RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) & BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party)

Decades before the sexual assault of women during the 2002 Gujarat and 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, Hindutva propounder Veer Savarkar justified rape as a legitimate political tool. This he did by reconfiguring the idea of “Hindu virtue” in his book Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, which he wrote in Marathi a few years before his death in 1966.

Where it all started & what are they up to?

We will try to mention a few names who can be recognised as the root cause of whatever is happening in India today.

We need to go back to the time when the RSS was established i.e., in 1925. Although the issue can be traced way before 1925. India has seen the religious tensions in it's history but was fitful & on a lower scale.

K.B. Hedgewar (the main founder of the RSS) who's inability to stomach Gandhi's overtures to Muslims led him to set up the RSS. It's quite apparent to the eyes that these people who work or support the RSS have a lot of hatred towards a man who has been given the title "Father of India" i.e., Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Hedgewar considered Gandhi & Muslims to be 'anti-national' & hated the fact that Gandhi wanted peace between the two religions (Islām & Sanatan Dharma).

Hedgewar was inspired by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.

Savarkar who promoted this concept of a 'Hindu Rashtrya' or 'Hindutva', Savarkar was jealous of Muslims & their strictly followed religious practices. He made it clear that Hindutva was not the same as Hinduism. It had nothing to do with religion or rituals & that Hindutva was only Politics. Savarkar was an atheist so he was not interested in the Hindu religion. His only aim was to consolidate political power under the veil of religion.

As per Savarkar’s theory of Hindutva, a Hindu was someone who considered India to be his motherland (matrbhumi), the land of his ancestors (pitrbhumi) and his holy land (punya bhumi). India was a land of the Hindus since the Hindu faith originated in India. Islam and Christianity, born outside of India, couldn’t ease into Savarkar’s definition of a Hindu and in turn, into his schema of a ‘Hindu nation’.

Savarkar’s views became the foundation of contemporary Hindu nationalism. In his 1963 book “Six Glorious Epochs,” written shortly before his death, Savarkar stated that Muslims and Christians wanted to destroy Hinduism. He also contended that India should enforce the kind of authoritarian rule that was imposed in totalitarian Germany during WWII. Savarkar also believed Muslims in law enforcement and the military were potential traitors and their numbers needed to be kept in check.

Then comes another fanatic, M.S Golwalkar, who is surprisingly inspired by Adolf Hitler, said Hindus should learn from Hitler.

Golwalkar took over RSS after Hedgewar. from 1940–1973, he took Savarkar’s idea of Hindutva even further when he wrote the book 'We, or Our Nationhood Defined', Golwalkar wrote: “To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”

India’s current ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), officially adopted Hindutva as its defining credo in 1989. It is the doctrine assiduously promoted by the Hindu nationalist volunteer organization i.e., RSS. Savarkar’s treatise was the foundation for the 2014 BJP manifesto, which set the party’s agenda to mend the ‘discarded vision’ of a Hindu nation.

The RSS was twice banned as a political party. Once was after Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 by former member RSS Nathuram Godse. The second time was more recent, following the demolition of Babri masjid. After the first ban, the RSS and Mahasabha created their own political party called the Bharatiya Jana Sangh – the predecessor to the current BJP – in 1951.

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pro-Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, the country’s 200 million Muslim minority population has been increasingly targeted.

Secularism is written in India’s constitution, but the BJP’s reelection in 2019 demonstrates that India may be undergoing a fundamental change and embracing a Hindu identity.

The Rama temple construction is expected to be ready before the next parliamentary election in 2024. The building and celebration of a Hindu temple on the grounds of a destroyed Muslim mosque is, I believe, emblematic of India’s transition.

We are witnessing a concerted attempt by the RSS to establish MS Golwalkar as the ‘prophet of a resurgent India,’ ‘a saint,’ ‘the best son of Bharat mata,’ and the ‘biggest gift to Hindu society in the 20th Century,’… This inspite of the fact that Golwalkar, throughout his life, remained committed to the concept of Hindutva which meant an inherent faith in Casteism, Racism and Imperialism. He stood for the establishment of a Hindu rashtra, or nation, where minorities like Muslims and Christians could exist only as second class citizens.

The Modi regime, by working towards achieving Golwalkar’s values, is seeking to undermine India as we know it. It is seeking to undo India’s Constitution, democracy, and the equal rights and status of all irrespective of caste, creed, faith, gender. It seeks to create a Nazi Manuvadi authoritarian rule instead. Golwalkar’s dream is India’s nightmare. We must know it, and fight it with all our might.