ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the relationship between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the state apparatus as a telling example for the political struggle to define and implement state secularism. The conflict around the RSS and its activities in the aftermath of Partition is one such arena in which concrete historical understandings of secularism and secular practices, including their contradictions, ambiguities, and incoherences, emerged. The severe damage done by misinformation and rumours had already been a major issue during the months before Partition. Besides the battlefield of propaganda and public (mis)information, the RSS developed another strategy to hamper the government's policies: refugee relief work. The catalyst for the ban on the RSS was Mahatma Gandhi's assassination on 30 January 1948 at the Birla House in New Delhi. When the ban on the RSS was finally lifted on 12 July 1949, the problem of loyalty to the organisation remained an issue for the 'secular' state.
