Tag: Hindu Mahasabha

Should Government Employees be Allowed to Join RSS?

Major leaders of the freedom struggle were very clear about the nature of RSS, which masquerades as a cultural organisation and expands its base by appealing to the emotions of the public.

RSS is the biggest organisation in the world. It aims at working for Hindu Rashtra and also claims that it is a ‘cultural Organisation’. It is as such striving for nationalism (Hindu)’ contrary to the one underlined in our Constitution, Indian nationalism.

It regards Hindus as a nation and so it has set its goal. Time and over again one or the other top leader of BJP voices the demand for scrapping the Indian Constitution and proclaiming that we should become a Hindu Rashtra.

RSS Sarsanghchalak K. Sudarshan himself had stated this when he became chief of RSS in 2000. Prior to 2024 elections BJP President J.P. Nadda stated that now BJP is more capable and does not need RSS support for its electoral campaign which was the norm in previous elections. What does the pledge and prayer of RSS tell about its goal?

We also recall that RSS has been banned thrice, and wriggled out of those bans by wearing the façade of Culture. As we know, the ban on government servants taking part in politics is to ensure that our bureaucracy remains committed to the values of the Constitution and not be politically partisan.

The ban on government employees participating in RSS activities had been there for over 50 years, and it was the third time this was done. The ban was recently lifted by the BJP government in the Centre.

The Sangh’s role in shaping BJP, its political progeny, can easily be discerned from the writings and actions of RSS. One recalls that it was Shyama Prasad Mukherjee of Hindu Mahasabha, who collaborated with RSS to float the previous avatar of BJP, Bharatiya Jana Sangh. The then RSS chief M.S. Golwalkar,(Guruji) regarded as the major ideologue of RSS; time and again outlined the role of RSS trained Swayamsaevaks and Pracharaks, while being in Jana Sangh or BJP.

Golwalkar writes, “For instance some of our friends were told to go and work for politics that does not mean that they have great interest or inspiration for it. They don’t die for politics like fish without water. If they are told to withdraw from politics, then also there is no objection. Their discretion is just not required.” (Golwalkar, MS, Shri Guruji Samagar Darshan (collected works of Golwalkar in Hindi, Bhartiya Vichar Sadhna, Nagpur, vol. 3, p. 33) tells us clearly that Jansangh or BJP was supposed to follow the instructions of RSS.

Further Guruji says, “We know this also that some of our Swayamsevaks [cadres] work in politics. There they have to organise according to the needs of work: public meetings, processions etc., have to raise slogans (Same as above Vol 4, page 4-5).

RSS nurtured and trained its swayamsevaks on these lines and later floated many organisations. Nathuram Godse, the killer of Mahatma Gandhi was also a trained pracharak of RSS. RSS at that time did not keep any records of membership so it could wash its hands off from this murder. Nathuram Godse’s family believes that the assassin, a staunch member of the RSS was neither expelled from the sangh nor did he ever leave the organisation.

Shamsul Islam, eminent scholar of Hindu Nationalism, points out, “The central publication house of the RSS, the Suruchi Prakashan, Jhandewalan, New Delhi, published, Param Vaibhav Ke Path Par (1997) which gave details of more than 40 organisations created by the RSS for different tasks.

The BJP as a political organisation figures prominently in it at number 3, along with the ABVP, Hindu Jagran Manch, Vishva Hindu Parishad, Swadeshi Jagran Manch and Sanskar Bharti etc.

Similarly, the prayer and pledge of RSS make it clear that they make its followers commit to Hindu nation. Its prarthna (prayer) says “You/O God almighty, we the integral part of the Hindu Rashtra salute you in reverence/For Your cause have we girded up our loins/Give us Your Blessings for its accomplishment”  (RSS, Shakha Darshika, Gyan Ganga, Jaipur, 1997, p.1).

The pledge is also equally forthright in this “I become a member of the RSS in order to achieve all round greatness of Bharatvarsha by fostering the growth of my sacred Hindu religion, Hindu society, and Hindu culture (page 66, above).

The masquerading of RSS as a cultural organisation does help it to expand its base by appealing to the emotions of many. Major leaders of the freedom struggle were very clear about the nature of RSS.

“A member of Gandhi’s entourage had praised the efficiency, discipline, courage and capacity for hard work shown by RSS cadres at Wagah, a major transit camp for Punjab refugees. Gandhi quipped back, ‘but don’t forget, even so had Hitler’s Nazis and Fascists under Mussolini’, Gandhi characterised RSS as a communal body with a totalitarian outlook” (Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, Ahmedabad, page 440).

Nehru did regard RSS as having traits of fascism. Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India, had stated that “The RSS is strictly secret as regards its organisation. It has consequently developed along fascist lines and is definitely a potential menace to public peace (Dr. Rajendra Prasad to Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, 12 December 1948).

Sardar Patel wrote “As regards the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, the case relating to Gandhiji’s murder… about the participation of the two organisations, but our reports do confirm that, as a result of the activities of these two bodies, particularly the former, an atmosphere was created in the country in which such a ghastly tragedy 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 [Letter 64 cited in Sardar Patel: Select Correspondence19450-1950, vol. 2, Navjivan Publishing House, Ahmadabad, 1977, pp. 276-277.].

In between Janata Party and Atal Bihari Vajpayee were also at the helm of political affairs but the ban on government employees holding membership of RSS was not lifted. Mr. Modi has been in power for the last 10+ years. Why is he taking this decision now? Is it after RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has been making oblique criticism of the supreme leader?

There is a need for cultural activists and social scientists to assess the contribution of RSS to Indian culture. This mask of RSS being a cultural organisation needs to be undone and its political agenda grasped for protection of Indian Constitution and democracy. As such it seems that it is a supra-political outfit.

Ram Puniyani is president of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism.

Remembering Subhas Chandra Bose’s Strong Views Against Hindutva Politics 

There is no ambiguity about Bose’s politics – he was decisively against communal politics.

Kolkata: ‘Netaji’ Subhash Chandra Bose’s stinging indictment of Hindutva politics in a May 1940 speech in West Bengal’s Jhargram has been back in the discussion in Bose’s home state over the past few years. To be precise, a few lines from it. 

The lines are: “The Hindu Mahasabha has sent monks and nuns with tridents in their hands begging for votes. Hindus bow in reverence at the very sight of trident and saffron robes. Hindu Mahasabha has entered politics by taking advantage of religion and has desecrated it. Every Hindu needs to condemn them.”

This part of his speech, in its Bengali original as well as English translation, has been doing the rounds on social media for the past few years. However, many started doubting its authenticity after Netaji researcher Chandrachur Ghose, in a social media post on January 24, 2022, cast doubts on the authenticity of the comment. 

“This is how myth is created. Create a template of false propaganda and party workers will circulate. No one can/will produce the originals. Bose’s collected works don’t have it. I have checked Jugantar of that date. No news. Prime example of Left-Congress fakery,” he wrote in the post, in which Ghose also ‘tagged’ authors Vikram Sampath, Anuj Dhar and Kapil Kumar. 

Prompted by requests from several persons for a fact-check, this journalist accessed the Anandabazar Patrika of May 14, 1940. Most of the social media posts using the comment had mentioned the date and the newspaper. A look at page 7 of that day’s Anandabazar Patrika, confirmed that the quotation in circulation is verbatim. 

Subhas Chandra Bose’s speech targetting Hindu communal politics published in May 14, 1940 edition of Anandabazar Patrika. Photo: Special Arrangement | Anandabazar Patrika

The speech of the May 12, 1940 meeting was published in the May 14 edition of the newspaper. On the 12th, a Sunday, Bose held organisational meetings at Jhargram town and then gave a speech at the Lalgarh ground for two hours and a half.  

After this journalist pointed out in an article in Anandabazar Patrika’s April 13 issue how Bose’s comments were not only authentic but also consonant with his larger politics, Ghose admitted his mistake in a social media post. 

“I was wrong about this, as despite several attempts I couldn’t find the report. However my central argument remains unchanged,” he wrote in a post. 

In another, he wrote that “TMC & Left supporters… are entitled to be happy in their ignorance, but I reiterate that this in no way affects the facts I have presented & arguments I have made in ‘Bose’ & later. I stand by my analysis & interpretation of facts.”  

While the authenticity of one single quotation should not, indeed, be treated as the basis of a researcher’s central arguments, it might be difficult for anyone other than Ghose to succinctly describe his “central arguments” or what his “analysis and interpretation of facts” exactly reveal in gist. 

One of the points he stressed in his past work is that Bose, though critical of Hindu Mahasabha leader Vinayak Savarkar’s politics, held respect for the latter. 

“Subhas Chandra Bose wasn’t ‘anti-Savarkar’,” Ghose claimed, adding, “Not only was the relation between Bose and Savarkar much more nuanced, but they also held each other in high regard despite their political differences.” 

Personal respect may be a sphere of speculation but that Bose opposed communal politics, particularly those preached by Savarkar’s Hindu Mahasabha and Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League, is irrefutable. 

The May 12 speech makes it clearer. He blamed Savarkar alone for the breakdown of the Congress’ alliance initiatives with the Hindu Mahasabha for Kolkata’s municipal elections in 1940. 

In that speech, Bose also urged people to boycott Amritbazar Patrika and the group’s Bengali publication Yugantar, besides publications named Bharat and Matribhumi. They were “spreading lies day after day”, Bose alleged. 

The call for boycotting four newspapers was based on his allegation that they were harming national unity efforts. Bose argued that at a time the Congress managed to wean the Muslim League away from Europeans in governing the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC), which showed that Hindus and Muslims could together govern the country without the British, these pro-Hindu Mahasabha media constantly opposed the efforts.

This acrimonious relation might be why Ghose could not find Bose’s speech in that day’s Jugantar. 

Some of the social media posts highlighting Bose’s May 12 comments also include two more sentences — “Banish these traitors from national life. Don’t listen to them.” Bose did not say this referring to the Hindu Mahasabha. Here, he was referring to the right-wing section of the Congress — or the Congress high command of the time — that had “imposed” an “ad-hoc committee” on the Congress’ Bengal unit in February 1940 amidst the heightening Bose-Gandhi conflict. 

Unambiguous position 

During the Lalgarh speech, Bose explained the Congress policy towards communal organisations. Referring to the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League, he said, “None of them are our enemies, all the countrymen are our allies. Foreign imperialism is the only enemy.” 

Bose explained that the Congress tried to reconcile with the Hindu Mahasabha (in March 1940) adhering to the party’s policy but “Savarkar ordered against any understanding with the Congress. That’s why the coalition efforts with the Hindu Mahasabha broke down.”

After this, when Congress found common ground with the Muslim League in municipal governance, they joined hands with the League. The main objective was to keep the British away from the municipality. Bose was keen on using municipal governance for mass contact. 

In the May 12 speech, he asked, “The Hindu Mahasabha’s efforts have divided the Congress into two groups. Has it strengthened the Hindu society or weakened it?” 

Bose said there would be no conflict if the “Hindu Mahasabha does Hindu Mahasabha’s work and the Congress does Congress’s” but “conflict is inevitable if Hindu Mahasabha tries to enter the Congress’ field.” By Hindu Mahasabha’s work, he meant religious work. 

He alleged that “reactionary people” had entered politics in the name of Hindu Mahasabha and vitiated politics. He said, “Had the policy of Hindu Mahasabha been progressive, we would not have objected. When it is not, conflict is inevitable. Bengalis have strengthened nationalism with their own blood. Bengalis will cease to exist if they forget nationalism.”

Such an attack on the Mahasabha did not come out of the blue. The tempo had been rising since December 1939, when Vinayak Savarkar came to Kolkata to strengthen the Bengal unit of the Hindu Mahasabha. Bose had by that time launched the Forward Bloc within the Congress with the call for intensifying the freedom movement.

The 30 December 1939 issue of the weekly publication Forward Bloc, which he edited, strongly criticised Savarkar’s speech in Kolkata, saying it involved “tub-thumping” and “ill-laid emphasis.” 

From December 30, 1939 issue of Forward weekly, which Subhas Chandra Bose edited. Photo: netajisubhas.org

The Hindu Mahasabha had been doing “incalculable harm to the idea of Indian nationhood” by highlighting communal differences, by “lumping all Muslims together,” it alleged. 

The article called the Muslim League “rancorously mean” and the Mahasabha “raucously outrageous”. It was argued in the brief report that Congress had repeatedly tried to strengthen the national movement by engaging with both the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha but these communal organisations spoiled such attempts. 

“Mr. Jinnah and his confederates constitute only a speck in the vast mass of Indian Muslims and that vast mass is gradually awakening to a sense of responsible nationhood. We cannot oblige Mr. Savarkar by ignoring the contributions of the nationalist Muslims to the cause of India,” it said.

Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s accounts reaffirm Bose’s position as reflected in the previous paragraph. Mookerjee wrote, “Subhas once warned me in a friendly spirit, adding significantly, that if we proceed to create a rival political body in Bengal, he would see to it (by force if need be)… that it was broken before it was really born.” 

Mookerjee – who later founded the BJP’s ideological-organisational predecessor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) – considered it to be the “most unreasonable and unfair attitude to take up.” But Bose had decided to take communal forces head-on. 

Bose’s philosophy has been the complete polar opposite of Hindutva’s thinking. In this regard, he followed his Guru, ‘Deshbandhu’ Chittaranjan Das and Gandhi – both high priests of communal unity. Bose differed with Gandhi on the course and strategy of the national movement but not the nature of India. All of Das, Gandhi, Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru considered Muslims as integral to India and the British rule as the beginning of India’s subjugation. 

In sharp contrast, in the last ten years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi repeatedly spoke of ‘thousand years of slavery’, in an obvious reference to the entire chapter of Muslim rulers “as subjugation” or “foreign rule.” This is the last remark Bose would have approved. 

In an editorial titled ‘Towards Communal Unity’ published in the Forward Block weekly on 24 February 1940, Bose wrote, “Communalism will go only when the communal mentality goes. To destroy communalism is, therefore, the task of all those Indians – Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Christians etc., who have transcended the communal outlook and developed a genuine nationalist me mentality.”

Bose’s work and words reflect a nationalist to the core of his heart. To him, the national interest of throwing out foreign power was of greater value than any other internal conflict of Indians. He tried to unite the whole of India cutting across religion, caste, and class lines. He criticised all forms of sectarian politics. He thought, every other internal conflict could wait and would be easier solved in a free India.

Also read: Modi’s Portrayal of Netaji as a Hindu Militarist Does the Secular, Socialist Bose a Disservice

It is his one-point agenda of liberating India from foreign powers that led him to collaborate with Hindu Mahasabha and/or Muslim League in the early 1940s and to ally with the Axis Powers during WWII after his Great Escape. 

As is well-known, before his internment in July 1940, Bose met both Savarkar and Jinnah. He offered Jinnah the post of independent India’s first prime minister in exchange for the League’s support of his movement. He found Jinnah to be preoccupied with the idea of Pakistan. Savarkar was, in Bose’s words, “seemed to be oblivious of the international situation and was only thinking how Hindus could secure military training by entering Britain’s army in India.” 

Bose realised that nothing could be expected from the Muslim League or the Hindu Mahasabha for the country’s freedom.

In his August 17, 1942 speech on Azad Hind Radio, Bose described Savarkar and Jinnah as “leaders who still think of a compromise with the British”. He said, “The supporters of British imperialism will naturally become non-entities in a free India.” 

Bose may have been a little wrong in this assessment. Jinnah’s supporters among Indian Muslims may have deserted India at the time of Partition with their own parcel of land, but Savarkar’s supporters are now running the country, ironically trying to appropriate Bose’s legacy.

Kharge Reminds Modi-Shah of Hindu Mahasabha Forming Coalitions with Muslim League

The Congress president hit back after PM Modi tried to term the Congress manifesto as one bearing the imprint of Jinnah’s Muslim League and of the Communists.

New Delhi: The Congress launched an all-round attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his recent remarks comparing the Congress’s election manifesto to one that bears the imprint of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League and of the Communists.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge posted on X (formerly Twitter) recalling that it was the BJP’s ideological guru Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha that formed a government in pre-independence Bengal, Sindh and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) in coalition with the Muslim League.

“Modi-Shah’s political and ideological ancestors supported the British and Muslim League against the Indians in the Freedom Struggle,” Kharge said.

He continued: “Modi-Shah’s ideological ancestors opposed Mahatma Gandhi’s call for “Quit India” in 1942, which was the movement chaired by Maulana Azad. Everyone knows how Prasad Mukherjee formed his governments in Bengal, Sindh and NWFP in the 1940s in coalition with the Muslim League.

“Did Shyama Prasad Mukherjee not write to the then British Governor about how the Quit India movement of 1942  can be “combated” and how the Congress should be suppressed? And for this, he said that “Indians have to trust the British.”

Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate on Monday (April 8) said that the BJP, fearing a loss in the Lok Sabha polls, has gone back to the “same cliched Hindu-Muslim script”.

The Congress has been saying that the BJP will not cross 180 seats in the upcoming polls.

“The PM’s love for Muslim League has resurfaced,” Shrinate hit back.

“After being in power for ten years, when the country is at the brink of elections and the prime minister has to show his report card and ask for votes, he is nervous. He has once again resorted to the same cliched Hindu-Muslim script,” she said according to the Press Trust of India.

Shrinate defended the Congress manifesto and said it was a document based “on the five pillars of justice”, “has an indelible imprint of the people of the country” and articulated “aspirations and challenges of the crores of people who met us during the Bharat Jodo Yatra and Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra”.

“It has the imprint of ten years of broken spirits and the emergence of a new hope, it has the imprint of youth, it has the imprint of farmers, it has the imprint of women, it has the imprint of workers, it has the imprint of those people who are on the margins of society and we will ensure their participation and greater representation,” PTI quoted Shrinate as saying.

She added that the party manifesto is a solution-oriented document and not a jumla like “Modi’s Guarantees” that have a 10-year-record of non-fulfilment.

“By stealing the word guarantee, no one will listen to you, Modi ji. Today the country is seeking a report on your earlier ‘jumlas’ – so don’t be distracted and get ready to pack your bags,” she said.

“These are the same people who stood with the British even during the great struggle for independence, and who left no opportunity to create communal rift along with the Muslim League.

“Remember, when in 1942, on the call of Mahatma and during the presidency of Maulana Azad, the country agitated in ‘Quit India Movement’ and had vowed to do or die, Syama Prasad Mookerjee was not only running his government in Bengal, and his like-minded people in Sindh and NWFP in collaboration with the Muslim League, but was also writing to the British giving advice on how to suppress this mass movement.”

PTI cited Shrinate as saying that the BJP and its ideological gurus have a deep affection, admiration and affiliation with the likes of the Muslim League and the British.

On April 6, Modi called the Congress manifesto a “bundle of lies” and said “every page [of it] reeks of breaking India into pieces”.

“The Congress manifesto reflects the same thinking which was in the Muslim League at the time of Independence, and Congress wants to impose those thoughts on India today … Its manifesto has the stamp of the then-Muslim League,” the Indian Express quoted him as saying. 

Modi added: “And what little remained in this Muslim League manifesto has been captured by Communists. One cannot spot the Congress at all in this [manifesto]. Such a Congress as exists today cannot take India forward in the 21st century.”

It is unclear how the prime minister reached such an understanding, as the Congress manifesto is divided into different sections, addressing what it believes are the real concerns of naari (women), kisaan (farmers), yuva (youth), and shramik (workers).

The manifesto anchors itself on the question of justice of these sections, and promises their proportionate participation in decision-making.

India Is in an Existential Crisis Because Criminals of Partition Went Unpunished

With its arsenal of zealous mobs, Goebbelsian propaganda, media lapdogs, infiltrated institutions, inexhaustible funds et al., it has captured the social space.

This is no place for the minorities. I fear for the future of a country that has declared war against a section of its people. I fear the dissolution of the Republic as our founding fathers had conceived it.

When I shared my misgivings with a dear friend, his glib response was that if the BJP loses the 2024 general election, the cowardly saffron hordes will fade away into the woodwork and our bustling, chaotic democracy will once again reassert itself. The mistake he makes is in presuming that the colossal damage done to institutions and the social fabric in the last few years stems purely from politics and will be mended once the authoritarian ruler and his minions are booted out, bag and baggage, the way the dictator and her hoodlums were after the Emergency.

What my simple-minded buddy has ignored is that in the last nine years there has been a frontal assault on our culture, of which politics is only one component. This regime ― a gravedigger of culture, no less ― has consciously divided us on religious lines and attacked lifestyles, traditions, art, learning, our collective memory, even how we love one another. It has devastated the very idea of a multicultural ethos based on liberal humanism that our founding fathers had conceived, and which was hitherto a stop-start work in progress. The damage inflicted seems irreparable. But I am getting ahead of the story.

My generation of midnight’s children grew up at a time when we willed ourselves to celebrate our common nationhood. ‘Unity in diversity’ was the hopeful shibboleth by which we defined our priceless heritage of religions, languages, ethnicities. “Amar, Akbar, Antony” were catchwords that represented our collective aspiration for brotherhood by setting aside our differences. Our founding fathers spun the enchanting myth that we are a tolerant, non-violent people, in the hope that, although blood-soaked at the nation’s birth, we would endeavour to live up to the Nehruvian idea of a modern, inclusive democracy of religious tolerance and cultural pluralism. That ideal lies in tatters today.

Our road to freedom was besmirched by unspeakable inhumanity on either side of the border as man killed man in a crazed religious frenzy. In lieu of gas chambers but equally productive, ordinary citizens brandishing swords, butchers’ knives, guns and even their bare hands, went on a killing spree in a collective state of “thoughtlessness”, a term used by Hannah Arendt to describe the irrationality of the unspeakable evil committed by the Nazis. It is estimated that up to 2 million men, women and children were butchered and 20 million people displaced in the holocaust of Partition. And there was no retribution for such evil.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn had observed with devastating prescience that “when we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are ripping the foundations of justice from future generations.” While the Nazis were hunted down and made to pay for their crimes, the millions of killers and their abettors during Partition quietly returned as anonymous lawful citizens of the two newly independent nations. It is not difficult to infer that these criminals slipped back to their everyday roles as teachers, workers, maulvis, sadhus, government employees and what have you; but by letting these murderous vectors of hate go scot-free without even so much as a condemnation of their bestiality, there has been neither repentance nor redemptive change. (Is it any surprise that this regime that has fattened on hatred, has declared August 14th as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day in order to keep alive the fratricidal bitterness? With like intent, the film Kashmir Files that spews venom against the Muslim community has been bestowed the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Film on National Integration at the 69th National Film Awards.)

The miasma of distrust and hate engendered by Partition suppurated in these diseased souls out of the public eye, ready to strike when the time was ripe. The Partition savagery provided the template for the mass killings in Delhi in 1984, in Mumbai in 1992-93, in Gujarat in 2002 and myriads of lesser conflagrations. In no other country on earth have civilians killed their fellow beings in such monstrous numbers and with such frequency. We are undoubtedly among the cruellest people on earth!

The seeds of the religious bigotry plaguing this country were planted a century ago. As far back as 1921, the All India Hindu Mahasabha at its very inception pronounced that that Hindus need a separate nation and Muslims must be denied any rights in it. This fuzzy notion of Hindu nationalism was formalised by VD Savarkar as an exclusivist and homogenising doctrine called Hindutva that is underpinned by an obsessive, visceral hatred of Muslims.

Group photo of Hindu Mahasabha. Standing - Shankar Kistaiya, Gopal Godse, Madanlal Pahwa, Digambar Badge. Seated - Narayan Apte, Vinayak D. Savarkar, Nathuram Godse, Vishnu Karkare. Credit: Flickr

Group photo of Hindu Mahasabha. Standing – Shankar Kistaiya, Gopal Godse, Madanlal Pahwa, Digambar Badge. Seated – Narayan Apte, Vinayak D. Savarkar, Nathuram Godse, Vishnu Karkare. Credit: Flickr

Over the decades, behind the benign façade of nurturing Bharatiya culture, ethnocentric Hindutva has spread across the land through the furtive but relentless RSS machinery. Millions of young and old in Shishu Mandirs, Vidya Bharati schools and the ubiquitous shakhas across the country have been tutored in a hyper-nationalism that fosters an implacable hatred of Muslims who must pay for historical wrongs committed against Hindus. Even the Amar Chitra Katha comic series are exploited for propaganda and the “cultural” conditioning of minds in what Sumit Sarkar terms “a Gramscian process of building up hegemony through molecular permeation.”

The saffron brigade has succeeded in capturing the collective consciousness of a large section of Hindus and indoctrinating them in the gospel of Hindutva. A study across four states by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in 2019 showed that 72% of Indians had clear majoritarian views on issues relating to banning beef, religious conversions, love jihad etc. Since then, their numbers could only have grown.

What we see today is Hindutva with a swagger. In January this year Mohan Bhagwat, the reigning pontiff of Hindutva, publicly enunciated the Hindutva doctrine with staggering bluntness. In a textbook case of hate speech, he brazenly stated that Hindu society had finally awakened after being at war for over 1,000 years and is now ready to do battle to defend Hindu society, Hindu Dharma and Hindu culture, “not against an enemy without but against an enemy within.” In the same breath, he warned Muslims to “abandon their boisterous rhetoric of supremacy”, leaving no doubt whom he considered the enemy. And for good measure, he reiterated the majoritarian trope: “The simple truth is this: Hindustan (the land of the Hindus) should remain Hindustan,” the unspoken implication being that minorities live here on sufferance. There was no public outrage as he was merely articulating this majoritarian government’s creed.

It is undeniable that in the two largest democracies, the invasion of neo-Nazis, supremacists and extreme right-wing nationalists into the mainstream of political and cultural discourse has coincided with the advent of Modi and Trump. There is an eerie similarity in the concepts deployed by their advocates to foment fear and loathing among their constituents. The toxic disinformation regarding an embattled white majority population being overwhelmed by immigrants is twinned with the criminal predisposition of immigrants. This is matched by the Hindu majoritarian propaganda of disproportionate increase in the Muslim population, their enticement of Hindu women through love jihad, their food jihad and the enduring theme of their disloyalty.

But whereas the white supremacists’ strategy of expanding their base is limited to tapping potential fellow-travellers and sneaking into mainstream media and political debate, the majoritarian nationalism in our midst that is on a crusade against Muslims, Christians and anything or anybody perceived as inimical to the Hindutva project, has now spread its tentacles everywhere. With its arsenal of zealous mobs, Goebbelsian propaganda, media lapdogs, infiltrated institutions, inexhaustible funds et al., it has captured the social space. Manipur and Nuh are a foretaste of things to come.

We are staring into the abyss!

Mathew John is a former civil servant. Views are personal.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

What Was Vajpayee’s Immediate Response to the News of Gandhi’s Murder?

After the RSS was banned, Vajpayee was exactly the kind of ‘active worker’ the government wanted to thrash. Shrewdness or luck – a bit of both perhaps – he was one of the few popular workers of the Sangh in UP who remained at large.

The ban [on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, RSS] had two components: the old complaint that the RSS functioned as a private army. The more urgent one was not so much the Sangh’s direct involvement in Gandhi’s murder as it was their inspiring an environment of hatred in which any aggrieved Hindu could have stabbed the Mahatma, or blown him away with a country-made bomb.

But the Home Ministry’s approach to enforcing the ban was mystifying. It should have begun with a crackdown on the RSS’s central and provincial working committees and then, in top-down order, nabbed all other important workers. Instead, the circular sent to provinces with the guideline that ‘all leaders and active workers of the RSS should be arrested and detained under appropriate provisions’ was interpreted literally. Over the next few weeks, 3,500 arrests were made in UP alone. But this included only 250 ideologically driven hard nuts; the rest were casual shakha-goers, many of them minors from villages and small towns who were about to sit their school board exams in a few weeks. This gave the crackdown the nature of a spectacle.

What was Atal’s immediate response to the news of Gandhi’s murder? Given his temperament, he might not have personally approved of pumping bullets into the seventy-seven-year-old Mahatma’s chest. He did not distribute sweets, as RSS–Mahasabha members had across the country, or condoned those who ‘drank liquor in celebration’. But Atal most certainly did not consider Gandhi’s death a serious loss to mankind. The dozens of articles he had written and edited holding the Mahatma responsible for India’s partition and condemning him for pandering to Muslims had most certainly contributed to poisoning the air that ultimately led to his assassination. He was exactly the kind of ‘active worker’ the government wanted to thrash.

Abhishek Choudhary
The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1924-1977
Pan Macmillan India ( May 2023)

Atal faced a tough time in Lucknow. The RSS’s machismo had melted away: Golwalkar, who heard the news of Gandhi’s murder on a tour to Madras, sent a telegram to Nehru and Patel expressing shock at the ‘cruel and fatal attack on a great personality’ – a calculated U-turn. He instructed the organization to observe a thirteen-day mourning at the ‘sad death of revered Mahatmaji’. Nehru howled in agony: ‘These people have the blood of Mahatma Gandhi on their hands, and pious disclaimers and dissociation now have no meaning.’

On 4 February, the provincial governments were asked to raid and seal ‘all places which are used for purposes of the Sangh’. Everyone at Bharat Press knew it was the beginning of something terrible. And yet, they were keen to present their side of the story. Knowing they were running against time, they nervously rushed though the publication of the fourth issue: ‘A request to the readers of Panchjanya: To explain this most catastrophic of events, we have advanced the publication of the issue, which is only eight pages. Our readers will hopefully forgive the inconvenience.’

Apart from dissociating itself from the Mahasabha and Godse, Panchjanya wanted to inform the government that ‘in our hearts we revere the Mahatma as much as a Congress worker does. If differences are cited to be the reason [for the Sangh’s alleged involvement in his murder], don’t Congressmen disagree among themselves too?’ It lamented that the ‘Sanghchalak of United Provinces, Narendrajeet Singh, and about 500 volunteers have been arrested and sent to the Kanpur Jail’, and that ‘warrant has been issued against many Sangh workers of Lucknow too.’ On 5 February, the district magistrate of Lucknow ordered the police to raid every place associated with the RSS. All movable property was to be seized, the buildings sealed. The seized items included the press and cyclostyling machines, chequebooks, RSS uniforms (leather belts, black caps), photographs of Sangh leaders, a jeep, bicycles. They tried to hide. But one by one, everyone in Atal’s immediate circle got captured – Bhaurao Deoras in Kanpur, Deendayal Upadhyaya in Delhi, Rajiv Lochan Agnihotri in Lucknow – and locked up in jails.

Except Atal. It helped that his name was not on the police’s hit list for UP. He had been associated full-time with the RSS for less than six months, and then again only as an editor. Unlike the UP officebearers of the RSS, many of them now in jail, the police or the CID did not yet have a profile or photo of him. Shrewdness or luck – a bit of both perhaps – Atal was one of the few popular workers of the Sangh in UP who remained at large.

*

Gandhi’s gruesome murder shocked India into sanity. The plot was seen as a major intelligence failure, and the IB went into overdrive issuing false alarms. It suggested that the RSS was preparing for nationwide assassinations: the security of ministers was beefed up everywhere; some communists feared that they were going to be ‘the first target now of the RSS, for, having removed Mahatma Gandhi from the scene, the only impediments to their dream of a Hindu Raj are the communist party of India and a few top-ranking leaders of the Congress’. This was a bizarre exaggeration of the RSS’s organizational strength as well as the level of coordination among the alt-rightists who, with help from maharajas, were said to be preparing to take over Delhi in a coup.

In reality, the RSS was hit more severely than ever before. On the ground, some Congressmen helped secure the release of the RSS detainees – partly to buy their allegiance. With varied success, communists and socialists too found in Gandhi’s murder an occasion to poach its cadres. It was in this state of sagging spirits that the Sangh launched an underground movement, steered by mid-level full-timers like Atal who had evaded arrest.

Since the ban prohibited assembly, they began to hunt for safe proxies. In every province sprung up this social club and that sports team. Activities in UP where Atal was one of the underground leaders included: Hanuman Gada Club; Virendra Bhojanalaya; Deshbandhu Industries, a limited business concern; reading clubs named after Gandhi and Nehru; swimming trips to the Ganga and Gomti; volleyball games; marriages, and other private ceremonies. There was no clear boundary between non-political activities – religious, social, educational, recreational – which were legal and political gatherings which were banned. The Punjab premier lamented to Patel that he was ‘unable to lay our hands on them because outwardly they do not commit any offence’.

Atal showed up in Allahabad to run the underground movement there. With all of its infrastructure seized and men imprisoned, the RSS had no means to communicate with its cadres or to defend itself against the government’s charges. Either he or someone in the RSS got in touch with the celebrated publisher Ram Rakh Sehgal of Allahabad and convinced him to allow them to use his press for movement work. Given the strict regulation of newsprint by the government, ‘our problem was that the Sangh did not have paper,’ recounted Devendra Swaroop, a young RSS volunteer who got acquainted with Atal around this time. They were both attached to Crisis, an English weekly of Sehgal’s: ‘Crisis used to have articles by us, but only using pseudonyms.’

A major drawback of the all-out crackdown was dispersed arrests and the unmanageable logistics of taking care of the mostly boisterous young volunteers, with the result that the police could not focus on nabbing the ringmasters. This resulted in a patchy implementation of the ban in most places. It would have taken sustained political and bureaucratic will to break the RSS – from amending the legal loopholes (to restrict RSS gatherings in the garb of clubs and picnics); to rigorously identifying and throwing out active RSS sympathizers from the government; to closing down publishers like Sehgal who were letting underground ringleaders like Atal use their press to present Sangh viewpoints. Had Nehru held the Home Ministry, some of this may have transpired. Patel lacked the will, especially after he was convinced that the RSS was not directly involved.

*

The RSS needed an outsider to champion the cause of its innocence, preferably someone who knew both Nehru and Patel. They found a willing party in Mauli Chandra Sharma, a tier-two Delhi Congressman. Sharma had recently been responsible for the arrangements for Gandhi’s cremation – from choosing the priest to ensuring that conches were blown and bells tolled as the crowd sat around the Mahatma’s pyre. He was later praised by Congress conservatives for making sure the event looked appropriately Hindu, rather than like some ‘Christian-style [minimalist] funeral’ that Nehru had initially suggested.

It speaks volumes of the porous boundary between the Congress and RSS–Mahasabha – and between secularism and communalism – that the man who made the arrangements for Gandhi’s cremation was the son of a prominent Mahasabha leader. Assisted by Sangh volunteers, Sharma floated the ‘Council of Civil Liberties’ – Janadhikar Samiti – and began to meet every major politician to argue the RSS’s innocence. They managed to impress Patel, who was now unsure of what to do with the RSS. Kashmir and Hyderabad remained tense, and the RSS was desperate to offer its services. Patel conveyed to Sharma that the government would deal with Hyderabad on its own, without help from the RSS. But just in case the government needed them in an emergency, Patel added in English, ‘Keep your boys ready in necessity.’ Here was the classic Patel dilemma on the question of communalism: he had recently written to S. P. Mookerji warning him of the long-term ‘dangers inherent in an organisation run in secret on military or semi-military lines’ and that he had ‘received rather disquieting reports of the revival’ of the RSS evidently defying the ban. Yet, if the occasion demanded, he wouldn’t shy away from strategically using them.

Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel. Photo: Wikimedia

With the ban loosening in July, Atal came back to Lucknow. His co-editor Agnihotri had been released. The Bharat Press owners had filed petitions in the court. In the case of Rashtradharma, the Lucknow district sessions court gave, unbelievably, a favourable judgement saying there was ‘no evidence to prove this journal’s association with the RSS’. Similarly, all seized material was returned because the volunteers argued successfully that these belonged to ‘me and my friends personally’. The court declared itself unable to find that any of the items were used for the propagation of Sangh activities. Panchjanya resumed publication.

Atal remained low-key: he spent time publishing in Panchjanya old poems he had written in college. He read out his poems at events such as the one marked to celebrate Tulsidas’s birth anniversary, presumably also an occasion to brainstorm on strategies to revoke the ban. Though Babuji was worried about the future of his brightest son, Atal did not return home. Gandhi’s assassination plot was traced to Gwalior: the investigations revealed that Godse had procured his pistol there. Most of the Bateshwar boys ‘never went back to the Sangh’ shakha. The Vajpayees were lucky that the implementation of the ban by the durbar was poor. Babuji and Prem Behari did not get arrested.

Not long ago Viceroy Wavell had deemed Jivajirao Scindia ‘a nice lad’ who ‘means well, but cares more for his horses and racing than anything else’. The trauma of losing power had made His Highness a self-conscious strategist. Privately, he continued to court the RSS–Mahasabha leadership. But advised to cultivate a favourable image in Sardar Patel’s watchful eyes, he decided to butter up the government by offering a generous donation of ₹10 lakhs for Gandhiji’s Memorial Fund. Patel replied to thank but, aware of the Gwalior durbar’s duality, bluntly added: ‘By now you must have heard how deeply involved some of the Hindu Mahasabha circles in Gwalior [were in the Mahatma’s murder]. Tongues are already wagging about the alleged part which Your Highness and the State have taken in promoting Mahasabha activities in the State … It is fortunate that you withdrew yourself in time from this embarrassing situation. Otherwise, I am afraid you would have found yourself in deep waters.’ In his reply, the maharaja profusely thanked Patel for his ‘fatherly interest in my welfare’.

Patel had now mastered the art of kissing his sacrificial lambs before chopping their heads off. In less than six months after the accessions were signed in mid-1947, he had decided that autonomous states were not feasible from the economic or security point of view. In states like Gwalior, he used the tragedy of the Mahatma’s murder as a catalyst for full integration with India. By mid-1948, Gwalior and adjoining kingdoms were merged into a new state called Madhya Bharat. As with maharajas elsewhere, His Highness Jivajirao Scindia was gifted the dummy post of governor, rajpramukh, in Gwalior.

Excerpted with permission of Pan Macmillan India from Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1924-1977 by Abhishek Choudhary.  

Mathura: Hindu Mahasabha Leader Arrested, 40 Detained Over Threat to Recite ‘Hanuman Chalisa’

The SSP had said on Monday that no new tradition or ritual would be allowed to be performed.

Mathura: An Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha leader was arrested on Tuesday while allegedly going to recite Hanuman Chalisa at the Shahi Masjid Idgah adjacent to the Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi temple and 40 Hindutva activists taken into preventive custody, officials said.

They said seven-eight other leaders of the organisation were also detained in their houses under different police stations of the city.

The Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha had given a call for reciting Hanuman Chalisa inside the Shahi Masjid Idgah to mark the 30th anniversary of the Babri Mosque demolition.

“Not a single member of the organisation could reach near Idgah as per their programme. As a preventive measure about 40 persons were taken into custody. They would be released on personal bond after completing the formality,” Senior Superintendent of Police Shailesh Pandey said.

Additional Superintendent of Police (City) Martandey Singh said police arrested the Mahasabha’s Agra region in-charge Saurabh Sharma when he was making an attempt to go towards the Idgah mosque in the complex.

He said the Mahasabha’s president Rajshri Chaudhary and treasurer Dinesh Sharma were not among those confined at their homes, and police had no information about the duo.

Chaudhary claimed that she was in Mathura on Tuesday and a picture of her standing at gate number 1 of the Janmabhoomi complex was shared by the Mahasabha.

However, Singh disputed the claim saying, “This is an old picture which is being used for making false claims”.

National Vice-President of the Mahasabha, Anil Tripathi, told PTI over phone that he has been kept under house arrest at his residence in Delhi.

The officer said in view of the situation in Mathura, prohibitory orders were imposed by the district administration and those who tried to disturb peace were being interrogated after being taken into custody.

Seven of these people belong to the Hindu Mahasabha, who are currently kept at the city police station, he said.

Singh said security had been beefed up in view of the right wing organisation’s declaration of reciting Hanuman Chalisa at the Idgah on Tuesday.

District Magistrate Pulkit Khare had taken stock of security arrangements in the Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi-Idgah complex on Monday night.

The Babri mosque in Ayodhya was demolished by ‘Kar Sevaks’ on December 6, 1992.

Earlier, Pandey had warned that the law and order situation in the city would not be allowed to be disturbed and a strict watch was being kept on social media too.

The SSP had said on Monday that no new tradition or ritual would be allowed to be performed.

The orders of the Supreme Court would be followed and the implementation of prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC in letter and spirit would be ensured, he said.

The organisation had given a similar call last year but their plan was scuttled by the district administration.

(PTI)

‘Want Gandhi-Mukt Bharat’: After Durga Puja Pandal, Hindu Mahasabha Scales Up Attack

The right-wing organisation has been slammed by all political parties after the asura at its Durga puja pandal resembled the Mahatma but has refused to back down.

Kolkata: Buoyed by the attention it received from the media for the asura depicted at its Durga puja pandal resembling Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu Mahasabha on Monday scaled up its attack on the ‘Father of the Nation’ and placed a rifle at the feet of the Hindu goddess.

Speaking to this correspondent on Sunday, the working president of the Bengal unit of the Hindu Mahasabha Chandrachur Goswami said, “We want Gandhi-mukt India. We don’t consider him the father of the nation. He did immense harm to the country.”

Goswami, who is also president of the puja organising committee, held Gandhi responsible for the deaths of Netaji and Bhagat Singh and also the death of “30 lakh people during the Partition”. 

The Durga Puja, organised by the Akhil Bhartiya Hindu Mahasabha near the Ruby Hospital on the EM Bypass, created a huge ruckus in Kolkata on Sunday evening after it was noticed that the ‘Asura’ in the idol resembled Mahatma Gandhi. Incidentally, Sunday was Gandhi’s birth anniversary as well.

According to the Hindu mythological text ‘Markandeya Purana’, ‘Asura’, the principal adversary of the gods, had waged a war against divinity. He was eventually slayed with a trident by Durga, the mother goddess, who rode on a lion. She is hence called ‘Mahishasuramardini’, or the slayer of the buffalo demon.

Typically, the idol that is worshipped during Durga Puja has ‘Mahishashura’ near the deity’s feet, stabbed by a trident held by Durga. He is usually shown as a muscular man with wavy hair and a handlebar moustache.

The ‘Asura’ at the Hindu Mahasabha puja pandal at Ruby Park initially had a bald head and black round-shaped spectacles. It resembled Gandhi. 

The Asura at the Durga pandal set up by the Hindu Mahasabha resembled Mahatma Gandhi. Photo: Indradeep Bhattacharyya

TV9 Hindi first reported the matter on Sunday afternoon. The image of the deity went viral after this correspondent tweeted it in the evening. The tweet was taken down at 8:45 pm at the request of the cyber cell of the Kolkata police.

Afterwards, the face of the asura was changed. A moustache and hair were added. The trademark Gandhi specs were kept beside the idol.

A moustache and hair were added. The trademark Gandhi specs were kept beside the idol. Photo: Indradeep Bhattacharyya

Narrating the circumstances that led to the alteration in the idol, Goswami said that at around 6 pm on Sunday evening, he received three calls from unknown persons who claimed to be from the home ministry in Delhi, and threatened them of consequences if the pandal was not shut down immediately.

“We didn’t buckle under any pressure. We have our freedom of expression and we took the requisite permissions from the Kolkata police for arranging the puja,” he added.

“Then the local police came and told us they, too, were under pressure to stop the puja. They said they would either break the pandal or take the idol away. When we resisted, they forced us to change the look of the asura and got an artisan to add the moustache and hair. It was done forcefully and we do not support this,” he said.

This is the first time that the Hindu Mahasabha has arranged a Durga Puja at the spot, which is a prime location at one of the busiest crossings right at the heart of the city. The organisers said they held the puja in their office in Tollygunge until last year.

The pandal has on display the name and contact number of the idol maker from Kolkata’s famous Kumartuli area. The numbers have been switched off since Sunday night. The pandal has a photograph of Bharat Mata and a slew of portraits which include Nathuram Godse (at the centre), Madan Mohan Malviya and V.D. Savarkar. They were all associated with the Hindu Mahasabha at some point of time.

Also Read: How the RSS Distanced Itself From Gandhi’s Killer

Asked about their alignment with the RSS-BJP, Sabyasachi Dutta, another organiser of the puja, said, “The Congress and the BJP are either sides of the same coin. BJP’s constitution itself says that the party believes in Gandhian socialism and Gandhian secularism. BJP toys with the idea of Hindutva for political gains. We are the real propagators of the idea of Hindu Rashtra. The only agenda of the Hindu Mahasabha is to see India as a Hindu Rashtra.”

A poster at the pandal showed what in the opinion of the organisers was proof of Gandhi’s ‘continued betrayal’. The first quote is falsely attributed to Gandhi and Alt News has debunked it in the past. Though the second quote is accurate, Gandhi made appeals to people of all religions not to retaliate to communal violence in the lead-up to and after Independence, when several inter-community killings took place.

A poster at the site, which the organisers say is proof of Gandhi’s ‘continued betrayal’. Photo: Indradeep Bhattacharyya

“In 1964, while establishing the Viswa Hindu Parishad, Golwalkar said we had three main enemies — Christians, Muslims and communists. That has always been the path. But the BJP since its inception has been doing politics over Hindutva,” he added.

On Monday morning, the organisers wore black armbands to protest against the changes that they made to the idol under coercion and placed a rifle at the feet of the deity.

A rifle was placed at the Durga idol’s feet. Photo: Indradeep Bhattacharyya

According to the Indian Express, the Kolkata police has filed an FIR against the organisers of the All India Hindu Mahasabha Durga Puja under sections 188 (disobedience to an order lawfully promulgated by a public servant), 283 (causing danger or obstruction in any public way), 153B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.

The joint commissioner of police (Crime) Murlidhar Sharma confirmed this to Indian Express.

All major political parties, including the Trinamool Congres, the Congress, the CPI(M) and the BJP condemned the depiction of Gandhi as an asura.

Indradeep Bhattacharya is a Kolkata-based journalist and a senior editor with AltNews.

No Matter What it Says Now, RSS Did Not Participate in the Freedom Struggle

V.D. Savarkar was providing the direction of the organisation and of the Hindu Mahasabha from behind the scenes.

As the country waves flags and celebrates the 75th anniversary of India’s independence, it is also time to take stock. What did India’s founders and citizens dream of, how has India fared, what have been our challenges and successes?

The Wire’s reporters and contributors bring stories of the period, of the traumas but also the hopes of Indians, as seen in personal accounts, in culture, in the economy and in the sciences. How did the modern state of India come about, what does the flag represent? How did literature and cinema tackle the trauma of Partition? 

Follow our coverage to get a rounded view of India@75.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

The 75th anniversary of independence inevitably turns our thoughts to the hard-fought battle for freedom from colonial rule.

The panorama that opens up before us includes the great revolt of 1857, the graphic theory of the drain of wealth propounded by Dadabhai Naoroji and his contemporaries which laid the economic foundations of Indian nationalism; the founding of the Indian National Congress as the headquarters of the movement for independence; the Swadeshi Movement which brought people out into the streets in Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab; the dramatic turn with the arrival of Mahatma Gandhi; the horrors of Jallianwala Bagh, the stoic non-violence of the Akali jathas at the Guru ka bagh Morcha; the quiet heroism of the Bardoli kisans; the defiance of the salt Satyagraha; the deathly silence on the hanging of Bhagat Singh and his comrades who refused to beg for mercy; the heady slogan of Quit India; the Azad Hind Fauj and the Red Fort trials; and India’s tryst with destiny at the midnight hour of August 15, 1947.

In this vastness, one looks in vain for any presence of those whose claims to being nationalists are the loudest today. Despite this glaring absence, there is not the slightest inclination on their part to acknowledge that the independence whose 75th anniversary is being celebrated with ghar ghar men tiranga was the achievement of millions of people who were inspired by a vision very different from the one espoused by the current regime. Nor is this happening as a result of soul-searching, admission of past mistakes of staying away from the freedom struggle, and remorse for and/or condemnation of actions promoting a communal atmosphere which ultimately led to the assassination of the Mahatma, or of refusal of the RSS to fly the tricolour for a 52-year stretch after independence, till it became too embarrassing once the BJP came to power at the Centre in 1998.

The facts are as follows: The RSS, which provides the organisational and ideological heft to the BJP, was set up in 1925 by K.B. Hedgewar. In the entire period from 1925 till 1947, it did not participate in any campaign or movement launched by the Congress or any other party or group. Nor did it initiate any movement against the British by itself. This is indeed remarkable for an organisation which claims nationalism as its creed. The mystery is solved very easily, however, if we realise that its creed is indeed nationalism, but not Indian nationalism. Its creed always has been and is Hindu nationalism. Its primary purpose therefore was to consolidate Hindu society against the perceived threat of Muslim domination.

Its founder, Hedgewar, had in fact been a middle level leader in the Congress in Nagpur and even went to jail in the non-cooperation movement. But he was a staunch follower of B.S. Moonje, a Hindu Mahasabha leader who had visited Italy, met Mussolini, studied Italian fascist institutions and was greatly impressed by them. It is also believed that he was influenced by V.D. Savarkar’s Hindutva which had been published in 1923 but had been in circulation earlier, in which Savarkar set out the essentials of the Hindutva ideology of India being a land that belongs to Hindus and those whose punyabhoomi and pitribhoomi are in India, thus excluding Muslims, Christians, and any others who fitted the bill from being part of the Indian nation.

Also read: Congress, the Hindu Right and the Formation of a Narrative of ‘Vote Bank Politics’

There is also speculation that Hedgewar was more of an organisation man, and the intellectual and ideological input or directions in fact came from Savarkar, who was still restricted to Ratnagiri after his release from Andaman jail, on the condition that he could not take part in politics or travel outside Ratnagiri.

This is strengthened by the fact that Savarkar’s elder brother Baburao Savarkar was one of the five people present at the founding meeting of the RSS in Nagpur in 1925 and later merged his own organisation Tarun Bharat Sangh with the RSS.

Two years after the foundation of the RSS, the anti-Simon Commission protests swept the country but the RSS was nowhere to be seen. A little later, in December 1929, Jawaharlal Nehru as president unfurled the national flag at the annual session of the Congress at Lahore, and declared complete independence as its goal. The Congress also decided to observe January 26, 1930 as Independence Day when the national flag would be raised in every town and village, and the national pledge taken by all present. Hedgewar claimed that since the RSS believed in complete independence it should observe Independence day but it would raise the Bhagwa jhanda (saffron flag) and not the tricolour. This was a perfect example of the RSS method, of giving the impression that they were nationalists but keeping away from the actual national movement.

In a similar vein, when the civil disobedience movement was launched later in the year, Hedgewar decided that he would join as an individual but the RSS as an organisation would stay away. So he went to jail to keep his nationalist credentials intact, and also, according to his official biographer, to attract Congress cadre in the jail to the RSS. The RSS focus right through the 1930s remained on building the organisation. There was some tension between the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, especially once Savarkar came into the open, as the Hindu Mahasabha wanted to play a more active political role, especially in the electoral sphere, but these relationships remained close at the ideological level with Hindu Mahasabha leaders regularly addressing RSS meetings, and there being a great deal of overlapping membership, as was revealed in intelligence reports before independence as well as in the investigations in the aftermath of Gandhiji’s assassination.

That Savarkar remained politically active from behind the scenes during the period of his internment is also shown by the fact that the moment he was released from restrictions in 1937, he became the President of the Hindu Mahasabha and remained so for six years till ill health forced him to give up the responsibility. It must be remembered that Savarkar had been released from the Andamans and then Yervada prison only on the condition that he would not indulge in any anti-British activity, after he had sent a mercy petition, and he was more than keen to keep that promise. He was even given an allowance for his upkeep. As soon as he assumed charge of the Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar lost no time in articulating the two-nation theory. Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations, he said, pre-empting Jinnah who followed soon after. His presidential addresses to the Hindu Mahasabha were virulent in their anti-Muslim, anti-Congress and anti-Gandhi rhetoric.

The outbreak of the Second World War brought the Mahasabha’s and the RSS positions into sharp focus. The Congress Ministries in the provinces resigned in protest against the British declaring India as party to the War without any consultation with Indian political opinion. Immediately, communal forces jumped into fill the gap. The Muslim League, true to its loyalist character, offered co-operation to form governments. Not to be outdone, Savarkar, then the president of the Hindu Mahasabha, told the Viceroy in October 1939 that the Hindus and the British should be friends and made an offer that the Hindu Mahasabha would replace the Congress if the Congress ministries resigned from office. (Linlithgow, Viceroy, to Zetland, Secretary of State, 7 October 1939,  Zetland Papers, Volume  18, Reel No. 6.)

He also advised Hindus to join the army. This fitted in with his slogan of “Militarise Hinduism” and with his goal of reducing the weight of Muslims in the Army which he thought was not desirable. In pursuance of this policy, the Hindu Mahasabha then proceeded to join governments, often in coalition with the Muslim League. In fact, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, the Hindu Mahasabha leader, was a minister in the Bengal government at the time the British brutally suppressed the Congress when it launched the Quit India movement in 1942. The Hindu Mahasabha also had no compunctions in forming coalition governments with the Muslim League in Sind and the North-west Frontier Province during the War, when the League had already declared Pakistan as its goal in 1940.

Also read: How the RSS Betrayed Jayaprakash Narayan

Interestingly, both the League and the Mahasabha saw the Congress as their main enemy and were willing to be friends with the British – at the same time claiming to be nationalists, the former espousing Muslim nationalism and the latter Hindu nationalism! The fact remains, however, that despite their claims, in the specific context of colonial India, when the main nationalist struggle was of all Indians against the British, they can only be described as communalists and loyalists.

The RSS, too, as in the previous big mass struggle, the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930-32, remained aloof from the real nationalist battle – the Quit India movement. They advised their young enthusiastic cadre, many of whom believed in the nationalist rhetoric which attracted them to the RSS in the first place, to save their energies for the big battle that was about to come. A Home Department note on the RSS reported that, “At meetings of the Sangh during the Congress disturbances (1942), speakers urged the members to keep aloof from the Congress movement and these instructions were generally observed.” Thus, in the final analysis, we are obliged to say that as an organisation the RSS did not participate in any anti-British movement during the entire period of its existence from 1925 -1947.

But it suddenly came to life when the communal situation took a turn for the worse in 1946. Clearly, this was the real battle they were waiting for. It was easy to emerge as “protectors” of Hindus when communal violence began to spread. Enough documentary evidence exists of Hindu Mahasabha and RSS leaders giving speeches and their followers writing vituperative content in newspapers, both before and immediately following independence and partition. Mahatma Gandhi was a prime target and was vilified as an appeaser of Muslims. The tiranga was rejected as the national flag of India with articles in the Organiser of mid-August 1947 including by Syama Prasad Mookerjee saying that the bhagwa, or saffron, flag was the only true flag worthy of reverence by Hindus, that the number three was considered evil in Hindu tradition and therefore the fact that it had three colours meant that it would bode ill for the country. In keeping with that faith, the RSS did not fly the tricolour till 2002, when the stronger pressures of the BJP being in power at the Centre made it embarrassing to continue the practice.

The months leading up to Gandhiji’s assassination witnessed widespread communal violence in north India, including in Delhi in September 1947. The role of the RSS and other communal elements was widely suspected and pointed out by provincial governments as well. Violent anti-government and anti-Gandhi speeches were common and three days before the assassination. Mahant Digvijaynath of the Mahasabha at a meeting in Delhi asked the gathering to send Mahatma Gandhi and all anti-Hindu elements to Pakistan. On December 18, 1947, RSS chief M.S. Golwalkar at a rally of 50,000 volunteers in Delhi called the attitude of the government “unIndian and satanic” and threatened that they had the “means whereby their opponents could be immediately silenced”.

On January 30, the threat was carried out, and the light went out of our lives, as Nehru said. Immediately after Gandhiji’s assassination, the Government of India, with Sardar Patel as Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, banned the RSS and put some 25,000 of its members in jail. The Hindu Mahasabha chose to dissolve itself when confronted with a ban. Tainted by its link with Gandhiji’s murder, the Hindu Mahasabha beat a tactical retreat and Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, its main leader, founded the Bharatiya Jan Sangh in 1951. This was to be the main political vehicle of Hindu communal articulation from then onwards, its frontline political party, till it merged into the Janata Party after the Emergency in 1977 and then was replaced by the BJP in 1980.

Also read: Book Extract: RSS Working Hard to Wipe Out True Religions of India

In January 1948, when Gandhi was assassinated, Savarkar was arrested as he was suspected of being the mastermind behind the conspiracy. Sardar Patel, who was overseeing the whole case as the Home Minister, being a fine criminal lawyer, was personally convinced of Savarkar’s guilt, otherwise he would not have agreed to put him up for trial. He told the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in unambiguous terms, ‘It was a fanatical wing of the Hindu Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that [hatched] the conspiracy and saw it through’. (Durga Das, Sardar Patel Correspondence, 1945–50, Vol. VI,  p. 56.)

In response to the Hindu Mahasabha’s disclaimer, Patel wrote to Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the Hindu Mahasabha leader, on 6 May 1948:

“…we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that an appreciable number of the members of the Mahasabha gloated over the tragedy and distributed sweets…. Further, militant communalism, which was preached until only a few months ago by many spokesmen of the Mahasabha, including men like Mahant Digbijoy Nath, Prof. Ram Singh and Deshpande, could not but be regarded as a danger to public security. The same would apply to the RSS, with the additional danger inherent in an organization run in secret on military or semi-military lines.” (Sardar Patel Correspondence, Vol. VI, p. 66.)

Patel further pointed out to Syama Prasad Mookerjee, ‘The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of Government and the state’. (July 18, 1948, Sardar Patel Correspondence, Vol. 6, p. 323.)

We can only wonder what the Sardar would have said today!

Mridula Mukherjee is former Professor of History at JNU and former Director of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.

Trailokyanath Chakraborty: The Revolutionary Who Spent 30 Years in Jail, But Never Apologised

Despite serving six stints in prison during India’s freedom struggle (and even after), Chakraborty’s revolutionary spirit refused to die down and his efforts to fight against British rule continued throughout his life.

There was once a revolutionary who spent 30 long years in a variety of British prisons. Of these 30 years, six were spent in the dreaded cellular jail of Andaman, yet he did not write one single apology letter or clemency petition to the British Imperialists. The name of that legendary revolutionary, which has almost been forgotten from out national memory, is Trailokyanath Chakraborty. 

Known as ‘Maharaj’ in revolutionary circles, Chakraborty was born on August 2, 1889 in the Mymensingh district of undivided Bengal. Taking inspiration from the Swadeshi movement that arose in response to the partition of Bengal in 1905, Chakraborty jumped into the freedom struggle at the tender age of 17 and joined the Dacca (now Dhaka) Anushilan Samiti in 1906, becoming an active member and organiser.

After the arrest of Pulin Behari Das, founder-president of the Dacca Anushilan Samiti, in the Dacca conspiracy case of 1910, Chakraborty, along with Pratul Chandra Ganguly, took charge of the organisation and successfully revived it as one of the most dreaded opponents of the colonial regime. 

Chakraborty was arrested for the first time in 1908 and was imprisoned for six months. With this arrest ended his formal education and began his journey to several prisons across the Indian subcontinent; a journey which continued even after the British left the country.

He was arrested for the second time in 1912 and was charged with the murder of a police constable, but was later released due to a lack of evidence. His third arrest came in 1914 when colonial police came across some Anushilan documents that proposed plans to incite native troops to rebel against the British during the First World War. As the ring-leaders of the conspiracy, Chakraborty and Ganguly, along with 42 others, were arrested and put on trial in the Second Barisal Conspiracy Case. The court found them guilty of waging war against the King-Emperor and sentenced them to 10 years imprisonment. 

Also read: India’s ‘Joan of Arc’: The Forgotten Life of Sushila Didi

After spending some time in the Barisal and Presidency jails, Chakraborty was transferred to Andaman’s Cellular Jail in 1916. In the Andamans, Chakraborty, like many of his other comrades, suffered inhuman torture. But his revolutionary spirit refused to die down.

When many of the revolutionaries lodged in the Cellular Jail decided to protest against the brutal torture and unbearable living conditions, Chakraborty joined them. This decision also caused an interesting rift between the revolutionaries. In this regard Chakraborty wrote in his autobiography:

“The inmates of Cellular Jail got divided into ‘naram’ (moderate) and ‘garam’ (radical) factions. The former consisted of the Savarkar brothers and Pulin babu who already had spent considerable time in the Cellular Jail and had suffered a lot. They had protested against their condition and were able to secure some amount of benefit for themselves. Now they were close to the jailor and superintendent. They refused to let go of their ‘benefits’ and join our struggle”.

Still, Chakraborty joined the hunger strike, despite a weak body and his suffering from Asthma.  

After spending seven years in the Andamans, Chakraborty was transferred to Bengal’s Alipore central jail in 1921 and was finally released three years later. After his release, he took up a teaching job at South Calcutta National School but refused to take any salary. During this period, he also tried to print fake currency notes in order to raise funds for the revolutionary movement, but his attempts ended in failure.

By the end of 1924, he was arrested again and sent to Mandalay Jail in Burma (present-day Myanmar), where he met fellow prisoner, Subhas Chandra Bose. Chakraborty spent around four years in Mandalay and was released in 1928, from where he went to the Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress and met Bhagat Singh, who was on the run after assassinating Saunders. He extended full support to Singh’s organisation, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.

After his fourth stint in prison, Chakraborty was able to breathe fresh air only for two years before being arrested again in 1930. This arrest came in the wake of the famous Chittagong Armoury Raid led by Surya Sen and his comrades. From 1930-1938, Chakraborty was transferred from one jail to another, only to be released in 1939.

Despite all the trials and tribulations, his revolutionary spirit refused to dampen down and he once again jumped into the thick of the freedom struggle as he began planning a nationwide insurrection among the Indian troops of the colonial army as soon as he was released. The catalyst was the speculations of another world war. It was during his fifth sojourn in prison that Chakraborty studied socialist literature and, as he notes in his autobiography, decided to form a communist party after being released from jail. 

Taking inspiration from the Revolt of 1857 and the Ghadar Movement of 1915, Chakraborty and other leaders of the Anushilan Samiti decided to organise a similar pan-India revolt of Indian soldiers and civilians as a world war seemed imminent. This time, the Samiti chose to rally behind Bose, who after resigning from his post as president of the Congress, had formed a more radical organisation, known as the Forward Bloc.

Also read: Modi’s Portrayal of Netaji as a Hindu Militarist Does the Secular, Socialist Bose a Disservice

On March 19, 1940, an anti-compromise conference was held in Ramgarh (now in Jharkhand) that rejected India’s support to British war efforts. Chakraborty and other Anushilan leaders, under the leadership of Bose, planned a mass insurrection against the British.

To make this possible, Chakraborty travelled to Punjab, Bombay Presidency, United Provinces, and different parts of Bengal and convinced many veteran revolutionaries and former members of the Ghadar movement to join the planned insurrection. He even met the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, and the leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, Ganesh Savarkar, as they also claimed to be ‘nationalists’. But the two openly refused to participate in any kind of action against the British, as Chakraborty has himself mentioned in his memoirs.

It is surprising that while nationalist and Marxist historians have completely forgotten Chakraborty, he has found a place, though in a selective manner, in right-wing intellectual propaganda where one single line from his book is used to absolve the founder of the RSS from the charge of not participating in the freedom struggle.

In almost every piece of hagiographic literature that has been written – and is still being written – on Hedgewar, a single line from Chakraborty’s autobiography, where he says that the former was at one time a member of the Anushilans, is quoted to prove the ‘revolutionary’ credentials of the founder of RSS. These academicians and journalists deliberately ignore the lines that follow, however, where Chakraborty narrates his meeting with Hedgewar in considerable detail:  

“On one afternoon of 1940, I reached the house of [Hedgewar] and asked him; ‘Do you still remember Kalicharan da?’ He embraced me…I asked him, ‘What is the strength of your volunteer force?’

He replied, ‘Sixty thousand.’  

I said, ‘They will have to join the revolutionary struggle.’ I explained everything and made him aware that Subhas Chandra Bose was in support of our plan. Listening to this, Keshav Hedgewar replied, ‘Out of the sixty thousand volunteers, many are young kids. They have not been trained properly.  Moreover, you people did not care to ask about my whereabouts for so long and now suddenly you are asking for my help! How is this possible?’

Upon hearing this, I replied, ‘We are not going to get such a golden opportunity again in our lifetime. We must exploit this opportunity provided by the world war.  Please convince your lieutenants anyhow to participate in the upsurge, others will follow suit.’” 

After this failed meeting with Hedgewar, Chakraborty left for Varanasi where he met Ganesh Damodar Savarkar, the elder brother of V.D. Savarkar and leader of the Hindu Mahasabha. He tried to convince him to join the insurrection. Narrating this meeting he writes:

“Ganesh Damodar Savarkar – the elder brother of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar – was in Kashi. We were together in the Andaman Jail. He had learnt a good deal of Bengali. I also used to learn Marathi from him. I addressed him as Ganesh da. After telling him about our plans of insurrection I asked him, ‘Will the Hindu Mahasabha support us?’ To this Ganesh da replied, ‘The train has left the station, now what is the use of limping after it…opportunity is lost, now nothing can be done.'”

After being disappointed by Ganesh Savarkar, Chakraborty writes that he met another fellow inmate from Andamans, Sachindranath Sanyal, who not only readily accepted his proposal but even began preparations. 

These meetings, narrated by Chakraborty in the same chapter of his autobiography, tell us a lot about the difference between the Hindu Mahasabha, the RSS, and the ‘real’ revolutionaries regarding their attitude towards the freedom struggle. Sanyal, who was imprisoned twice in the Andamans, did not budge from supporting the cause, while the Hindutva ideologues backed down immediately, citing one excuse or another. 

Also read: Bhagat Singh and Savarkar, Two Petitions that Tell Us the Difference Between Hind and Hindutva

Though Chakraborty’s plan of insurrection failed ultimately, his spirit did not. He continued his struggle for freedom and went back to East Bengal and began to reorganise the Dacca Anushilan Samiti. He was arrested for the sixth time for giving a speech at a political gathering in Chittagong in 1940, and was released only in 1946.    

After the British left our country and partitioned it into India and Pakistan, Chakraborty decided to stay in his home in what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), where he co-founded the Pakistan Socialist Party. He was elected to the provincial assembly of East Pakistan in 1954, but after Ayub Khan declared martial law in the country, the activities of the Pakistan Socialist Party were banned, forcing Chakraborty to retire to his home village.

His failing health forced him to travel to Kolkata in 1970 for treatment, from where he was shifted to Delhi. On August 9, 1970, the legendary freedom fighter breathed his last. 

Of his 42-year-long revolutionary career, Chakraborty spent 30 years in jail, and many years living underground. He faced all kinds of harassment and torture that were reserved for those Indians who dared to oppose the British. Despite these hardships, Chakraborty did not budge an inch from his commitment to the freedom struggle. His entire life was spent fighting for freedom and to make the Indian subcontinent a secular and socialist society. This, he writes in his autobiography, was the ideal of revolutionaries.

If anyone truly deserves the title of ‘Veer’, it is Trailokyanath Chakraborty. 

Harshvardhan is a research scholar based in Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Prabal Saran Agarwal teaches History at Sri Venkateswara College, Delhi University.

During the Quit India Movement, the Hindu Mahasabha Played the British Game


When the Congress party launched the Quit India movement, the Hindu Mahasabha was busy collaborating with the British and running coalition governments with the Muslim League in Bengal, Sind and the NWFP.

Note: This article was originally published on August 8, 2018.

This year, on August 8, we are celebrating the 76th anniversary of the Quit India movement launched by the Congress in 1942 at the height of the Second World War, when India was confronted with Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia coupled with domestic issues such as the failure of the Cripps Mission and war-time inflation.

Mahatma Gandhi, the movement’s chief creator, saw it as an opportune moment to weaken the existence of the British Empire on the Indian subcontinent through a nation-wide civil disobedience struggle. In opposition to committing Indian soldiers to British war efforts, the Congress provincial ministries had already resigned in 1939. Now, a mass non-cooperation movement began with Gandhi’s ‘do or die’ call that reverberated across the Indian subcontinent.

In his speech on the occasion, among other matters, Gandhi denounced Hindu supremacists “like Dr. Moonjee and Shri Savarkar”, icons of the Hindutva movement, who wanted to keep Muslims under their domination. He went on to proclaim India as “the homeland of all the Mussalmans (sic) inhabiting this country”, asserting the very principles of multiculturalism which, at the present juncture in Indian politics, appear threatened. A day later, Congress politicians – including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Vallabhbhai Patel – were arrested among thousands of other freedoms fighters.

The front page of the Indian Express on August 10, 1942. Credit: Wikipedia

Mainly three groups did not support the movement and continued to collaborate with the British Empire: the Communists, the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha. Among these, the Communists were not in a position to wield ministerial power while the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League – as unlikely as it sounds today – joined hands in an unholy alliance to form provincial governments.

Hindu Mahasabha’s ‘practical politics’

Syama Prasad Mookerjee, a prominent leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, joined the Fazlul Haq ministry in Bengal, in 1941, as its finance minister. A year before that, Fazlul Haq, before his fallout with the Muslim League, had moved the (in)famous resolution, dubbed as the ‘Pakistan resolution’, which committed the Muslim League to a separate Muslim nation. For this, Haq had been denounced by the Congress as a communalist.

In Sind and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the Hindu Mahasabha ran coalition governments with the Muslim League. On March 3, 1943, when the Sind legislative assembly discussed and passed a resolution moved by G.M. Syed recommending to the Viceroy that “Muslims of India are a separate nation”, the Hindu Mahasabha leaders were in the government. Although the Mahasabha ministers opposed the resolution and voted against it, they continued to be a part of the government.

Such endeavours were in accordance with Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s presidential address at the Kanpur session of the Mahasabha in 1942, immaculately chronicled by historian Shamsul Islam in his book Hindu Nationalism and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Savarkar had asserted that the Hindu Mahasabha follows the policy of “responsive co-operation” with the British Empire since he considered the Congress a “pseudo-nationalist body”.

For Savarkar, this “practical politics” led to “reasonable compromises” meant to “capture the centres of political power only in the public interest”, playing down his personal interests. The biographer of Savarkar, Dhananjay Keer, also adopts this view sympathetic to the Hindu Mahasabha while freely plagiarising from Savarkar’s speech.

BJP chief Amit Shah at the Savarkar Sahitya Sammelan in Thane in April 2017. Credit: PTI

On June 10, 1943, a few months after the Sind legislative assembly favoured the creation of Pakistan, Savarkar reiterated the Hindu Mahasabha’s commitment to forming provincial governments including with the Muslim League to further the Hindu cause. On June 17,1943, Dr Hemandas Wadhwani (a Hindu Mahasabha member), health minister in the Sind government, met Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the chief of the Muslim League, to talk about the situation of communal harmony and to forge an anti-Congress alliance. Wadhwani also apprised Savarkar of his talks with Jinnah and tried to arrange a meeting between the two. To be fair, forming a coalition government was the Hindu Mahasabha’s political right, but it does not augur well for the ‘nationalistic’ credentials of Hindutva heroes like Mookerjee and Savarkar.

It is clear, as Jyotirmaya Sharma elucidates in his book Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism, that Savarkar’s “commitment to the creation of a Hindu Rashtra superseded the goal of political independence of India”. This “practical politics” of Savarkar-led Hindu Mahasabha may have been beneficial to his organisation but was certainly disastrous to the fate of the Indian subcontinent.

Borrowed nationalism 

The Hindu Mahasabha had ideological similarities with the Muslim League. Both parties believed in the notion of ‘one religion/culture, one language’ as the guiding force of nationhood borrowing from the parochial nationalism of Western Europe. The Hindu Mahasabha wanted a country for Hindus speaking Hindi while the Muslim League preferred to have a country of Urdu-speaking Muslims. By doing so, both organisations also adopted the principle of having a ‘common enemy’. For instance, the Hindu Mahasabha considered Pakistan (read Muslims) as its common enemy while the Muslim League hated India (read Hindus), mistaking a secular nation as the homeland of Hindus.

The Hindu Mahasabha, like the Muslim League, believed that Hindus and Muslims are two separate and antagonistic nations. Savarkar in his presidential address during the 1937 session of the Hindu Mahasabha held at Ahmedabad put forth this idea of separate nationhood, three years before the Muslim League passed the Pakistan resolution in Lahore:

“India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary, there are two nations in the main; the Hindus and the Moslems, in India.”

Savarkar’s speech at Ahmedabad is filled with anti-Muslim rhetoric. He had imbibed these sectarian values as a child when he enjoyed participating in a mob responsible for vandalising a mosque.

Although the Hindu Mahasabha remained an elitist movement, the Hindu Mahasabha-Muslim League bonhomie indirectly legitimised the cause of Muslim separatism spearheaded by the Muslim League especially in the electoral sphere with tragic consequences.

For instance, in the 1936-37 provincial elections, the Congress party performed better than expected to obtain an absolute majority in five out of 11 provinces. It emerged as the single largest party in four more provinces and ultimately formed governments in eight provinces. On the other hand, the Muslim League was decimated, including in Muslim-majority provinces. In Sind and the NWFP, the Muslim League could not win a single seat. In Punjab, it won only one seat. Its performance in Bengal was also below expectation, as it could not capture even one-third of the Muslim-reserved seats. Less than 5% of the Muslim population supported the Muslim League in those elections.

It became crystal clear that the Muslim League had no mass Muslim support. In fact, no party could properly represent the Muslims as many Muslim-reserved seats went to independent candidates. 

Seeing this dismal performance, a critical question arose for the Muslim League: How to vitiate the atmosphere on communal lines in provinces like Bengal and Punjab which were central to the logic of Partition? Jinnah exploited the emotional campaign of ‘Islam in Danger’ to gain mass Muslim support after the 1936-37 elections – a divisive cause in which the Hindu Mahasabha came to its help through coalition ministries.

By the time of the 1945-46 provincial elections, the Muslim League had gained substantial Muslim support in Bengal, Sind, Bengal and the NWFP, making the Partition of the Indian subcontinent inevitable. It won 430 seats up from 108 in 1936-37, with roughly 21% of the total vote share. Like its performance in the 1936-37 election, the Hindu Mahasabha was a total disaster in the 1945-46 ones, winning only three seats across all Indian provinces.

The pre-independence trajectory of the Hindutva movement is not so righteous. By helping the Muslim League while the Congress leaders were in jail, the Hindu Mahasabha furthered the argument for Partition. At this crucial juncture in India’s polity, it is important to know this dishonourable genealogy of the Hindutva ideologues with which the present-day Hindu right-wing is associated.

Sharik Laliwala, 22, an alumnus of King’s College London and Ahmedabad University, is an independent researcher on the politics and history of Gujarat. He is on Twitter @sharik19.