39. Dhananjay Keer discusses the revolutionary activities in Maharashtra in Veer Savarkar, 2nd ed. (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1966), Ch. 3.
40. For additional analyses of the Anushilan Samiti and the expansion of its activities after 1905, see Majumdar, Freedom Movement in India, Vol. 2, pp. 267–98. Leonard A. Gordon discusses this revolutionary society in Bengal: The Nationalist Movement, 1876–1940 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), Ch. 5.
41. Its success in heightening a sense of Hindu identity discussed in Kenneth W. Jones, ‘Communalism in the Punjab: The Arya Samaj Contribution’, The Journal of Asian Studies 28 (November 1968), pp. 39–54. Also see his book, Arya Dharma, Hindu Consciousness in Nineteenth Century Punjab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).
42. N. Gerald Barrier, ‘Arya Samaj and Congress Politics in Punjab, 1894-1904’, The Journal of Asian Studies 26 (May 1967), p. 364.
43. Rudolph and Rudolph, Modernity of Tradition, Pt. 2; Erik Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Non- Violence (New York: Norton & Co., 1969), pp. 395–409.
44. Edgerton, Bhagavad Gita, pp. 127–31.
45. Benjamin Walker, The Hindu.eWorld: Tin Encyclopedic Survey of Hinduism, 2 vols (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1968), Vol. 1, pp. 78–80.
46. Rudolph and Rudolph, Modernity of Tradition, pp. 196–200.
47. For an analysis of Gandhi’s use of satyagraha, see Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), Ch. 2.
48. For reference to the practice, see Balkrishna Govind Gokhale, ‘Gandhi and History,’ History and Theory, Studies in the Philosophy of History 11, No. 2 (1972), p. 221.
49. Tilak, Gita Rahasya, pp. 43–44. Aurobindo Ghose argues along similar lines in The Doctrine of Passive Resistance, 2nd ed. (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1952), pp. 87–8.
50. Tilak, Gita Rahasya, p. 36.
51. Mahratta (Pune), 29 October 1922.
Chapter 2: Formation and Development of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
1. The British in 1909 introduced constitutional reforms which permitted some Council members to be elected. The reforms conceded separate electorates for the Muslims. This action touched off Hindu opposition and was one of the factors which led Hindus to organize. For a discussion of the Lucknow Pact, see Hugh Owen, ‘Negotiating the Lucknow Pact’, The Journal of Asian Studies 31 (May 1972), pp. 561–87).
2. Pattabhai Bhogaraju Sitaramayya, History of the Indian National Congress, 2 vols (Delhi: S. Chand, 1969), vol. 1, p. 200; Mukund Ramarao Jayakar, The Story of My Life, 2 vols. (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1958), Vol. 1, pp. 390–403. For a discussion of the Khilafat movement, see Gail Minault, Khilafat Movement, Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
3. Sitaramayya, Indian National Congress, Vol. 1, p. 205.
4. For a history of tension between the two communities, see Govind Sadashiv Ghurye, Social Tensions in India (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1968), particularly Ch. 10.
5. Inder Malhotra, in a perceptive analysis of the May 1973 communal riots in Pune, points out that events and personalities from the distant past may contribute to the memory bank which can spark a communal riot. He notes that, ‘The Jagmohan Reddy Commission recorded . . . that the attack on the Jagannath temple in Ahmedabad [during 1969] inflamed the local Hindus because it reminded them of the sack of Somnath by Ghazni [a Muslim commander who seized this Hindu religious centre several hundred years ago]. In Pune, communal fires were stoked by an attack on a youth immediately after he had played the role of Shivaji in a tableau.’ ‘A Recurring Nightmare: After Poona, What?’, Times of India (Bombay), 31 May 1973, p. 6.
6. Ram Gopal, Indian Muslims: A Political History (1858-1947) (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1959), pp. 154–58; and Khalid B. Sayeed, The Political System of Pakistan (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), pp. 25–26.
7. Sitaramayya, Indian National Congress, Vol. 1, p. 220.
8. Mahratta (Pune), 23 June, 1922.
9. Leader (Allahabad), 1 May 1922.
10. Ibid., 12 November 1921.
11. For an analysis of the Hindu Mahasabha’s formation and early development, see Richard Gordon, ‘The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915 to 1926,’ Modern Asian Studies 9 (April 1975), pp. 145–203.
12. The formation of these centres or sabhas, as they were called, in August 1923, is reported in ibid., pp. 17–18. Following the Benares session, the Mahasabha was reorganized. A working committee was established with headquarters at Banaras Hindu University; the country was divided into twenty-three linguistic provinces (as in the Congress). However, Gordon notes that in 1924 there were only nine provincial branches and 362 local branches, 80 per cent in Punjab, United Provinces and Bihar. Richard Gordon, ‘The Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 173.
13. Leader (Allahabad), 23 July 1923.
14. Ibid., 23 August 1923.
15. Ibid., 22 August 1923.
16. An acrimonious debate between the revivalist reformers and the orthodox occurred at the 1926 Hindu Mahasabha session on these issues. An account of the proceedings is reported in ibid., 15, 17, 18 March 1926.
17. Ibid., 13 April 1925.
18. Ibid.
19. Government of India, Home Political File (I) No. 18-21/25, 1925.
20. Experimental research in social psychology suggests that, when groups which feel deprived succeed in overcoming the obstacles that are perceived as preventing them from sharing in the benefits enjoyed by a ‘favoured’ group, the ‘deprived’ will experience a marked increase in aggressiveness towards the ‘favoured.’ For a discussion of the general principle, see John W. Thibaut and Harold H. Kelley, The Social Psychology of Groups (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1959), pp. 181–84.
21. The most comprehensive and authentic biography of Hedgewar was written by Narayan Hari Palkar. The book, Dr K. B. Hedgewar (Pune: Hari Vinayak Datye, 1964), was published in Marathi and has since been published in other Indian languages. We have relied primarily on the original Marathi edition, although we have also gone through the later Hindi translation. Not only did Palkar have access to RSS documents, but he was personally acquainted with many of Hedgewar’s closest colleagues. There is now an English language biography, Dr Hedgewar: The Epoch Maker, compiled by B. V. Deshpande & S. R. Ramaswamy, ed. by H. V. Seshadri (Bangalore: Sahitya Sindhu, 1981).
22. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, p. 7.
23. Ibid., p. 10.
24. RSS pamphlet, Hamare Hedgewar (Lucknow: Rashtradharm Pustak Prakashan, n.d.), pp. 9–11, in Hindi.
25. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, p. 14.
26. Appaji Joshi, perhaps Hedgewar’s closest confidant, discusses their relationship in an article in Tarun Bharat (Pune), 4–5 May 1970 (in Marathi).
27. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, pp. 36–37. R. C. Majumdar outlines the organizational structure of the Samiti in History of the Freedom Movement in India, Vol. 2, pp. 282–86.
28. Maharashtra State Gazetteers: Nagpur District (Bombay: Government Printing and Stationery, 1966), p. 118.
29. Ibid.
30. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, p. 66.
31. Ibid., p. 70.
32. Ibid., p. 78–79.
33. M. R. Jayakar, one of Tilak’s closest associates, reports the dismay among Tilak’s Maharashtrian followers when prominent allies such as Lajpat Rai and C. R. Das supported Gandhi at the Nagpur session. The Story of My Life, Vol. 1, p. 420. Indeed, some of Tilak’s own Maharashtrian supporters were converted to Gandhi’s programme. Discussion in Richard Cashman, The Myth of the Lokamanya, pp. 206–7.
34. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, p. 78.
35. Ibid., p. 90.
36. This letter to Motilal Nehru was written on 19 February 1922, shortly after the non-cooperation movement was cancelled. The letter is published in Jawaharlal Nehru, comp., A Bunch of Old Letters Written Mostly to Jawaharlal Nehru and Some Written by Him, 2nd
ed. (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1960), p. 23.
37. Hedgewar was a member of the All-India Congress Committee in 1928 and attended the 1928 Congress session at Calcutta. For a discussion of these activities, see Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, p. 198. After 1928, his time was devoted almost exclusively to building the RSS. He did, however, participate in one more major Congress activity, the 1930–31 satyagraha. In the Central Provinces, this satyagraha took the form of a protest against the restricted use of government-controlled forest lands. Hedgewar informed his RSS colleagues that his participation did not commit the RSS to the movement. An account of his participation can be seen in Palkar, Hedgewar, Ch. 17. Individual swayamsevaks could and did participate in politics, but only with the approval of RSS officials. RSS officers for their part were not permitted to engage in any political activity. Generally, Hedgewar tried to portray the RSS as apolitical. He may have been concerned that the educational objectives of the RSS would be undermined if the participants were drawn into the intense factional infighting of Nagpur’s Congress organization. More importantly, he probably feared that the young organization might be banned if it appeared to have political objectives.
38. Ibid., p. 115.
39. Ibid., p. 116.
40. Mahratta (Pune), 18 November 1922.
41. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, p. 117.
42. Ibid., p. 126.
43. Mahratta (Pune), 18 January 1925.
44. Quoted in Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, p. 129.
45. Ibid., p. 120. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was a militant Hindu nationalist. While a college student at Pune, he formed with the revolutionary Abhinava Mela. In 1906, he left for England on a scholarship which required that he swear never to work in any way for the British. During his study in England, he recruited Indian students into an underground unit which smuggled anti-British literature manuals on the manufacture of explosives, guns, and nationalist books into India. For a discussion of these activities, see Keer, Veer Savarkar, Chapters 2 and 3. In 1910, Savarkar was tried and convicted as a co-conspirator in the murder of a British official in India, and was sentenced to life imprisonment on the Andaman Islands. In 1921, he was removed to a prison in India. While at the Ratnagiri jail in 1922, he wrote Hindutva. Copies of this tract were reproduced by hand and distributed among Maharashtrian nationalists. Hedgewar read one of these handwritten copies. The work was eventually published in English, which can be found in Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya: Hindu Rashtra Darshan, 6 vols. (Pune: Maharashtra Prantik Hindusabha, 1964), Vol. 6, pp. 1–91.
46. Ibid., pp. 7–9, 28–46.
47. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, Ch. 1; Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts (Bangalore: Vikrama Prakashan, 1966), pp. 331–32.
48. At about this time, Jawaharlal Nehru also expressed dismay over the lack of a well-organized cadre of young men which the Congress could mobilize for its various activities. Jawaharlal Nehru, Toward Freedom (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), pp. 120–21.
49. This Hindu festival occurs on the tenth day of the waxing lunar fortnight of the Hindu month of Ashwina (September–October). The festival has particular martial significance in Maharashtra for this was the date on which Shivaji’s armies crossed the frontiers to fight the enemy, an event called simolanghan in Marathi. The elder brother of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, G. D. (alias Babarao) Savarkar, designed the RSS’s flag, the bhagva dhwaj, and it was displayed on the day Hedgewar launched the RSS. See D. N. Gokhale, Krantiveer Babarao Savarkar, 2nd printing (Pune: Sri Vidya Prakashan, 1979) in Marathi, p. 275. Some RSS informants also claim that G. D. Savarkar wrote the first oath, which was used up to 1947. (There is some debate over whether he authored the oath.)
50. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, p. 135.
51. Ibid. For a testimonial on the character-building potential of akharas, see Dinakar Dhondo Karve, ed. and trans., The New Brahmins: Five Maharashtrian Families, with editorial assistance of Ellen E. McDonald (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), pp. 180–81.
52. Census of India, 1931, Vol. 12: Central Provinces and Berar, pt. 1—Report, by W. H. Shoobert (Nagpur: Government Printing, 1933), p. 296.
53. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, pp. 138–39. B. K. Kelkar, a swayamsevak, wrote in his diary in February 1943 that Hedgewar asserted that an understanding of his philosophy required a thorough study of the writings of Ramdas. (Unpublished diary of B. K. Kelkar.)
54. Ibid., pp. 136–39.
55. The uniform was the same as that worn by the Bharat Sevak Samaj, the volunteer force Hedgewar organized during the 1920 Congress session in Nagpur. It consisted of white shirt, khaki shorts and a black khaki cap. In choosing a name, Hedgewar rejected putting Hindu in the title because that would suggest that Hindus were but one community among many. Rather, Hindus were, in his view, the nation. He also rejected names that emphasized the Maharashtrian origins of the RSS. For discussion on this, see C. P. Bhishikar, Bhayyaji Dani (Pune: Bharatiya Vichar Sadhana, 1983) in Marathi.
56. The account emphasizes the bitterness of the brahmin priests who denounced Hedgewar for disrupting their lucrative business.
57. Ibid., pp. 141–42. Lathi training was a part of traditional training in the akharas of Maharashtra, and elsewhere. Its introduction was the suggestion of Anna Sohani, a former revolutionary who was close to Hedgewar. Sohani was later to introduce instruction in still other martial arts.
58. Ibid., pp. 145–46.
59. Ibid., p. 161.
60. See report of this incident in H. V. Seshadri, Dr Hedgewar, the Epoch Maker (Bangalore: Sahitya Sindhu, 1981), pp. 95–97.
61. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, pp. 202–03.
62. Palkar describes a speech Hardikar gave in Nagpur in which he denounced the nonpolitical nature of the RSS and a number of other associates. Ibid., p. 204.
63. D. V. Kelkar, ‘The R.S.S.’, Economic Weekly (4 February 1950): 132, quoted in J. A. Curran Jr, Militant Hinduism in Indian Politics: A Study of the R.S.S. (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1951), pp. 12–13.
64. Information in this paragraph from K. R. Malkani, RSS Story (New Delhi: Impex India, 1980), pp. 21, 28; and interview with Malharrao Kale, RSS general secretary 1943–1945, on 30 June 1983 at Nagpur.
65. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, pp. 202–210.
66. As will be explained in the next chapter, the RSS banner is considered the ‘guru’ and RSS members are careful to employ the term only to the banner.
67. For an explanation of the relationship between a Hindu teacher and his student, see Abbe Jean Antoine Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, trans. and ed. by Henry K. Beauchamp, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), Ch. 10.
68. RSS Pamphlet, Guruji: Rashtriya Swayam Sevak ke Sarsanghchalak (Delhi: n.p., n.d.), p. 43, in Hindi.
69. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, pp. 160–65.
70. Ibid., p. 329.
71. The Khaskars were formed in 1930 in Punjab to unite all Muslims in South Asia into a common political front. In 1939 the organization claimed 400,000 members, chiefly in Punjab, Hyderabad, Sind, and the North-West Frontier Province. For a description of the organization, see Shan Muhammed, Khaksar Movement in India (Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1973).
72. Government of India, Home Political File (I), No. 18.
73. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, p. 255, and Ch. 21.
74. Ibid., Ch. 28. The membership figures for 1939 were mentioned by Golwalkar in a speech he gave at an RSS ceremony in Nagpur. Mahratta (Pune), 25 August 1939.
75. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, Ch 23.
76. In his work on the RSS, Curran Jr describes the Rashtra Sevika Samiti. He writes that Hedgewar was against a women’s branch because ‘the leaders of the Sangh had taken a vow of “Brahmacharya” (which obliged them to avoid all temptations such as that of association with women).’ Curran Jr, Militant Hinduism, p. 81. We believe his explanation is wrong. Many of the early leaders of the RSS did not take any vow of sexual abstinence and there have always been marr
ied pracharaks (full-time workers). P. B. Dani, a former general secretary of the RSS, for example, was married, as were other members of the RSS central executive. As far as we know, no swayamsevak or pracharak is required to take any vows of sexual abstinence. At the time the Rashtra Sevika Samiti was formed, it would have been unacceptable for an organization like the RSS to accept women participants. In fact, many RSS members indicated to us that it would still be socially unacceptable for the two to unite.
77. Palkar notes that most of the early participants in Nagpur and the surrounding region were largely from the ‘middle classes’. The frequent reference both in RSS correspondence and Palkar’s biography to swayamsevaks going to high school and college further indicates the middle-class composition of the RSS.
78. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, p. 270.
79. Ibid.
80. Ibid., pp. 181–82.
81. As early as 1929, Mahasabha leaders approached Hedgewar with the proposal that the RSS become an affiliate of the Mahasabha. He rejected the notion. See D. E. V. Baker, Changing Political Leadership in an Indian Province: The Central Province and Berar 1919–1939 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 106. Hedgewar bluntly told Munje in 1938 that the RSS was not the youth wing of the Mahasabha. After that, Munje was not invited to deliver special lectures (baudhik) at RSS functions. Interview with Malharrao Kale, general secretary of the RSS from 1943 to 1945, in Nagpur on 30 June 1983.
82. For a discussion of the relationship between the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha both before and after Hedgewar’s death, see Walter K. Andersen, ‘The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,’ Economic and Political Weekly (7, 11, 18, 25 March and 1 April 1972).
83. From a mimeographed statement read by Godse to the court on the day he was convicted, p. 11. Copy of the statement was given us by Gopal Godse, brother of Nathuram.
84. Letter from Vinayak Damodar Savarkar to S. L. Mishra, 3 March 1943. Savarkar Files, Bombay.
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