A new biography of MS Golwalkar shows he built the RSS for political power without joining politics

In keeping with the theory of focusing upon a single opponent, Golwalkar made Muslims the grotesque projection of all imaginable vices and dreads, the cause of tyranny in the past and a threat to Hindus in future. In We or Our Nationhood Defined, the most authentic treatise on a Hindu Rashtra, he expounded that all non-Hindus were “either traitors or enemies to the national cause, or, to take a charitable view, idiots”. Even when he sought to avoid the government’s attention by abandoning the overtly militaristic aspects of the dress and ceremonials in RSS shakhas or decided to side with the British during the Quit India movement, Golwalkar never lost sight of the propaganda value of his anti-Muslim rhetoric.

In fact, the entire Hindutva politics was so highly aware of that aspect of things that one wonders how it would have survived if Muslims did not exist. To be sure, the form that the Muslim took in Golwalkar’s own mind did not differ greatly from the diabolical propaganda image that the Hindutva organisations had created. “I had been taught and tutored by the RSS to look upon every Muslim as a snake which must be killed,” writes Ram Lall Dhooria, who joined the RSS in Montgomery district of Punjab just after the Quit India movement. Within the RSS, therefore, the figure of the Muslim was the incarnation of everything it hated.

Certainly, the thesis that Muslims were striving to divide India made good propaganda, but Golwalkar saw it as the key to all sorts of crises. He clung more and more to this redeeming formula as he dealt with a section of swayamsevaks’ apathy caused by the suspension of parade ground activities or when he sought to convince RSS men not to take part in the Quit India movement but to conserve their energy for their own “decisive” struggle in the future.

The veil of ambiguity regarding the future struggle was dropped in August 1943, when Babasaheb Apte, a close associate of Golwalkar’s, declared in an RSS camp at Allahabad that “Hindus might have to fight Islam after the War [Second World War] and that it was, therefore, important to instill courage and spirit in volunteers”.

Of special significance was Golwalkar’s way of taking his beliefs and overlaying them with an aggressive and purposeful theory of action. This sometimes required an aggravation of his hate complex so that his anti-Muslim rhetoric would not just remain the ranting of a demagogue but would be part of a coherent system necessary to achieve the goal of a Hindu Rashtra.

But along with the goal, Golwalkar also recognised the risk. The 1940 order seemed to have made him careful not to spell out openly the kind of politics he was fostering. He, therefore, pretended that his relentless views on Muslims had nothing to do with politics and that his organisation was truly apolitical. Explaining his motivations, he told a group of RSS men in a closed-door meeting at Amraoti in 1943 that any announcement of political aims would almost certainly invite controversy which may lead to the Sangh’s early “disintegration”.

His strategy, therefore, also required finding new ways for maintaining utmost secrecy about the internal affairs of the RSS. To the extent it existed, the RSS’s organisational structure had already been promoting an authoritarian institutional secrecy that concealed the internal workings of the organisation and conflicts and discussions within it. An Intelligence Bureau report of late 1943 noted fresh attempts at concealment. “For the first time in the Sangh’s history, a special censorship branch was opened at the Nagpur summer camp and all outward mail was scrutinised,” the report said. It added:

At the Bombay headquarters, a system of Visitors’ Passes has been organised. Lectures at the Officers’ Training Camp at Meerut last May were held behind closed doors and only those with special passes were admitted. The same precautions were taken at the Officers’ Training Camp at Benaras where students were also forbidden to reduce anything to writing. At a meeting in Rawalpindi on August 4th, L Kundan Lal Kakar [a local RSS leader] advocated caution in enlisting members lest police informers should be able to find their way into the Sangh. […] When important Berar organizers met in Akola last September to chalk out the Dussehra programme, special precautions were taken to safeguard the secrecy of their names and of the proceedings.

Although Golwalkar was anxious to leave no room for doubt that he was unmistakably on the side of the colonial government, he never seemed to be sure whether the British trusted him. Nor did he have any illusions about the fact that he would stand no chance of success in the absence of help – at least covertly – from within the government machinery. As direct support from the government was out of the question, Golwalkar instructed “secret enrolment of reliable Government servants, teachers and clerks in order to spread the influence of the Sangh in official circles”.

Before long, the results started showing, although at the time it was restricted primarily to the Central Provinces. “A new feature of the Sangh activity in the Central Provinces is the establishment of branches in the Gun Carriage Factory, Jubbulpore, and the Ordnance Factory, Khamaria, while several employees in the Ordnance Factory at Katni are said to belong to the local branch of the Sangh,” noted an Intelligence Bureau report. “The leaders of the branches in the first two installations (which are controlled by the Supply Department of the Government of India) have been warned to cease their activities but it is doubtful if the warning has had any real effect.”

The Intelligence Bureau’s analysis was that Golwalkar and his associates were travelling extensively to stimulate interest of swayamsevaks, impart secret instructions and strengthen the local units of the RSS. Referring to Golwalkar’s itineraries in 1943, it said, “Last April he was at Ahmedabad, in May at Amraoti and Poona, in June at Nasik and Benaras, in August at Chanda, in September again at Poona, in October in Madras and the Central Provinces and in November at Rawalpindi.”

There are credible accounts that Golwalkar was flirting with a vision of politics that would accord him a position similar to the German Fuehrer but was unable yet to openly embrace it. “RSS is aimed at bringing the Hindus of India under the control of a dictator (Guru Ji) and solidify their organisation for the ultimate purpose of capturing political power,” an important RSS man in Punjab, Ram Rakha Mal, told the Intelligence Bureau in 1943. “A spirit of discipline, martial tendencies and developing healthy bodies by the Hindus is to be inculcated so that the Hindu nation may turn matchless in strength due to its overwhelming majority in India.”

As Golwalkar’s political thought became central to the Sangh’s ideological training, the demand for We or Our Nationhood Defined increased phenomenally. The book was republished four times in the 1940s until the RSS was banned following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on 30 January 1948. With his book as the guiding force and a new institutional mechanism of pracharaks in place, Golwalkar seemed on a mission to convert the RSS into a powerful instrument of attack and conquest, perhaps imagining himself as something akin to a Hindu Hitler.

Prompted by ideas borrowed from Nazism, he was coming to the belief that he must quietly wait for the British to leave the country before setting out to overthrow the present order and seize political power and that this the RSS must do under his own leadership. His extreme and violent views on politics find expression in a diary confiscated from the RSS headquarters in the aftermath of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The diary contained the minutes of a meeting of top RSS leaders held on 9 September 1945, in which deliberations were written by hand in a question-and-answer format.

The meeting was thought to have been a confidential affair meant to explain Golwalkar’s oft-repeated statement: “We have no connection with present politics.” The idea seems to have been to convey the RSS plan from the top leadership to prominent organisers and teachers, who would then – by virtue of being in regular touch with swayamsevaks – carry the secret message down the line. The meeting was attended by “Balasaheb Deoras, PV Savarkar, Datta Vaidya, Anna Pandharipande, Baburao Savatker, Nandlal Verma, Nana Narale, [Pandurang] Kshirsagar, Madhukar Oak and Tatyaji [Tatyarao Telang]”.

All the participants were close associates of Golwalkar. While Deoras was in charge of the organisation’s headquarters at Nagpur and considered the main executioner of Golwalkar’s ideas, others were prominent organisers and teachers of the RSS. The diary details a discussion, in which Deoras responded while the RSS’s organisers and teachers asked questions touching primarily upon the organization’s approach to politics in independent India. The meeting had been convened by Deoras with the apparent purpose to ideologically equip “RSS organisers and main teachers” with the nuances required to instil the Sangh’s idea of politics in the ranks and files of the organisation.

“It is wrong to say that we have no connection with politics,” Deoras, according to the diary, remarked while responding to a question by PV Savarkar. “Today our plan is to create a powerful body by organising the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh all over India and thereby to effect an all-India unity, and at an opportune moment to seize the power on receipt of an order from our Leader. Obviously, to achieve this power, it is necessary that it should not be utilised in any other sphere and our attention should not be diverted to any other thing.”

In the meeting, Deoras tried to show that the new politics under Golwalkar was in no sense contradictory to the fundamental trend of Indian history and mythology. Arjun, one of the main characters of the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharat, and Shivaji, the Maratha king and the most revered political figure in Maharashtra, were shown to have followed the same political line. “Arjun could see only the eye of the bird. Does this mean that Arjun was unaware of the fact that Dronacharya [his teacher] was standing by his side and that the bird was sitting on the tree? But with all this when the vision is directed towards a certain object it is necessary not to divert it towards anything else,” Deoras said. Referring to Shivaji, he said:

Did Shivaji overthrow the empire of Aurangzeb by utilising the present politics? The present politics has come into existence on account of the novel way of administration of the British. The British followed the Roman method of administration by avoiding its defects. As the sentiments of enslaved people are apt to rise they created an outlet for it and decided to do everything according to law. […] The present politics is the creation of this system. The fruits achieved out of the present politics are also limited, e.g. an ordinary reduction in taxes or an achievement of some minor rights. […] To think that there was any advantage in getting some reforms or some rights is a mistake. Britishers have done this for their own interest.

Responding to a question by Anna Pandharipande, Deoras said, “Our plan is of ‘surprise’.” Then, in a nuanced way, he added: “It is not that all the things are done according to the settled plan. Even if we think that we will do the work step by step, there is no guarantee that all the factors will remain till the last.” Deoras also talked about the political role swayamsevaks should be playing till the RSS was organisationally ready to seize power:

It is possible that we will be required to do anything. It is also possible that the Sangh might tell 5-10 persons to start their own political party. Everything is possible. This is our general plan. […] We should bear this thing in mind that we would take a particular step suitable to the occasion. […] It is said about the Imperial Guard of Napoleon that he used to feed it as much as possible till the approach of the suitable moment. At a proper moment it used to take the offensive.

It was in this context that Deoras stated that the RSS would not formally take part in the upcoming elections to central and provincial legislatures in the winter of 1945-46 but that its cadre should vote. To a question about why swayamsevaks should vote at all, he said, “There are several things of which we are not in favour but still we have to do those things. We are not in favour of slavery but still we are [in] it. The same will be the case with elections.”

The conversation contained in the diary gave the gist of Golwalkar’s political programme. His RSS, unlike the Hindu Mahasabha, did not pursue democratic political goals but worked instead for violent seizure of power. Despite the ambiguity being so fundamental to the political outlook of Golwalkar, intelligence agencies could easily see that there was much more than what was apparent. According to an Intelligence Bureau report, Golwalkar, addressing a closed-door meeting of RSS office-bearers at Hoshangabad in March 1946, claimed that the total strength of swayamsevaks was around 250,000 and “that his plan of direct action was held in readiness for disclosure at the psychological moment”.

Excerpted with permission from Golwalkar: The Myth Behind the Man, The Man Behind the Machine, Dhirendra K Jha, Simon and Schuster India.