'Hindu Mahasabha is a small reactionary group pretending to speak on behalf of the Hindus of India' - Text of speech delivered by Jawaharlal Nehru on November 12, 1933

[Text of speech delivered by Jawaharlal Nehru at the Banaras Hindu University on November 12, 1933]


I have long been of opinion that the Hindu Mahasabha is a small reactionary group pretending to speak on behalf of the Hindus of India of whom it is very far from being representative. None the less misapprehensions have been created by their high-sounding titles and resounding phrases and it is time that these misapprehensions are removed. Nothing in recent months has pained me quite so much as the activities of the Mahasabha group culminating in the resolutions passed at Ajmer.

Going a few steps further, the Arya Kumar Sabha, which is presumably an offshoot of the Hindu Mahasabha, has proclaimed its policy to be one of elimination of Muslims and Christians from India and the establishment of a Hindu Raj.1 This statement makes it clear what the pretensions of the Mahasabha about Indian nationalism amount to. Under cover of seeming nationalism, the Mahasabha not only hides the rankest and narrowest communialism but also desires to preserve the vested interests of the group of big Hindu landlords and the princes. The policy of the Mahasabha, as declared by its responsible leaders, is one of cooperation with the foreign government so that, by abasing themselves before it, they might get a few crumbs. This is a betrayal of the freedom struggle, denial of every vestige of nationalism and suppression of every manly instinct in the Hindus. The Mahasabha shows its attachment to vested interests by openly condemning every form of socialism and social change. Anything more degrading, reactionary, anti-national, anti-progressive and harmful than the present policy of the Hindu Mahasabha is difficult to imagine.

The leaders of the Mahasabha must realise the inevitable consequences of this policy of their lining up with the enemies of Indian freedom and most reactionary elements in the country. It is for the rest of India, Hindu and non-Hindu, to face them squarely and oppose them and treat them as enemies of freedom and all that we are striving for. It is not a mere matter of condemnation and dissociation, though of course there is to be both these, but one of active and persistent opposition to the most opportunist and stupid of policies.

[Speech delivered at the Banaras Hindu University on November 12, 1933 — published in The Bombay Chronicle, November 15, 1933; reprinted in Recent Essays and Writings (Allahabad, 1934), pp. 45-46]