India’s prime minister Narendra Modi is an avatar of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh’s founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, who founded RSS on 27 September 1925. Five people were present at the inaugural meeting, Hedgewar, Moonje, Veer Savarkar’s brother Ganesh Damodar Savarkar, L.V. Paranjpe and B.B. Tholkar. With the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Hedgewar now commands formidable respect with the Hindu majority and terrified minorities. Recently even some Congress leaders, including Pranab Mukherjee visited Hedgewar’s grave and paid him rich tributes.
C.P. Bhishikar’s biography of Hedgewar, Keshav Sanghnirmata tells how RSS founder equated Muslims to “yavana” snakes. Rakesh Sinha, BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP and Hedgewar’s biographer, said, “Hedgewar formed RSS in order to consolidate the Hindus. He wanted to liberate them from restrictions imposed by the protracted Mughal-British rule.
Driving force for Hedgewar to form RSS was Vinayak Damodar (Veer) Savarkar’s ideas on Hindutva and motherland. Savarkar had spelled out that only those who considered India as their fatherland and a holy land could be considered patriots. He ruled out Muslims, suggesting that their patriotism should always be suspected.
RSS which beats people up to demand that they say ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai”, actually prefers the term “Hindu” to “Bhartiya,”. It thinks they are doing Muslims a favor by “letting” them call themselves “Bhartiya”! Bhagwat equates “Hindu” and “Bhartiya/Indian”.
The ruling BJP has a symbiotic relationship with RSS as is obvious from Babri Masjid demolition.
In a work that expressed admiration for Nazi Germany’s purge of Jews, Golwalkar wrote in 1939, “… 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.” (MS Golwalkar, We Or Our Nationhood Defined, Bharat Prakashan, 1939, 104-105).
Golwalkar made it clear that in the RSS view, Hindu majoritarian identity politics is the only acceptable nationalism, and any politics of asserting an identity separate from the Hindu identity is ‘anti-national’ and ‘divisive.’ He wrote: “Let us remember that this oneness is ingrained in our blood from our very birth because we are all born as Hindus.” (Bunch of Thoughts, p. 255).
Re-imaging: The RSS has been busy re-imaging itself in media as a `cultural, not a `genocidal movement’, Rashtriya Swayem Sevak Sangh has floated selected leaks into national and international media from a new book by its ideologue Sunil Ambekar. He is organizing the national secretary of the RSS’s student wing (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad). The book is titled ‘The RSS: Roadmaps For The 21st Century’. As a prelude to the book launch, the RSS hosted an in-house closed-door briefing for foreign journalists based in India. Earlier, it held an all-India enclave in which `intellectuals’ from all over India were invited. RSS’s puppet Muslim munches to distribute pamphlets. The aim was to show off that RSS was not anti-Muslim.
Gay stand: To appease the West, the RSS has deviated from its anti-gay position. The above-mentioned book says, `RSS is willing to discuss this issue in future’.
Indian Constitution: RSS spurn Indian Constitution and believes India is a place for Hindu nation, Rashtra, to live exclusively in.
RSS, Hindutva Ideology and Minority Muslims
Congress leader Tharoor pilloried for exposing BJP-RSS nexus: While delivering a lecture (July 15, 2018) on “Threats Faced by Indian Democracy and Secularism” at Thiruvananthapuram, Tharoor expressed apprehension that `the BJP could tear up our Constitution and replace it with one that enshrines the principles of the “Hindu Rashtra”, that would pave the way for the creation of a “Hindu Pakistan” (implying extremist Pakistan).
He added that BJP could not realize its dream as it lacks a requisite majority in parliament. The BJP took his remarks as an affront and took Tharoor to task on multifarious propaganda channels. Even Congress became too miffed to defend him.
Read more: Hindutva- India’s very own doom through self inflicted extremism
Dr. Tharoor. A former candidate for the post of UN secretary-general, made similar remarks during the Jaipur literature festival in January this year. He said, “We are living in a country where on the one hand the Prime Minister says the Constitution is his holy book and on the other hand, he extols as a hero and instructs his Ministers to study the works, writings, and teachings of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, who explicitly rejects the Constitution. “The only thing that had stood in its [BJP’s] way is a two-third majority in the Rajya Sabha”. BJP’s official ideology is “Integral humanism”, coined by Deendayal Upadhyaya in 1965. The RSS stands committed to Hindutva, a term coined by VD Savarkar.
Upadhyaya sugar-coated the term Hindutva as Bharteeyata. The adamant Tharoor promised to retract his statement if the BJP officially abandon the Hindu-Rashtra (nation) ideal (propounded by Savarkar and Golwalkar, Upadhyaya and their ilk. The Hindu Rashtra concept was first formulated by Savarkar in 1923 in the essay titled “Hindutva”. It was officially adopted through a resolution by the Hindu Mahasabha in 1937. So, RSS’s two-nation theory resolution was contrived even before the Muslim League’s resolution of Lahore in 1939.
Upadhyaya presented his `theory of Muslim purification’ at the BJP National Council meeting in Kozhikode in 2015. India’s founding father, `Mahatma’ Gandhi, himself was shot dead by an RSS fanatic, Nathuram Godse, in 1948 for his perceived soft corner for Muslims. Vallabhai Patel banned the RSS. To appease the state, as well as to continue their operations, the RSS decided to drop the words ‘Hindu Rashtra’ or the Hindu Land, from their official manifesto. The party was reinstated.
RSS-BJP Nexus
The ruling BJP has a symbiotic relationship with RSS as is obvious from Babri Masjid demolition. The RSS publicly supported Gujarat chief minister and BJP leader, Narendra Modi’s 11-phase Hindu Pride Parade in July 2002.
How RSS distort history? The ‘Hindu’ were persons inhabiting the Indus valley area and beyond. The territory inhabited by him was Hindustan. But, the RSS calls the territory Hindusthan (the Hindu’s place). The suffix ‘-stan’ being of non-Hindu origin is obnoxious to RSS’s good sense. They find Bharatvarsha even more palatable. This word originated from an ancient Hindu king Bharatvarsha.
Congress leader Dr. Shashi Tharoor is in the eye of a storm because of his innocuous remarks about the rising wave of Hindu nationalism in India.
The communalist outfits like Sangh Parivar use this name preferentially as it emphasizes Vedic roots of the country and its original people. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in his book Hindutva defines ‘Hindutva’ (Rashtriya Swayem Sevak Sangh’s ideology) as ‘Hindus being a nation
(Rashtra), bound by a common culture (Sanskrit), a common history, a common language, a common country and a common religion (Hindu dharma). All RSS recruits take Pratigya (oath): `for the all-round progress of Bharatvarsh (ancient name of India) by strengthening Hindutva.
RSS and Sangh Parivar must stop propagating Hindutva terrorism before it is too late. Ban Hindutva outfits like Sanatan Sanstha, Bajrang Dal etc before they start mass killings like this. https://t.co/3sXw2Txe58
— Dr. Sanjukta Basu, M.A., LLB., PhD (@sanjukta) September 20, 2019
Following the assassination of Gandhi by a former activist of the Sangh, the RSS was banned. To appease home minister Patel and wriggle out of the ban, the RSS, in 1948, dropped the term `Rashtra’ from its manifesto.
Inference: The RSS’s genocidal role is a caricature of Indian constitution visualizing a `sovereign socialist secular democratic republic ‘and its Article prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. Indian army chief’s outburst to overrun nuclear Pakistan is in keeping with the Hindu mentality.
The Hindu civil and military leadership is nostalgic about ancient India’s prosperity during the Maurya and the Gupta periods achieved through total-war tactics (Major General Rajendra Nath, Military Leadership in India: Vedic Period to Indo-Pak Wars). Indian army is wedded to a keynote of Krishna’s strategy: `end justifies the means. The truth may often have to be sacrificed in pursuit of victory (Karma Parva)’. Brihaspati and Kautilya (Arthashastra) stress koota yuddha (no-holds-barred war or Maya yuddha (war by deception) against the non-Hindu. Congress leader Dr. Shashi Tharoor is in the eye of a storm because of his innocuous remarks about the rising wave of Hindu nationalism in India.
Read more: Modi’s India exposed: Hindu extremism seeps into universities
RSS-Nathsi nexus: The RSS leaders had nexus with Nathsi leaders. Now they are hobnobbing with extremist elements in Israel. We need to see through the Hindutva mentality and smokescreen of India’s constitutional secularism Ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s commitment to koota yuddha is obvious from
(a) its Babri Masjid petition to the Supreme Court to hand over the `undisputed ‘land to the Nyas (trust), VHP (Nyas originally owned only one acre.
(b) BJP-supported then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s 11- phase Gaurav or papadshahi yatra (pride parade) in July 2002.
Mr. Amjed Jaaved holds degrees in economics, business administration, and law and his articles have been published in the leading dailies and magazines at home and abroad (Nepal. Bangladesh, et. al.). He is author of seven e-books including Terrorism, Jihad, Nukes and other Issues in Focus. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Global Village Space’s editorial policy.