The Brotherhood in Saffron

by Walter Anderson

  85. There was considerable speculation both within and outside the RSS over whether Golwalkar was, in fact, Hedgewar’s choice for the position. Some argue that Hedgewar would not choose a person with the religious and ascetic orientation of Golwalkar. Even more important, Golwalkar had no revolutionary or political experience, and he was only recently promoted in the RSS hierarchy before Hedgewar’s death. Others expected V. D. Savarkar or preferred his younger brother revolutionary, staunch Hindu nationalist freedom fighter, Dr Narayan Damodar alias Bal Savarkar would be chosen as Hedgewar’s successor. Palkar writes that Dr L. B. Paranjpe, Babasaheb Apte and Appaji Joshi were other names considered by Hedgewar but he never discussed them publicly (Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, p. 385). Of these possibilities, Appaji Joshi was considered the most likely choice. Since the formation of the RSS he had been close to Hedgewar; he was perhaps the most successful of the RSS organizers, and he was its senior-most official. After Hedgewar’s death, Joshi did not believe the announcement; moreover, he did not think Golwalkar had the requisite political sophistication to lead the RSS. Joshi, a ‘good RSS soldier’, eventually put his grudge aside and continued his work in the RSS. He frequently defended Golwalkar against those who charged that Golwalkar had abandoned the objectives laid out by Hedgewar. He served as RSS general secretary from 1943–1946. In the 4 and 5 May 1970 issues of Tarun Bharat (Pune), he strongly denied any fundamental differences between Golwalkar and Hedgewar.

  86. Organiser, 14 July 1973.

  87. Peerhaps the two best accounts of his youth are in the RSS publications, Shri Guruji, the Man, and His Mission: On the Occasion of His 51st Birthday (New Delhi: Bharat Prakashan, 1955), in English and Guruji: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ke Sarsanghchalak, in Hindi.

  88. An account of their early acquaintance can be found in Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, Chapters 22 and 23. Hedgewar was attracted to young intellectuals. Prior to grooming Golwalkar for a career in the RSS, Hedgewar had shown a great interest in G. M. Huddar, a scholarly young man from Nagpur who was selected the first general secretary of the RSS (1928–1931).

  89. Shri Guruji, the Man and His Mission, p. 6.

  90. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, pp. 360–61.

  91. RSS Pamphlet, Justice on Trial: A Collection of the Historic Letters Between Sri Guruji and the Government (Mangalore: Sharada Press, 1968), p. 96.

  92. All RSS teachers are expected to attend three Officers’ Training Camps, two at the state level and the third at the all-India Camp at Nagpur. Each of these camps are held for four to six weeks in the summer. The curriculum includes exercises, the martial arts (lathi, sword, dagger), games, songs and political philosophy. The RSS leadership is able to observe the trainees at close quarters and to evaluate their leadership potential.

  93. Palkar, Dr K. B. Hedgewar, p. 378.

  94. Martandrao Jog, head of the military department of the RSS, wanted the RSS to take a more militant line towards the British. When his advice was rejected, he resigned. Information from an interview with Malharao Kale, RSS general secretary from 1940 to 1943, on 30 June 1983 at Nagpur.

  95. V. D. Savarkar and Munje, as well as other Maharashtrian Hindu nationalists, were the most active spokesmen in this drive. They felt that Hindus would have to fight for control of India at the conclusion of World War II. Control of the military and training in the martial arts would be critical in this engagement. The major role played by Maharashtrians, who formed the prime source of recruitment into the military services in this drive, may derive from the British policy of excluding most Maharashtrians from the ‘martial races’. This exclusion not only limited job opportunities, but also challenged the martial traditions of Maharashtra’s dominant castes. See discussion of British recruitment policy in Stephen Cohen, The Indian Army, Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), particularly Pt. 3.

  96. Limaye resigned in 1943, and he returned to the RSS in 1945.

  97. Interview with his brother, Gopal Godse, in Pune on 3 July 1969.

  98. Government of India, Home Political File (I), No. 28/3/43. In 1940, the government, under the power given it by Defense of India Rule 56 (I), required all paramilitary groups to apply for a license before permitting them to have parades or conduct camps. Defence of India Rules 58 (I) and 59 (I) covered drill and uniforms, respectively, and gave the government the power to limit their use during national emergencies.

  99. Ibid. The Home Department advised all provinces that government servants, under GSC Rule 23, should not take part in a ‘political’ organization like the RSS. RSS materials and the Home Department files both indicate that the RSS continued to recruit many civil servants.

  100. Ibid.

  101. Ibid. Participation in shakha may have been even higher. One source notes that there were at this time some 600 shakhas attended by 100,000 people. See S. R. Date, Maharashtra Hindusabhachaya Karyacha Itihas (Pune: S. R. Date, 1975), in Marathi.

  102. While interviewing in an area of Delhi with a large Scheduled Caste population, we met many swayamsevaks from the lower and scheduled castes. They mentioned several reasons for joining the RSS and remaining with it: the opportunity to play games; the social acceptance accorded them by high-caste shakha mates; its respect for Hinduism. An explanation that ran through almost all the interviews concerned the ‘respectability’ they earned through participation in the RSS. Many stated that they learned ‘proper behaviour’ (i.e., cleanliness, hard work, discipline, knowledge of India’s ‘great history and traditions’) according to norms accepted by the highest castes. The RSS, for them, is a ‘Sanskritizing’ institution which opens up the prospect of social mobility. A similar appeal for the Jana Sangh among many Scheduled Caste voters was noted in a study of municipal elections in Delhi. See Mahender Kumar Saini and Walter K. Andersen, ‘The Basti Julahan Bye-Election, ‘The Indian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 30 (July–September, 1969), pp. 260–76.

  103. Leonard E. Mosley, The Last Days of the British Raj (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), p. 11.

  104. Mary Doreen Wainwright, ‘Keeping the Peace in India, 1946-1947: The Role of Lieutenant General Sir Francis Tucker in the Eastern Command,’ The Partition of India: Politics and Perspectives 1935–1947 eds C.M. Philips and Mary Doreen Wainwright (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT. Press, 1970), p. 131.

  105. Ibid., pp. 138–39.

  106. The following provide accounts of that election: Satya M. Rai, Partition of the Punjab: A Study of Its Effects on the Politics and Administration of the Punjab (I) 1947–1956 (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1965), pp. 39–46; Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, The Emergence of Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967); and Penderel Moon, Divide and Quit (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), pp. 71–96.

  107. Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, Emergence of Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 101. As a matter of fact, Sikh paramilitary units were also banned.

  108. Leader (Allahabad), 9 March 1947.

  109. Moon, Divide and Quit, p. 95. Moon relates that the Muslim police in Bahawalpur state were very unreliable protectors of the Sikh and Hindu minorities. In fact, they sometimes participated in the violence and actively participated in the attempt to rid the state of its minorities as quickly as possible.

  110. Michael Brecher, Nehru: A Political Biography, abridged ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962), pp. 143–45.

  111. Accurate figures of the refugee flow are difficult to determine. V. P. Menon, adviser to Lord Mountbatten, estimates that about 5,500,000 Hindus and Sikhs were brought from West Punjab to India by 1948. See his Transfer of Power in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 431. Rai, in Partition of the Punjab, also reports that India established over 160 refugee camps which accomodated some 1,250,000 people. This does not include camps established by private groups like the RSS. Ibid., p. 108.

  112. Moon, Divide and Quit, p. 217.

  113. Interview with Chaman Lal in Delhi on 5 September 1969.
Before the 1975–1977 Emergency, Chaman Lal was office secretary of the Delhi karyalay and the person responsible for maintaining contact with swayamsevaks and RSS-related activities outside of India.

  114. K. D. Jhari, ‘I was a Swayamsevak: Creating the Urge to Kill’, Secular Democracy 3 (July 1970), pp. 27–29.

  115. Golwalkar, in conversations with us, during the interview in Nagpur on 19 April 1969, expressed considerable bitterness over the criticism of the RSS for its involvement in the violence during the partition period. He noted that the government supplied the RSS with weapons (as it did other groups) to protect Hindu refugees, and, at the time, expressed its gratitude for the ‘protective’ activities of the RSS. However, in the milieu of hate that existed at the time, it was difficult to demarcate what was ‘aggressive’ from what was ‘defensive’. There are numerous accounts of RSS members who did initiate violence against Muslims. For example, see I. H. Qureshi, ‘A Case Study of the Social Relations between the Muslims and the Hindus, 1935-1947’, Philips and Wainwright eds Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives, 1935-1947, pp. 360–368.

  116. R.S.S. in Punjab (Lahore: Government Printing Press, 1948).

  117. For an account of Gandhi’s visit to the RSS shakhas in Delhi, see Pyarelal Nayar, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, Vol. 2 (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Publishing House, 1958), pp. 439– 41; and Mishrawala, Delhi Diary, Vol. 3 (Delhi: Gyandeep Prakashan, 1987), pp. 257, 264–7.

  118. See Sixty Years of the RSS (Delhi: Suruchi Prakashan, 1985), p. 22; and Rashtriya Punaruttanchya Aghadivar, RSS (Pune: Bharatiya Vichar Sadhana, 1985), p. 19, in Marathi.

  119. D. R. Goyal, R.S.S.: Poisonous Tree (Delhi: Kamleshwar Prakashan, 1979), p. 98.

  120. K. R. Malkani, The RSS Story (New Delhi: Impex India, 1980), p. 50.

  121. When the RSS stages one of its public functions, its practice is to invite a locally prominent person to preside, even though the person may have no affiliation with the RSS.

  122. For a survey of RSS relief activities, see Organiser, 21 August 1947.

  123. Interview with Madhukar Dattatreya Deoras (invariably referred to in RSS publications by his alias, Balasaheb—an alias we shall use hereafter), then general secretary of the RSS, in Nagpur, on 21 April 1969.

  124. This meeting is reported in Leader (Allahabad), 5 February 1948.

  125. ‘Sardar Patel on Indian Problem’, cited by Kewalram Lalchand Punjabi, The Indomitable Sardar: A Political Biography of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1962), p. 131.

  126. For an excellent account of the conditions leading up to Gandhi’s fast, see Abul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom: An Autobiographical Narrative (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1959), pp. 213–22. Azad also points out that anti-Muslim sentiment ‘was not confined to the refugees or even to the general public. Even the areas where only government servants lived were involved. When the reports of massacres in the West Punjab reached Delhi, Muslims in the city were attacked by mobs of unruly men. Some Sikhs took a leading part in organizing these murderous attacks in Delhi [sic].’ Ibid., p. 201.

  127. Interview with Gopal Godse in Pune on 13 May 1969.

  128. Nathuram Godse had ceased to participate in RSS activities prior to World War II.

  129. This newspaper was widely considered an advocate of Savarkar’s philosophy. For example, Savarkar’s secretary wrote to a Jabalpur editor, ‘If you request some ten Hindu Sabha workers there to subscribe [to Agrany, Godse’s newspaper] . . . you will be able to read the day-to-day thoughts [of Savarkar] as seen through our ideology.’ Letter to N. R. Shukla, 20 April 1944, in Savarkar Files, Bombay.

  130. Figures reported in an RSS pamphlet, Shri Guruji, The Man and His Mission: On the Occasion of His 51st Birthday, p. 37.

  131. In response to a letter from Nehru suggesting that Gandhi’s murder was ‘a part of a much wider campaign organized chiefly by the RSS’, Home Minister Patel, in charge of the investigation, responded: ‘It . . . clearly emerges that . . . the RSS was not involved at all. It was a fanatical wing of the Hindu Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that [hatched] the conspiracy and saw it through.’ Patel’s letter of 27 February 1948, responding to Nehru’s 26 February letter in Durga Das, ed. Sarder Patel’s Correspondence: 1945–1950, ten vols (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1973), vol. 6, pp. 56–58.

  132. Restrictions noted in RSS pamphlet, Justice on Trial, pp. 69–70.

  133. Ibid.

  134. Ibid., pp. 8–9 (letter dated 24 September 1948).

  135. Ibid., pp. 23–26 (letter dated 24 September 1948).

  136. Ibid., pp. 16–17 (letter dated 10 November 1948).

  137. Ibid., pp. 17–20 (letter dated 12 November 1948).

  138. Ibid., pp. 26–28 (letter dated 11 September 1948).

  139. Ibid., pp. 70–82.

  140. Ibid., pp. 85–87.

  141. Because P. B. Dani was arrested, the leadership of the RSS passed to Eknath Ranade and Madhavrao Mule who directed the RSS protest movement (which it refers to as satyagraha).

  142. In recalling the ban and the protest movement, RSS members who participated in the events find a number of ‘anti-national’ reasons that motivated the leadership to continue the ban even after no evidence showed up on an RSS connection with the assassination of Gandhi. The more frequently mentioned were ‘fear’ (1) that the RSS would transform itself into a political party, (2) that some foreign ‘design’ would prevent India from becoming strong and united, (c) of Nehru’s ‘pro-Muslim’ bias, (d) of an attempt on the part of the ‘vested interests’ to ‘keep the people down’. One recollection which came up in almost all the interviews was the shock the members experienced at being labelled ‘murderers’, ‘hooligans’, and ‘criminals’, and the pressure to denounce the RSS, the abandoned friends, lost jobs, and expulsions from college. Almost all those interviewed recall that their commitment to the RSS was strengthened during the ban period.

  143. Interview with Eknath Ranade in Kanyakumari on 29 December 1969.

  144. RSS literature draws a sharp distinction between Nehru and Patel. The latter is portrayed as a practical Hindu, and the former as an impractical visionary. In seeking to identify themselves with Patel, RSS writers exaggerate Patel’s pro- RSS sympathies. No doubt, he respected their help to the refugees. But the record seems to indicate that he thought they sometimes acted intolerantly towards the Muslims. Nehru did not, as far as the records indicate, interfere in Patel’s handling of the ban issue. Patel did not exactly deal gently with the RSS during the ban period and exacted some hard terms from them before he agreed to lift the ban. Patel did support RSS entry into the Congress. One could argue against the conventional RSS wisdom about why he wanted them in. He might only have wanted to exploit the disciplined cadre to build the organizational infrastructure of the Congress. In a letter to Rajendra Prasad in 1948, Shankarrao Deo claims that Patel was upset over the deplorable state of the Congress organization. Referred to in Stanley Kochanek, The Congress Party of India: The Dynamics of a One-Party Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 15. It could well be that Patel planned to delegate the hard ‘leg work’ to the swayamsevaks. He could hardly have expected them to be a major asset in his opposition to Nehru, for at the time, the RSS leaders had almost no experience at practical politics. He very likely foresaw little possibility of the politically unsophisticated swayamsevaks influencing the ideology of the Congress or playing a major role in its factional struggles.

  145. Justice on Trial, pp. 40–44 (letter dated 3 May 1949).

  146. Ibid., pp. 44–49 (letter dated 17 May 1949).

  147. Copy of letter published in the Times of India (Delhi), 11 June 1970, and discussion of it in the Times of India (Delhi), 12 June 1970. There was considerable interest in this issue of succession at the time because there were rumours that the government was again considering a move to place restrictions on RSS activities. The letter of clarification to Sharma was given to D. P. Mishra, home minister of the Central Pr
ovinces. Mishra immediately forwarded it to Patel, who was convalescing at Dehra Dun. Patel consulted with Nehru to get his approval of an order to lift the ban, satisfied that Golwalkar intended to implement democratic reforms within the RSS. It is believed that the letter of clarification influenced Patel’s decision to support lifting the ban.

  148. Justice on Trial, pp. 50–52 (letter dated 24 May 1949).

  149. Ibid., p. 102 (Appendix 15).

  150. Ibid., pp. 102–03 (Appendix 16). At least one prominent government figure, Morarji Desai, home minister of Bombay in 1949, stated on the floor of the provincial assembly that the ban on the RSS was lifted unconditionally. Bombay State Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol. 15 (Bombay: Government of Bombay Press, 1949), p. 2126.

  151. Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA), Pune, 18 November 1949.

  152. In November 1947 RSS full-time workers met in Bombay to discuss the role of the RSS in an independent India. (Interview with Yeshwantrao Kelkar, 14 July 1983 in Bombay.)

  Chapter 3: RSS: Ideology, Organization and Training

  1. The two approaches most frequently employed to analyse the social determinants of belief systems (or ideologies) are interest theory and strain theory. In the former, a belief system is perceived in terms of the struggle for advantage through the pursuit of power; in the latter, socio-psychological stresses create ideological responses. The latter, as Geertz notes, allows a more systematic presentation of motivation and the social context in which the ideology develops. He points out that interest theory ‘turns attention away from the role that ideologies play in defining (or obscuring) social categories, stabilizing (or upsetting) social expectation, maintaining (or undermining) social norms, strengthening (or weakening) social consensus, relieving (or exacerbating) social tensions’. Clifford Geertz, ‘Ideology as a Cultural System,’ Ideology and Discontent, ed. by David E. Apter (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1964), p. 53. Also see Francis X. Sutton et al., The American Business Creed (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956), pp. 303–10.