The overlap of land reforms in 1974 with the anti-Emergency movement accelerated the RSS’s expansion and consolidation of its support base in Karnataka.
Published Nov 05, 2025 | 6:00 PM ⚊ Updated Nov 05, 2025 | 6:00 PM
The RSS has long conducted shakha-style gatherings in schools and colleges, especially in Coastal Karnataka.
Synopsis: From its first shakha in Mangaluru in 1940, the RSS has come a long way in Karnataka. It drew strength from the Karnataka Land Reforms Act in 1974 and a ban during the Emergency. Later, wherever the RSS network has been strong, the BJP’s organisational presence followed. Incidentally, the BJP’s vote share went up in those constituencies that had witnessed communal flare-ups. However, the Congress has been failing to stymie the growth of both RSS and BJP. The Congress has lost the keenness to locate the minds that RSS has colonised.
Sanjeeva Kamath’s “going back” from Nagpur was not casual. The Gaud Saraswat Brahmin lawyer returned with a purpose.
Hailing from Kallya, a small village in the present-day Udupi district of Karnataka, Kamath travelled to Madras (now Chennai) to pursue a legal career. In Madras, he met Dadaroa Paramarth, who was deputed to the then-Presidency to lay the foundation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
An impressed Kamath, who had already been associated with the Goud Saraswat Parishad in Madras, asked Paramarth to take the RSS ideology to Coastal Karnataka. Soon, Kamath found himself attending the first session of the RSS in Nagpur in 1925.
While addressing the RSS’s National Officers’ Training Camp, the organisation’s founder, Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, gestured at a particular participant.
“He came here as a stranger, but in a matter of just four days, he is going back as our brother,” Hedgewar said.
The participant, Kamath, returned with a purpose and became instrumental in setting up Mangaluru’s first RSS shakha in 1940 — the first of many that would soon spread all over Coastal Karnataka.
Cut to the present. Eighty-five years after Kamath had founded the first shakha in Mangaluru, the RSS is in a precarious position in Karnataka. The ruling Congress has decided to frame rules to ban activities of private organisations on government-owned properties, including educational institutions.
The RSS has long conducted shakha-style gatherings in schools and colleges, especially in Coastal Karnataka. Although the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government has been insisting that the rules don’t singularly target the Sangh, the decision came at a time when the RSS was planning rallies across the state to mark its centenary.
Some rallies have run into trouble after the state denied them permission, citing an “ongoing law and order situation”.
Additionally, the Cabinet’s decision to frame the rules came after IT/BT and Rural Development Minister Priyank Kharge wrote to Siddaramaiah seeking a ban on the activities of the Sangh on the premises of government-run institutions, since they were “contrary to India’s unity and the spirit of the Constitution”.
Despite a ban, the RSS gained strength during the Emergency in 1975.
As Vishanz Pinto, former Associate Professor at St. Aloysius College, Mangalore, noted in 2019 that many Sangh-affiliated leaders, such as Uri Majalu Ram Bhat and Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat, were arrested during the Emergency. But since the base of the organisation’s activities had been built, RSS karyakartas led active efforts against the suspension of democracy.
When the Emergency was lifted, the RSS and its allies organised victory marches across Mangaluru. Pinto noted how those rallies celebrated writer and poet Aerya Laxmi Narayan Alva. Alva would then go on to become the District President of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and introduce the Hindu Samajotsava – a yearly show of strength of the Sangh Parivar in Coastal Karnataka.
Another turning point that bolstered the Sangh’s presence in the state was the implementation of the Karnataka Land Reforms Act in 1974. According to Suresh Bhat Bakrabail, district president of the Karnataka Communal Harmony Forum, the RSS began to grow after its work resonated with non-upper caste Hindus.
The Act, which redistributed land from dominant landowning castes to marginalised communities, triggered resentment among the non-upper caste Hindus and created a social vacuum that the RSS quickly occupied. Dominant caste groups like the Bunts, who were particularly affected by the reforms, started distancing themselves from the Congress.
The overlap of land reforms with the anti-Emergency movement further accelerated the RSS’s expansion and consolidation of its support base.
The RSS’s mobilisation efforts began to pay off politically post the Emergency. In the 1978 elections to the Karnataka Assembly — the first after the Emergency — the Janata Party (which was a coalition of parties that opposed the Emergency, including the Bharatiya Jana Sangh— the predecessor of BJP) got more than 37 percent of the votes.
In the next 1983 elections, the Janata Party was voted to power as the single-largest party with Ramakrishna Hegde at the helm. Since then, Coastal Karnataka has become a BJP bastion.
The party has held the Dakshina Kannada Lok Sabha seat continuously since 1991 and dominated the Udupi and Uttara Kannada seats as well. Wherever the RSS network has been strong, the BJP’s organisational presence followed, political analysts said.
Backed by the RSS’s strength, the BJP has ridden on communal issues to victory in the region. According to a study by Professor Narayana A, the BJP did well in Coastal Karnataka despite the anti-incumbency factor in the 2023 Assembly elections, which stripped it of power in the state.
Across the state, constituencies that had witnessed communal flare-ups in the past few years showed an increase in the vote share of the BJP. In Udupi, the epicentre of the 2022 hijab controversy, the BJP’s winning margin jumped from around 12,000 votes in 2018 to over 32,000 in 2023.
In Srirangapatna, where the Sangh Parivar attempted to revive its claim over a mosque — saying it was once a Hindu temple — the BJP’s vote share shot up from a mere six percent in 2018 to 23 percent.
Even in Mangalore North, the BJP bettered its vote share from 56 percent to 57 percent and from 52 percent to 56 percent in Mangalore South. Both these constituencies had seen a spate of communal incidents, including two murders.
Today, Coastal Karnataka’s landscape is dotted with educational institutions linked to the Sangh and its leaders.
The Sri Rama Vidyakendra High School in Kalladka in Bantwal, owned by RSS leader Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat, was under fire in 2019.
It had then held a mock drama, re-enacting the Babri Masjid demolition in front of leaders such as former chief minister of Karnataka DV Sadananda Gowda and former Governor of Pondicherry, Kiran Bedi.
Additionally, Dr Veerendra Heggade, who has been associated with the VHP, owns the Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheswara Education Society.
The names of Vinaya Hegde, who is the Chancellor of Nitte Deemed-to-be-University and Dr Mohan Alva, who owns Alva’s Education Society, often figure in programmes of the Sangh, Pinto pointed out.
“It implies the depth and influence of the rightist ideology in the district,” he said.
Political analysts sounded unsure over whether the ongoing row over RSS activities would have any bearing on the organisation’s influence in the region.
KP Suresh, an analyst from Mangaluru, felt the Sangh’s internal contradictions posed a greater threat than external regulation.
“It is pushing a singular agenda of hatred and turning a blind eye to the apprehensions of its core support group. The RSS will face greater challenge from within, not outside,” he opined.
The analyst further said that the Congress government could not curb the influence of the Sangh. “It is an ideological fight, not a law and order challenge. RSS grew like a shadow organisation. Congress has lost the keenness to locate the minds that RSS has colonised,” Suresh argued.
Another Mangaluru-based social activist, Vidya Dinker, explained that the Sangh might use the ongoing row to gain sympathy and garner more support.
“They have been so focused on occupying the minds, hearts and entering the social fabric of people in the region,” she said, referring to how the RSS has been holding huge rallies and smaller neighbourhood meetings to augment its influence.
“They might get used to getting the paperwork done to get the necessary permissions,” Dinker said.
However, she lauded the state government’s move to regulate the Sangh’s activities. She said it would help create a “level-playing field” at a time when citizen-led groups have to go through a bureaucratic rigmarole to get permissions to hold events.
“It creates a paper trail where officials become conscious. It makes them (RSS) adhere to rules like the rest of us,” Dinker opined.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
