The Hindu Nationalist politics of caste harmony: Balasaheb Deoras, Sāmājik Samarastā , and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, 1973–90

Abstract This article examines the ideological and organizational evolution of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the world’s largest Hindu Nationalist organization, in response to the challenges posed by the anti-caste politics in post-Independent India. Focusing on the leadership of Balasaheb Deoras (1915–1996), the third sarsańghacālak of the RSS, it situates the period between 1973 and 1990 as a critical yet understudied period in the history of the Sangh, marked by a significant departure from the organization’s earlier defence of caste hierarchy. Unlike his predecessors, Deoras publicly rejected the caste system in the early 1970s and paved the way for the Sangh to adopt the rhetoric of Sāmājik Samarastā (Social Harmony), which became the central pillar of the Sangh’s engagement with the question of caste in its bid to create a wider Hindu community which posed itself as caste-neutral and caste-assimilative. The article argues that the Sangh’s engagement with caste was neither superficial nor a new feature of its post-2014 avatar. S amarastā helped the Sangh develop a conservative model of caste reform, one that invoked the language of social change without challenging the Brahmanical ideas inherent to its Hindu Nationalism.