Following his release from prison in 1931 for participating in a civil disobedience campaign, Hedgewar devoted himself full-time to the RSS. Having established the discipline during the formative years (1925–1931), he now set out to make it a national organization.
EXPANSION OF THE RSS: 1931–1939
In the early 1930s, the RSS began to spread beyond its Marathi-speaking base in the Central Provinces. Bhai Parmanand, a leader of the Arya Samaj in Punjab, invited Hedgewar to Karachi in mid-1931 to attend the All-India Young Men’s Hindu Association session. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Hedgewar started RSS work in Sind, and soon after launched the RSS in Punjab and the United Provinces.69 In the United Provinces, RSS students from the Central Provinces began the work. Among them were Prabhakar Balwant Dani, later general secretary of the RSS, and Bhaurao Deoras, later a senior RSS zonal organizer. The work in north India progressed so well that Hedgewar in 1937 sent ten organizers to expand the organization in Punjab, Delhi, and the United Provinces.70 RSS informants admit that much of this growth in north India was due to a growing Hindu fear of Muslim paramilitary movements, particularly the Khaskars.71 Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim paramilitary groups sprang up all over Punjab in the period immediately preceding World War II. A Home Department fortnightly report stated:
These militant groups continue to multiply. The stock excuse for each successive formation is the alleged certainty of civil war in the Punjab when war is declared in Europe and the necessity for each sect and community to assert itself.72
G. D. (alias Babarao) Savarkar, a former revolutionary and the elder brother of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, helped the RSS expand into western Maharashtra. He merged his own Tarun Hindu Sabha (Hindu Youth) as well as the Mukteshwar Dal (Liberation Organization), associated with Pachalegoankar Maharaj (a Hindu saint), into the RSS. He accompanied Hedgewar on trips to western Maharashtra, introducing him to Hindu nationalists. Some of these contacts (e.g., K. B. Limaye, Vinayak Apte, and Bhaurao Abhyanker) were to become prominent RSS officials in Maharashtra. Pune developed into the centre of RSS activities in western Maharashtra.
Between 1931 and 1933 the number of shakhas increased from 60 to 125, and the membership increased to 12,000.73 Work was started in Madras, Bengal and Gujarat in 1938, and by 1939 there were about 500 shakhas, approximately one half in Marathi-speaking areas, and 60,000 participants.74
A women’s affiliate, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, the first RSS affiliate, was started in October 1936 in the Central Provinces by Mrs Lakshmi Bai Kelkar, mother of a swayamsevak.75 She sought RSS assistance to fulfil one of the revivalist goals—training women in the martial arts. During a visit to Hedgewar, she reportedly told him, ‘Just as women are an integral part of the household, so they too are a part of the nation. If the ideology of your organization is taught to women, it would also help the Sangh.’ However, Hedgewar considered it imprudent for the RSS to accept women. He agreed to assist Mrs Kelkar to establish a separate women’s group. The discipline and organization of this group parallel that of the RSS. While there is no formal connection between the two groups, leaders of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti often consult with their RSS counter parts, and they support the other organizations affiliated with the RSS.76
Because the RSS kept no membership rolls during the pre-war period, and because it does not officially recognize caste divisions, it is not possible to make any precise description of its membership. However, RSS informants note that it recruited largely in urban areas and from high caste, middle-income groups.77 Its success in recruiting middle-level government employees and teachers worried the government, and a Central Provinces Government Gazette notification in 1932 prohibited government employees from taking part in the activities of the RSS.78 Nagpur district officials also ruled that teachers in government schools could not join the RSS. This ruling was a result of a 31 December 1931 memorandum from the Central Provinces Department of Local Self-Government, advising local government units that its employees could not participate in a ‘communal’ and ‘political organization’. Neither of these restrictions seems to have adversely affected the RSS.79
Hedgewar maintained close ties with the Hindu Mahasabha leadership, due to his close association with Dr Munje and V. D. Savarkar. Dr Munje presided over the 1927 Hindu Mahasabha annual session at Ahmedabad, and he invited the RSS to perform drills at the session, providing Hedgewar with the opportunity to establish contacts with Mahasabha leaders throughout India.80 Material at the V. D. Savarkar collection in Bombay suggests that the RSS benefitted more from this relationship than did the Mahasabha. Prominent members of local Hindu sabhas would introduce RSS organizers to potential recruits and donors, provide organizers housing and the RSS with a meeting area. This assistance led many members of the Mahasabha, including Dr Munje, to conclude that the RSS would function as the youth wing of the Mahasabha.81 Events were to prove them wrong. To emphasize the non-political character to the RSS, Hedgewar refused to sanction RSS support of the Mahasabha’s 1938–1939 civil disobedience campaign in the princely state of Hyderabad, though individual RSS members took part in it.82 Savarkar was trying to turn the Mahasabha into a political party at a time when Hedgewar was seeking to insulate the RSS from politics. The Mahasabha established its own paramilitary youth group, the Ram Sena, in 1939.
The cooling of relations between the Mahasabha and the RSS after Hedgewar’s death in 1940 was a continuation of a process that had begun three years earlier when V. D. Savarkar was elected president of the Mahasabha. Savarkar attempted to give the organization a more specifically political orientation. Neither Hedgewar nor his successor wanted the RSS to be closely associated with a group whose political activities would place the RSS in direct opposition to the Congress.
Savarkar’s disdain for Golwalkar further soured relations between the two organizations. Both men were apprehensive regarding the other’s role in the Hindu unification movement. Savarkar did not appreciate Golwalkar’s saintly style, and Golwalkar had reservations about Savarkar’s unwillingness to compromise. Savarkar’s followers, particularly those in Maharashtra, considered him the driving force behind the Hindu unification movement. For example, Nathuram Godse, in his final statement to the court which tried him for the murder of Gandhi, states, ‘Millions of Hindu Sangthanists looked up to him [V. D. Savarkar] as the chosen hero, as the ablest and most faithful advocate of the Hindu cause. I too was one of them.’83 RSS members were not prepared to accept this. While many RSS members respected Savarkar, they did not consider him the supreme leader of Hindus. The tension between the two organizations shows up in an angry letter which Savarkar’s office issued in 1940 with the advice that
When there is such a serious conflict at a particular locality between any of the branches of the Sangh RSS and the Hindu Sabhaites that actual preaching is carried on against the Hindu Mahasabha . . ., then the Hindu Sabhaites should better leave the Sangh . . . and start their own Hindu Sabha volunteer corps.84
GOLWALKAR CHOSEN TO SUCCEED
After a protracted illness, Hedgewar died on 21 June 1940 in the home of Babasaheb Ghatate, the Nagpur sanghchalak (chief executive of the province). On 3 July the sanghchalak of the Central Provinces, acting as spokesman for five senior state sanghchalaks assembled in Nagpur, announced that Hedgewar had designated Golwalkar his successor on the day before he died.85 The choice stunned many RSS members, who had expected that Hedgewar would choose an older, more experienced person. Referring to the decision, Balasaheb Deoras, the sarsanghchalak, recalls that many RSS leaders were not sure if Golwalkar could handle his new responsibilities.
Possibly some of us may have thought at that time, that Guruji Golwalkar was new to the Sangh, and not experienced enough. So we might have been doubtful about how he would discharge his responsibility. Those who were outside the Sangh but had love for it were also apprehensive about the Sangh after Doctor Saheb.86
Golwalkar’s family background, training and interests made him an unlikely choice to succeed
Hedgewar. Golwalkar, unlike Hedgewar, came from a relatively prosperous and close-knit family. His father was a moderately successful civil servant who ended his career as the headmaster of a high school. Golwalkar, who had a youthful interest in sports and music, had a relatively uncomplicated childhood.87 His father encouraged him to study the sciences, and he dutifully honoured his father’s wishes and was an exemplary scholar. While a student, he displayed none of Hedgewar’s intense nationalism; indeed, he was remarkably apolitical. During his late adolescence, he developed a deep interest in religion and spiritual meditation. Two years after earning his MSc in biology at Banaras Hindu University, he was selected lecturer in zoology there. Some of Golwalkar’s students encouraged him to attend RSS meetings, but there is no indication that Golwalkar took a keen interest in the organization.
Hedgewar first met Golwalkar while visiting Benares in 1931, and according to account of this visit he was attracted to the ascetic twenty-five-year-old teacher.88 He was soon to have the opportunity to know him much better. Golwalkar’s parents requested that their son return to Nagpur to prepare himself for assuming the duties of a householder. This included studying law, then considered a promising avenue to higher status. Meanwhile, Hedgewar appointed him karyavah (secretary) of Nagpur’s main shakha, in 1934. In the summer of 1935, shortly after completing his law examinations, Golwalkar was asked to manage the RSS Officers’ Training Camp, a clear sign of his high standing with Hedgewar.
Yet, Golwalkar was a reluctant leader. Hedgewar feared that Golwalkar’s ascetic temperament could lead him to become a sannyasi (a religious recluse). His fears were justified, for in October 1936 Golwalkar abandoned his legal practice and his RSS activities and, without informing either his parents or Hedgewar, left for Bengal to study yoga under Swami Akhandananda, one of the surviving disciple of Swami Ramakrishna and a colleague of Swami Vivekananda. A RSS pamphlet says of that experience, ‘It had also brought to him the realization of “self’’ which is the sine qua non for knowledge of the eternal and ultimate truth.’89 His religious guide died on 7 February 1937, and a distraught Golwalkar returned to Nagpur where Hedgewar persuaded him to fulfil his religious duties through the RSS. Golwalkar, the filial junior, must have had a difficult time reaching the decision to work full-time in the RSS as this meant that he had to ignore his parents’ wishes. Nevertheless, he threw himself into his new career with the same energy he had devoted to his earlier academic career, and to religion.
Golwalkar, by his own account, was a rather blunt and short-tempered young man, qualities considered inappropriate for an RSS worker. It disturbed Hedgewar. In a rare insight into his own character, Golwalkar recalls:
I had read a vast number of books on various subjects in those days, and there developed around me a thick intellectual sheath through which Doctor’s words could not penetrate. But a process of absorption began slowly. I then met him and my whole life changed. I forgot my self-importance.90
One could question whether Golwalkar ever fundamentally changed. For example, when he was negotiating the removal of the ban of the RSS in 1948, the government frequently expressed its irritation with his blunt manner. T. R. V. Shastri, an attorney who served as a mediator between the government and the RSS at the time, commented on his abrasiveness: ‘Mr M. S. Golwalkar is a blunt man innocent of the etiquette required in a correspondence with Government. The soft word that turneth away wrath is not among his gifts.’91
Despite his apprehensions regarding Golwalkar, Hedgewar recognized that the young Madhav had the qualities of leadership. He placed him in charge of the annual All-India Officers’ Training Camp at Nagpur for three consecutive years (1937–39). The position is a key one, and is a sign of the respect accorded a person by the RSS leadership. The RSS conducts a large number of camps each year, but the most important are the Officers’ Training Camps.92 Hedgewar, from all accounts, was pleased by Golwalkar’s ability to handle complex details of a large camp. Hedgewar was also impressed by his public speaking and literary abilities. In 1938 Golwalkar prepared the first systematic statement of RSS ideology, ‘We or our Nationhood Defined’, a text which he later revealed was an abridgment of an essay on nationalism (i.e., ‘Rashtra Mimansa’) by Babarao Savarkar. During Hedgewar’s increasingly frequent illnesses, Golwalkar substituted for him on the speaker’s platform. The confirmation of his acceptance into the inner circle of the RSS came at the 1939 Gurudakshina festival (an occasion for honouring the RSS flag and contributing to the RSS treasury) in Nagpur, where Hedgewar announced that he had selected Golwalkar to be the new general secretary, the second most important position in the RSS.93
REORIENTATION OF THE RSS UNDER GOLWALKAR
Golwalkar’s saintly style and his apparent disinterest in politics convinced some swayamsevaks that the RSS had become more concerned with other-worldly implications of character building than with its national political implications. Links between the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS were virtually severed: the military department of the RSS was dismantled;94 the RSS remained aloof from the anti-British agitations during World War II, and it refused to assist the various militarization and paramilitary schemes advocated by many other Hindu nationalists. Golwalkar, unlike Hedgewar, showed no public interest in the movement to enlist Hindus in the armed forces of British India.95
A significant part of the RSS establishment in Bombay province, particularly in the Marathi-speaking districts where the Hindu Mahasabha had a firm base, was disturbed by the reorientation of the RSS under Golwalkar. K. B. Limaye, sanghchalak of the province, resigned, underscoring the depth of the discontent there.96 A number of swayamsevaks defected in 1942, and formed the Hindu Rashtra Dal the next year. Nathuram Godse, the founder of the paramilitary organization, intended to use it to fight against British rule. It received the blessing of Savarkar.97
Despite the apprehensions regarding Golwalkar’s leadership, there was no large-scale defection. He moved quickly to consolidate his position by creating a new position—provincial pracharak (organizer)—responsible directly to him rather than to the provincial sanghchalaks. He convinced several local Congress figures to preside over RSS functions, which offered convincing public proof that the RSS was not the youth front of the Hindu Mahasabha.
Throughout the war period, RSS policy was influenced by fears regarding the potential adverse effect of the war on the Hindu community. First, the RSS must be prepared to protect Hindu interests should the Japanese invade the subcontinent. Perhaps even more compelling was the fear that communal warfare would erupt in the post-war period, as it had after World War I. Golwalkar believed that the British should not be given any excuse to ban the RSS. When the British banned military drill and the use of uniforms in all non-official organizations, the RSS complied. On 29 April 1943 Golwalkar distributed a circular to senior RSS figures, announcing the termination of the RSS military department. The wording of the circular reveals his apprehensions regarding the possibility of a ban on the RSS:
We discontinued practices included in the government’s early order on military drill and uniforms to keep our work clearly within bounds of law, as every law abiding institution should . . . Hoping that circumstances would ease early, we had in a sense only suspended that part of our training. Now, however, we decide to stop it altogether and abolish the department without waiting for the time to change.98
Golwalkar was not a revolutionary in the conventional sense of the term. The British understood this. In an official report on RSS activity, prepared in 1943, the Home Department concluded, ‘. . . it would be difficult to argue that the RSS constitutes an immediate menace to law and order . . .’ Commenting on the violence that accompanied the 1942 Quit India movement, the Bombay Home Department observed ‘. . . the Sangh has scrupulously kept itself within the law, and in particular, has refrained from taking part in the disturbances that broke out in August, 1942 . . .’99 Another Home Department official compared the leader of the paramilitary Khaskars to Golwalkar and noted that
‘while Inayatullah is an unbalanced and blustering megalomaniac, Golwalkar is wary, astute, and therefore by far the more capable leader’.100
At the same time, Golwalkar opposed as unpatriotic the effort of some Hindu organizations to encourage the recruitment of Hindus into the military. He was openly critical of the Hindu Mahasabha for engaging in such recruitment activities. The RSS continued to expand rapidly during the war years despite the defection of some members disappointed by its apparent retreat from activism. British sources indicate that in 1944 some 76,000 men regularly attended shakha in British India alone, of whom about one half were in the Central Provinces and the rest mainly in Bombay and Punjab.101 Between 1945 and 1948, the RSS membership surged. Most of that increase occurred in areas now part of Pakistan (especially Sind and the North-West Frontier Province), Punjab and Delhi. The membership centre shifted from Maharashtra to the Hindi-speaking heartland of India; however, the leadership remained overwhelmingly Maharashtrian, brahmin, and from Nagpur. Whereas a significant proportion of its Maharashtrian membership were from professional or middle-level service backgrounds, the north Indian membership, at least in the early period, tended to come from families engaged in small-scale entrepreneurial activities. These people, religiously oriented and in the process of consolidating their caste membership, may have been attracted by the reliance of the RSS on the symbols of the Great Tradition of Hinduism, and by its use of these symbols to justify social solidarity. The RSS was also more successful in attracting boys from the lower castes in northern India, where the brahmanical orientation of the RSS did not arouse the opposition of non-brahmins as it did in Maharashtra. Indeed, the RSS in north India may be attractive as a possible route to an advanced status.102
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