Dattatreya Hosabale

Dattatreya Hosabale (born 1 December 1954) is an Indian social worker and politician who is the current General Secretary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) since March 2021. During the period of Indian Emergency from 1975 to 1977 he was arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) and imprisoned for 16 months. He also served as the general secretary for the student organization, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad for 15 years. He has been actively involved in the RSS since his youth and has held various key positions within the organization.

Early life
Dattatreya Hosabale was born in 1954 in Soraba in Shimoga, Karnataka. Hailing from a family of RSS 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 RSS in 1968 and then its affiliated student wing ABVP in 1972. He became a full-time organizer in 1978. He quickly rose through the ranks due to his dedication and leadership qualities. 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, Assam.

He was the founding editor of Aseema, a Kannada & English monthly. Not only that, but 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-in charge of intellectual activities) in 2004. Then, in 2009, he became Sah-Sarkaryawah in the team of Suresh Joshi, when the latter replaced Mohan Bhagwat 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.'' "'There is no need to convert India into a Hindu nation or create a new Hindu nation. India has always been a Hindu nation and will continue to be so'""'Any person can enter any temple, and everyone has the right to fetch water from any source of water. We must not tolerate such discrimination in the name of caste or untouchability, because it brings disrepute to the entire Hindu community. Instead of only opposing such practices, we must work actively to abolish them'"

Controversies
Hosabale's remarks on population control in Uttar Pradesh have sparked controversy. Hosabale claimed that conversions and migration are causing an imbalance in the Hindu population and called for the strict implementation of anti-conversion laws. While some political figures support his stance, others, like Congress and Samajwadi Party representatives, criticize it as an attempt to communalize the population issue, condemning it as unconstitutional and divisive.