There has been the paradigmatic connotation of the RSS — the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, as the sole representative of the Hindus and the Hindu Society, in Indian socio-political discourse.
As has been established earlier that the RSS is not a Hindu organization. In the present essay, we shall be concerning ourselves with question as to where does the Sangh stand vis-à-vis the Hindu Society.
Let us first establish the parameters and yardsticks upon which any individual, organization, institution, and any other relevant entity is to be weighed, with regards to the positions they hold towards the Hindu Society — that of a facilitator of the Hindu cause, antithetical to it, or a neutral one.
The fivefold parameters are as follows:
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1. What positions, in policies as well in attitudes they manifest, as an organization (such as a party), or an institutions (eg. judiciary) w.r.t. the Hindu Society, Hindus, their identity, traditions (spiritual, philosophical, socio-political), customs, and mores and their worldview?
2. What are the stances of the given organization with regards to the manifest enemies of the Hindu Society, the ‘Breaking India Forces’, the Missionaries, the Neo-Buddhist cum Ambedkarites (Bhimtas for recall value), the Khalistanis, and the most pertinent, the Islamists?
3.What are the policies and the attitudes that inform the given organization when dealing with the above mentioned expressed enemies and the vicious forces undermining the Hindu Society and Civilization?
4. It is a well attested fact that the Indian State practises the policy of apartheid towards the Hindus and Hindu Society and is blatantly anti-Hindu.
How then does the given organization/institution contribute, whether positively or negatively, to the movement which seeks for establishing the ‘equitable’ grounds for the Hindu Society?
5. In any socio-cultural, or economic movement that is of interest to and holds implications for the Hindu Society, does the individual or organization facilitate and corroborates to the process, or is antithetical to that response?
1. What are Sangh’s stances towards the Hindu Society?
Sangh as postulated in the previous exposition is decisively anti-Hindu, with apathetic views towards their traditions, Dharamshastras, units of social organization — Jaati and Varna — cannons which are the carriers of the paramparas, arts, and knowledge inherent therein.
The oft quoted verse, which is just one fourth of the actual verse from the Rigveda, “Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti” — that “it is of One Existence that the wise ones speak in diverse ways”, to show their accommodating gesture for the closed and exclusivist creeds of Christianity and Islam. This “wanton misrepresentation of an entire and ancient ethos in
spirituality, philosophy and culture”¹ not only undermines Dharma, Dharmic Spirituality and leaves it open for digestion, but also does it without having the faintest of ideas about imperialist designs of Christianity or Islam.
Dharmic notions and ideas are comfortably reinterpreted and straitjacketed to provide ‘indigenous’ templates for their already established view and not the fount of it. But they evade any further scrutiny or critique based on the selfsame Shastras they selectively adduce to reaffirm their positions, saying that ‘the RSS as an institution is not predicated upon any of the Dharmsastras’!²
Acknowledging the fact that Hinduism and Islam are two diametrically opposite worldviews with their fundamentally incoherent onto-epistemologies is something that the Sangh hasn’t, or betrays no intention to come to terms with.
For Sangh, ‘Hindu’ is a geographical marker, not a socio-cultural or a religious one. In their framework of ‘Hindu’, every identity within the Indian State can be coalesced to form a ‘national identity’, no matter how disparate and mutually contradictory their beliefs are. Sangh’s view of the Hindu Society is that of an inchoate collection of different native identities which betrays any notion of coherence and everything else can be assimilated within this mould without the loss of their ‘identity’.
Given sway the RSS holds over the Hindu Society, it is but disastrous for the psyche and Asmita of Hindus with far reaching consequences for the Hindu Society. The ideological premises from which the RSS operates is also against the very idea of Hindutva, a much maligned term by Commies and fellow travelling Nehruvians and Gandhiites, which seeks to safeguard and perpetuate the Hindu identity of Bharatiya Civilization and culture with its intransigent, resilient, and relentlessly assertive spirit.
2. Sangh’s Attitude towards the Professed Enemies of the Hindu Society
M.S. Golwalkar, the most prominent leader of the Sangh and the one who shaped it into its present form, held in his early years that Hindu society was faced with perpetual threats of Islamist aggression, Missionary zeal, and the malevolent maneuvers of the Marxists, as he reasonably understood that they were actively engaged in their attempts to ‘dismantle’ the Hindu Society.
This clarity, the Shatru Bodha, was but short lived, as the institutional framework of the RSS gradually shaped his attitude into something apathetic and ‘dhimmified’.
Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS, thought of Hindu Mahasabha’s anti-Islamist approach as the manifestations on the behalf of the personal malice of their leaders, and thought of it as something vain, which didn’t quite matter as much as the independence from the British domination.³ (Rakesh Sinha)
RSS showed apathy towards the Hindu cause and refused to stand with Hindu Mahasabha and other pro-Hindu quarters, as they were but a ‘neutral’ outfit for the invocation of ‘nationalism’ amidst the Hindus, and not some Militia who was there to fight for the Hindus! Given that Hindus joined the RSS largely because of this image of the organization as the defender of Hindu interests, as their image has emerged from the 1927 Nagpur riots; this attitude of RSS was the driving factor in their policy decisions, while they kept the smokescreen of being a Hinduvaadi Sangthan, to beguile the despondent Hindu Samaj into its trap.
Let us review Sangh’s ideological stances wrt the Shatrus of the Hindu Samaj:
I. Islamists
The fact that Islam and Hindu Dharma are two fundamentally opposed worldviews, which cannot co-exist together, cannot be asserted enough, given the institutionalized deracination and self alienation of the Hindu psyche, shaped by the post-independence stakeholders of the Indian National Congress, the Communists, and the fellow travelers. Their brainchild, this faux notion of some mythical syncretic culture — The Ganga Jamuni Tehzeeb, between the Hindus and the Muslims, something reiterated over and over again in pop culture and media, is but a calculated scam meant to disarm and hoodwink the Hindus from knowing the true nature and intent of Islam, something the Hindu Society was cognizant of and held intact for generations.
There was never a Hindu Muslim syncretic culture, as the edifice of Islam doesn’t allow a Muslim to give in to assimilation. Unlike the Shakas and the Huns, the Turkic invaders never gave up their imperial notions of racial and cultural superiority. And whatever little existed of ‘syncretism’ was due to the remaining Hinduness of the nascent Muslim convert, not because Islam was accommodating, which the movements like Tablighi Jamaat within the Muslim community zealously seek to purge as a sign of ‘Kufr’.
Islam, understood in its proper form and intent, is an ideology ensconced in eschatological paradigm, which seeks to destroy and dismantle the world civilizations, to recast them into its own mould. And that has been the nature of existential threat, the mortal danger that the Hindu society has been facing for a 1000 years!
Given the proportions of the stake, having a sound understanding of Islam, Islamic beliefs and its ideological underpinnings are critical for any Hinduvaadi organization worth its name.
However, the RSS and the BJP remain colossally ignorant on the subject matter of Islam.
Firstly, they always confuse the Muslim problem by this willfully ignorant bifurcation into the Invaders and those who were converted from the native fold.
They posit that the foreigners were the only aggressors, and not the converted Muslim, and that the latter can be assimilated into the ‘national’ society by invoking the fact that their forefathers were Hindus. Laughable as it is, this distinctly shows the gross mistranslation of the historical facts.
Jinnah, the champion of the separate Muslim State cause, was from a Muslim family out of the native fold and so was Shaikh Abdullah, the progenitor of Jihad in Kashmir that culminated in the ethnocide and wanton massacre of Kashmiri Hindus. This dichotomy is fundamentally flawed and showcases a transpicuous cluelessness about the basic tenets of Islam.
Islamic belief prohibits a Muslim from taking the Kafirs as friends, companions, consorts, or allies, notwithstanding even the close family relation such as that of a father or a brother if they’re not Muslims.
“O you who believe, do not take your fathers and your brothers as your friends if they prefer infidelity to Faith. Those of you who have friendship with them are the wrongdoers.” (Quran 9:23)
“The believers must not take the Kafirs as friends instead of the believers. And whoever does that has no relation with Allah whatsoever,
Unless you (do so) as a protective measure (in order to) save yourself from them. Allah warns you of Himself, for unto Allah is the return.” (Quran 3:28)
How then the RSS and the BJP wants them to remain loyal to Kafir forefathers?
Something along the same lines was parroted by the Sangh leaders regarding the issue of Babri Masjid, saying that their stand against the mosque was because Babur was an invader!
Further props were thrown such as “Allah doesn’t accept prayers from a disputed spot.” Such outlandish props offered as a form of apologia for their association with a ‘Hindu’ movement which started independently by other stakeholders within the Hindu fold, and not the Sangh Parivaar, which latched on to it in later as an attempt to capitalize the Hindu emotions for their electoral dividend.
Secondly, Sangh considers Islam as just another addition to the vast diaspora of faiths existing within the native pantheon in the civilizational culture of Bharat.
The Origins of the Same DNA theory
Something that is thrown around a lot by the BJPites (also referred to as Bhajipaos) and the Sanghis is the trope that all of Indians belong to the same land and share the same DNA, hence they’re to imbibed in a common, an all encompassing cultural fabric.
Antecedents to this psychology can be found mutatis mutandis in the works and speeches of of M.S. Golwalkar, which marks a running theme where the dominant thought seems to be the naïve and historically ignorant assertion that there have never been genuine attempts at assimilation of the Muslims within the Hindu Society.
History on the other hand tells us of recurrent separatist reform movements within the Muslim community in an attempt to de-Hinduize the Muslim convert, which encompasses everything from mannerism to dress codes, and from food choices to language, from the times of Sirhindi, a contemporary of Akbar, to Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, Ahmed Shahid Barelvi, from the Faraizi movement in Bengal to Darul ulum Deoband, and to puritanical missions of the Tablighi Jamaat. This was the underlying psyche that culminated in the bloody vivisection of the motherland in 1947, and still carries on unabated, with full blown proportions.
Another reason that RSS presupposes and coming directly from Golwalkar, as to why the Muslims were never assimilated within the ‘National’ (redefined Hindu) Society, was because of the vote hungry politicians, and the partition of India happened because of the ‘appeasement policies’ of the Congress.
He furthermore posited with regards to the interests and aims Hindu society and the Muslim community that our aspirations are ‘one’!
Never knew that a Society recovering from the thralls of two successive waves of colonialism that led to the degeneration of culture, and striving for its very survival with the Hindus reduced to dhimmis in their own civilizational homeland, is ‘one’ with a community which seeks to destroy and demolish all that is Hindu about Bharat and establish an Islamic state instead — Ghawza-e-Hind!
This is the common theme that animates the psyche of the Sangh Parivaar and underpins their policy decisions which are fatal to the very sustenance and survival of the Hindu Society undermining the Hindu interests in futile attempts to lure Muslims.
Let’s have a look at various instances where these themes are substantiated and ensuing implications for the Hindus.
I. The Demographic Theory
Col. U.N. Mukharji’s book, A dying Race (a collection of his letters in 1912), where he draws from the changing demographic tilt in Bengal in favour of Muslims and its Implications for the Hindu Society, was the cause of much stir within the Hinduvaadi quarters. On similar lines, Swami Shraddhanand, a relentless stalwart for the Hindu cause, published his Hindu Sangthan, the Saviour of the dying Race. The books were primarily concerned with the fact that Hindus, ‘divided’ as they were, couldn’t tackle the expansionist designs of Islam.
Dr. Hedgewar rejected such theories outright, saying that such things had no consequences for the Hindu Society! (Rk Sinha’s Book)
What’s surprising is the fact that Sangh itself has passed many resolutions afterwards concerning this changing demographic balance!
II. The Balakrishna Munje Incident
As has been narrated in the previous blogpost in this series, B.K. Munje, then president of Hindu Mahasabha, had presented his twofold concerns which, given the sheer ignorance of leaders on the subject Islam, was a very keen foresight.
Hedgewar disputed his understanding, stating that the attainment of ‘independence’ from the imperial power was the primary aim of ‘their’ movement. It can be made clear with the speeches, stances, and attitude that he, like most other leaders, had relegated the issue of Islam as something relatively ‘unimportant’ for the Hindu society. That was also one of the reasons why they kept themselves out of the movements organized by Hindu Mahasabha, as they saw it as attempts by the leaders of the latter to gain power for bidding on behalf of Hindus with the British!
Firstly, how is that bad from any sane perspective that a Hindu party gets to bid for Hindus instead of self-alienated Sahebs and Babus?
Secondly, they divided the Hindus between their Sangh’s work, and the actual work that was needed for the Hindu cause. For Dr. Hedgewar, the expansion of Sangh alone was enough for the nationalist cause, which he of course presumed is ‘good’ for the Hindu Society. While the RSS didn’t produce any intellectual substrates of their own and always fared in their enemy’s hallowed boats, borrowing the dominant discourse, methodologies, even down to the templates (eg. Secularism, Gandhian Socialism), rather than actively shaping it.
In the same vain, they didn’t give any genuine support to Bhaganagar Satyagraha staged by Hindu Mahasabha and Arya Samaj, led by Hindu Hriday Samrat V.D. Savarkar himself. They sent a ‘symbolic support’ of some 100 Karyakartas!
Rakesh Sinha has written, whether in his apologist zeal, or as a matter of fact, that the Muslim League and the RSS didn’t criticize each other up until 1945!
If it is indeed true, then for sure you have no right to claim any share of contribution in Independence movement, let alone any contribution for the Hindu cause.
If not, then how is this propagated and wholeheartedly endorsed by the Sangh Parivaar?
Baffles one!
Furthermore, RK Sinha on his book on Golwalkar’s standing vis-à-vis the Muslims had stated in no vague terms that he was against the exchange of populations, and so was Gandhi and what followed his hollow assurances is well known. At this juncture, it seems like BR Ambedkar was more Hindutva-vadi than the RSS!
Given the shortcomings, one shall rather accept their incompetence and try to rethink their approach over time.
But Lal Krishna Advani boasts of the fact that RSS workers were providing for the protection and survival of the Hindu and Sikh refugees who were coming en masse from newly found Pakistan, while being utterly incompetent, an estranged bystander, when the partition of the motherland happened. (L.K. Advani, My Country My Life)
Another thing that puzzles the reader is the sheer authority which RSS mouthpieces wield, not only about the Hindu Dharmshastras, which they of-course haven’t read any as they themselves claim that their ‘Sangthan’ is not founded upon any of them (one wonders what sort of ‘Hindu’ Organization would that be!), but also on the subject matter of Islam, it’s teachings and philosophy.
The following instance comes from the life of Golwalkar when he was engaging with a Sufi scholar in Aligarh Muslim University on the subject of increasing atheism, or more precisely anti-theism, emerging from the heavy communist influence.
AS RK Sinha puts it,
“His dialogue with a Kashmiri Sufi Nazir Ahmed in Aligarh presents a contrast between the Hindu and Muslim perceptions of achieving harmony and peace.
“Ahmed suggested him that ‘the threat of godlessness and communism was overtaking all of us and we who believe in God should get together to meet the threat’. Showing his complete approval with his proposition Guruji [Golwalkar] tried to unravel his mind.
Guruji [Golwalkar] said, “I perfectly agree with you but the difficulty is that we have, as it were, broken the image of God, and each one has got his own piece. So what is to be done? You think of God in one particular way, the Christians think in another, Buddhism says there is no God, there is, only Nirvana; the Jain will say it is nothing; then so many will say we worship God in the form of Rama, Krishna, Shiva etc.
How to ask these people to believe in one common God? Have you any recipe for this?”
The Kashmiri Sufi was rather prompt, he said, “why not all of you come to Islam.”
In response, Golwalkar, perplexed as he was by this answer given the “peaceful & tolerant” perception of the ‘Sufis’, replied, “Don’t you think that people will say, why not join Christianity? Suppose, I devote as I am to my religion, say why not become a Hindu. It comes to the same thing and the problem will never end.”
While propounding his view on the subject matter, to borrow the apologetic expression of RK Sinha, Golwalkar showed “his finest philosophical aptitude”, as he argued,
““There is no substantial philosophy which does not belong to the Hindus or to the Muslims. [Oh! We didn’t know that. Thanks to ‘Guruji’!!]
Call it Advaita or whatever you like.
It says that there is one single existence, which is truth, which is bliss. It is the Creator, Sustainer and Destroyer. All our conceptions of God are only limited conception of that ultimate reality, so that the rock bottom of ultimate reality will join us together. [Essentially the Hindu view of non-dualism] It does not belong to any one religion. [Do you even know what religions are and how they’re formed and how they affect one’s identity perception & shape one’s worldview that informs their actions!?]
Everyone can accept it on this account. Religion is only way of worship. [kisiki pooja-paddhati kyun badalni] This is not such a way; it is a philosophy. It is the philosophical understanding of the world. It can be taken to be the rock bottom.””⁴
There are couple of things one needs to understand, given the nature of duplicitous political discourse that one sees, which people tend to ignore.
The claim that Vedanta, the culmination of Indian philosophical thought (and NOT Buddhism), is compatible with the Imperialist and Machiavellian philosophy of Islam, is an assertion as infantile as it can get.
On what grounds, a tradition that has evolved over 6000 years of Spiritual and philosophical inquiry and with a rich history of extensive peer-to-peer debates (the Vada tradition) that led to development of different systems of elaborate philosophies with their nuances and distinctions, a variegated tradition of dynamic thought, can be compared, let alone put on an equal pedestal, unjustifiably with a system that is grounded on brittle edifice and can’t stand any genuine philosophical inquiry, primarily enshrined by the means of the sword, and an artifice for aggression, intolerance, and subversion?
Secondly, telling a Muslim scholar who had devoted life to be well versed with the tenets of Islam faith, what Islam is, without having even the slightest understanding of the subject matter himself, is just banal. (He’s gotta be snickering!)
Indeed, an empty vessel makes more noise.
Again, Islam and Hinduism are two fundamentally opposed worldviews which cannot, and that’s categorical, co-exist together, and NOT merely the difference in the ‘mode of worship’. The latter was the archetypal Gandhian attitude to veil his ignorance of the subject matter of Islamic theology or its modus operandi.
Unfortunately, such stands are still reiterated today, after some 75 years of the partition of country to carve out a new Medina to launch Ghazwa-e-Hind from there, and that too by the supposed ‘Hinduvaadi’ politicians! Just shows how much similar the two situations are, not to forget how the cluelessness of the Hindu leaders culminated in an unprecedented disaster in history of Bharat.
Also, taking such juvenile stances doesn’t alter the Islamic psyche a single bit, but disarms the Hindus and the Hindu Society to fight against their existential Shatru which seeks their wholesale destruction, which in effect makes Islamic vigilantism more sinister, while the Hindus revel in false sense of security.
Same goes for their attitudes towards the leftist-dialectical Wokeist Nexus, which seeks to dismantle Hinduism by haranguing every negative thing such a patriarchy, misogyny, and all sorts of stuff that is being churned in the ‘imperial’ Universities of Ivy League in America. (Snakes in the Ganga, Rajiv Malhotra, Vijaya Viswanathan)
References:
1.Defence of Hindu Society, Sita Ram Goel
2. Bunch of Thoughts, M.S. Golwalkar
3. Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, R.K. Sinha
4. Guruji and Indian Muslims, R.K. Sinha
Credits:
There present essay is predicated upon the thesis of Mr. Pushkar Brat Agnihotri which he conveyed in a discussion with Mr. Sandeep deo, hosted on ISD. I’ve acquired his permission to transcribe, comment, & elucidate on themes relevant to his exposition, after having gone through the primary sources myself, for its wider dissemination into the public discourse.
Take a look at Atharva (@TheHindutvite): https://twitter.com/TheHindutvite?t=CcCVn3r-r-gzGFJTrRcBtg&s=08
