Why RSS in its Centenary Year Should Introspect and Pay Heed to Gandhi’s Address at its Rally in 1947

On Wednesday (October 1) Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the blatant lie that Mahatma Gandhi had openly appreciated the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS’s) commitment to equality and harmony. The PM said this while addressing the centenary celebrations of the RSS on Wednesday. The RSS was founded on the occasion of Vijaya Dashami in 1925.

This year, Vijaya Dashami falls on October 2, which is also Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary and is celebrated as International Non-Violence Day.

Contrary to Modi's claims, in fact, in his hard-hitting speech delivered at an RSS rally on September 16, 1947, Gandhi charged it of converting Hinduism to a sectarian and exclusive religious creed promoting bigotry which imperilled religious pluralism and harmony and spread fear among minorities.

If RSS had pursued the ideals of equality and harmony, as is claimed by Modi, then why did then RSS chief M.S. Golwalkar threaten to “silence” Gandhi on December 8, 1947, when he consistently took a stand against ethnic cleansing of Muslims? Three weeks later Nathuram Godse assassinated him.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the first home minister of independent India, had banned the RSS on February 4, 1948. After the assassination of Gandhi on January 30 that year and he wrote to Golwalkar, “All their (RSS leaders') speeches were full of communal poison. It was not necessary to spread poison in order to enthuse the Hindus and organise for their protection. As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji. Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government, or of the people, no more remained for the RSS. ….Opposition turned more severe, when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhi's death. Under these conditions, it became inevitable for the Government to take action against the RSS…”

The RSS leadership must introspect and hold itself to account for what they did to the father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi, when newly independent India was struggling to stabilise and frame an egalitarian Constitution which RSS later rejected because it was not anchored in Manusmriti, celebrating caste inequality.

Gandhi addressed an RSS rally and he was Reprimanded for it

Gandhi addressed an RSS rally in Delhi on September 16, 1947 and two months later on November 16, he while speaking at prayer meeting candidly stated that he was reprimanded for what he did and even received complaints against it.

He noticed that prayers in that rally, among others, were exclusively extolling Hindu culture and Hindu religion reducing Hinduism to a narrow creed, and so Gandhi told upfront, “..if the Hindus felt that in India there was no place for any one else except the Hindus and if the non-Hindus, especially Muslims wished to live here they had to live as the slaves of Hindus, they would kill Hinduism.”

Gandhi rejected a monolithic Hindu society and retrograde the idea of Hindu Rashtra which the chief of RSS recently invoked to mark its centenary year.

Gandhi proceeded to add his speech that M.S. Golwalkar admitted before him that RSS dedicated itself to serve Hindus and Hinduism alone and it had hardly any faith on non-violence.

On completion of the speech Gandhi was asked if Hinduism permitted the killing of an evil-doer and if not, how would he explain Lord Krishna’s highly persuasive appeal to Arjun in the Bhagavad Gita to destroy the Kauravas? Gandhi told RSS workers that only a legitimate Government would exercise authority to decide how to punish those committing offences and urged them not to act in violation of law and foil attempts of home minister Sardar Patel and prime minister Nehru to function freely to deal with the grave threats to newly independent India confronting existential threats.

Those utterances assume added significance when BJP leaders and some belonging to the RSS have issued blood curdling calls for genocide of Muslims and comprehensive social and economic boycott of Muslims and other minorities.

RSS chief’s call violate Constitution

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s repeated advocacy of Hindu Rashtra is in itself against the Constitution, one of the basic structures of which is secularism. By calling RSS members to participate in their individual capacities to reclaim the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi and the Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura, Bhagwat was instigating them to act in contravention of Places of Worship Act of 1991 mandating to retain the character of shrines as it existed on August 15, 1947.

His description that consecration of Ram Temple in Ayodhya on January 22, 2024 heralded real independence of India in contrast to only political independence the country gained on August 15, 1947 constituted distortion of values of freedom struggle in which RSS deliberately never participated.

RSS targeted Gandhi

The track record of RSS proves beyond doubt that it acted with impunity to target Gandhi. Then RSS chief Golwalkar had threatened to “silence” Gandhi on December 8, 1947, when he consistently took a stand against ethnic cleansing of Muslims. Three weeks later Nathuram Godse assassinated Gandhi.

RSS workers caused commotion and mayhem in Gandhi’s prayer meetings whenever passages from the  Quran were recited. On one occasion Gandhi without mincing words frankly and boldly charged that a big organisation, meaning the RSS, disrupted the prayer meeting.

On November 16, 1947, two months after he addressed the RSS rally, Gandhi in his speech at a prayer meeting, flagged the issue of the accession of the princely state of Rampur, ruled by a Muslim ruler, to the Indian Union.

When some Hindu leaders charged that in spite of Rampur’s accession to India the Muslim League’s venomous imprints persisted, Gandhi said, “Had that only been the obstacle, it could have been easily overcome”, and further added, “But there is also the Hindu Mahasabha assisted by the members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh who wish that all the Muslims should be driven away from the Indian Union.”

He charged that such attempts to throw out Muslims flowed from a flawed approach adopted by RSS that India only belonged to the Hindus who could act as lords and masters over people professing other faiths.

On November 30, 1947 in Delhi, he said in a prayer meeting, “I would like to tell the Hindu Mahasabha and also the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – both are Hindu organisations and many influential and educated people are associated with them as in other organisations – that they cannot save Hinduism in this manner. Is it true that they have harassed Muslims? If not, who has?”

Those questions raised by Gandhi in 1947 continue to persist in the centenary year of RSS.

Gandhi flagged fascist tendencies of RSS

In the book “Mahatma Gandhi : The Last Phase,” Volume X, Part-II, Pyarelal refers to Gandhi’s pleadings with RSS that the allegations hurled against its leaders for killings Muslims should be clarified and in case there was an iota of truth in them they should atone for it.

Pyarelal then recalled the remarks of a member of Gandhiji's party that the RSS. people apart from doing a fine job at Wah refugee camp had shown discipline, courage and capacity for hard work. In that context he quotes Gandhi who said, "But don't forget, even so had Hitler's Nazis and the Fascists under Mussolini."

Gandhi endures

Pyarelal also wrote that the logic of fanatical creed of RSS ultimately claimed its victim the father of the Nation.

Gandhi’s martyrdom marginalised RSS and Hindu Mahasabha and his worldview thrives and endures inspiring humanity. The centenary year of RSS should be used by it to eschew its retrograde thoughts and actions negating the idea of India and the Constitution, in defence of which people are now in forefront.

S N Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India K R Narayanan.

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