Equality and the RSS: Rahul Gandhi's Pune Meeting and India's Battle Over Women's Rights
In pre-colonial India, Hindu society was broadly governed by the laws of Manusmriti, with caste and gender hierarchies at the core of its values. During the colonial period, as education, transport and modern administration began to develop, democratic ideas also began to emerge.
These developments were accompanied by the emergence of ideas of secular nationalism. Its emerging principles included workers’ rights, education and the rights of Dalits and women. This was soon followed by the concept of equal citizenship for all, irrespective of religion, caste, language and gender.
All these processes had their opponents belonging to the elite-landlord-clergy classes. While the democratising tendencies can broadly be grouped as those represented by Bhagat Singh, B.R. Ambedkar and M.K. Gandhi, those opposing them were represented by the Muslim League, Hindu Mahasabha and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
The democratising process involved workers demanding their rights, citizens seeking freedom of expression, agitations supporting education for Dalits and women and more. As far as women’s education was concerned, it began with Jotirao Phule, Savitribai Phule and Fatima Shaikh.
The hardships Savitribai Phule and Fatima Shaikh faced in pursuing their goals are well known. Ambedkar’s movements had good participation from women and the Gandhi-led national movement also had a good presence of women. The opponents from elite sections, including their organisations, the Muslim League and RSS, were predominantly male organisations. Our constitution very aptly gave equal opportunities and status to both genders.
Also read: Commitment to Justice Was the Preeminent Note in Savitribai Phule's Poetry
While the Muslim League's ideology played havoc in Pakistan, the RSS was a primary opponent of the right to equality of women in India. When in 1936 Laxmibai Kelkar asked the RSS Sarsanghchalak to allow women to become members of RSS, he turned her down and asked her to start the Rashtra Sevika Samiti instead.
It is noteworthy that in the women’s organisation, the word "swayam", meaning self or oneself, is absent. The womens' outfit of the RSS is called the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti, sevika meaning a woman who selflessly serves others. This clearly indicates that women had to be subordinate to men. The RSS also opposed the constitution on the ground that it did not have the values of the ancient glorious past, meaning the tenets of Manusmriti. The outfit stood totally against the original draft of the Hindu Code Bill, which gave equal rights over property to women in their father’s property.
During the initial decades of India's freedom, a lot was done to promote the notion of equality for women and girls as well as to legislate those rights. At the same time, the grip of Hindu nationalist ideology was strengthened in those decades. One of the mechanisms to do the latter was the Gita Press, which published books based on the Manusmriti, some churned out in millions of copies.
Or recall the Roop Kanwar episode, in which a young, educated woman was burned on the funeral pyre of her husband. Amidst the rightful condemnation of this tragic crime by numerous social groups and parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) vice president Vijaya Raje Scindia led a procession to Parliament raising the slogan that committing sati was a glorious Indian tradition and also the right of women. (She herself did not exercise this right after the death of her husband.)
Then there is Mridula Sinha, former chief of the BJP's Mahila Morcha, who in an interview with Savvy magazine (April 1994) stated that women should not work outside the home, unless there was a dire necessity. She defended wife-beating and dowry.
All these historical facts have returned to the public conversation today as we saw Congress MP and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi hold his fourth ‘Chhatron ki Goonj’ programme, exclusively for girls, in Pune on August 23, 2026.
At the Pune meeting, Gandhi heard women articulate their concerns over security, the obstacles to their studies and to their independent decision-making and the numerous social pressures and hindrances that prevent them from living as a full citizen. Gandhi turned the meeting into a process of social reform, pushing the narrative in the direction of equality for women.
In today’s India, the RSS and its outfits are not only trying to undermine the values of the Indian constitution, but also promoting retrograde social relationships vis-à-vis women and Dalits in particular. While its promotion of hatred against Muslims and Christians is very much in the air, its promotion of the Manusmriti for gender relations is also being noticed by citizens. This concern was also raised by people at the Pune meeting.
Gandhi himself gave three obvious examples of this tendency. He pointed to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s statement that rapes happen in India, not in Bharat. Surely, by Bharat he meant rural areas, which, according to him, were unaffected by the progress made by the rest of the country in sync with constitutional values. Of course, in that statement, he feigned ignorance of rapes against Dalits and Adivasi women.
The second instance is the former chief minister of Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar, who is now Union Minister, whose comments in 2018 about rape and sexual harassment drew opprobrium. The leader of the pack is, of course, Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India. He was recently upset that girls had used cuss words and abuses during the Jantar Mantar protest (which spread far beyond the capital). Boys abusing was passé for the prime minister; girls abusing was a "culture shock".
The way the regime he runs underplayed the plight of India's women wrestlers who complained about sexual harassment is also reprehensible.
Gandhi brought out the core ideology of Hindu nationalists when he said that they uphold the Manusmriti, according to which a girl or woman must first remain under the control of her father, then under the control of her husband and finally under the control of her son if her husband dies. When he said girls should have swayam (selfhood, right to express themselves), his audience welcomed it wholeheartedly.
This meeting should be considered a milestone India's quest towards equality. Without being ‘political’ in the usual sense of the word, Gandhi operated at a deeper social level. He focused on where attention is needed the most: the social structure which must transform in favour of womens' equality. Most importantly, what the Congress leader said found resonance among the listeners. The girls said boys must change their behaviour, beliefs and attitudes so that everybody can live with equality and dignity.
Women are half of humanity, half of India. Gripped by Hindu nationalist imposition on everyday lives, India needs to reinforce the values of the Indian constitution instead. This meeting gives India one more reason to challenge the growing might of the RSS combine.
Ram Puniyani is president of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism.
This article went live on August twenty-fourth, two thousand twenty six, at forty-six minutes past eight in the evening.The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
