Ferreting Out the Bible of Hindu Fascism (Hindutwa) I K Shukla

Ferreting Out the Bible of Hindu Fascism (Hindutwa)

I K Shukla

Published on February 13, 2007

Why has this Bible of Hindutwa, first published in 1939, succeeded by four reprints until 1947, been withdrawn from RSS shelves and made unavailable to the general public?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. ï¿½it was only part of the general literature of the times that he was examining.ï¿½

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 Golwalkarï¿½s 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 ï¿½ 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 ï¿½anadiï¿½ (without a beginning, beyond history, and pre-historical). His repeated use of the word ï¿½scientificï¿½ 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 Companyï¿½s 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 Golwalkarï¿½s 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 Gandhiï¿½s 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 Golwalkarï¿½s 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? :

ï¿½The 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.ï¿½ (p. 146, Zindagi Ka Safar- 3: Deendayal Upadhyay Ki Hatya Se Indira Gandhi Ki Hatya Tak, 2003, Delhi).

And on Vajpayee:

ï¿½Sometime 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 comingï¿½ï¿½ (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.

Prof. I.K. Shukla is a rewound literature and cultural connoisseur, writer and poet and author of several books including Hindutva: Treason and Terrorism, Hindutva: An Autopsy of Fascism as a Theoterrorist Cult and Other Essays etc.