BOOK REVIEW:
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Golwalkar's We or Our Nationhood Defined: A
Critique by Shamsul Islam: Pharos Media and
Publishing Pvt Ltd, New Delhi, 2006, pp 162,
Rs.120.
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Why has this Bible of Hindutwa, first published
in 1939, succeeded by four reprints until 1947,
been withdrawn from RSS shelves and made unavailable
to the general public? Why has its authorship
been denied, fudged over, and brazenly lied
about in a concerted manner, among others including
the author, by Lalchand K. Advani, Atal B.Vajpeyi,
and David Frawley, who outdid all with three
big lies in just two sentences: 1. Golwalkar
just translated it, 2. in 1938, and 3. "it
was only part of the general literature of the
times that he was examining."
How fanatically vicious Golwalkar was in laying
down his version of Mein Kampf informs this
major handbook of Hindu fascism wherein he strips
himself for condemnation and revulsion as an
evil ogre of Dark ages. The long and well-researched
Introduction by Prof. Islam in itself has become
an invaluable asset for serious researchers,
scholarly academics, and committed activists.
He deserves kudos for retrieving Golwalkar's
poison-spewing book, always revered by RSS and
its affiliates, and widely regarded as the Bible
of Hindutwa fascists, among others, by two CIA
agents close to them ? Jean A. Curran (author
of Militant Hinduism in Indian Politics: A Study
of the RSS, 1951) and Craig Baxter (author of
The Jana Sangh: A Biography of an Indian Political
Party, 1969).
An aside for relieving the tedium is in order.
How shallow was Golwalkar becomes clear from
his mention of names of historical importance
in the field of literature: Sharatchandra Chakrawarti,
Babu Premchand (p. 42). I had never known of
them. Golwalkar had casually heard these names
and embellished them with his imagination. This
imagination is at full play in his understanding,
skewed and sickly, of history, human civilization,
culture, and modern polity. No wonder only such
a one could call Hindutwa "anadi"
(without a beginning, beyond history, and pre-historical).
His repeated use of the word "scientific"
is comic and contemptible, and his exhilaration
at Fatherland a slavish adoption of the German
word Vaterland with all its concomitant evils
fleshing it out. This unabashed and implacable
devotee of three evil Ms - Manu, Mill (James,
East India Company's employee, hack historian,
who partitioned Indian History into three divisions:
Hindu, Muslim, British, 1817, -not Christian-)
, and Mussolini, besides Hitler, regarded them
all as great regenerators and benefactors of
mankind!
The riddle is why the Hindutwa luminaries and
lumpens who have always venerated this Bible
of Hindu fascism are fighting shy of it at present.
Not that they have abjured its ideology of racial
hatred and violence against non-Hindus, of ethnic
extremism and bloody purge, of India as the
fatherland of Hindus only, once more adumbrated
without any remission in Golwalkar's later book
Bunch of Thoughts. The reason for this coyness
and concealment is a mix of cowardice and criminality
that have distinguished the bloody enterprise
of the Hindutwa cult since its inception. It
has vindicated its assassination of Gandhi on
January 1948 by a recurrent series of mass slaughters
since 1992 of Muslims, Christians, and others
it decreed to be non-Hindu.
In Gandhi's murder the involvement of RSS became
too evident, too undeniable for it to escape
unscathed. Hence, a new political creature of
Hindu communalism, Jan Sangh, was fabricated.
Hence too the disavowal of Golwalkar's book
We or Our Nationhood Defined, as an expedient.
What, howeve,r the book had already achieved
remarkably successfully through its wide diffusion
was to remain inviolate, i.e., its racist precepts
and its politically invidious indoctrination
of the masses. The ban on RSS on 4 Feb.1948
was a temporary glitch, but it was also a safety
valve, curiously, helping RSS more than hindering
it. The legal hibernation thus secured, it went
ahead with its perfidies and pogroms, neither
handicapped, nor humbled. The title of this
seminal booklet was well chosen, not in a symbolic
but in quite a substantive sense. It defined
the Hindutwa cult of crime and sedition, as
it defiled the Indian nationhood at the same
time. It thus upheld treason as virtue, pitched
terrorism as duty, tyranny as statecraft, and
theocracy as polity. The sinister screed had
achieved its squalid ends well.
It would be apposite to quote the redoubtable
RSS stalwart of yesteryears, Prof.Balraj Madhok
on Vajpeyi and Advani, as extremely pertinent
to the criminality that has characterized RSS
all along. How did Advani climb the organizational
ladder? :
"The position of Lal Krishan Advani was
like a puppet. He was not capable for the post
(presidentship of BJS) which was given to him
after discarding many senior workers. I knew
through my personal experience that he is a
boneless wonder. He has neither personal integrity
nor opinion. But he is lucky. The office which
he had got due to the offerings (prasad) of
Vajpayee and officials of Sangh, keeping aside
its honour, he acted as a bonded labourer, for
any work assigned to him." (p. 146, Zindagi
Ka Safar- 3: Deendayal Upadhyay Ki Hatya Se
Indira Gandhi Ki Hatya Tak, 2003, Delhi).
And on Vajpayee:
"Sometime back when I was the President
of Jana Sangh, Jagadish Prasad Mathur, in charge
of the Central Office, who was staying with
Atal Bihari at 30, Rajendra Prasad Road, had
complained to me that Atal had turned that house
into a den of immoral activities. There everyday
new girls were coming?" (p.25, Ibid.)
Madhok points out unreservedly to the triad
of Vajpayee, Nana Deshmukh and Balasaheb Deoras,
responsible for the murder of Dendayal Upadhyaya
in 1968 at Mughalsarai Railway junction, having
been patronized by Golwalkar, popular as Guru
in the RSS lore.
These qualifications and attributes, essential
to Hindutwa, have propelled it onward. It earned
its cherished laurels as a den of cutthroats,
kleptomaniacs, womanizers, rapists, arsonists,
terrorists and traitors by remaining constant
to its cultist pledge of grime and gore. For
unraveling its various layers of diabolical
and anti-national crimes in such a painstakingly
thorough manner, and highlighting the threat
they pose to the unity and security of the nation,
the author has put us all in his debt. 5Feb.07
