The Ratnagiri Hindu Sabha was established with the object of "organising and consolidating the Hindus into an organic whole with a view to enabling them to resist effectively any unjust agression, and protecting their cultural, economic and religious rights". The Sabha reconverted many persons to the Hindu faith, its mixed caste schools reduced the number of converts which the American Mission School could make. The progrmmme of re-conversion was opposed by Christian, Muslim missionaries and the Hindu orthodoxy. Describing its formation Keer writes that it was "established ostensibly through the influence and attempts of Babarao Savarkar, but, in fact, inspired by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar himself", he dates the establishment at two weeks after the internment of Savarkar in Ratnagiri, on January 6, 1924.