Imagining India as Hindu rashtra

By Jyotirmaya Sharma

(Feb. 24 2006, The Hindu)

...The greatest impediment in the way of "a true vision of the nation," as Golwalkar chose to put it, was the liberal idea that various communities - and here he means Hindus, Muslims, Christians - were to be considered as parts of a single nation. On the contrary, Indian national life was the ideal of Hindu rashtra. Here, the foremost Sangh ideologue speaks of the Hindu rashtra as an inalienable, eternal, unbroken, and unified identity. He calls it the reality of India, whether people accept it explicitly or not.

To argue otherwise was to lose sight of a clear conception of the nation. What about other communities living within India? Golwalkar is forthright in his exposition: "An unclear imagination of the nation - the impractical idea that whoever comes here and stays will be considered a part of the nation; even today if any alien comes and stays, he is deemed as part of the nation - it is to this level that there is lack of clarity of thought." While he is acutely aware of this stance being branded racial, communal, and narrow, he exhorts his audience not to be ashamed of the claims of the Hindus...

Golwalkar addressed his last ideological session of the RSS, called chintan baithak in RSS parlance, in Thane from October 28, 1972 to November 3, 1972. The very first words that Golwalkar uttered were: "This is our Hindu rashtra." He declared the goal of the Sangh as the re-establishment of the glory, excellence and universal authority of the Hindu rashtra. There was a certain definitiveness, even stridency, in his tone. Those who did not believe in the truth of the Hindu rashtra were un-Hindu...

In 1972, this tendency in Golwalkar matures into questioning the very existence of India's democratic model. In its place, he argued for a Platonistic framework of wise men leading society and determining its affairs. The illiterate of India were incapable of handling democracy, he argued...

The RSS of today, along with members of the Sangh Parivar, will do well to spend the Golwalkar centenary year in dispassionately evaluating his thought and legacy. More importantly, they will have to either own up the ideological vision of Golwalkar, or tell the ordinary people of India of their points of disagreement and departure with their ideological mentor.

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