 The RSS has millions of members across India |
The RSS is the ideological fountainhead of various Hindu groups including India's governing Bharatiya Janata Party.
Following a three-day conclave, it came out in strong support for the construction of a Hindu temple at Ayodhya, on the ruins of the demolished Babri mosque.
It also passed a resolution on the controversial issue of Bangladeshi infiltration - like the BJP, the RSS believes that illegal Bengali Muslim migrants from across the border should be sent back.
The RSS came into existence in 1925 in the western Indian city of Nagpur with an avowed objective to make India a Hindu nation.
Today the organisation has around 4.5 million active members across India and over 100 affiliate bodies.
Some RSS members take part in military drills and exercises - a guiding principle of the organisation is that India should be Hinduised and militarised.
Critics of the organisation say that its hardline ideology is based on intolerance towards religious minorities.
Ideological framework
RSS founder KS Hegdewar gave the organisation an ideological framework and developed it into a sizeable network throughout India.
However, during his 15-year stewardship he consciously kept the organisation from having a direct affiliation with any of the political organisations then fighting British rule. 
The RSS grew in size when MS Golwarkar was nominated as successor to Mr Hedgewar in 1940.
He steered the organisation through a difficult time, and remained in charge for 33 years.
Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 by a militant Hindu who had once been an RSS member.
This incident, coupled with a subsequent ban on the organisation imposed by the government, undoubtedly blighted its image.
Up until Mahatma Gandhi's murder, the RSS capitalised on the departure of millions of Muslims to the newly created Pakistan at the time of partition.
Hindu nation
The organisation used this mass Muslim migration as an opportunity to intensify its campaign for India to become a Hindu nation.
The ban on the RSS was lifted in 1950 when it gave an undertaking that it would work under its own written constitution. 
Its drive to be at the centre of right-wing Hindu thinking was enhanced when its members played a key role in the launch of a new right-wing Hindu party, Janasangh, in October 1950.
The new party mainly drew its support from Hindu refugees who had come from Pakistan.
The majority party in India's current governing coalition, the BJP, was formed by many who were in the Janasangh party before it was disbanded.
The BJP itself is considered a political off-shoot of the RSS.
Ban
The RSS has been banned on two other occasions since 1948.
Once in 1975, when Indira Gandhi was prime minister, and in 1993 because of its perceived role in the demolition of the 464-year-old mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya.
Although the RSS claims to be a socio-cultural organisation without a political agenda, this has often been debated and challenged.
The organisation was at the centre of the controversy that brought down the first ever non-Congress coalition government.
Some constituents of the coalition accused the Hindu nationalist Jan Sangh of acting under orders of the RSS rather than in consultation with its coalition partners.
Critics of the RSS maintain that India's current BJP-led government is also unduly influenced by the organisation.
2 news.bbc.co.uk/2/
Congress steps up RSS row
 Members of hardline groups were banned until recently |
By Jyotsna Singh in Delhi
India's main opposition Congress Party has threatened to launch national protests over a decision by the Gujarat state government to allow civil servants to join what they say is an umbrella organisation for Hindu extremists.
Recently, the state's BJP-led government said that public sector employees could join the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh or RSS.
They say that the decision to lift a 13-year-old ban on RSS members having government jobs sets a dangerous precedent.
Non-political
But the Gujarat Home Minister Harin Pandya says the RSS is a non-political, nationalist organisation engaged in the character building of youth and social services in remote areas.
He said that a previous ban imposed by the Congress Party government on the RSS was imposed with the wrong intention.
Ultimatum
On Monday, a three-member Congress delegation met President Narayanan seeking his immediate intervention.
 Sonia Gandhi: Sent letter to the president |
The delegation also handed him a letter by the party president Sonia Gandhi in which she had said that the decision will seriously jeopardise the secular character of the Gujarat government.
The party has given Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee 12 days in which to order the Gujarat government to revoke the order.
He said if the government fails to seek the withdrawal, Congress will launch a nationwide protest march which will include a demonstration outside the prime minister's house on 30 January - the anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi at the hands of a Hindu extremist.
3 news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
In India, the head of the influential nationalist Hindu organisation, the RSS, has accused foreign governments of using Christianity as a political weapon to divide the Indian nation.
He was speaking at the third and final day of a mass RSS rally in the city of Agra, where 75,000 followers have gathered.
He also repeated his call for India Christians to set up their own national church separate from those in other countries.
Organisers of this three-day rally say their aim has been to make followers aware of the threats they perceive to India's stability.
They cite Pakistan as a major security threat, but they also include aspects of Islam and Christianity, which they describe as tools of hostile foreign influences.
Religious politics
RSS leader, K S Sudershan, told reporters that today Christianity is less a religion and more about politics, politics which must be opposed because its detrimental to India's interests.
He described the Church as part of the western arsenal.
Western governments, he said, were deliberately using the spread of Christianity as a way of segregating regions of India and damaging the country's unity.
 Communal violence in Bihar: Some say the RSS incites tensions |
Many Christians didn't support these moves, he said, and he called on them to cut their links with foreign Churches and start their own Indian Church.
Muslims in India weren't obliged to recognise Hindu gods as deities, he added, but they should acknowledge them as their forefathers.
Mr Sudashan's call for a national Indian Church, similar to the model established by China, has caused concern amongst many Christian leaders here.
They say any such move would be unconstitutional and go against India's secular traditions. Christian groups have blamed the RSS for a recent series of violent attacks on Christians and churches, but the RSS denies involvement.
4 news.bbc.co.uk/2/
BBC News Online: World: South Asia
Monday, 22 January, 2001, 17:36 GMT
Controversy over Hindu weekly
By Sanjeev Srivastava in Bombay
A row has broken out in the western Indian state of Gujarat over a move ordering schools to subscribe to an allegedly right-wing Hindu magazine.
Authorities in the western Indian state of Gujarat have rejected demands by Christian and Muslim groups to withdraw the controversial order.
Minority community leaders say the weekly, Sadhana, is a mouthpiece of the Hindu nationalist organisation, RSS.
The RSS is seen by many as the ideological parent organisation of India's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is also the ruling party in Gujarat.
Christian missionaries and other activists have described the Gujarat Government's decision to introduce the Hindu weekly in state-run schools as unconstitutional.
They have also decided to move the court if the government failed to reverse its decision soon.
Hindu ideology
The convenor of the United Christian Forum for Human Rights and a Jesuit priest, Cedric Prakash, told the BBC that the directive was an attempt to impose Hindu ideology on students of different religions.
He also took exception to the government asking school authorities to use official aid and grant money to pay for the subscription costs.
But Gujarat Education Minister Anandiben Patel denied there was any attempt to force non-Hindu students to read the weekly which she described as a "social magazine".
This is not the first stand-off between the BJP government in Gujarat and minority groups.
Christian groups had charged the state administration with being soft on some militant Hindu groups during widespread anti-Christian violence nearly two years ago.
The Gujarat Government also provoked a row last year when it allowed government employees to take part in the activities of the RSS.
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The BJP has been in power in the state for most of the last 10 years.
And it is under pressure to retain power in Gujarat because there are only two other Indian states which it still holds.
In assembly elections held earlier this year in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur and Jammu and Kashmir, the party fared badly.
It is facing an uphill task in Himachal Pradesh, which goes to the polls in February next year.
Personal prestige
Retaining Gujarat is also a matter of honour for the party since some of its most senior leaders represent the state in central politics.
These include the hawkish Deputy Prime Minister, LK Advani, who is a member of parliament from the state capital, Gandhinagar, former Law Minister Arun Jaitly, who is a member of the upper house from the state, Textiles Minister Kanshiram Rana and Minister of State for Defence Hiren Pathak. 
With the state witnessing total political and religious polarisation, the BJP and its ideological affiliates are pitted against a strong secular front under the Congress.
The Left is supporting the Congress, and the Lok Janshakti Party has announced that it will refrain from contesting the election so that the secular vote is not divided.
Other political parties like the Samajwadi Party or the Nationalist Congress Party - which are reportedly going it alone - do not have much political clout in the state.
Gujarat has also been a testing ground for the BJP.
Mr Advani's campaign in 1990 for construction of a HIndu temple at Ayodhya in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh started from Somnath in Gujarat.
The Hindu nationalist movement's confrontation with the Christian minority also started in Gujarat in 1998 before it went on to spread to other states.
Troublesome coalition
Apart from its ideological attachment to Gujarat, the BJP also has to take into account coalition politics in Delhi.
Following the Hindu-Muslim clashes which swept the state earlier this year, Chandrababu Naidu, the leader of the Telugu Desam Party, a key partner in the ruling national alliance, expressed his reservations about Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi continuing in office.
But the BJP ignored such concerns, and Mr Modi stayed put.
Another coalition partner, the DMK, is also estranged from the BJP - but for different reasons.
The party is a major regional player in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and is reportedly unhappy with the growing closeness between its rival in the state, the AIADMK, and the BJP.
Another of the BJP allies at the centre, the Samata Party, has refused to join forces with the BJP for the Gujarat elections.
Its president, George Fernandes, is the defence minister in the union government and the convenor of the National Democratic Alliance.
The party regards itself as secular and does not want to be associated with the BJP's agressively Hindu nationalist platform in the Gujarat polls.
A clear victory in the Gujarat elections will enable the BJP to assert itself in the coalition with renewed confidence.
A less than resounding victory could seriously weaken the BJP's standing in the alliance at a time when its electoral fortunes have already taken a dip.
6 news.bbc.co.uk/2/
BBC News Online: World: South Asia
Thursday, 24 February, 2000, 13:03 GMT
Parliament row over Hindu hardliners
The Indian parliament has adjourned in chaos after opposition MPs protested against what they say is the growing political influence of the Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Opposition members chanted anti-government slogans in protest at a decision to allow civil servants in the states of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh to join the RSS.
"Remove the RSS, save the country," the opposition deputies shouted.
Earlier, the opposition, led by Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, held a sit-in in the parliament compound to protest against the RSS.
'Hidden agenda'
The opposition expressed fears that the RSS would penetrate all levels of government and the civil service.
"It is regrettable that they (BJP-led government) are pursuing the hidden agenda. We will fight to the last," Sonia Gandhi said.
The RSS has links with the Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and opponents allege that it influencess the government's political agenda.
Its critics say it is an umbrella organisation for Hindu extremists seeking to alter India's secular society.
We will fight to the last
Sonia Gandhi
The RSS says it is a social and cultural organisation and not a political one.
But the opposition accuses the organisation of promoting intolerance against Muslims and Christians - a charge the RSS denies.
Controversy
The RSS issue became even more controversial when Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani hinted earlier this month that the federal government would also consider allowing its workers to join the organisation.
However, Mr Vajpayee's announced last week that there was no move to lift the ban on federal civil servants joining a political organisation.
7 news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
World: South Asia
Christian nuns raped in India
The attack caused fear and outrage among India's Christians
The authorities in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have increased security around religious buildings and homes of the Christian community in two districts, following attacks and sexual assaults on a group of nuns on Wednesday.
The incident happened in the village of Nawapada, at the convent of the Foreign Missionary Sisters, who provide medical help in rural areas.
The attack
In the early hours of the morning a group of armed men, brandishing swords and canes, broke open the grilled gates of the convent, after pleading with the sisters to accompany them to a patient in the area.
The sisters had refused to go, asking the men to bring a letter from the local priest.
The men then dragged four nuns to a farm field, and raped two of them.
The identities of the nuns were not revealed, but they were all under 35, and came from the southern coastal state of Tamil Nadu, the All India Catholic Union said.
The motive
Habans Singh, the state's home minister said 18 people were being sought by police in connection with the attack, and a judicial inquiry had also been announced.
A reward of 50,000 rupees (US$1,190) was offered for information about the attackers, who also ransacked the convent, the minister said.
Mr Singh said the motive for the attack had apparently been robbery, and the rape of the nuns was not premeditated. A local official said the suspects were members of a local criminal gang.
But our correspondent says that the Christian community thinks otherwise.
Christian fears
Christians believe that they are being targeted by Hindu militant groups in remote and rural parts of the country, where Christians are generally poor and powerless.
Other attacks on Christians have taken place earlier in neighbouring districts, but Christian suspicions that they were connected have not been proved.
Institutions run by Christian missionary groups in the state of Madhya Pradesh are reported to have remained closed on Thursday in protest.
Madhya Pradesh is currently in the midst of an assembly election. The opposition Hindu nationalist BJP has condemned the attack, and blamed it on what it described as the breakdown of law and order in the state.
A party spokesman said the authorities were trying to play down the seriousness of the incident.
8news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/
Thursday, December 3, 1998 Published at 16:39 GMT
Hindu militants stage lesbian film attacks
Hindu militants stage lesbian film attacks
Hindu extremists in India have continued their attacks on cinemas showing a controversial film centred on a lesbian relationship.
The Shiv Sena organisation - which is allied to the governing Hindu nationalist BJP - tipped-off the media before about a dozen of its members rampaged through the lobby of a Delhi cinema on Tuesday.
![[ image: width=150]](http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/225000/images/_227273_150tear.jpg)
Windows and mirrors were smashed as protestors outside shouted slogans and tore down posters for the film, Fire.
A restaurant was also damaged, but nobody was hurt and the vandals did not get into the auditorium, where the internationally-acclaimed movie was showing to a full house.
Film 'attacks Hindu culture'
The day before two cinemas in Bombay had suffered similar attacks.
Shiv Sena says the film is anti-Hindu because of a scene showing the two main female characters having sex.
The group's president, Jaibhagwan Goyal, said: "This scene is a direct attack on our Hindu culture and civilisation.
![[ image: width=150]](http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/225000/images/_227273_150film_couple.jpg)
"We do all these things according to our social system - where it is done between a man and a woman after marriage - but the film is trying to show something that deviates from this line and it will send a wrong message to the society."
Fire tells the story of two sisters-in-law trapped in loveless marriages who develop an emotional - and eventually physical relationship.
The film had already been showing in India for three weeks before the wave of violent protests began.
'Cultural terrorism'
Police in Delhi say they have begun making arrests and that they will prevent further attacks.
But some cinema owners are not taking any chances and have stopped showing the film for fear of further trouble.
![[ image: width=150]](http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/210000/images/_213417_director150.jpg)
Film-makers in Bombay, India's cinema capital, have condemned what they called "cultural terrorism" and called for protection from the authorities.
The movie's Canadian-based director Deepa Mehta, has defended the public's right to see her work without fear of intimidation.
"Fire has gone through the Indian censors without one cut," she said.
"So, you know, I think that let's not under-estimate the Indian audience. I didn't make the film to shock people. I made the film because I wanted to make the film."
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