Appropriating Gandhi: RSS and the Politics of Historical
Revision
On Gandhi Jayanti 2025, Prime Minister
Modi praised the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as a century-long agent of
“service to the nation.” This tribute raises critical questions about
historical memory and ideological contrast. While Gandhi championed
non-violence, pluralism, and constitutional morality, the RSS historically
opposed the independence movement, admired fascist regimes, rejected the Indian
Constitution, and fostered communal polarization. The assassination of Gandhi
by Nathuram Godse, an RSS affiliate, underscores this antagonism. This op-ed
critically examines the RSS’s ideological trajectory, highlighting its fascist
inclinations, majoritarian agenda, and persistent clash with Gandhian
principles. It argues that appropriating Gandhi’s legacy to validate the RSS is
a deliberate effort to blur historical truths, and emphasizes the urgency of
defending Gandhi’s vision of a just, inclusive, and pluralist India.
On Gandhi Jayanti this
year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi lauded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
(RSS), calling its hundred years a saga of “service to the nation.” For some,
this was ritual homage. For others, it was a chilling political message: the attempt
to cloak the RSS — once banned after Gandhi’s assassination — in the halo of
Gandhi himself.
This is not just
symbolic. It marks a deliberate effort to fuse Gandhi’s moral authority with
the RSS’s contested legacy, ahead of its centenary in 2025 and the 2026
elections.
Gandhi’s India vs.
Golwalkar’s India
For Gandhi, India was to
be a federation of faiths. “I want it to be wholly tolerant, with its religions
working side by side,” he wrote in Young India (1924). He insisted that
Muslims, Christians, Parsis, Sikhs, and Hindus were all part of India’s civilisational
fabric.
The RSS disagreed.
Inspired by Savarkar’s Hindutva (1923), it defined the nation as a Hindu
pitribhumi (fatherland) and punyabhumi (holy land). M. S. Golwalkar, its second
chief, rejected the pluralist Constitution, writing in Bunch of Thoughts
(1966): “It has absolutely nothing which can be said to have grown from the
soil of this land.”
Where Gandhi saw India’s
strength in diversity, Golwalkar saw danger in difference.
Fascist
Echoes in Hindutva
The RSS’s fascination
with European fascism is no secret. In We, or Our Nationhood Defined (1939),
Golwalkar praised Hitler’s “race pride” and the “lesson” of purging Jews.
Hedgewar and his circle admired Mussolini’s youth brigades. Discipline,
uniformity, cultural nationalism — these were seen as templates for a Hindu
rashtra.
That legacy is rarely
spoken of today. Yet when the Prime Minister praises the RSS on Gandhi Jayanti,
he sanitises not only its role in Gandhi’s assassination aftermath but also its
ideological debt to fascist Europe.
Gandhi’s Assassin and
the RSS
The RSS has long
struggled with the shadow of Nathuram Godse, Gandhi’s killer. Godse was once an
RSS member and later a leader of its ideological cousin, the Hindu Mahasabha.
The Government of India banned the RSS in 1948 after the murder. The Kapur Commission
later recorded the “atmosphere of hatred” against Gandhi fostered by Hindutva
groups.
Today, BJP MPs and MLAs
have openly praised Godse as a “true nationalist.” In 2019, Pragya Thakur, a
BJP MP from Bhopal, called Godse a patriot. She later apologised under
pressure, but the fact that she sits in Parliament is itself a symbol of
Gandhi’s betrayal.
Rewriting
Gandhi Out, Writing Savarkar In
The battle over Gandhi’s
legacy is visible in classrooms. NCERT textbooks have quietly deleted
references to Gandhi’s assassination, the role of Hindu extremists, and Godse’s
ideology. Passages critical of the RSS have disappeared. At the same time, Savarkar
has been elevated, portrayed as a misunderstood patriot rather than a
polarising ideologue who openly rejected Gandhi’s politics.
This is no innocent
curricular trimming. It is the deliberate hollowing out of Gandhi to make space
for the RSS within the nationalist pantheon.
Gandhi
as Statue, Not Spirit
The state still
celebrates Gandhi — in statues, slogans, and Swachh Bharat logos. But these are
emptied icons. His radical insistence on Hindu–Muslim harmony, his opposition
to untouchability, his resistance to centralised industrialism, and above all
his rejection of majoritarian nationalism — these core ideals are sidelined.
In their place stands a
sanitised Gandhi, safe enough to be invoked by the same forces that once
despised him.
Why
Modi’s Tribute Matters
With the RSS’s centenary
approaching in 2025, and elections looming, Modi’s message was strategic. By
invoking Gandhi and RSS together, he attempts to erase the moral gulf between
them. If Gandhi can be appropriated as a vague “patron saint of service,” then
the RSS can claim to be the rightful heir to his legacy.
But this is historical
falsehood. Gandhi died resisting precisely the ideology that the RSS embodied.
He gave his life for Hindu–Muslim unity. Godse killed him for that.
The
Stakes Today
This is not about the
past. It is about the present. When students no longer read about Gandhi’s
assassination, when MPs call his killer a patriot, when the Constitution is
dismissed as “foreign,” and when Gandhi is invoked to legitimise those who once
opposed him — India risks becoming unmoored from its pluralist foundations.
The battle between
Gandhi’s India and Golwalkar’s India is not abstract. It is being waged in
classrooms, legislatures, WhatsApp forwards, and public memory.
Conclusion:
Choosing Gandhi, Not Hollowing Him Out
To remember Gandhi is not
to recite platitudes. It is to defend his vision of non-violence, religious
pluralism, and moral democracy against the encroachment of majoritarian
authoritarianism.
Modi’s tribute to the RSS
on Gandhi Jayanti was not respect. It was appropriation. To merge Gandhi with
the RSS is not homage but betrayal. Gandhi’s ideals and the RSS’s ideology were
not parallel lines — they were clashing currents. One gave us the Republic; the
other distrusted it. One died for harmony; the other fostered its opposite.
On Gandhi Jayanti 2025,
India must confront the choice: Will Gandhi remain a statue on a pedestal,
emptied of meaning, or will his living spirit resist the slide into uniformity
and authoritarianism?
That choice is not
historical. It is the battle for India’s soul, unfolding before our eyes.
References
1.
Golwalkar, M. S. Bunch of Thoughts. 1966.
Nagpur: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
2.
Golwalkar, M. S. We, or Our Nationhood
Defined. 1939. Nagpur: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
3.
Kapur Commission Report. Inquiry into the
Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India,
1970.
4.
Organiser. Editorials: “National Flag”
(1947), “Manu Rules Our Hearts” (1950). Nagpur: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
5.
Jaffrelot, Christophe. The Hindu
Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics. London: C. Hurst & Co., 1996.
6.
Bhishikar, C. P. Biography of K. B.
Hedgewar. Nagpur: Sahitya Akademi, 1980.
7.
India. Ministry of Home Affairs.
Government Records on RSS Bans, 1947–1949. National Archives of India, New
Delhi.
8.
Guha, Ramachandra. India After Gandhi: The
History of the World’s Largest Democracy. London: Pan Macmillan, 2007.
9.
Sarkar, Sumit. Modern India 1885–1947. New
Delhi: Macmillan, 1983.
10.
Narasimhan, V. Hindu Nationalism and the
RSS: History, Ideology, and Controversy. New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2012.
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