Why Golkwalkar Denied Writing ‘We or Our Nationhood Defined'

For almost everyone who knew him, Nehru embodied the ideals of secularism and democracy, and these underpinned his capacity for leadership. During a conversation with young diplomats of the Ministry of External Affairs in December 1963, Nehru, on being asked what would happen if the Communists are elected to power’, challenged their basic assumptions. ‘Communists, communists, communists,’ Nehru said. ‘Why are all of you so obsessed with communists and communism: What is it that communists can do that we cannot do and have not done for the country: Why do you imagine the communists will ever be voted into power at the Centre!’ Then, after a long pause, he added: ‘The danger to India, mark you, is not communism. It is Hindu right wing communalism.’

At the end of the Nehru regime, of all the factors that made Golwalkar deeply unsettled, none seemed to generate more anxiety – or more panic – than his book, We or Our Nationhood Defined. More than two decades after its publication, the book still potentially threatened to turn his situation unstable. Its reprinting had been stopped after the assassination of Gandhi, but, as J. A. Curran noted in 1951, despite the conciliatory tone in Golwalkar’s speeches delivered after the removal of the ban on the RSS, the “genuine ideology of the Sangh’ had continued to be based on the book. ‘We can be described as the R.S.S. “Bible”‘ Curran wrote. It is the basic primer in the indoctrination of the Sangh volunteers. Although this book was written twelve years ago, in a national context different from the contemporary one, the principles contained in it are still considered entirely applicable by the Sangh membership. On the basis of his field research and widespread interaction with the RSS leaders and cadres, he concluded that the ‘philosophy’ of Golwalkar’s 1939 book ‘forms the foundation for contemporary R.S.S. plans and activities’.

Curran’s conclusion was echoed again in 1956 when two biographies were published to mark the completion of Golwalkar’s fiftieth birth anniversary. B.N. Bhargava, one of these biographers, called We or Our Nationhood Defined ‘an unassailable exposition’ of the doctrine of ‘nationhood’ and asserted: ‘Subsequent developments have established beyond all doubt the truth of his [Golwalkar’s] thesis. N. H. Palkar, the other biographer, claimed that what Golwalkar wrote in his book is the only proper way to look at the question of minorities’ in India and that ‘this alone can ensure stable and peaceful national life.’

Thus, despite stopping its reprinting, the book continued to carry the core of the RSS ideology as it had been prior to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The book, however, remained out of public discourse all these years until it was dragged up in 1962 by P. Kodanda Rao, a Bangalore-based social activist and rationalist who was highly regarded by the political and social leaders of the time.

That year, on having discovered some of the contents of We or Our Nationhood Defined, Rao wrote to Golwalkar to ascertain whether he had modified his views on minorities since the publication of the book or he still held them. Rao waited for a while, but Golwalkar neither acknowledged the receipt of his letter nor replied to it. Rao then wrote to Nehru and Shastri on 9 June 1962, acquainting them with the communal contents of the book. He also started reflecting on the book’s anti-minority contents in his write-ups for several English dailies and journals.

Up until then, Golwalkar maintained silence on the book, believing that it would remain forgotten. For a long while, the absence of the book from public debate conferred seemingly unestimable benefits on Golwalkar but was now, under the aegis of Kodanda Rao, threatening to bring those benefits to naught.

Acutely conscious of the uncensored expression of his views in the book, he seemed to start looking for a way to escape the threat that it posed. The opportunity came in May 1963 during the weeklong celebration of V. D. Savarkar’s eightieth birth anniversary in Bombay. As part of the celebration, Golwalkar addressed a public meeting on 15 May, when he claimed that he was not the author of We or Our Nationhood Defined and that it was really an abridged translation of Babarao’s Marathi book, Rashtra Mimansa.

Also read: Golwalkar: The Father of Indian Fascism

His claim was recorded by Savarkar’s official biographer Dhananjay Keer: ‘Golwalkar […] said that the book We which was read by the RSS was the abridgement done by him [Golwalkar] of the work Rashtra Mimansa of Babarao Savarkar. […] He said that it was most befitting on his part to acknowledge publicly the debt of gratitude.’

This claim was nothing but a lie. It also exemplified the paranoid attitude of Golwalkar who scrambled for an escape route when confronted with the danger of being called out. That is the only way to explain the fake narrative that he churned out on 15 May 1963. Golwalkar had definitely drawn inspiration from Rashtra Mimansa and used it as one of his main sources. He acknowledged Babarao’s influence in his book’s preface, which also mentioned that an English translation of Rashtra Mimansa would be out separately. In compiling this work, I have received help from numerous quarters, too many to mention,’ Golwalkar wrote in the preface to We or Our Nationhood Defined. ‘I thank them all heartily; but I cannot help separately naming one and expressing my gratefulness to him – Deshbhakta GD Savarkar. His work Rashtra Meemansa in Marathi has been one of my chief sources of inspiration and help. An English translation of this work is due to be shortly out and I take this opportunity of directing the reader to that book for a more exhaustive study of the subject.’

‘Thus, while writing his book, Golwalkar had no confusion regarding its authorship. He used Babarao’s Marathi book as a source and even endorsed it, but made it clear that We or Our Nationhood Defined was his own work, not an abriged translation.

Even biographical accounts on Golwalkar and his own writings prior to May 1963 do not in any way support his claims. On the contrary, they make his turnaround look like an afterthought and a completely arbitrary and false hypothesis which even Golwalkar did not have in mind all these years after writing the book. In 1944, for example, the Hindi translation of Rashtra Mimansa was published, and Golwalkar wrote its introduction. Interestingly, nowhere in the introduction, which in a way was his own testimony, did he give even a faint suggestion of anything similar to what he claimed later in 1963 – that Rashtra Mimansa was the original book and his own its mere abridged translation.

Nor are the critical formulations of Golwalkar’s book – especially its prescription of Nazi treatment of Jews as a model to be applied to Indian Muslims – to be found anywhere in Rashtra Mimansa. There is not a word in Babarao’s book about the Nazi regime, nor about its treatment of Jews. It is unlikely that Babarao knew anything about the Nazi government when he wrote his book, which was published in 1934, only a year after Hitler came to power. In fact, the Nazi hostility towards Jews reached a critical point with the Kristallnacht pogroms in 1938 – a year before Golwalkar’s book was published in which Jewish homes, synagogues, hospitals and schools were ransacked across Germany.

Hundreds of Jews were killed, and thousands arrested and sent to concentration camps. These pogroms set the stage for the murder of an unfathomable number of Jewish people in the years to follow.

Similarly, Hitler’s aggressive steps towards rebuilding the German military and expanding the Third Reich across Europe – which included the aggression towards Austria and Czechoslovakia that Golwalkar refers to in his book – began in 1935, a year after Rashtra Mimansa was published.

Golwalkar did not repeat the lie in any of his subsequent speeches. Perhaps, in view of the many discrepancies which it carried, he did not want to over-emphasize the claim to avoid provoking independent evaluation of its validity. After his death in 1973, the Sangh’s efforts to deny the influence of Nazism on its ideology forced its supporters into the strangest of postures, ranging from a complete silence on We or Our Nationhood Defined to loosely constructed arguments aimed at excluding Golwalkar from the possibility of ever writing the book.

The question of Golwalkar’s authorship of this book was also complicated by some non-RSS writers in later years. In their writings, the complexity of his thinking as enshrined in We or Our Nationhood Defined is not always evident as they seem to accept the claim that Golwalkar was not its author – the claim from which the Sangh’s argument of having no Nazi influence on its ideology was derived. For example, in his book Makers of Modern India, historian Ramachandra Guha, while deliberating on Golwalkar, says absolutely nothing about We or Our Nationhood Defined.

It neither finds mention in Guha’s description of Golwalkar’s life-history nor in the excerpts curated from the RSS leader’s work to portray his political and social views. Political scientist Jyotirmaya Sharma, in his book Terrifying Vision: M.S. Golwalkar, the RSS and India, goes to the extent of declaring, without even examining the veracity of Golwalkar’s claims, that he ‘did not write We or Our Nationhood Defined and that Babarao Savarkar ‘originally wrote the book’.

In some respects, such writings have helped the warped pro-RSS historians’ attempts to take advantage of the distance in time to excuse Golwalkar and hide Nazi influence on the ideology of the Sangh.