The RSS was a natural child of the twenties. Like any organization, it reflected the ambitions and aspirations of a section of Hindu society of that time and was set up to meet a specific historical need. Since then it has grown and the growth has brought many alterations in its original character. Gramsci has remarked that ‘the history of a party … cannot fail to be the history of a given social class … from a particular, monographic point of view.’ But this is not how Malkani conceived his task when he set about to write The RSS Story. He has no historical sense, no understanding of the objective causes—the complex interrelation of objective social conditions and their subjective perception by a community or class that make a party or institution appear on the historical stage and grow. His conception of the RSS story is static and uncritically naive.
May-June 1981, volume 5, No 5/6