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Alphabetical Order
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In Benares, his students affectionately called him 'Guruji' and the prefix stuck throughout his life. During this period Guruji came into contact with the R.S.S. Here he met Bhayyaji Dani, secretary of the sangh, and Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, founder of the R.S.S. for the first time. The meeting changed the whole course of his life.
Guruji was appointed secretary of the newly-opened branch of the sangh in Benares. Two years later, he returned to Nagpur as an eligible bachelor. But he firmly rejected the pleadings of his parents regarding marriage and opted to remain a bachelor.
At Nagpur, in 1933, he took his law degree and started practice. But his heart was not there, and he devoted most of his time and energy to R.S.S. activities. It was then that he wrote his book 'We or Our Nationhood defined.' But the RSS work alone did not satisfy him - he was in search of the ultimate. He left his home in 1936 and joined the Ramakrishna Ashram in Sargacchi in Bengal. After leading for six months a life of meditation and yoga, he returned to Nagpur in 1937. He plunged himself headlong again into RSS work.
In 1939, he was appointed chief organiser of the sangh in Bengal. But the founder of the RSS died in June, 1940, and Guruji had to return to Nagpur and assume the mantle of supreme authority over the RSS. He was hardly 34 when he became the leader of the Hindu volunteer corps. The RSS, which was confined largely to Marathi-speaking areas before Guruji took over, within a short period of ten years, blossomed into a formidable youth movement under his inspiring leadership.
In 1948, the R.S.S. came under a cloud after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Guruji along with thousands of volunteers was put in jail. He was released from jail in a few months. He met Sardar Patel in Delhi but the talks failed and the RSS was again banned and Guruji was back in jail. The sangh launched an agitation against the ban. It was in July of the following year that, following an intervention of Venkatarama Sastri, the sangh agreed to certain conditions imposed by the government and the ban was lifted.
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