EQUIP IDEOLOGICALLY TO CHALLENGE THE ANTI-NATIONAL RSS

EQUIP IDEOLOGICALLY TO CHALLENGE THE ANTI-NATIONAL RSS

Shamsul Islam

Friends from India and abroad who are concerned about the increasing threats to the democratic-secular Indian polity from the Hindutva organizations have been writing to me for preparing a concise document on the anti-national game-plan of the RSS and other like-minded offshoots. The need of such a document is rightly felt for countering the Hindutva propaganda at all levels.

The following document is an attempt to accomplish this objective. It is hoped that equipped with this document all those who love India as a democratic-secular nation would be able to challenge the fountain-head of the Hindutva politics. This document is based solely on the documents drawn from the RSS archives.

This document underlines the following cardinal principles of the RSS world view:

(1) RSS IDOLIZES FASCISM & NAZISM.

(2) RSS WANTS MANUSMRITI TO REPLACE DEMOCRATIC-SECULAR CONSTITUTION OF INDIA.

(3) RSS HAS ETERNAL BELIEF IN CASTEISM.

(4) RSS DENIGRATES THE NATIONAL FLAG.

(5) RSS AGAINST DEMOCRAY AND FOR TOTALITARIANISM.

(6) RSS AGAINST FEDERALISM.

(7) RSS' HATRED FOR MUSLIMS & CHRISTIANS.

(8) RSS AGAINST COMPOSITE INDIAN NATIONALISM.

To read the previous part of this article click here

(1) RSS IDOLIZES FASCISM & NAZISM

Doubtlessly Hitler is a great hero for RSS. The RSS as great champions of

Hindutva want to deprive minorities of their all civil and human rights shamelessly and openly adhering to the totalitarian models of Hitler. This fascist outlook towards minorities specially Muslims and Christians was clearly elaborated by the senior ideologue of the RSS, MS Golwalkar, in his book, We or Our Nationhood Defined. This book published in the year 1939, gives an insight into the thinking of the RSS leadership. We find Golwalkar in this book idealizing the Nazi cultural nationalism of Hitler in the following words:

"German Race pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up

the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races—the Jews. Race pride at

its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by."

Golwalkar unhesitatingly wanted to model his Hindu Rashtra or Nation on

Hitler’s totalitarian and fascist pattern as is clear from the following words of his in the same book:

"It is worth bearing well in mind how these old Nations solve their minorities problem. They do not undertake to recognize any separate element in their polity. Emigrants have to get themselves naturally assimilated in the principal mass of the population, the National Race, by adopting its culture and language and sharing in its aspirations, by losing all consciousness of their separate existence, forgetting their foreign origin. If they do not do so, they live merely as outsiders, bound by all the codes and conventions of the Nation, at the sufferance of the Nation and deserving no special protection, far less any privilege or rights. There are only two courses open to the foreign elements, either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race. That is the only sound view on the minorities problem. That is the only logical and correct solution. That alone keeps the national life healthy and undisturbed. That alone keeps the nation safe from the danger of a cancer developing into its body politic of the creation of a state within a state."

(2) RSS WANTS MANUSMRITI TO REPLACE DEMOCRATIC-SECULAR CONSTITUTION OF INDIA

RSS and its fraternal organization, Hindu Mahasabha were very angry when Indian Constituent Assembly adopted a democratic-Secular Constitution under the supervision of Dr. BR Ambedkar. VD Savarkar as leader of Hindutva believed:
“Manusmriti is that scripture which is most worship-able after Vedas for our Hindu Nation and which from ancient times has become the basis of our culture-customs, thought and practice. This book for centuries has codified the spiritual and divine march of our nation. Even today the rules which are followed by crores of Hindus in their lives and practice are based on Manusmriti. Today Manusmriti is Hindu Law”.

(collection of Savarkar's writings in Hindi), vol. 4, Prabhat, Delhi, p. 416.>

The democratic-secular Indian Constitution was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949, RSS English organ, Organizer in an editorial on November 30, 1949, complained:

“But in our constitution there is no mention of the unique constitutional development in ancient Bharat. Manu’s Laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing”.

How loyal the RSS is to the Constitution of India can be known by the following statement of Golwalkar:

“Our Constitution too is just a cumbersome and heterogeneous piecing together of various articles from various Constitutions of the Western countries. It has absolutely nothing which can be called our own. Is there a single word of reference in its guiding principles as to what our national mission is and what our keynote in life is? No!”

(3) RSS HAS ETERNAL BELIEF IN CASTEISM

Golwalkar, the most prominent ideologue of the RSS like Savarkar, believed that Casteism was a natural integral part of Hinduism. In fact, Golwalkar went to the extent of declaring that Casteism was synonymous with the Hindu nation. According to him, the Hindu people are none else but,

"the Virat Purusha, the Almighty manifesting himself… sun and moon are his eyes, the stars and the skies are created from his nabhi and Brahmin is the head, Kshatriya the hands, Vaishya the thighs and Shudra the feet. This means that the people who have this fourfold arrangement, i.e., the Hindu People, is our God. This supreme vision of Godhead is the very core of our concept of ‘nation’ and has permeated our thinking and given rise to various unique concepts of our cultural heritage.

(4) RSS DENIGRATES THE NATIONAL FLAG

The English organ of the RSS, Organizer (dated August 14, 1947) carried a feature titled 'mystery behind the bhagwa dhawaj' (saffron flag) which while demanding hoisting of saffron flag at the ramparts of Red Fort in Delhi, openly denigrated the choice of the Tri-colour as the National Flag in the following words:

"The people who have come to power by the kick of fate may give in our hands the Tricolour but it never be respected and owned by Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country."

Thus the National Flag was declared to be inauspicious and injurious for India!

(5) RSS AGAINST DEMOCRACY AND FOR TOTALITARIANISM

The RSS since its inception loves absolute power. Golwalkar while addressing the 1350 top-level cadres of the RSS at its headquarters at Nagpur in 1940 declared:

“The RSS inspired by one flag, one leader and one ideology is lighting the flame of Hindutva in each and every corner of this great land.”

This slogan of one flag, one leader and one ideology was directly borrowed from the programmes of the Nazi and Fascist Parties of Europe.

(6) RSS AGAINST FEDERALISM

On federalism, Golwalkar sent the following message to the first session of the National Integration Council in 1961. It read:

“Today’s federal form of government not only gives birth but also nourishes the feelings of separatism, in a way refuses to recognize the fact of one nation and destroys it. It must be completely uprooted, constitution purified and unitary form of government be established.”

These have not been some stray ideas of the RSS ideologue on the Indian

Federalism. The Bible of the RSS, Bunch of Thoughts, has an exclusive chapter titled, ‘Wanted a unitary state’ in which Golwalkar presenting his remedy to the federal set-up of India wrote:
"The most important and effective step will be to bury deep for good all talk of a federal structure of our country’s Constitution, to sweep away the existence of all ‘autonomous’ or semi-autonomous ‘states’ within the one state viz., Bharat and proclaim ‘One Country, One State, One Legislature, One Executive’ with no trace of fragmentational , regional, sectarian, linguistic or other types of pride being given a scope for playing havoc with our integrated harmony. Let the Constitution be re-examined and re-drafted, so as to establish this Unitary form of Government..."

(7) RSS' HATRED FOR MUSLIMS & CHRISTIANS

Organizations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM) and Bajrang Dal (BD), and other affiliates of the RSS after using Gujarat as a laboratory for religious cleansing of minorities specially Christians and Muslims for last so many years are spreading their tentacle throughout India. The leaflets containing highly provocative statements like,

“‘Muslims are filth of the gutter, don’t let them enter in your houses’, or ‘Wherever Christian priests have gone in the world, they loot the people. Lies and deceit are their religion. The Christian priests teach people to tell lies, to steal in the name of religion…They curse Hindus, and decry the Hindu religion. Awaken Hindus and struggle against these thieves who lie, who rob you of your rights, and bring these people to their senses and put their pride in place’, or ‘One addition in the population of Christians or Muslims is not only the addition of anti-Hindu but anti-national person.’”

The ‘Holy’ book for the RSS cadres Bunch of Thoughts, has a long chapter titled as ‘Internal Threats’ in which Muslims and Christians are described as threat number one and two respectively. This chapter opens with the following statement:
“It has been the tragic lesson of the history of many a country in the world that the hostile elements within the country pose a far greater menace to national security then aggressors from outside.”

<MS Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore, 1996, p. 177.>

While treating Muslims as hostile element number one he goes on to elaborate,
“Even to this day, there are so many who say, ‘now there is no Muslim problem at all. All those riotous elements who supported Pakistan have gone away once for all. The remaining Muslims are devoted to our country. After all, they have no other place to go and they are bound to remain loyal’….It would be suicidal to delude ourselves into believing that they have turned patriots overnight after the creation of Pakistan. On the contrary, the Muslim menace has increased a hundredfold by the creation of Pakistan which has become a springboard for all their future aggressive designs on our country.”

<MS Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore, 1996, pp. 177-78.>

He goes on to spit venom against common Muslims in the following words:

“...within the country there are so many Muslim pockets, i.e., so many ‘miniature Pakistans’… The conclusion is that, in practically every place, there are Muslims who are in constant touch with Pakistan over the transmitter…”

While deliberating on the ‘Internal Threat’ number two, he says,
“such is the role of Christian gentlemen residing in our land today, out to demolish not only the religious and social fabric of our life but also to establish political domination in various pockets and if possible all over the land.”

Golwalkar, finally, following into the footsteps of Hitler had the following solution of the minority problem in India:

“From this standpoint, sanctioned by the experience of shrewd old nations, 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. There is, at least should be, no other course for them to adopt. We are an old nation: let us deal, as old nations ought to and do deal, with the foreign races who have chosen to live in our country.”

The RSS hatred for Muslims and Christians does not mean that it accords equality to other religious Indian minorities like Sikhs, Buddhist and Jains. It does not accord the status of independent religions to Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism and treats them as part of Hinduism.

(8) RSS AGAINST COMPOSITE INDIAN NATIONALISM

Importantly, the RSS organ Organizer in its issue on the very eve of Independence, dated 14 August, 1947, rejected the whole concept of a composite nation (under the editorial title ‘Whither’):

”Let us no longer allow ourselves to be influenced by false notions of nationhood. Much of the mental confusion and the present and future troubles can be removed by the ready recognition of the simple fact that in Hindusthan only the Hindus form the nation and the national structure must be built on that safe and sound foundation <…> the nation itself must be built up of Hindus, on Hindu traditions, culture, ideas and aspirations”.
.https://www.academia.edu/676529/Know_the_RSS

Shamsul Islam is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science,
Satyawati College, University of Delhi.

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Shamsul Islam

[email protected]