Golwalkar holocaust of Muslims and Christians.
“It’s a gimmick to gain a foothold among the Muslim masses,”: Experts on Mohan Bhagwat’s statement on lynchings
July 9, 2021 MuslimMirror 2 Comments
By Ubair Ul Hameed
New Delhi: Reacting to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s statement prominent experts on RSS have said that RSS is trying to gain a foothold among the Muslim masses, that’s why they’re making statements that seem to be in favor of Muslims.
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, on Sunday, said that the DNA of all Indians is the same and that those indulging in lynching are against Hindutva.
Reacting to the statement, former professor of Political Science at the Delhi University and author of several books on Hindu Nationalism, Hindutva and the RSS, Dr. Shamsul Islam said that before talking about Muslims, RSS should talk about their agenda about the majority and the politics of the country.
While quoting an excerpt from an article from the RSS’ mouthpiece, Organizer, which dates back to 14 August 1947 and reads “The people who have come to power by the kick of fate may give in our hands, the tricolour, but it will never be respected and owned by Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country,” Dr. Islam said that the RSS has no agenda for the Indian nation. Dr. Islam added that RSS is against the very idea of India.
He said that the RSS stood against the constitution of India after it was drafted. “In an editorial on November 30, 1949, Organizer, the RSS rejected the constitution because it talks of equality and demanded the archaic, anti-egalitarian ‘Manusmriti’— a book that’s against Hindu women and Shudras,” he said.
Dr. Islam, while citing VD Savarkar’s book Hindutva (1923) said that RSS doesn’t even consider Muslims and Christians to be a part of India. “According to Savarkar, people who are fair in color and speak Sanskrit are Indians only… interestingly most RSS members will also not be a part of the Sangh’s idea of India,” he said. “Hindutva is what Mohan Bhagwat is denying”
.
Dr. Islam said that he’d trust Bhagwat if he denounces Golwakalar’s books which call for a holocaust of Muslims and Christians. “…but they won’t do it, these books are the Bibles for RSS cadre,” he said.
“Bengal and Tamil Nadu elections have shown that Hindus are not falling prey to the vicious ideology and now elections are going to be held in the Hindi belt…they want Muslim votes, it’s all a gimmick,” Dr. Islam said.
“The RSS killed Mahatma Gandhi, they abused Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev and Bhim Rao Ambedkar when they were alive, now they eulogize them…it’s all hypocrisy,” he added.
Maulana Abdul Hameed Nomani, who wrote several books on RSS ideologues and its ideology said that Bhagwat’s statement is right but the implementation doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon. “We’re a free country, everyone is a part of it, nobody can exclude the existence of others from the idea of India,” he said.
Maulana Nomani said that statements like these are mere words and unless a law is formed in the country, it doesn’t make any sense. “There shouldn’t be a contradiction in precept and practice,” he said.
Earlier, Member of Parliament and chief of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, Assadudin Owaisi had said RSS and Hindutva ideology is responsible for radicalization of the majority community.
“I want to ask him (Mohan Bhagwat) if he has accepted that the majority community has been radicalized due to RSS & Hindutva ideology? Is RSS & Hindutva ideology not responsible for radicalization?,” Owaisi was quoted, as saying by ANI.
The National President of the Social Democratic Party of India, M.K. Faizy also criticized the RSS chief’s statement and said that the statement should be discussed as a prime agenda in RSS itself and needs its retrospection.
Faizy said that Bhagwat’s affirmation of “Don’t get trapped in the cycle of fear that Islam is in danger in India” needs to be checked in the Sangh circle itself.
“Bhagwat is well aware of Golwalkar theory of ‘Hindutwa’ which directs the Sangh members to treat Muslims as enemies and evils that need to be eliminated from the country. This ideology of RSS has been taught to Sangh members till today in its training camps, Shakhas, literature, speeches, etc. Arms training and brainwashing camps are taking place across the country by the RSS to instill Golwalkar theory in the minds of RSS workers and for its implementation,” he said in a statement.
“Even ‘Hindutwa Politics’ survives and thrives on the Golwalkar theory of communal polarization and demonization of Muslims,” Faizy added.
Hate crimes against Muslims in India have reached new heights, with reports of Muslims being assaulted, insulted, and lynched in the news almost every day.
Although, there are no official figures, at least 133 cow-related attacks were reported in India since 2012, leading to 50 deaths and more than 290 injuries, according to a FactChecker.in database.
In March 2021, the US Department of State released a report, criticizing India for violations of religious freedom; crimes involving violence and discrimination targeting members of minority groups including women based on religious affiliation or social status, etc.
Likewise, in the Freedom House report for 2021, India lost its status as ‘free’. “Political rights and civil liberties in the country have deteriorated since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, with increased pressure on human rights organizations, rising intimidation of academics and journalists, and a spate of bigoted attacks, including lynchings, aimed at Muslims,” the report read. “The decline only accelerated after
Modi’s reelection in 2019.”
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) also accused the Indian government of adopting laws and policies that “systematically discriminate against Muslims and stigmatize critics of the government.”
'Remembering a great thinker'
Culture ministry tweets praises for Gowalkar oh his birthday
Parallels have been drawn between some of the former RSS chief's views and those of Hitler’s Nazis; a modern-day drive had been launched to airbrush such a past
Golwalkar in Calcutta in 1972.
Golwalkar in Calcutta in 1972.
File picture
Anita Joshua | New Delhi | Published 20.02.21, 02:28 AM
The worst-kept secret in India has been officially acknowledged: a source of inspiration and a guiding force now are the thoughts of M.S. Golwalkar, the second sarsanghachalak of the RSS.
Make no mistake: Given a choice, it will be so for “generations” to come.
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“Remembering a great thinker, scholar, and remarkable leader #MSGolwalkar on his birth anniversary. His thoughts will remain a source of inspiration & continue to guide generations. @prahladspatel @secycultureGOI @PMOIndia @PIBCulture @pspoffice,” the Union culture ministry tweeted on Friday, the birth anniversary of the erstwhile Sangh boss.
Former culture secretary Jawhar Sircar responded: “As former culture secretary, I hang my head in shame to see RSS chief Golwalkar being falsely praised by @MinOfCultureGoI. Golwalkar & RSS opposed Gandhi’s Freedom Struggle. In his Bunch of Thoughts, Golwalkar opposed India’s tricolour too. Sardar Patel jailed him, banned the RSS.”
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UK-based academic Priyamvada Gopal sought to draw the world’s attention to the official handle lauding Golwalkar, who essentially spelt out the ideology of the RSS, the ideological parent of the ruling BJP.
“Dear world. India’s **government** wishes us to celebrate a ‘great thinker’ who said ‘To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by purging the country of Semitic races — the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here’.”
The Union ministry’s tweet did not elaborate on which of Golwalkar’s thoughts remained a source of inspiration. Parallels have been drawn between some of Golwalkar’s views and those of Hitler’s Nazis although a modern-day drive had been launched to airbrush such a past.
Some of Golwalkar’s known “thoughts” follow:
Internal threats
Bunch of Thoughts — written in 1966 — has a section on “Internal Threats”, which lists them as Muslims, Christians and communists. In contrast, he maintains that Hindus have no divided loyalties. “…Hindus are a hundred per cent national society here. To call them ‘communal’ and to place them at par with those people whose loyalties are divided and at times questionable is unjust and unwise,” the book says.
Women
The book adds: “There is now a clamour for ‘equality for women’ and their ‘emancipation from man’s domination’! Reservation of seats in various positions of power is being claimed on the basis of their separate sex, thus adding one more ‘ism’— ‘sexism!’ — to the array of casteism, communalism, linguism, etc.”
Caste
The book says: “Castes there were in those ancient times too, continuing for thousands of years of our glorious national life. There is nowhere any instance of its having hampered the progress or disrupted the unity of society. It, in fact, served as a great bond of social cohesion.”
Elsewhere, it says: “The other main feature that distinguished our society was the Varna-vyavastha (caste system). But today it is being dubbed ‘casteism’ and scoffed at. Our people have come to feel that the mere mention of Varna-vyavastha is something derogatory. They often mistake the social order implied in it for social discrimination.
“The feeling of inequality, of high and low, which has crept into the Varna system, is comparatively of recent origin. The perversion was given a further fillip by the scheming Britisher in line with his ‘divide and rule’ policy. But in its original form, the distinctions in that social order did not imply any discrimination such as big and small, high and low, among its constituents. On the other hand, the Gita tells us that the individual who does his assigned duties in life in a spirit of selfless service only worships God through such performance.…”
Asuras
The book says: “If one were to dispassionately observe the characteristics of the present-day so-called civilised modern societies, they appear to tally, almost word to word, with the attributes of the asuras as detailed in Bhagawad Gita!”
Unitary pitch
The Narendra Modi dispensation’s preoccupation with having a unitary system is rooted in Golwalkar’s writings. Golwalkar was in favour of a unitary state as opposed to the quasi-federal structure adopted by the framers of the Constitution.
The book says: “We are one country, one society, and one nation, with a community of life-values and secular aspirations and interests; and hence it is natural that the affairs of the nation are governed through a single state of the unitary type. The present federal system generates and feeds separatist feelings. In a way, it negates the truth of a single nationhood and is, therefore, divisive in nature. It must be remedied and the Constitution amended and cleaned so as to establish Unitary Form of Government.”
On Friday, some social media users cited references from the We or Our Nationhood Defined, which Golwalkar penned in 1939 and which the RSS distanced itself from in 2006. We mentions Hitler. Bunch of Thoughts, written in the mid-1960s when few dared express open admiration for the routed Nazis, has no direct reference to Hitler.
Putting out a series of tweets on Golwalkar’s quotes, CPIML politburo member Kavita Krishnan said: “RSS claims to disown Golwalkar’s pro-Nazi ‘We’. But his BoT (Bunch of Thoughts) isn’t different in content, just more carefully worded. ‘We’ asked minorities to ‘Merge in The Hindu race’. BoT asked them to ‘merge themselves in the common national stream’....”
Culture Ministry Tweets Tribute to M.S. Golwalkar Who Glorified Hitler, Justified Caste
A longtime chief of the RSS, Golwalkar was a firm believer that religious minorities would have to play second-class citizens in India.
Culture Ministry Tweets Tribute to M.S. Golwalkar Who Glorified Hitler, Justified Caste
M.S. Golwalkar, in the Union Ministry of Culture's poster. Photo: Twitter/@MinOfCultureGoI
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19/FEB/2021
New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Culture, through its official Twitter handle on Friday, February 19, paid tribute to Hindutva ideologue M.S. Golwalkar on his birth anniversary.
The ministry called Golwalkar – one time head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – a “great thinker, scholar and remarkable leader” whose thoughts will guide generations. However, not many share this view. Golwalkar’s publicised views were thought to be largely against democracy, so much so that even RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat distanced himself from him in an outreach programme.
In 2006, the RSS itself disowned one of Golwalkar’s books.
Former culture secretary Jawhar Sircar wrote that he was ashamed to see Golwalkar praised falsely by the same ministry he once served.
Sircar said in his tweet that Golwalkar had been jailed by Sardar Patel, had opposed the national flag and Gandhi’s freedom struggle.
Along with V.D. Savarkar, Golwalkar was arrested for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The two were released only because some of the witnesses who had deposed against them disappeared as the trial commenced.
Minorities
Golwalkar’s thoughts fit straight into the Bharatiya Janata Party’s current agenda – a fact which goes some way into explaining the Ministry of Culture’s sudden celebration of him.
The Union Ministry of Culture’s poster commemorating Golwalkar. Photo: Twitter/@MinOfCultureGoI
The poster that the ministry used with the tweet had a photograph of Golwalkar overlaid on a background image of a multitude, identifiable as RSS members, standing in position at what is clearly an RSS event.
The fact that the Narendra Modi government had conspicuously left out Muslims – always the target of the Sangh parivar – from the list of relief seekers in the Citizenship Amendment Act, is testament to its acceptance of Golwalkar’s politics.
Like Jinnah, he was a firm believer of the hypothesis that Muslims and Hindus cannot coexist, and was an avid votary of a separate Hindu Rashtra.
In We, or Our Nationhood Defined, Golwalkar categorically said that minorities should have no rights except as second-class citizens unless they accepted the culture of the Hindus. In his other book, Bunch of Thoughts, he said that there are three enemies of nationalism: Muslims, Christians and communists.
In other words, Golwalkar called for an exclusivist nationalism to be propagated, which had no space or scope for any form of alliance with any of these three groups.
Golwalkar, notably, is also known to have been an avid supporter of Adolf Hitler, and had said in Bunch of Thoughts that minorities in India should be treated in the way Hitler treated Jews. In We, or Our Nationhood Defined Golwalkar fleshes this out further:
“…To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of Semitic races – the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”
Also read: Golwalkar’s Idea of Culture as War Drives BJP’s Scorn for Democracy and Minorities
Caste
In Bunch of Thoughts, Golwalkar also justifies the caste system:
“The feeling of inequality, of high and low, which has crept into the Varna system, is comparatively of recent origin. The perversion was given a further fillip by the scheming Britisher in line with his ‘divide and rule’ policy. But in its original form, the distinctions in that social order did not imply any discrimination such as big and small, high and low, among its constituents. On the other hand, the Gita tells us that the individual who does his assigned duties in life in a spirit of selfless service only worships God through such performance.”
The Manusmriti, the text which lays down the “rules” of varnasrama dharma, defines Golwalkar’s “assigned duties” as such:
“To Brahmanas he assigned teaching and studying (the Veda), sacrificing for their own benefit and for others, giving and accepting (of alms). The Kshatriya he commanded to protect the people, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study (the Veda), and to abstain from attaching himself to sensual pleasures; The Vaisya to tend cattle, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study (the Veda), to trade, to lend money, and to cultivate land. One occupation only the lord prescribed to the Sudra, to serve meekly even these (other) three castes”. (The Laws of Manu, translated by G. Buhler, pp 3)
Also read: What the RSS as ‘Vishwaguru’ Means for India and the World
Democracy
Speaking to The Wire in 2017, political scientist Jyotirmaya Sharma, who authored a book on Golwalkar, had said that the latter’s vision was “terrifying because it has no place for modern democratic politics.”
“It is also terrifying because there is no place in it for compromise, conversation and disagreement. He thought he had seen the light. But he was not an original thinker,” Sharma had said.
Historian Ramachandra Guha wrote about Golwalkar in The Telegraph, noting his unique rejection of democracy.
“The long-serving RSS chief rejected democracy on the basis that it gave too much freedom to the individual,” Guha wrote.
He then elaborated on the resonances of this stance:
Narendra Modi may swear that the Indian Constitution is his only holy book, but his guruji, Golwalkar, believed that document to be deeply flawed and that it must be rejected or at least redrafted, since (as he put it in Bunch of Thoughts) “the framers of our present Constitution also were not firmly rooted in the conviction of our single homogeneous nationhood”. He was angry that India was constituted as a Union of states, for in his view the federal structure would sow “the seeds of national disintegration and defeat”. Golwalkar wanted the Centre to be all-powerful. Modi may now speak of the virtues of co-operative federalism, but his guru, Golwalkar, wrote of the need “to bury deep for good all talk of a federal structure of our country’s Constitution”.
“Let the Constitution,” he insisted, “be re-examined and re-drafted, so as to establish [a] Unitary form of Government.”
Golwalkar's views on tricolour, martyrs, minorities, caste as per RSS archives
Monday, February 22, 2021
By Shamsul Islam*
First time in the history of independent India, the in-charge minister of the Cultural Ministry in the current Modi government, Prahlad Singh Patel, has glorified MS Golwalkar, second supremo of the RSS and the most prominent ideologue of the RSS till date, on his birth anniversary, February 19. In a tweet he wrote: “Remembering a great thinker, scholar, and remarkable leader #MSGolwalkar on his birth anniversary. His thoughts will remain a source of inspiration & continue to guide generations.”
The claim about Golwalkar being "great thinker, scholar, and remarkable leader [whose] thoughts will remain a source of inspiration & continue to guide generations" made by Patel, who must have been appointed as minister after taking oath that he would abide by the democratic-secular Constitution of India, need to be seen against the backdrop of the facts and activities of Golwalkar as recorded in RSS archives.
Let us know what RSS archives tell us about Golwalkar.
Golwalkar has been against secular-democratic Indian polity. It was formed in 1925. It opposed the freedom movement. Golwalkar was the second supremo of the organization, and as the most prominent ideologue of the RSS denigrated every symbol which represented an all-inclusive India.
Golwalkar's views on the Tricolour
Golwalkar while addressing a Gurupurnima gathering in Nagpur on July 14, 1946, stated:
"It was the saffron flag which in totality represented Bhartiya [Indian] culture. It was the embodiment of God. We firmly believe that in the end the whole nation will bow before this saffron flag."(Golwalkar, M.S., “Shri Guruji Samagar Darshan” [collected works of Golwalkar in Hindi], Bhartiya Vichar Sadhna, Nagpur, nd., volume 1, p. 98.)
On the eve of independence when Indian Constituent Assembly adopted Tricolour as its National Flag, the English organ of the RSS, “Organiser”, in its issue dated August 14, 1947, denigrated this choice in the following words:
"The people who have come to power by the kick of fate may give in our hands the Tricolour but it will never be respected and owned by Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country."
So, according to the RSS, the National Flag was never to be respected by Hindus. It was a bad omen and injurious for the country.
Even after Independence it was the RSS which refused to accept it as the National Flag. Golwalkar while denouncing the choice of Tricolour as National Flag in an essay entitled ‘Drifting and Drifting’ in the book “Bunch of Thoughts” wrote:
"Our leaders have set up a new flag for our country. Why did they do so? It is just a case of drifting and imitating… Ours is an ancient and great nation with a glorious past. Then, had we no flag of our own? Had we no national emblem at all these thousands of years? Undoubtedly we had. Then why this utter void, this utter vacuum in our minds?" (Golwalkar, “M.S., Bunch of Thoughts”, Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore, 1996, pp. 237-238. For more material on this issue click here.)
Golwalkar on democracy
The RSS, contrary to the principles of democracy, constantly demanded India be ruled under a totalitarian regime. Golwalkar, while delivering a speech before the 1,350 top level cadres of the RSS in 1940 declared:
"RSS inspired by one flag [saffron], one leader and one ideology is lighting the flame of Hindutva in each and every corner of this great land." (MS Golwalkar, “Shri Guruji Samagar Darshan” [collected works of Golwalkar in Hindi], Bhartiya Vichar Sadhna, Nagpur, nd., Volume I, p. 11.)
The slogan of one flag, one leader and one ideology is similar to the programmes of Nazi and fascist parties of Europe.
The RSS has also been dead against federal structure of the Constitution, again a ‘basic’ feature of the India polity, according to the highest court of justice in India. This is clear from the following communication of Golwalkar which he sent to the first session of the National Integration Council in 1961. It read:
"Today’s federal form of government not only gives birth but also nourishes the feelings of separatism, in a way refuses to recognize the fact of one nation and destroys it. It must be completely uprooted, Constitution purified and unitary form of government be established." (Ibid, Volume III, p. 128)
The Bible of the RSS, “Bunch of Thoughts”, has an exclusive chapter titled, ‘Wanted a unitary state’ in which Golwalkar demanded:
"To bury deep for good all talk of a federal structure of our country’s Constitution, to sweep away the existence of all ‘autonomous’ or semi-autonomous ‘states’ within the one state viz., Bharat and proclaim ‘One Country, One State, One Legislature, One Executive’ with no trace of fragmentational [sic], regional, sectarian, linguistic or other types of pride being given a scope for playing havoc with our integrated harmony. Let the Constitution be re-examined and re-drafted, so as to establish this Unitary form of Government…”
Golwalkar celebrated the Holocaust
Golwalkar, known as Guru Golwalkar in the RSS fraternity, who is credited to have been groomed the present Indian Prime Minister’s politics, declared:
"If, as is indisputably proved, Hindusthan is the land of the Hindus and is the terra firma for the Hindu nation alone to flourish upon, what is to be the fate of all those, who, today, happen to live upon the land, though not belonging to the Hindu Race, Religion and culture."
It would be like the Jews under Hitler and Mussolini. Thus, Golwalkar glorified the Holocaust in the following words:
"German Race pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by." (Golwalkar, MS, "We Or Our Nationhood Defined", Nagpur, 1939, pp. 34-35.)
Golwalkar, following the foot-steps of Hitler, arrived at the following solution for the minority “problem” in India, declaring Muslims and Christians as belonging to foreign races:
"From this stand point, sanctioned by the experience of shrewd old nations, the foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment not even citizen’s rights. There is, at least should be, no other course for them to adopt. We are an old nation: let us deal, as old nations ought to and do deal, with the foreign races who have chosen to live in our country." (Golwalkar, MS, “We Or Our Nationhood Defined”, Nagpur, 1939, pp. 47-48.)
Muslims and Christians internal threat: Golwalkar
Golwalkar described Indian Muslims and Christians are ‘internal threat’ number one one two, respectively. The ‘Holy’ book for the RSS cadres “Bunch of Thoughts” (collection of writings of Golwalkar and a RSS publication), has a long chapter titled as ‘Internal Threats’ in which Muslims and Christians are described as threat number one and two respectively. This chapter opens with the following statement:
"It has been the tragic lesson of the history of many a country in the world that the hostile elements within the country pose a far greater menace to national security then aggressors from outside." (Golwalkar, M.S., “Bunch of Thoughts”, Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore, 1996, p. 177.)
While treating Muslims as ‘Internal Threat’ number one, Golwalkar goes on to elaborate:
"Even to this day there are so many who say, ‘now there is no Muslim problem at all. All those riotous elements who supported Pakistan have gone away once for all. The remaining Muslims are devoted to our country. After all, they have no other place to go and they are bound to remain loyal’….It would be suicidal to delude ourselves into believing that they have turned patriots overnight after the creation of Pakistan. On the contrary, the Muslim menace has increased a hundredfold by the creation of Pakistan which has become a springboard for all their future aggressive designs on our country." (“Bunch of Thoughts”, pp. 177-178.)
This is what he said about common Muslims:
"...within the country there are so many Muslim pockets, i.e., so many ‘miniature Pakistans’… The conclusion is that, in practically every place, there are Muslims who are in constant touch with Pakistan over the transmitter…" (“Bunch of Thoughts”, p. 185.)
According to him every Muslim in India is untrustworthy and disloyal:
"Even today, Muslims, whether in high positions of the Government or outside, participate openly in rabidly anti-national conferences." (“Bunch of Thoughts”, p. 187.)
While deliberating on the ‘Internal Threat’ number two, he says:
"Such is the role of Christian gentlemen residing in our land today, out to demolish not only the religious and social fabric of our life but also to establish political domination in various pockets and if possible all over the land." (“Bunch of Thoughts”, p. 193)
The English organ of the RSS, “Organiser”, on the very eve of independence (August 14, 1947) when Golwalkar was the boss of the RSS, editorially chalked out its concept of the Hindu nation in the following words excluding all minorities from the Indian nationhood:
"Let us no longer allow ourselves to be influenced by false notions of nationhood. Much of the mental confusion and the present and future troubles can be removed by the ready recognition of the simple fact that in Hindusthan only the Hindus form the nation and the national structure must be built on that safe and sound foundation…the nation itself must be built up of Hindus, on Hindu traditions, culture, ideas and aspirations."
Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism not independent religions: Golwalkar
The RSS regards followers of Islam and Christianity as emigrant or foreigners and demands their cleansing as these two religions are declared to be foreign religions. However, the RSS has no respect for Indian religions like Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism as these are not treated as independent religions but part of Hinduism. Golwalkar set the agenda by declaring that “the Buddhists, the Jain, the Sikh are all included in that one comprehensive word ‘Hindu’.”
In fact, Golwalkar learnt this denial to Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism the status of independent religions from senior Hindutva icon, VD Savarkar who believed that the followers of...
"the Arya Samaji, the Brahmasamaj, the Devasamaj, the Prarthana Samaji and such other religions of Indian origin are Hindus and constitute Hindudom, i.e., the Hindu people as a whole." (Golwalkar, MS, “The Spotlights”, Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore, 1974, p. 171)
It is said that the then Home Minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, had a soft-corner for the RSS and continues to be a favourite with the RSS. However, even Sardar Patel found it difficult to defend the RSS for its role in the post-Partition massacre of Muslims. In a letter written to Golwalkar (the then Supremo of the RSS), dated September 11, 1948, Sardar Patel stated:
"Organizing the Hindus and helping them is one thing but going in for revenge for its sufferings on innocent and helpless men, women and children is quite another thing…" (“Justice on Trial”, RSS, Bangalore, 1962, pp. 26-28.)
RSS has no respect for religions like Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism. These are not treated as independent religions but part of Hinduism
Golwalkar’s views on cow-slaughter paved the way for nation-wide lynching of Muslims. With Modi’s coming to power as PM in 2014, RSS zealots started lynching Muslims, blaming them for cow-slaughter, apart from burning and looting their properties. The ideological basis for such nation-wide lynching was provided by Golwalkar, who declared that cow-slaughter...
"began with the coming of foreign invaders to our country. In order to reduce the population to slavery, they thought that the best method to be adapted was to stamp out every vestige of self-respect in Hindus…In that line cow slaughter also began." (Golwalkar, MS, “Spotlight”, Bangalore, Sahitya Sindhu (RSS publication house), 1974, p. 98.)
The inference was clear; Muslims were responsible for starting the cow-slaughter in India. It was immaterial to Golwalkar that the claim that beef-eating started with the arrival of the Muslims in India was not in keeping with the Vedic version of history as narrated by the ‘Hindu’ chroniclers. Swami Vivekananda, regarded as a great Hindu philosopher by the RSS, while addressing a meeting at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California, USA (February 2, 1900) on the theme of ‘Buddhistic India’ told the gathering:
"You will be astonished if I tell you that, according to old ceremonials, he is not a good Hindu who does not eat beef. On certain occasions he must sacrifice a bull and eat it." (Vivekananda, Swami, “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, vol. 3 [Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1997], p. 536.)
At another occasion he went on to disclose:
"There was a time in this very India when, without eating beef, no Brahmin could remain a Brahmin; you read in the Vedas how, when a Sannyasin, a king, or a great man came into a house, the best bullock was killed…" (Vivekananda, Swami, “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, vol. 3, Advaita Ashram, Calcutta, 1997, p. 174.)
RSS under Golwalkar demanded Manusmriti as Indian constitution
Those who believe that RSS wants cleansing of Muslims and Christians know only half of the reality. Its project of Hindu nation demands sub-human existence for Sudras (Dalits) and Hindu women. The Constituent Assembly of India finalized the Constitution of India on November 26, 1949, RSS was not happy. Its organ, “Organiser”, in an editorial on November 30, 1949, complained:
"But in our Constitution there is no mention of the unique constitutional development in ancient ‘Bharat’. Manu’s Laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day his laws as enunciated in the ‘Manusmriti’ excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing."
For Golwalkar casteism is synonymous with the Hindu nation. Faith of RSS brass in “Manusmriti”, naturally, leads them to believe in Casteism too which gave birth to the debased practice of untouchability. For RSS Casteism is the essence of Hindu nationalism. Golwalkar did not mince words in declaring that Casteism was synonymous with the Hindu Nation. According to him, the Hindu people are none else but...
"the Hindu People, they said, is the Virat Purusha, the Almighty manifesting Himself. Though they did not use the word ‘Hindu’, it is clear from the following description of the Almighty in Purusha-Sukta [in the 10th book of Rig Ved] wherein it is stated that the sun & the moon are His eyes, the stars and the skies are created from his nabhi [navel] and Brahmin is the head, Kshatriya the hands, Vaishya the thighs and Shudra the feet. This means that the people who have this fourfold arrangement, i.e., the Hindu People, is [sic] our God. This supreme vision of Godhead is the very core of our concept of ‘nation’ and has permeated our thinking and given rise to various unique concepts of our cultural heritage." (Golwalkar, M. S., “Bunch of Thoughts”, p.36-37.)
What kind of a Hindutva civilization the RSS under Golwalkar wanted to build by enforcing the laws of Manu, can be known by having a glimpse of the laws prescribed by Manu for the Sudras and Hindu women. Some of these dehumanizing and degenerated laws, which are presented here, are self-explanatory.
A selection of laws of Manu denigrating Dalits/untouchables:
For the sake of the prosperity of the worlds (the divine one) caused the Brahmana, the Kshatriya, the Vaisya, and the Sudra to proceed from his mouth, his arm, his thighs and his feet. (I/31)
One occupation only the lord prescribed to the Sudras, to serve meekly even these (other) three castes. (I/91)
Once-born man (a Sudra), who insults a twice-born man with gross invective, shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of low origin. (VIII/270)
If he mentions the names and castes (jati) of the (twice-born) with contumely, an iron nail, ten fingers long, shall be thrust red-hot into his mouth. (VIII/271)
If he arrogantly teaches Brahmanas their duty, the king shall cause hot oil to be poured into his mouth and into his ears. (VIII/272)
A low-caste man who tries to place himself on the same seat with a man of a high caste, shall be branded on his hip and be banished, or (the king) shall cause his buttock to be gashed. (VIII/281)
As per the Manu Code if Sudras are to be given most stringent punishments for even petty violations/actions, the same Code of Manu is very lenient towards Brahmins. Shloka 380 in Chapter VIII bestowing profound love on Brahmins decrees:
“Let him never slay a Brahmana, though he have committed all (possible) crimes; let him banish such an (offender), leaving all his property (to him) and (his body) unhurt.”
A selection of Laws of Manu demeaning Hindu women:
Day and night woman must be kept in dependence by the males (of) their (families), and, if they attach themselves to sensual enjoyments, they must be kept under one’s control. (IX/2)
Her father protects (her) in childhood, her husband protects (her) in youth, and her sons protect (her) in old age; a woman is never fit for independence. (IX/3)
Women do not care for beauty, nor is their attention fixed on age; (thinking), ‘(It is enough that) he is a man,’ they give themselves to the handsome and to the ugly. (IX/14)
Through their passion for men, through their mutable temper, through their natural heartlessness, they become disloyal towards their husbands, however carefully they may be guarded in this (world). (IX/15) (The above selection of Manu’s codes is from F. Max Muller, “Laws of Manu”, LP Publications, Delhi, 1996; first published in 1886. The bracket after each code incorporates number of chapter/number of code according to the above edition.)
It is to be noted here that a copy of Manusmriti was burnt as a protest in the presence of Dr. BR Ambedkar during the historic Mahad agitation on December 25, 1927. Dr Ambedkar called upon Dalits to commemorate December 25 as the Manusmriti Dehen Diwas (Manusmriti burning day) in future. In fact, the Brahmanism as basis of the RSS world-view is the original Fascism in the history of human civilization.
Golwalkar was a believer in the superiority of the North Indian Brahmins. He publicly denigrated the Kerala Hindus, especially women. The RSS, which claims to be the largest world organization of Hindus is, in fact, working over-time to establish the hegemony of the North Indian Brahmanical order over the Hindu society. The RSS brand of Brahmanism treats South Indian Hindus as inferior racially. In its world-view North Indian Brahmins are the superior lot in comparison to the rest.
And RSS does it brazenly. Golwalkar was invited to address the students of the School of Social Science of Gujarat University on December 17, 1960. In this address, while underlying his firm belief in the Race Theory, he touched upon the issue of cross-breeding of human beings in the Indian society in history. He said:
"In an effort to better the human species through cross-breeding the Namboodri Brahamanas of the North were settled in Kerala (sic! the issue of the origin of the Namboodri Brahmins is debatable) and a rule was laid down that the eldest son of a Namboodri family could marry only the daughter of Vaishya, Kashtriya or Shudra communities of Kerala. Another still more courageous rule was that the first off-spring of a married woman of any class must be fathered by a Namboodri Brahman and then she could beget children by her husband. Today this experiment will be called adultery but it was not so, as it was limited to the first child." (M.S. Golwalkar cited in “Organiser”, January 2, 1961.)
The above statement of Golwalkar suggests that he believed that the Indian Hindu society had a superior race or breed and also an inferior race which needed to be improved through cross-breeding. To accomplish this task Brahmins, specially Namboodri Brahamans, belonging to a superior race were sent from the North of India. Shockingly, this was being argued by a person who claimed to uphold the honour and unity of the Hindus world over. For him wombs of Kerala’s Hindu women enjoyed no sanctity and were simply objects of improving breed through intercourse with Namboodri Brahamins who in no way were related to them.
Golwalkar on martyrdom tradition of the Indian freedom struggle
In a chapter ‘Martyr, Great But Not Ideal’ of “Bunch Of Thoughts”, he decried the whole tradition of martyrdom. After declaring that his objects of worship have always been successful lives and that 'Bhartiya culture' (which surely means RSS culture) does not adore and idealize martyrdom and do not treat "such martyrs as their heroes", he went on to philosophise that...
"there is no doubt that such man who embrace martyrdom are great heroes and their philosophy too is pre-eminently manly. They are far above the average men who meekly submit to fate and remain in fear and inaction. All the same, such persons are not held up as ideals in our society. We have not looked upon their martyrdom as the highest point of greatness to which men should aspire. For, after all, they failed in achieving their ideal, and failure implies some fatal flaw in them." (“Bunch of Thoughts”, p. 283.)
What Golwalkar thought of the people sacrificing their lot for the country is obvious from his following words. He asked the great revolutionaries who wished to lay down their lives for the freedom of the motherland the following question as if he was representing the British:
“But one should think whether complete national interest is accomplished by that? Sacrifice does not lead to increase in the thinking of the society of giving all for the interest of the nation. It is borne by the experience up to now that this fire in the heart is unbearable to the common people. (Ibid. pp. 61-62.)
Could there be a statement more insulting and denigrating to the martyrs than this?
What the RSS as 'Vishwaguru' Means for India and the World
The RSS’ drive to position India as preacher to the world encapsulates a long-term political programme of eliminating political dissent within the country and, later, establishing control over South Asia.
What the RSS as 'Vishwaguru' Means for India and the World
Mohan Bhagwat speaking on the RSS's foundation day. Photo: PTI
A.G. Noorani
A.G. Noorani
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POLITICS
15/FEB/2021
The world paid a heavy price for ignoring Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He, on his part, had suppressed nothing. His agenda, and the outlook which inspired it, were laid bare with perfect candour.
The Italian scholar Marzia Casolari’s classic In the Shadow of the Swastika: The Ambiguous Relationship between Indian Nationalism and Nazi Fascism [(2011), I Limri die mil, via Benedetti Marcello F, 40141 Bologna; Italy] based on stupendous research in the archives in New Delhi and Rome, exposes the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and V.D. Savarkar’s attachment to the Nazi-Fascist ideals and the links and contacts between them.
The RSS’ claim to be the Vishwaguru (tutors of the world) is not a new development, nor is it a vain boast based on an insane version of history. M.S. Golwalkar, the RSS’ boss for years, claimed in his Bunch of Thoughts (1966): “Our arms stretched as far as America on the one side—that was long long before Columbus ‘discovered’ America!—and on the other to China, Japan, Cambodia, Malaya, Siam, Indonesia and all the South-East Asian countries and right up to Mongolia and Siberia in the North. Our powerful political empire too spread over these South-East areas and continued for 1,400 years, the Shailendra empire alone flourishing for over 700 years— standing as a powerful bulwark against Chinese expansion.”
His chela, Pravin Togadia of the Vishwa (World) Hindu Parishad, an RSS’ creature, gave free rein to his imagination: “At a point of time, the entire world was Hindu. There were 700 crore Hindus, and now there are just 100 crore.” He was then the international working president of the VHP. Such people live in Vedic times and conjure up “achievements” of that era.
Also Read: How an Aspiring ‘Vishwa Guru’ Has Brought the ‘Third World’ Back to India
Hindustan Times reported on January 5, 2015: “Maharshi Bharadwaj’s Vaimanika Shastra prescribes a chemical formula that can make a flying plane invisible; the 100 Kaurava brothers were the first evidence of human cloning; cow urine can cure cancer…. Set up in 1991, Sangh-affiliated science organisation Vijana Bharati says it plans to expand in the Muslim-dominated Gulf countries to acquaint children of Indian families there with the country’s rich scientific and cultural heritage….
“With eminent scientist G. Madhavan Nair and Anil Kakodkar as patrons, the organisation is headed by Vijay P. Bhatkar, who developed India’s first supercomputer.
“Vijnana Bharati identifies promotion of ‘swadeshi science’, intertwining traditional and modern sciences, as well as natural and spiritual sciences, as its founding principle.
“What is available in the Vedas and Upanishads can give India a big leap. The government should promote research based on them,’ [Dr. Somdev] Bhardwaj [of Vijnana Bharati] said….
“While Vijnana Bharati wants to expand to the Gulf, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is pushing the government for steps to protect and develop indigenous cows….
“The [agriculture] ministry is already in overdrive. It has allocated Rs 500 crore to protect and promote desi cows. Projects worth Rs.378 crore have been sanctioned and Rs 123 crore released in this financial year. Two breeding centres in Mathura and south India have also been proposed [by the end of 2014].”
No wonder Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted in Mumbai while inaugurating a newly reconstituted hospital that plastic surgery very much existed in those times.
Initially, the term “Jagatguru” was used to denote the Hindu world order. But it was apt to be confused with the names of heads of the four principal monasteries of Hinduism – the Jagatguru Shankaracharyas. Hence the term Vishwaguru for India – as governed by the RSS, of course. A desperate effort has been made of late by the Sangh Parivar to dissociate itself from Golwalkar’s two books; namely, We or Our Nationhood Defined (1939) and Bunch of Thoughts (1966).
The effort is as futile as it is devious. For the RSS solemnly owned up to both books in Application No.17 of 1978 by the RSS chief Rajendra Singh and Bhaurao Deoras, brother of M.D. Deoras, former chief of the RSS and a junior colleague. In paragraph 17, they owned up to both books. Crazy reconstruction of history should not divert attention from the political implications of the RSS’ claims to be Vishwaguru. We have an explicit, unambiguous statement of the politics of this business from Amit Shah, Union home minister, former BJP president, and an ardent member of the RSS. He said on March 5, 2016: “If we have to elevate Bharat Mata to the status of Vishva Guru (the world’s teacher) … it is important that the country has a BJP government for 25 years.”
This explains the true raison d’être of the cry of Vishwaguru and its implications for the country. It encapsulates a long-term political programme – elimination of political opposition in India; suppression of dissent; discarding of secularism; acquisition of military might; acquiescence of the world as the new India wing of the RSS abroad, and parts with all fascist forces elsewhere. In short, the triumph of Hindutva at home and its acquiescence internationally.
Home minister Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: PTI
Second half of Hindutva
The fact that this quixotic dream will not be realised is beside the point. It is the danger it spells for our country that matters. Its corollary is dominance over South Asia. Vishwaguru is the second half of Hindutva.
Savarkar’s essay “Hindutva” (1923) expounded the poisonous theme at length and sowed the seeds of Vishwaguru. His successors watered the plant and nursed its growth. But Savarkar did aver: “Let all people of the world learn their duties from the elders born in this land.” He is at pains to emphasise his respect for Buddha and Buddhism. But his lament at its spread in India and deep regret at its consequences are not concealed. It is the period before the rise of Buddhism that inspires him, as it did the RSS’ leaders. “Up with the Vedic Dharma! Back to the Vedas! The national cry grew louder and louder …. because this was essentially a political necessity.” Very true – and “Hindutva” is a political manifesto. It was a political necessity that led to the rejection of Buddhism in India.
Read this revealing bit: “Hatred separates as well as unites”. Like Savarkar, the RSS spews hatred at once to unite the Hindus and separate them from the rest of Indians, especially Muslims, Christians and Communists, the three “Internal Threats” listed in Golwalkar’s Bunch of Thoughts (Chapter XI).
Golwalkar took over the theme and the task of expressing it in his We or Our Nationhood Defined. His detailed exposition, laden with hate, ends thus: “The spirit of the race beckons to us and has lighted for its benighted children the path to their cherished ideal, with beacons of undying spiritual splendour. Let us rouse ourselves to our true nationality, let us follow the lead of our race-spirit, and fill the heavens with the clarion call of the Vedic seers ‘from sea to sea over all the land—One Nation’, one glorious, splendorous Hindu Nation benignly shedding peace and plenty over the whole world.”
Savarkar. Credit: savarkarsmarak.com
Savarkar. Credit: savarkarsmarak.com
Extravagant claims
Bunch of Thoughts begins with “Our World Mission” (Chapter 1). What he wrote explains the extravagant claims of past achievement made by Modi & Co. “History has recorded that it is in this land alone that, right from the hoary times, generation after generation of thinkers and philosophers, seers and sages rose to unravel the mysteries of human nature, dived deep into the world of Spirit and discovered and perfected the science of realisation of that Great Unifying Principle. The penance and sacrifice and experience of hundreds of centuries of a whole nation is there as the inexhaustible fountain-head of this knowledge to assuage the spiritual thirst of the world. It was not mere dry knowledge confined to the intellectual speculations of a few thinkers sitting in their forest hermitages. It was a living thought driving our ancestors—thinkers, administrators, merchants, scientists, artists and philosophers—to reach distant lands carrying that message of world brotherhood. Wherever they stepped, they taught the local people the spiritual and cultural values of life, taught them the sciences of material prosperity as well and built up a homogeneous brotherhood of nations under their benign wings. Our Hindu Society strong, self-confident and self-effulgent provided the unifying pivot for that far-flung empire of the Spirit.”
Also Read: History Shows How Patriotic the RSS Really Is
Fascination for the United States
Right from the beginning, the RSS advocated an alliance with the US (rejection of non-alignment) and made no secret of its distaste for “Communist” China. The quest for international sway is coupled with divisiveness in India based on hate. “In fact, we are Hindus even before we emerge from the womb of our mother. We are therefore born as Hindus. About the others, they are born to this world as simple unnamed human beings and later on, either circumcised or baptised, they become Muslims or Christians.
“Therefore, to strengthen the unity and spirit of identity in our society is a duty born with our birth, our sahaja karma. And that which is our sahaja karma must not be given up even if it may appear to be defective. It is therefore our pre-eminent duty to see that the present differences and dissensions eating into our vitals are removed and our society made once again into a unified and harmonious whole”—not by inter-faith conciliation but by imposition of Hindutva in India as a Vishwaguru pledged to teach the world.
Contempt for M.K. Gandhi and the Congress is not concealed. “Our leaders raised the slogan of ‘Hindu-Muslim unity’ and declared that anything that stood in its way should be forgotten. As they dared not tell the Muslim to forget his separatism, they pitched upon the docile Hindu for all their preachings. The first thing they preached was, that our nationality could not be called Hindu, that even our land could not be called by its traditional name Hindusthan, as that would have offended the Muslim. The name ‘India’ given by the British was accepted. Taking that name, the ‘new nation’ was called the ‘Indian Nation’. And the Hindu was asked to rename himself as ‘Indian’…
Also Read: The RSS and Gandhi: A Necessary Backstory
“In other words, the Hindu was told that he was imbecile, that he had no spirit, no stamina to stand on his own legs and fight for the independence of his motherland and that all this had to be injected into him in the form of Muslim blood. What a shame, what a misfortune that our own leaders should have come forward to knock out the ancient and indomitable faith in ourselves and destroy our spirit of self-confidence and self-reliance, which is the very life-breath of a people! Those who declared ‘No swaraj without Hindu-Muslim unity’ have thus perpetrated the greatest treason on our society. They have committed the most heinous sin of killing the life-spirit of a great and ancient people. To preach impotency to a society which gave rise to a Shivaji who, in the words of the great historian Jadunath Sarkar, ‘proved to the whole world that the Hindu has drunk the elixir of immortality’, and to break the self-confident and proud spirit of such a great and virile society has no parallel in the history of the world for sheer magnitude of its betrayal.” Instil an inferiority complex and soothe it with the cry of Vishwaguru.
M.S. Golwalkar. Credit: Youtube
M.S. Golwalkar. Photo: YouTube
Campaign for Vishwaguru
There was no let-up in the campaign for Vishwaguru. On the contrary, it was stepped up after Independence and has continued right until January 2021, a splendid record of consistency. Consider the gems on the theme in recent years:
1. The RSS supremo Rajendra Singh addressed RSS workers in Nagpur on the Vijayadadshmi day in 1997. He said “lakhs of people have to forego and limit their personal pleasure and work for the realisation of the dream of making Bharat the Vishwaguru again. Great men such as Swami Vivekananda, Savarkar, Dr Hedgewar, Subhas Chandra Bose, Aurobindo Ghose, saw this dream and did wonderful work towards its realisation. If all our brethren decide to accomplish this incomplete work and recognise that the life can be worthy by realising this sacred dream and work towards this goal, we will be able to change the present depressing situation of the Motherland and an atmosphere vibrant with hopes and promises can be brought about within a year or two.” (Organiser, October 26, 1997).
2. Addressing a gathering at the Hindu Sammelan in Baitool, Mohan Bhagwat said the entire world was looking towards Bharat to become a Vishvaguru and it is the responsibility of every Hindu to work in that direction. He said while we see economic struggle being waged all around in the world, and lot of bloodshed in the name of religion and sects, it is time Bharat assumed the role of a Vishvaguru, because the world looks at Bharat to resolve such issues. (Organiser, February 19, 2017).
3. Organiser of December 20, 2020, reported RSS boss Mohan Bhagwat’s speech on India’s role in the global scenario. He said: “The world was waiting for India’s role long before we become independent, but this time also has its importance. The first thing is that now we have awakened. Even when we were independent, we did not do this type of thinking. We did not prepare any such vision document of what will be the place of the newly independent India in the life of the world. Nor was there any discussion in its intellectual field because at that time it was believed that what we will do, we are still a developing nation. But today this belief has awakened in us. Every nation has a purpose; Swami Vivekananda said it. He said that the purpose of Rome was to set an example of militarism in front of the whole world, which it did and the purpose of its existence ended, and Rome also ended. This is how nations incarnate. To pursue the life of this creation, the purpose of their life is their purpose, and they succeed and go away. But Vivekananda Ji used to say—India’s aim is always necessary for the world, from time to time, India is uplifted to give ground to the world and time has come; now India has to wake up.
“India has to become a contributor in the world based on its idols, its ideas, as they are global idols: Taking this whole imagination, our life has stood up, and each country has its scope of identity and diversity. We will not try to make everyone sit in one system.…
“India’s role is vital in the coming world because of the new powers emerging in the world. The power that gives them confidence, courage, assures them is the only the power India has in the entire world. If India comes forward and leads them, it will be our welfare. Therefore, we should wear the Shiv Tav that makes this belief meaningful and gives the world a new standard definition.” The issue also carried an article by one Shridhar Prabhu on “Vaccine and the Vishwa Guru”.
Representative image of an RSS conclave in Pune. Photo: Reuters
4. The latest issue of Organiser (January 24, 2021) is a delight to read. On the one hand it condemns “inter-faith” marriages; on the other it longs for the “The dawn of Dharma-based World Order” in an article by one Shekhar Patel, avowedly “President of the International Centre for Cultural Studies” in the US. It reveals the writer’s deep commitment to preservation of the environment in his assiduous recycling of garbage. He concludes at page 28 of the magazine: “Polarisation is a disease that destroys nations. India can build on its elders’ wisdom and wise seers and use societal cohesion as an antidote to the apparent chaos of social-politico-technological disruptions to guide the world to a better place. A world order, built bottoms-up, with universal-well-being at its core, will be the most just and aligned with all living beings’ aspirations.”
Mohan Bhagwat put the basic subtext underlying the Vishwaguru campaign tersely in a speech in New Delhi on October 3, 2012: “India has to lead the world.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on January 2, 2021, that the time was perfect for “India’s influence” to spread across the world.
Golwalkar's Idea of Culture as War Drives BJP's Scorn for Democracy and Minorities
"We stand for national regeneration and not for that haphazard bundle of political rights – the state," the RSS's key ideologue wrote.
Golwalkar's Idea of Culture as War Drives BJP's Scorn for Democracy and Minorities
File photo of protestors in Delhi condemning the violence unleashed on the students of Jamia by the police. Photo: Special Arrangement
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee
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POLITICSRIGHTS
31/DEC/2019
In We or Our Nationhood Defined (1939), M.S. Golwalkar writes about the unending war of history:
“It is the fortune of war, the tide turns now to this side, now to that, but the war goes on and has not been decided yet.”
Till when does the fortune of war remain undecided? It does, till the war is won. The victorious outcome of war is when it is finally decided, when it finally ends.
The idea of such a war is made clearer when Golwalkar writes:
“The Race Spirit has been awakening. The lion was not dead, only sleeping. He is rousing himself up again and the world has to see the might of the regenerated Hindu Nation strike down the enemy’s hosts with its mighty arm.”
Golwalkar, who led the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from 1940 to 1973, is dreaming of an unending race war. He uses a zoological metaphor for defining the race spirit, and joins it with the idea of a Hindu nation. In order to eliminate the enemy, the race spirit must wake up from sleep. Incidentally, the same lion reappeared in Mohan Bhagwat’s controversial speech in Chicago last year.
In order to establish such a permanent state of race war, Golwalkar takes the next, necessary step. He attacks the idea of democracy: “Wrong notions of democracy strengthened the view and we began to class ourselves with our old invaders and foes under the outlandish name – Indian and tried to win them over to join hands with us in our struggle. The result of this poison is too well known. We have allowed ourselves to be duped into believing our foes to be our friends and with our own hands are undermining true Nationality.”
To be Indian, a word that is etymologically Greek, is to other oneself historically and culturally. It means to lose sight of one’s racial identity. Democracy, for Golwalkar, is a mistaken notion as long as it encourages the politics of friendship. This friendship is poison, for it weakens the body’s spirit for war. For those who believe in war, the so-called friend is the enemy.
Having raised his central doubts about democracy, Golwalkar turns his attention towards the idea of the minority. He quotes from the League of Nations:
“The very definition of the word ‘Minority’ as a ‘class of people incorporated in the body of a Nation,’ ‘citizens who differ from the majority of the population in Race, Religion and Language are called minorities’ is clear on the point that every Nation has necessarily its own National Race, Religion and Language (culture needs no special mention for with the mention of the three Race, Religion and Language, culture also is implicitly there.)”
Ignoring the term, “citizen”, Golwalkar focusses on the word “incorporated” to understand that the minority are aliens, or outsiders, who do not comprise the nation’s body politic. For Golwalkar, minorities divide the grand, singular idea of the nation.
There are glowing praises of Nazi Germany by Golwalkar: “Modern Germany strove… to once again bring under one sway the whole of the territory, hereditarily possessed by the Germans but which, as a result of political disputes, had been portioned off as different countries under different states.”
National territory is a matter of racial heredity, whose history is determined by a premodern idea of empire. In fact, the idea of history itself is pseudo-history, where history is understood only in terms of the history of the race, or race history. What Germany or India were before the advent of the modern nation state must be the basis of national territory according to Golwalkar. Golwalkar emphasises, that “for a people to be and to live as a Nation, a hereditary territory… is essential”.
What is important to note here is how the idea of heredity is woven around a racial idea. The matter gets further clarified when he says, “Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.” Culture is understood in racist terms. There is no cultural assimilation possible outside racist boundaries. Golwalkar’s idea of culture is strictly segregationist and territorial.
Nehru and Tagore’s approach
Contrast this to what Jawaharlal Nehru writes in The Discovery of India:
“A Buddhist or Jain in India is a hundred per cent product of Indian thought and culture, yet neither is a Hindu by faith. It is, therefore, entirely misleading to refer to Indian culture as Hindu culture. In later ages this culture was greatly influenced by the impact of Islam, and yet it remained basically and distinctively Indian [my emphasis]”.
Nehru here is trying to correlate culture and nation. But his approach is diametrically opposite to Golwalkar. Instead of making race or religion the basis of how to define national culture, Nehru treats the history and presence of diverse religions as the basis of Indian culture. Nehru is simply defining a historical truism: Hindu is Indian, but Indian is not just Hindu. Buddhism and Jainism are as distinctively Indian as Islam in India.
The distinctiveness of Islam in India is precisely because of its encounter with these other religions. This encounter produced wars, but they also produced culture. Since Golwalkar is solely focussed on the problem of war, he refuses to define culture outside this war.
Let us take another example that differs from Golwalkar in defining culture. Rabindranath Tagore in his essay, ‘The Centre of Indian Culture’, writes:
“The modern European culture, whose truth and strength lie in its fluid mobility, comes to us rigidly fixed, almost like our own Sastras, about which our minds have to remain passively uncritical because of their supposed divine origin.”
Tagore welcomes the fluidity of culture, in contrast to the rigidity of traditional knowledge. In the same essay, he defines culture as “the life of the mind”.
There is a fundamental difference between mind and race. Race is a biological idea. It is a glorified idea of the body, which is partly based on prejudiced notions of the body of other (ethnically different) people. The mind is a combination of thinking and experience that cannot be purely identified with – or reduced to – someone’s ethnic identity. The mind processes what the body experiences, and reflects upon it. The life of the mind, in many ways, represents the life of culture. Mind and body, as reflection and experience, are part of what we call our cultural memory. This is where racial theories create a language of difference based on exaggerations taken from historical and cultural conflicts and turn knowledge (of the other) into war.
Tagore in the essay makes the perceptive observation, that “our notion of modern culture is limited within the boundary lines of grammar and the laboratory.” He uses two key words that plague modern xenophobia around language: grammar and laboratory. Grammar defines the rules of a language. But when grammar is used to develop a scientific idea of language based on purity, the open and organic nature of language is forced into a jar. In a laboratory, the scientific rules of language are used to develop a theory, where reason is reduced to race.
How does all this affect the idea of culture?
Culture, for Nehru and Tagore, is what transcends or overcomes the limitations of both tradition and history. For Golwalkar, tradition is the word for religion, culture and language put together. It defines racial difference. In Tagore and Nehru’s view, culture is what survives the war. Culture is what is left, after two sides violently encounter each other. Culture is the historical leftover of violence.
Golwalkar believes that the task of culture is to retain the idea of violence that it survived in history. In other words, Golwalkar wants to take culture back to what destroyed it. Golwalkar’s task is contradictory, dangerous and tragic. He defines and defends culture by the idea of war.
Culture as permanent war against minorities
In his fascinating series of lectures between 1975 and 1976, put together as Society Must Be Defended, the French thinker, Michel Foucault, traces the idea of war since the early 17th century as defining all institutions of power. I will borrow certain key passages from the text to show how closely Foucault’s description of the mindset that produces war, closely resembles Golwalkar’s.
Speaking about the emergence of the binary structure of power in the Middle Ages that privileged war against law (of a society), Foucault unpacks the mindset:
“In other words, the enemies who face us still pose a threat to us, and it is not some reconciliation or pacification that will allow us to bring the war to an end. It will end only to the extent that we really are the victors.”
Golwalkar is echoing a similar, 17th century European mindset, turning the racial idea of culture into a state of being in a permanent war against religious minorities. If you believe in war, peace is not just unreal but undesirable.
Since war is a policy, it must flow from the ideology of the state. The fascist state that believes in a state of war is a state at war with all those it imagines as enemies. Such a state does not like the word “minority”, because a minority demands and deserves political rights.
As Golwalkar clarifies, “We stand for national regeneration and not for that haphazard bundle of political rights – the state.” The tacit argument is, national regeneration based on the reified glory of the majority community, won’t need to bother about minority rights. But it also means something more.
Explaining the ideologists of war, Foucault says in Society: “The nation is therefore no longer a partner in barbarous and warlike relations of domination. The nation is the active, constituent core of the State. The nation is the State, or at least an outline State.”
Hindu rashtra is analogous to this idea of the nation taking over the state. It seeks to become the state. In concrete terms, it is a vigilante society playing the role of the state. The idea of society comes into danger at this point. If society is conceived as an entity whose prime historical motive is to wage war within, the idea of society is destroyed.
Golwalkar chides the founders of the Indian National Congress for diluting the cause of the Hindu nation with the idea of democracy: “… [We] have almost completely lost sight of our true Hindu Nationhood, in our wild goose chase after the phantasm of founding a “really” democratic “State” in the country.”
Democracy, for Golwalkar, is elusive, while a Hindu nation is both possible and desirable. He finds the idea of a religious state (Hindu rashtra) more preferable than a democratic state. He does not offer reasons about why the desire for a democratic state is a wild goose chase. But he makes the suggestion that a democratic state deviates from achieving Hindu rashtra. A nation needs to be more interested in the management of war than the (democratic) management of society, or our social and religious differences.
For Golwalkar, the democratic state has no guts to name the enemy. He blamed the Indian National Congress, for “letting our race spirit to fall asleep”. According to him, it “has been the root cause of our present unhappy condition… of hugging to our bosom our most inveterate enemies and thus endangering our very existence.” The political logic seems to be: Democracy must be abandoned, in order to drive out the nation’s enemies.
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is the author of Looking for the Nation: Towards Another Idea of India, published by Speaking Tiger Books (August 2018).
We, or Our Nationhood Defined, published in 1939,
Bunch Of Thoughts1966
RSS officially disowns Golwalkar's book
Akshaya Mukul / TNN / Mar 9, 2006, 00:56 IS
NEW DELHI: In a major ideological shift, RSS has for the first time officially disowned M S Golwalkar's book We or Our Nationhood Defined published in 1939 as "neither representing the views of the grown Guruji nor of the RSS".
We is considered the basic charter of Sangh from where the idea of separating 'We' (Hindus) from other communities and cultural nationalism emanates. In fact, L K Advani has been a vocal proponent of cultural nationalism as the key essence of BJP.
