Hedgewar sent Dani as a
pracharak to the
Benaras Hindu University in the early 1930s, a move that had the approval of
Madan Mohan Malviya, the university's founder and a leader of the
Hindu Mahasabha. Hedgewar advised Dani to freely intermix with the students and learn the native languages of the regions that they came from, so that students from all regions could be recruited into the RSS. Among the people recruited by Dani was a young Lecturer named
M. S. Golwalkar, who would later become the Chief of the RSS. Later Dani worked as a
prant pracharak (regional propagator) for
Madhya Bharat during 1940–46. He worked from a headquarters in
Indore. His first team of
pracharaks were recruited during an Officers Training Camp held in
Khandwa in 1942. They included Manohar Rao Moghe, who went to
Ujjain,
Kushabhau Thakre and Haribhau Wakankar, who went to
Mandsaur-
Ratlam division and
Kukshi respectively, and Moreshwar Rao Gadre, who worked in Indore. These
pracharaks developed the initial RSS network in towns as well as villages. By 1946, Dani's team had recruited 3% of the urban population and 1% of the rural population of Madhya Bharat into the RSS, as per Hedgewar's target. In Ujjain area, there were around sixty
shakhas (branches) by 1950. In Indore area, there were a hundred. When the RSS was banned in 1948, following the
Mahatma Gandhi assassination, and Golwalkar put in prison, the RSS held
satyagrahas to protest against the ban. Of the 1,995
swayamsevaks that were arrested for the
satyagraha, 498 were from the Ujjain district, 488 from the Indore district and 209 from
Shajapur district. The strong foundation laid by Dani and his team in central India later led to the rise of the
Jana Sangh from this area. Dani was appointed as the General Secretary (
sarkaryavaha) of the RSS in 1946, a position in which he served till 1956 and again from 1962 to 1965. Following the ban and the arrests, he negotiated with
Sardar Patel for the lifting of the ban, along with colleagues
Eknath Ranade and
Balasaheb Deoras. The three of them wrote a constitution for the RSS to the satisfaction of Patel, which was a pre-condition for lifting the ban. In practice, the democratic measures put into the constitution never had any effect because the exact number of candidates were nominated for all posts without the need for any elections. == Notes ==