Sangh Parivar

The Sangh Parivar (translation: "Family of the RSS" or the "RSS family") refers, as an umbrella term, to the collection of Hindutva organisations spawned by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which remain affiliated to it. These include the political party Bharatiya Janata Party, religious organisation Vishva Hindu Parishad, students union Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), religious militant organisation Bajrang Dal that forms the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), and the worker's union Bharatiya Kisan Sangh.
The Sangh Parivar represents the Hindu nationalist movement of India. Members of the Sangh Parivar or the supporters of its ideology are often referred to as Sanghis.
In the 1960s, the volunteers of the RSS joined the different social and political movements in India, including the Bhoodan, a land reform movement led by prominent Gandhian Vinobha Bhave and the Sarvodaya led by another Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan. RSS also supported the formation of a trade union, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh and a student's organisation Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and many other organisations like Seva Bharati, Lok Bharati and Deendayal Research Institute among others.
These organisations started and supported by the RSS volunteers came to be known collectively as the Sangh Parivar. Next few decades have seen a steady growth in the influence of the Sangh Parivar in the social and political space of India.
While the BJP governments have been progressively seen to be industry friendly, the opinions and the views of the Sangh Parivar constituents like Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) find consonance with the known leftist stands on labour rights. The Sangh Parivar, as a whole, even the BJP in its earlier days, has advocated 'Swadeshi' (Self Reliance). Sangh Parivar leaders have been very vocal in their criticism of globalization especially its impact on the poor and native people. They have been suspicious of the role of international agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Sangh constituents have advocated and promoted decentralized village centric economic growth with emphasis on ecological protection.
The constituents of the Sangh Parivar have been known for their demands for steps to "protect the environment, natural-ecology and agro-economy" and for establishment of a "self-reliant village-oriented economy". They have been vocal in their demand against the use of chemical fertilizers and have supported preservation and development of organic farming in India. Many of these views are seen to mirror the concerns of the Green party.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, a constituent of Sangh Parivar included the concerns on global warming in its election manifesto for the National Elections of 2009. The manifesto promised prioritising "combating climate change and global warming", "programmes to arrest the melting of Himalayan glaciers", "afforestation" and emphasis on "protecting India's biodiversity".
The Sangh Parivar has been described with monikers spanning the spectrum from "patriotic Hindus" and "Hindu nationalist". Some have also labeled them "Hindu chauvinist". While its constituent organisations present themselves as embedded in the traditional ethos of Hinduism, their ideological opponents have characterized them as the representatives of authoritarian, xenophobic and majoritarian religious nationalism in India, These organisations have been accused being involved with Saffron terror. Flemish Indologist and Hindutva supporter Koenraad Elst has challenged the critics, in his 2001 book The Saffron Swastika, he wrote "So far, the polemical arrows have all been shot from one side, replies from the other side being extremely rare or never more than piecemeal."
The activities of the Sangh Parivar have had considerable social and religious impact. And considerable influence over country's educational, social and defense policies.
In 1979, the religious wing of the Sangh Parivar, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad got the Hindu saints and religious leaders to reaffirm that untouchability and caste discrimination had no religious sanction in the Hindu scriptures and texts. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad is also spearheading efforts to ordain Dalits as priests in temples across India, positions that were earlier usually occupied only by people of "upper castes". In 1983, RSS founded a Dalit organisation called Samajik Samrasta Manch.
The leaders of the Sangh Parivar have also been involved in the campaigns against female foeticide and movements for the education. VHP founded a number of educational institutes such as Bharat Sevashram, Hindu Milan Mandir, Ekal Vidalayas and schools in tribal locations.
The service programs, over the years, have led to the empowerment of the economically and socially underprivileged sections of the society, mostly the tribal, who have long remained politically under-represented. Babulal Marandi belonging to the tribal community, who was the organizing secretary of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, became the first Chief Minister of the state of Jharkhand. Other such leaders of Sangh Parivar who belong to the tribal community include Karia Munda, Jual Oram; both ministers in the Union Government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
The emergence of the Sangh Parivar in Indian politics also brought many Dalits and representatives of the backward classes, who had been victims of social neglect, to prominent positions in the Government and Administration. Suraj Bhan, a dalit, who had been a member of the RSS, became the Governor of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, in 1998. Other leaders of the Sangh Parivar from the backward classes, who rose to prominence include Kalyan Singh, the former Chief Minister of UP, Uma Bharti, the former Chief Minister of MP, Narendra Modi, the incumbent Prime Minister of India, Gopinath Munde, the former Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh.
In many villages across India, Dharma Raksha Samitis (Duty/Religion Protection Committees) promote religious discourse and form an arena for bhajan performance. The Sangh sponsors calendars of Hindu deities and provides instruction on sanctioned methods of conducting Ganesh Chaturthi and Navaratri.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which represents the Sangh Parivar in national politics, has formed three governments in India, most recently being in power from May 2014 under the leadership of Prime minister Narendra Modi, re-elected in May 2019 and again re-elected in 2024.
Political opponents of the BJP allege that the party's moderate face merely serves to cover the Sangh Parivar's "hidden agenda" of undiluted Hindutva, detectable by the BJP's efforts to change the content of history textbooks and syllabi as well as other aspects of the education system.
Such criticism of the BJP arises from the fact that BJP had only 2 seats in the parliament in 1984 and after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 the party gained national recognition, and rose to power in 1998.
According to the report of the UPA instituted Liberhan Commission the Sangh Parivar organised the destruction of the Babri Masjid. The Commission said— "The blame or the credit for the entire temple construction movement at Ayodhya must necessarily be attributed to the Sangh Parivar".
It also noted that the Sangh Parivar is an "extensive and widespread organic body", which encompasses organisations, which address and bring together just about every type of social, professional and other demographic grouping of individuals.
The Sangh Parivar includes the following organisations (with membership figures in brackets). They are also categorized.