(Himal
May June 2006)
Trapped in the Golwalkarian past
As RSS followers in India celebrate M S Golwalkar’s birth centenary this year, it is not clear whether they are celebrating the Second Supremo himself or a cleaned up version.
by | Subhash Gatade
Golwalkar in 1940, the year he became Second Supremo
‘Social change’ is an ongoing, continuous process, uniquely affected by both progressive and regressive forces. The cumulative impact of these forces determines both the direction and intensity of subsequent changes. Such an understanding certainly colours any objective assessment of Independent India. After the most prominent names have found mention – ranging from the Nehrus and Patels, to the Ambedkars or Jayprakash Narayan – is it possible to avoid that of Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the second Sarsanghchalak (Supremo) of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)?
Founded in 1925 by a Telugu Brahmin, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, over the next three-quarters of a century the RSS (translated as ‘national volunteer corps’) succeeded in expanding its influence into much of India’s civil society and state organs. Its leadership, however, continues to call it a ‘cultural’ organisation. The central figure who helped to achieve this success was undeniably Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar – ‘Golwalkar Guruji’ to his followers, for his brief stint in the early 1930s as a zoology teacher at Benares Hindu University. Golwalkar led the fledgling RSS for 33 years, from 1940 until 1973, providing not only the theoretical foundation for the Hindu rashtra project, but expanding its influence through a plethora of affiliated organisations. These ‘anushangik’ partners today range from the parliamentary Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to extra-parliamentary units such as the Bajrang Dal, which has a record of affiliation with many unsavoury incidents. A BJP-led coalition government did hold power at the Centre for an uninterrupted six years, a unique feat for any non-Congress government. But overall, the political record of the wings of the RSS parivar as it gained national prominence was geared towards destruction of the social fabric. These encompass the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992 and the subsequent communal conflagration, and a decade later the genocide of minorities in Gujarat in 2002.
Golwalkar was born on 19 February 1906, and 2006 is being celebrated across India to mark his centenary. The commemoration started near his birth town on 24 February, with a large gathering in Nagpur, Maharashtra. The festivities are scheduled to culminate in February 2007 with a large programme in Delhi. Organisers say that samajik samrasta, or ‘social harmony’, is the commemorative year’s central theme, and ‘Hindu rallies’ are to be organised at the block level throughout the country. Says a RSS document, “Meetings of caste and religious leaders will also be held with the objective of promoting social harmony. Seminars, symposia, lectures, etcetera, will also be organised to propagate the ideas and vision of Shri Guruji.”
The anniversary activities have opened up uncomfortable questions for Golwalkar’s many detractors, in particular in comprehending the undeniable ‘success’ of his Hindutva project. How was it that such a worldview, which reached back to medieval supremacist Brahminism and glorified the Fascist experiments in Western Europe, was able to achieve such an advance in the latter decades of the 20th century?
Hindu rashtra
According to his biographers, young Madhav was keen to follow a spiritual journey and initially studied under Swami Akhandanand at the Ramakrishna Mission in West Bengal. The Swami’s sudden death in 1937, however, prompted Golwalkar to return home and rejoin his work as a swayamsevak (volunteer) with the RSS, an organisation preaching ‘Hindu resurgence’ founded by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar. Although a latecomer to the organisation, Golwalkar quickly earned Hedgewar’s confidence due to his quick mind, and the following year was appointed the group’s sarkaryavah (general secretary). That same year, his long essay entitled “We or Our Nationhood Defined” was published in book form, a work that demonstrated Golwalkar’s theoretical acumen.
Golwalkar emerged as one of a triumvirate of Hindu nationalists – together with Indian nationalists Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Keshav Baliram Hedgewar – which actively sought a Hindu rashtra based on ‘Hindutva’, a term coined by Savarkar in or around 1923. When Hedgewar breathed his last in 1940, he left a note asking his followers to make Golwalkar the next Supremo, a post that he held until his passing in 1973.
The period when Golwalkar was anointed Supremo was marked by three worldwide currents: the ascendance of the forces of Nazism and Fascism; the surge in anti-colonial struggle; and the emergence of militant socialist movements in several countries, with help and support from Soviet Russia. Upon arrival in India, the anti-colonial movement and the rising communist movement mediated their paths through the existing socio-cultural movements that were challenging caste and gender hierarchy. This was also the first time in Southasia that new bonds of solidarity – cutting across caste, community and regional loyalties – were being forged in opposition to the British colonialists. Meanwhile, Golwalkar’s project of Hindu unity took inspiration from the social engineering experiments undertaken by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In seeking refuge in the discredited Hitlerian scheme, he failed miserably in understanding the march of history. In the controversial We or Our Nationhood Defined, he wrote: “To keep up the purity of 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.”
On the domestic front, this ‘nation-building’ project not only hinged on opposing Islam and Christianity, but also countering the parallel challenge posed by anti-Brahminical struggles. It was also a time when the cultural revolts led by activists like Babasaheb Ambedkar and Periyar Ramaswami Naicker had already made significant headway. Meanwhile, Golwalkar had no qualms in keeping himself and the RSS aloof from the anti-colonial movement, and he opposed the demands for equality of Dalit and tribal communities. He derided the anti-imperialist struggle as one for ‘territorial nationalism’, as opposed to his fight for ‘cultural nationalism’. It would be more than 30 years before a RSS leader, Nanaji Deshmuk, would raise the crucial question: Why did the RSS not take part in the liberation struggle?
With Partition and the bloody riots that followed, Golwalkar and the RSS were suddenly catapulted to the centre stage of Indian polity. Even while working to provide assistance to the Hindu refugees from Pakistan, the RSS took advantage of the communalised environment to strengthen its ranks. The RSS was blamed for the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi in 1948. Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel, in a letter to his Hindu Mahasabha colleague Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, wrote:
Our reports do confirm that, as a result of the activities of these two bodies particularly the former [the RSS], an atmosphere was created in the country in which such a ghastly tragedy [Gandhi’s assassination] became possible … The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of the government and the state. Our reports show that those activities, despite the ban, have not died down. Indeed, as time has marched on, the RSS circles are becoming more defiant and are indulging in their subversive activities in an increasing measure.
As the post-Partition riots subsided, and with the new approaches being followed by India’s new leaders, Golwalkar and the RSS found themselves out on a limb. The Hindutva forces were stigmatised for their ignoble alleged participation in Gandhi’s death, as well as for staying out of the anti-colonial struggle. As his organisation faced marginalisation, Golwalkar sought to devise new ways and means to sustain the project of building a Hindu rashtra.
Throughout those attempts at reviving the fortunes of the RSS, Golwalkar courted controversy. He created one final uproar towards the end of his life, in an interview to a Marathi daily, Navakal, when he extolled the virtues of Chaturvarnya (the division of the Hindus into four Varnas) and glorified Manusmriti, the ancient edicts that sanctify a structured hierarchy based on caste and gender. Similar views had gotten him into trouble decades earlier, as well. While leaders of the newly independent India were struggling to create a constitution premised on the inviolability of individual rights, Golwalkar was advocating Manusmriti as the country’s sole constitution. The RSS mouthpiece, The Organiser, complained in November 1949: “… in our constitution there is no mention of the unique constitutional developments in ancient Bharat. Manu’s laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day 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.”
When in the 1940s, under the stewardship of Jawaharlal Nehru and Dalit leader B R Ambedkar, attempts were made to give limited rights to Hindu women in property and inheritance, Golwalkar and his associates launched a movement opposing the historic Hindu Code Bill. Their contention was simple: such a step would be inimical to Hindu traditions and culture.
Revisionist project
Despite the feverish preparations to celebrate the anniversary of their departed mentor, it is clear that some of Golwalkar’s followers are uncomfortable with his legacy. Even while he is being lionised for his ‘contributions’, they are surreptitiously sanitising the man’s image, presenting him with a more humane, publicly acceptable face. Such attempts are particularly prominent in a new publication, as noted in a recent media account:
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 … The booklet Shri Guruji and Indian Muslims, authored by Delhi University lecturer Rakesh Sinha and published by RSS’ Suruchi Prakashan … argues that in his lifetime Golwalkar had revealed that the book carried not his own views but was an abridged version of G D Savarkar’s Rashtra Mimansa.”
Other elements of this sanitising project include: attempts by RSS members to show that Golwalkar was not even the author but merely the translator of the controversial book; the concocted ‘proofs’ that have been made public to show that the Hindutva lobby did indeed participate in the Independence movement; and the dedication of the year-long celebrations in Golwalkar’s honour to the cause of ‘social harmony’. Despite such attempts at revisionism, however, it is important to remember that Golwalkar’s current followers do not have any second thoughts about his exclusivist vision – they are only concerned about how to present that vision less problematically. Despite this year’s attempts to update the Second Supremo for a modern audience, the RSS appears to remain trapped in the past.
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