Review: When RSS icon Golwalkar claimed authorship of G D Savarkar's books

One of the reasons that [Madhav Sadashiv] Golwalkar’s elevation (as RSS general secretary in 1939) was accepted without any demur was because of his image of an ideologue-thinker. Apart from his ascetic-like appearance and various sojourns to ashrams, Golwalkar had taken upon himself to translate G.D. (aka Babarao) Savarkar’s book in Marathi titled, Rashtra Mimansa, into English, which was published in March 1939 as We or Our Nationhood Defined.
 
Although this proved to be a significant milestone in his career, for some strange reason, Golwalkar denied the authorship to Savarkar [who was Veer Savarkar’s brother] and instead claimed the book to be his ‘maiden attempt’ in the Preface of the first edition. He, however, did acknowledge Rashtra Mimansa as amongst his ‘chief sources of inspiration and help’ and further explained in the Preface that he wrote it, despite it being ‘superfluous.’
 
The original Marathi version was published in 1934, but when Golwalkar began translating it, copies of the [original] book were withdrawn and hence unavailable to readers. For a period spanning a quarter of a century, Golwalkar had supposedly concealed the fact that the book was not his original work. Yet another observation was that the [translated] book often lapsed ‘into intemperate language here and there,’ and when a second edition was published a few years later, it had been ‘somewhat cleansed of these excesses of language.’
 

Photo: Reuters

[Golwalkar’s] book went into three reprints, the last in 1947, but it took more than a decade and a half before a public statement was made in 1963 attributing the original authorship of We or Our Nationhood Defined to G.D. Savarkar. Finally, Golwalkar declared that his was an abridged version of Rashtra Mimansa and that he had handed over the Hindi translation to someone, and put to rest the mystery surrounding the book.
 
Despite Golwalkar’s proclamation, the story of two authors claiming authorship of the same book did not create any ripples in the local press. Amongst other reasons, it was because the RSS was still a marginal political force at the time; second, as the declaration was made during the eightieth birthday celebrations of V.D. Savarkar, who was still suspected to be involved in Gandhi’s assassination, the controversy was given short shrift and continued to be under wraps for the next four decades. For the people at large, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar was the author of We or Our Nationhood Defined and the book is still regarded as a seminal work by the RSS.
 
Eventually, a booklet titled Sri Guruji and Indian Muslims released by the RSS in February 2006 (written by Prof. Rakesh Sinha, an RSS-leaning academic who was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 2018) made two critical points in this regard: first, that the book ‘neither represents the views of the Guruji [that is, Golwalkar] nor of the RSS,’ and, second, that this was an abridged version of G.D. Savarkar’s work which was previously mentioned by Dhananjay Keer in his autobiography of K.B. Hedgewar and was accepted by the RSS.
 

But what was most intriguing, and given Golwalkar’s scholarship, was that if he did take recourse to such a route, then why did he do so in the first place? Was it to ride roughshod over the RSS leadership and gear up to combat any opposition to his appointment as general secretary, and eventually sarsanghchalak? Moreover, the basic premise of G.D. Savarkar’s Rashtra Mimansa was already treated as a sacred principle by the entire sangh....
 
At no point did Golwalkar disagree with G.D. Savarkar’s postulations. Since then, the RSS has somehow failed to ward off claims that as an organisation, it ratifies Golwalkar’s version of the original book....
 
In September 2018, there was a concerted effort by the RSS to debunk parts of Golwalkar’s contentious political arguments. At a three-day lecture series, the RSS’ sarsanghchalak, Mohan Bhagwat had asserted that many of Golwalkar’s views had outlived their purpose, because they were made in a particular historical context. This was however not the first time when Golwalkar’s theories were rejected by the RSS. The organisation had expressed its discomfort over Bunch of Thoughts, a compilation of Golwalkar’s speeches and articles, published in 1966. The book contained a chapter titled, “Internal Threats”, with sub-sections on Muslims, Christians, and Communists. The section on Muslims argued that the community had adopted a two-fold strategy after Partition—‘direct aggression’, and ‘swelling numbers’, and that the problem was a ‘time-bomb’ for they had neither forgotten nor learnt anything and were working towards creating ‘miniature Pakistans.’
 
In the chapter, Golwalkar had claimed that not all ‘pro-Pakistan elements’ had gone away and in fact the ‘Muslim menace has increased a hundredfold.’ In 2004, the RSS released a twelve-volume compendium titled, Sri Guruji Samagra or the Collected Works of Sri Guruji.
 
However, a year later, the organisation felt the need for a ‘diluted’ version of Golwalkar’s political views and published Sri Guruji: Drishti aur Darshan (or, Sri Guruji: Vision and Mission). In his speech, Bhagwat argued that the views contained in this particular book were more representative of Golwalkar’s thoughts.
 
Although the RSS continues to grapple with certain aspects of its past, in so far as Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar is concerned, the cadre continues to revere him as he was projected in its annals.

The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right
Author: Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay
Publisher: Westland
Pages: 432
Price: Rs 799

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Reproduced with permission