These were the demands the Sangh Parivar sought to advance in the tumultuous months of 1947. As India approached independence, the organisation opposed the emerging national symbols and sought to redefine the nation along explicitly Hindutva lines. The country’s name, language and flag were not merely questions of identity; they became instruments for drawing a line between Hindus and minorities. Even before India became independent, the experiment was already underway: turning the symbols of the new nation into instruments of exclusion.Today, the same people present themselves as custodians of national symbols and the sole proprietors of patriotism. Yet the July-August 1947 issues of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) mouthpiece, Organiser stand as a written record of the Sangh Parivar’s ‘lost battle’.In July 1947, the Constituent Assembly debated the national flag. As the country moved towards adopting the tricolour, the RSS launched a fierce campaign against it in Organiser, using everything from editorials to letters to the editor.The Bhagwa Dhwaj is the saffron flag that the RSS reveres and bows before as its guru at its shakhas. When a shakha is held in a temple courtyard, the flag is placed at the centre. It also flies at RSS-controlled temples, while some sannyasis carry it with them. The RSS attaches great sanctity to it.From the editorial of the organiser July 17,1947In its July 17 editorial, Organiser waxed eloquent about the greatness of the flag. As it became clear that the Constituent Assembly was moving towards adopting the tricolour, the editorial dismissed it as the Congress flag. Organiser reacted sharply to the Assembly’s argument that it was adopting a flag that was ‘acceptable to all’.‘This is sheer nonsense. The Flag represents the nation, and there is only one nation in Hindusthan, the Hindu Nation, with an unbroken history extending over 5,000 years. That is the nation and the flag must symbolise that nation and that nation alone. We cannot possibly choose a flag with a view to satisfy the desires and wishes of all the communities,’ the paper wrote.After elaborating at length on the greatness of the saffron flag, ‘handed down by their forebears’, the editorial concluded:It is only the ignorant or the malicious who cannot find or appreciate this peculiar charm, nobility and grandeur in the Flag (Bhagavad dwaj). This Flag and this alone can be the true National Flag of Hindusthan. That and that alone will be the only one acceptable to the nation. There is growing evidence of this insistent demand on the part of the public and the Constituent Assembly would be well advised to carry out their wishes.None of these warnings, however, had any effect. On July 22, Jawaharlal Nehru moved the proposal to adopt the tricolour as the national flag, and the Constituent Assembly adopted it.But the ‘battle’ did not end there. In subsequent issues, alongside other demands, Organiser continued its attack on the national flag. The July 31 issue carried a ‘warning’ on its front page that abandoning the Bhagwa Dhwaj would destroy the very soul of the nation. The August 7 issue reproduced Savarkar’s statement against the flag in full:“How can a genuine nationalist salute such a Flag adopted by such a party (Congress) with no mandate from the nation as the National Flag? No! The authoritative Flag of Hindusthan, our Motherland and Holy land, undivided and indivisible from the Indus to the Seas, can be none other than the Bhagwa Flag to deliver expressly the message of the very being of our Race.’ Savarkar completely rejected the national flag.The same position also appears in a speech by the second Sarsanghchalak, M. S. Golwalkar, published in the July 3 issue of the paper. He said that abandoning the Bhagwa Dhwaj and accepting the tricolour was like ‘cutting off a leg and putting a wooden leg in its place.’This ‘battle’ continued in subsequent issues as well. The August 14 issue made the RSS position unequivocally clear. An article titled Mystery Behind the Bhagwa-Dwaj said:The people who have come to power by the kick of fate may give in our hands the tri-colour, but it will never be respected and owned by Hindus. The word Three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country.This is the same Sangh Parivar that today presents itself as the champion of the national flag-a flag that its own ‘Veers’ and ‘Gurujis’ once instructed people not even to touch.The RSS’s ‘war’ to rename the country Hindustan also continued in the pages of Organiser. The Constituent Assembly had not yet settled the question of the country’s name. In its July 31 editorial, the paper declared:A country derives its name from the people who inhabit it. Therefore, the country inhabited by Hindus should be known by the name “Hindustan”; not by any other name. It had been known as such from the dawn of history itself.The campaign for Hindi was no less forceful. In its July 24 editorial, the RSS raised the pitch for Hindi as the national language. Hindi, it argued, should be the national language because it was the language of Hindus.“The culture and traditions of Hindustan and the Hindus can be expressed only through their national language.”People in the southern states, the paper said, should learn Hindi, pointing to the work of the Hindi Prachar Sabha. It also insisted that the Hindi being promoted should be pure and ‘undiluted’.An indication of what should happen to those who refused to learn Hindi appeared in the August 7 issue of Organiser, which gave special prominence on page 14 to a news report:“Learn Hindi Or Retire”The Chairman of the Municipal Board, Allahabad, has asked all the employees to learn Hindi soon, failing which they will be compelled to retire. The Chairman has given them two months to pick up Hindi. The majority of the employees know only Urdu and some of them are as old as 55.The prominence given to this report makes clear that, behind the guise of promoting Hindi, the RSS was also settling scores with Urdu, a language widely used by Muslims.Statement by Hindu MahasabhaAs the country moved towards Independence Day celebrations, statements from the Hindu Mahasabha appeared in Organiser in line with the RSS’s broader position.The August 7 issue carried a statement by the Sabha’s president, L. B. Bhopatkar, calling upon Hindus and Sikhs to boycott the August 15 celebrations. The call was made under the pretext of opposition to the partition of India.The All-India Committee of the Hindu Mahasabha, which met under Savarkar’s chairmanship, also called for protest meetings on Independence Day.The RSS’s opposition to the national flag did not simply disappear with independence. Following Gandhi’s assassination, the organisation had to draft a constitution as one of the conditions for lifting the ban imposed on it. Golwalkar was in prison at the time. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel insisted that drafting a constitution was not enough; it should explicitly state that the RSS accepted the national flag.Golwalkar reportedly argued that ‘everyone accepts the national flag anyway’. Ultimately, however, the RSS had to give in. Article Five of its constitution included a statement accepting the national flag. The RSS thus became the only organisation in India that had to insert such a provision into its constitution.Nor did the opposition end there. In Bunch of Thoughts, published in 1966, Golwalkar again warned of the dangers of the national flag (pages 237-238). Even in September 2015, at a meeting of writers convened in Chennai, the then Prachar Pramukh, Dr Manmohan Vaidya, repeated this position.The RSS has also repeatedly used the national flag as an instrument of communal polarisation. When Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti arrived in Hubli, Karnataka, in 1994 to create a confrontation, she carried the national flag in her hand. The move was aimed at provoking a confrontation over hoisting the national flag at the Idgah Maidan. Six people were killed in police firing there. In 1992, the national flag was similarly used as an instrument of confrontation at Lal Chowk in Srinagar.The irony is difficult to miss. An organisation that once rejected the tricolour and insisted that only the Bhagwa Dhwaj could represent the nation now claims an exclusive right to define patriotism.Today, the RSS-controlled Union government appears determined to turn into victories the battles the Sangh Parivar lost in the 1940s. It is not accidental that an image of Bharat Mata, accompanied by the saffron flag and Vande Mataram, is being pushed to the forefront. The demand to change the country’s name from India and the renewed attempts to advance Hindi are part of the same project.The symbols may have changed in presentation, but the underlying political project remains recognisable. The battles that secular India pushed back in 1947 are being brought back to the centre of national politics-one by one.The RSS may have lost the battle over the national flag in 1947. But it has never abandoned the larger battle over what India should mean.This article was originally published on Left Views.