KB Hedgewar: The Social Architect

FEW FIGURES IN MODERN INDIAN history embody both continuity with tradition and innovation in political imagination as much as Keshav Baliram Hedgewar (1889-1940). As the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Hedgewar provided more than just an organisational structure; he seeded an idea of India rooted in cultur­al belonging, fraternity, and civic disci­pline. Yet Hedgewar is often reduced to a partisan caricature, understood only through the prism of RSS’ subsequent evolu­tion. To grasp his true significance, there is a need to develop a new lexicon that describes ‘Hedgewarian thought’ beyond the confines of the Sangh. Such a lexicon must account for his hy­brid intellectual inheritance: deeply Indian, yet conversant with European ideas, producing a philosophy that may be described as ‘progressive conservatism’.

Progressive conservatism, in Hedgewar’s idiom, sought to rec­oncile rootedness with reform, community cohesion with social mobility, and national unity with cultural diversity.

Hedgewar’s vision remains profoundly relevant to India’s contemporary challenges, and his influence is more endur­ing than that of many of his contemporaries because he grasped the precondition of national life: order, fraternity, and moral discipline.

Beyond RSS

The story of Hedgewar is often subsumed into the institutional history of RSS. Yet Hedgewar was more than a founder of an organisation. His writings, speeches, and methods suggest a thinker responding to India’s crisis of cohesion in the early 20th century. He saw that colonial rule had not only exploited India’s material resources but had fractured its social fabric. Caste antagonisms, religious conflict, and the erosion of civic virtues threatened to prevent any coherent national identity from emerging.

To frame Hedgewar merely as a sectarian activist obscures his real innovation: he understood that before freedom could be realised politically, society itself had to be reconstituted morally and institutionally. In this sense, Hedgewar was not a revolution­ary in the mould of Subhas Chandra Bose, nor a spiritual reformer like Gandhi, nor a constitutional lawyer like BR Ambedkar. He was a social architect, concerned with how to shape disciplined citizens capable of carrying the burden of freedom. For this rea­son, a distinct vocabulary—Hedgewarian thought—is needed to examine his vision on its own terms.

Progressive Conservatism

The term ‘progressive conservatism’ originates in European political thought, most notably in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thinkers such as Benjamin Disraeli in Britain and later the German Christian Democrats argued that social reform was necessary not to overthrow tradition but to preserve it. For conser­vatives, society is an organic whole, fragile and interdependent, in which reckless liberal individualism or radical revolution risked disintegration. Progressive conservatives accepted the need for reforms in welfare, education, and political participation, but always framed them as continuity with cultural inheritance rather than rupture.

Hedgewar’s progressive conservatism shared these prem­ises but was adapted to India’s unique conditions. Drawing on his exposure to European nationalist movements during his medical studies in Calcutta, and informed by classical Indian philosophy, he saw that reform in India could not mean deracination. It had to mean renewal from within, drawing strength from the soil of India’s civilisation. The nation (rash­tra) was not simply a political entity but a living organism sus­tained by dharma, culture, and fraternity. For Hedgewar, reform that ignored these sources of rootedness would produce only fragmentation. His conservatism was thus not reactionary but integrative: he sought to conserve in order to progress.

Moral Basis of Community

At the heart of Hedgewar’s vision was rootedness. He believed that a people without deep attachment to their soil, traditions, and culture would lack the cohesion necessary for collective action. This was not a narrow ethnic exclusivism. Hedgewar’s notion of desh bhakti (love of the soil) was capacious: anyone who revered the land and contributed to its flourishing could be part of the national community, regardless of caste, class, or creed. By contrast, those who treated the land as an object to be dominated or exploited were outsiders, whatever their origin.

In European terms, this resonates with the conservative idea that reform must draw from the soil it hopes to enrich. Rootedness anchors freedom. Without it, liberty degenerates into licence and democracy into chaos. In Hedgewar’s India, rootedness was indispensable for bridging the gulf between communities fractured by colonial divide-and-rule and by in­ternal social cleavages.

Social Capital

Modern political science provides a useful vocabulary to under­stand Hedgewar’s project: social capital. As Robert Putnam has argued, societies rich in networks of trust, reciprocity, and civic engagement are more capable of democratic governance and economic development. Hedgewar anticipated this insight by half-a-century. His emphasis on the shakha (local branch of RSS) was not simply about ideological training but about building habits of cooperation, discipline, and mutual trust.

Without such social capital, community cohesion is impos­sible. And without cohesion, no common national identity can emerge. Hedgewar’s genius was to see that India’s freedom would not be secured by charismatic leaders or constitutional drafts alone but by the slow, patient cultivation of fraternity at the local level. In this sense, he addressed the pre-political conditions of politics itself, a deeper and more enduring project than many of his contemporaries pursued.

Hedgewar vs Others

Why, then, should Hedgewar’s influence be considered greater than that of his contemporaries? Bose’s vision was heroic but unsustainable, dependent on external alliances and military gamble. Gandhi’s moral authority was vast, but his model of non-violence was vulnerable to political exhaustion and divi­sion. Ambedkar provided essential constitutional safeguards, but his project remained primarily legal and structural. Hedgewar, by contrast, worked on the substratum: the forma­tion of disciplined citizens bound by fraternity and rootedness. This is why the organisation he founded, beginning with a few volunteers in 1925, today constitutes the world’s largest volun­tary association.

Hedgewar’s significance lies not in spectacular acts but in the durability of his methods. His insight, namely that social cohe­sion precedes political sovereignty, remains as relevant to India in the 21st century as it was under colonial rule.

Relevance

India today faces challenges of polarisation, economic inequal­ity, and environmental fragility. In such a context, Hedgewar’s progressive conservatism offers a vocabulary for renewal. Root­edness reminds India that globalisation must not erode cultural inheritance. Social capital emphasises the need for trust and fraternity across religious, caste, and regional lines. Progressive reform, rather than radical rupture, ensures that India’s institu­tions adapt without disintegration.

Moreover, Hedgewar’s fusion of Indian and European influ­ences offers India a model of creative synthesis: confident enough in its tradition to borrow, and discerning enough to adapt rather than imitate. In a world of fractured democracies and declining trust, the Hedgewarian insight that community cohesion is the bedrock of freedom remains indispensable.

KB Hedgewar was not merely the founder of an organisa­tion but the architect of a philosophy best described as pro­gressive conservatism. Rooted in India’s soil yet informed by European thought, he understood that a nation is sustained not by episodic protests or charismatic leaders but by daily practice: the quiet cultivation of rootedness, social capital, and cohesion. His relevance for India today lies in remind­ing us that progress is impossible without conservation, and that freedom endures only where fraternity is strong. To recover Hedgewarian thought in its fullness is to recover a lexicon for nation-building that India, and indeed the wider world, urgently needs.

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