Answering Tomorrow’s Questions: Remembering Doctor Hedgewar

Dr Hari Seldon was a mathematician who lived in the future. Born in the 11,988th year of Galactic Era, Seldon grew up as a mathematician specialising in a branch of science called psychohistory. It is a statistical science that studies human behavior. He realised that the Galactic society in which he lived, was slowly crumbling down. So he established what came to be known as ‘Foundation’ at one end of the galaxy. This was created to steer Galactic humanity back into a vibrant civilisation through the ensuing centuries of barbarism after the inevitable fall of the Galactic society.

It aimed to reduce the chaotic barbarism to a mere thousand years. For this, Seldon said that a group of scholars would sit in isolation and gather all human knowledge silently. They would then publish a series of Encyclopedia Galactic. Thus was established the Encyclopedia Foundation, which was later famously known only as Foundation at the remote corner of the galaxy in an unnoticed small planet called Terminus.

Who could have thought that a bunch of isolated scholars working in a remote planet on encyclopedias would actually become harbingers of renaissance and builders of a new society on a galactic scale? And who could have thought a bunch of Kabadi playing youngsters would change the course of a history of a nation.

Dr Hari Seldon actually never lived. He is a fictional character created by Dr Isaac Asimov. But Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar really lived.

He created the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS) in 1925. He wanted some boys in the neighborhood to come together every day for one hour in an uniform that one may today find laughable. These boys would do some physical exercises, sing some patriotic songs, play Kabadi and then disperse. There was no membership form. There was no attendance. There was no need for much of an infrastructure. These youths, the doctor predicted would become the powerhouses of the nation in various sectors.

It seems amazing that Dr Hedgewar could have involuted into the body of the Sangh solutions for a crisis that would threaten the fabric of Hindu society decades after his death. But the fact is he had. Take the question of Jaathi(caste). What should be the Hindu approach. At the time Dr Hedgewar formulated the Sangh, most of the dominant national leaders including Tilak and Gandhi were supporters of caste system. Some of the greatest Hindu religious leaders including Sankaracharyas of that time supported untouchability and opposed Scheduled Communities entering Hindu temples.

Dr Hedgewar then shines as the one Hindu leader who could peer into the dark future and see clearly how the fault-lines would develop for the society with external forces trying to deepen them.

Another interesting aspect of Dr Hedgewar’s futuristic vision is his ability to tap into the traditional network ability of the Hindu society. He made shakas the networking point for local Hindu cadre in a cost-effective manner. There was no building, no secrecy. All that was needed for the RSS to run a shaka is just an open ground available for one hour. This cost-effective networking strategy has made sangh the fastest rescuer of humans whenever there is a calamity anywhere in India. It does not matter whether RSS is ‘strong’ in an area. If there is an accident or a flood, sangh volunteers would be the first to reach the spot and start the rescue operations. For example in Kerala, when in 1988 more than 100 people lost their lives when Trivandrum bound Island Express plunged into a lake near Quilon, RSS cadre were the first to reach the place and rescue many trapped in the derailed bogeys reported Kerala’s leading newspaper. The same story has been repeated in Morvi dam disaster and Bhopal gas tragedy, Gujarat earthquake, Tsunami of 2004 and so on.

What is amusing is the fact that there is not a single academic study of how the RSS has emerged as the only nationwide organisation, reaching in rescue missions of all natural disasters without being capital intensive. The sangh network and methodology is actually a boon for creating similar cost-effective voluntary organisations in other post-colonial developing societies.

In fact, what Dr Hedgewar did is expression of an age old Indic vision. When Uddalaka showed his son Svetaketu, how the great Banyan tree was involuted in the small seeds, he also showed that the principle can be repeated at all levels : from the biological to the spiritual, to the socio-spiritual.

‘Tat Tvam Asi Swayamsevaka’ – ’That thou art, Swayamasevaka’ – says the Rishi Keshava Baliram Hedgewar; that deep within every Hindu lies the future glory of the great nation.