Dattatreya Hosabale (born 1 December 1954) is an Indian social worker who is the current General Secretary of the

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ( ; , , ) is an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organisation. The RSS is the progenitor and leader of a large body of organisations called the Sangh Parivar (Hindi for "Sangh family ...

(RSS) since March 2021. During the period of

Indian Emergency The Emergency in India was a 21-month period from 1975 to 1977 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had a state of emergency declared across the country. Officially issued by President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed under Article 352 of the Constitution beca ...

from 1975 to 1977 he was arrested under the

Maintenance of Internal Security Act The Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) was a controversial law passed by the Indian parliament in 1971 giving the administration of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Indian law enforcement agencies very broad powers – indefinite p ...

(MISA) and imprisoned for 16 months. He also served as the general secretary for the student organization,

Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) () is a right-wing all India student organisation affiliated to the Hindu nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). History The ABVP, founded in 1948 with the initiative of the RSS a ...

for 15 years.

Early life

Dattatreya Hosabale was born in 1954 in Soraba in Shimoga,

Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...

. Hailing from a family of

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

activists, he is the founding trustee of India Policy Foundation, a non-profit policy research organization.

Association with RSS

He is a post graduate in English literature from Mysuru University. He joined

in 1968 and then its affiliated student wing ABVP in 1972. He became a full-time organizer in 1978. His stint in the ABVP encouraged the RSS higher ups to appoint him general secretary of the ABVP in 1978 and he held the post for over 15 years. He played an active role in setting up the Youth Development Centre in

Guwahati Guwahati (, ; formerly rendered Gauhati, ) is the biggest city of the Indian state of Assam and also the largest metropolis in northeastern India. Dispur, the capital of Assam, is in the circuit city region located within Guwahati and is the ...

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

. He was the founding editor of ''Aseema,'' a

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

monthly. He became ''Sah-Baudhik Pramukh'' (second in command of the intellectual wing of RSS) in 2004. He is fluent in Kannada, Hindi, Marathi, English and Sanskrit.

He has voiced his opinion on Indian Secularism being anti-Hindu, saying "When it comes to the Idea of India, there is no dispute as such; the point is that there can be a variety of ideas and each must be permitted its space. It’s not necessary that they should be at loggerheads or contradictory to each other"

He was back in RSS in 2003 and was appointed the RSS’s Sah-Bauddhik Pramukh (joint-incharge of intellectual activities) in 2004. Then, in 2009, he became sah-sarkaryawah in the team of Suresh Joshi, when the latter replaced

Mohan Bhagwat Mohan Bhagwat (, Marathi pronunciation: oːɦən bʱaːɡʋət̪ born 11 September 1950) is an activist currently serving as the 6th and current Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in India. He was chosen as the successor to ...

at the post. He is the first Sar-karyawah most of whose time as pracharak was spent in an anushangik (frontal organization), that is ABVP.

Views

He termed football as symbol of global oneness.

''Football has been a great unifier having admirers, fans, adherents and adepts across civilisations, continents & borders. It has been so since ages – in ancient India, as in ancient Greece the game of tackling the ball and hitting it around with the foot was a hugely popular sport enjoyed by the vast majority – ruler as well as the commoner.''

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hosabale, Dattatreya Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharaks 1955 births Living people People from Shimoga Hindutva