Book Extract — Golwalkar: The Myth Behind the Man, the Man Behind the Machine

Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, or Guruji as he is reverentially referred to by his followers, is regarded as the demi-god of Hindutva politics and often accorded a status higher than even the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, K. B. Hedgewar.

In 1940, when 34-year-old Golwalkar unexpectedly assumed charge of the RSS on Hedgewar’s death, the Hindu militia was still in its nascent stage, with pockets of influence mainly in Maharashtra. Under Golwalkar’s leadership over the next three decades, the RSS and its allied organizations, known as the Sangh Parivar, extended its network across the entire country and penetrated almost every aspect of Indian society.

Golwalkar’s ideological influence was enormous—and it did not end with his death. Golwalkar’s prescriptions in his incendiary book We or Our Nationhood Defined, published in 1939, now became central to the ideological training and radicalization of youth dedicated to the idea of a Hindu Rashtra. Here, Golwalkar prescribed a solution to India’s ‘minority problem’ based on the Nazi treatment of Jews in the Third Reich. As Dhirendra K. Jha conclusively establishes in this book, this would eventually provide the core of the Sangh’s credo and, as events in the recent past have borne out, have a lasting influence on Indian politics .

Drawing from a wealth of original archival material and interviews, the deeply researched and scholarly Golwalkar: The Myth Behind the Man, the Man Behind the Machine pierces through the many legends built around the man in the biographies written by his loyalists during his own lifetime. Jha traces Golwalkar’s path from a directionless youth to a demagogue who plotted to capture political power by countering the secularist vision of nationalist leaders from Nehru to Gandhi. Ambitious, insecure, tactical and secretive—Jha draws a compelling and sinister portrait of one of the most prominent Hindutva leaders, and of the RSS and its worldview that evolved under him.

Dhirendra K. Jha is a Delhi-based journalist. He is the author of Gandhi’s Assassin: The Making of Nathuram Godse and His Idea of India; Shadow Armies: Fringe Organizations and Foot Soldiers of Hindutva; and Ascetic Games: Sadhus, Akharas and the Making of the Hindu Vote. He is the co-author of Ayodhya: The Dark Night—The Secret History of Rama’s Appearance in Babri Masjid.

The following extract is reproduced with permission

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The Fantasy of a Hindu Rashtra With all his fancies of establishing the Hindu Rashtra turning to dust, Golwalkar seemed inhibited and inflicted by a sense of awkwardness. The first general election had established Nehru's sway over the country, and secularism had emerged as the norm of the Indian political system. In some respects, Golwalkar was unprepared for the leadership role in the new political and social environment. As the RSS chief, he had learned to work hard and to concentrate on results, but he lacked a natural touch for operating in the richly diverse cultural context that the secular, democratic system continually presented him. That he felt awkward was not due solely to the stigma of leading an organization of Hindu supremacists. Rather, his idea of a Hindu Rashtra suffered from a vague feeling that it represented part of the wrong turn the nation might have taken had leaders like Gandhi and Nehru not come in the way.

All the available sources show that Golwalkar, at this stage, displayed a singular indecisiveness, a fear of fixing on any one course. He was certainly eager to chart out a mass action programme for the RSS, but he exhibited no desire to take any risks. Thus, in the campaign for banning cow slaughter, which the RSS launched in late 1952, it is not hard to detect the escape motivation of Golwalkar. The same is true for much of his public behaviour during Nehru's lifetime.

The issue of cow protection had always been close to the RSS, but this was the first time it decided to build a campaign around it. The RSS observed 26 October 1952 as 'Anti-Cow Slaughter Day' and its swayamsevaks brought out processions in several parts of Delhi 'with banners, slogans and bedecked cows, arousing popular sentiments in favour of cow protection'. These processions culminated in a public meeting that was presided over by RSS sarkaryavah Bhaiyaji Dani and attended by leaders of the Jana Sangh, the Hindu Mahasabha and 'other Hindu organisations'. It was the first mass movement against the government's policies since the ban on the RSS had been revoked, and yet Dani, reflecting Golwalkar's fears, declared that the campaign was 'not against the Government' and that it was 'the spontaneous expression of the sentiment of the crores of Indians'. Interestingly, the public meeting where Dani made this claim was attended not even by lakhs but by just about 5,000 people.

As expected, the results of this first expression of anti-cow slaughter sentiment were meagre. But the silence had been broken. Golwalkar's success was due in considerable part to his being the first to take up the issue. These initial moves resulted in a similar preoccupation overtaking other Hindutva organizations and gradually led Golwalkar into the wings of the political centre stage. Soon he became part of a joint effort to start a wider movement against cow slaughter. On 6 December 1952, Jana Sangh president Mookerjee inaugurated the 'Cow Protection Exhibition' at Ramlila Grounds in Delhi. The next day, a public meeting was organized at the venue. It was attended by about 20,000 people, mostly RSS men from Delhi as well as the neighbouring districts of Rohtak, Hansi, Sonipat, Karnal, Kurukshetra, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Saharanpur, Patiala and Gurgaon. As if emboldened by the mobilization and bursting through the political barriers of many years, Golwalkar's accusations against Nehru came tumbling out as he addressed the public meeting. An intelligence report on his speech said, 'Shri M.S. Golwalkar repudiated the Prime Minister's statement that the campaign was a "political stunt". He added that about two crores of signatures on the Memorandum for ending cow slaughter showed how the masses felt on the issue and presented a challenge which the Government could not ignore.' As everything with him turned to excess-his fears, his selfconfidence, or even his rapture at seeing a good turnover in the rally-the number of signatories that he mentioned in his speech was an exaggeration of an unimaginable kind. To be sure, two crores of signatories in 1952 would have meant almost 6 per cent of the country's total population of 36 crore as per the census of 1951. In reality, the cow protection activists had collected barely 4,72,687 signatures in Delhi and its neighbourhood, the sole focal point of the campaign. That Golwalkar lied deliberately is borne out by the fact that he had already been informed about the actual figure during the RSS central executive's three-day meeting held in Delhi between 6 and 8 December.

The RSS central executive meeting also revealed another bitter truth about Golwalkar-despite the political passion he showed at the rally, he still looked for ways to escape alternatives he felt to be threatening. Whereas other Hindutva organizations, particularly the Ram Rajya Parishad, favoured launching of a nationwide satyagraha on the issue, the RSS meeting, which was presided over by Golwalkar, resolved to stay away from any confrontation with the government. 'It was, therefore, decided,' an intelligence report on the meeting said, 'to appoint a Sub-Committee to press upon various State Assemblies to enact legislation through non-official Bills.'

By and large, therefore, his cadres never displayed mass anger on the street, and the anti-cow slaughter movement never assumed any serious proportion while Nehru was alive. Their activities consisted almost entirely of token protests and small meetings. Intelligence records of 1953 and 1954 talk primarily of incidents of small groups of five or six protesters getting intercepted outside the residence of Nehru as they carried milk and butter and shouted slogans like 'Gau hatya band ho' [Cow slaughter should stop] and 'Panditji, dudh khao, makhan khao' [Panditji, drink milk, eat butter].

Among the Hindutva groups, however, Golwalkar's restraint often created frustration and even led some of them to chart their own separate ways. In June 1954, for example, Swami Karpatri, president of the Ram Rajya Parishad, issued a statement threatening to detach his party from the anti-cow slaughter movement of 'the RSS and the Jana Sangh' and vowing 'to launch his "satyagraha" campaign separately'. Golwalkar responded to Karpatri's threat in his own peculiar manner. On 8 August 1954, he called an 'all party meet' in Delhi with the stated objective to bring together 'all the Hindu organizations interested in the protection of cow'. This time, even the Hindu Mahasabha joined the Ram Rajya Parishad in boycotting Golwalkar's call.

With such turbulence becoming commonplace, and Golwalkar still not ready to embrace the same degree of risk as he had done before the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the cow protection movement could achieve nothing.

Dhirendra K. Jha Golwalkar: The Myth Behind the Man, the Man Behind the Machine Simon & Schuster India, Delhi, 2024. Hb. Pp. 386. Rs. 899