26

May

RSS’s New Found Love For Gandhi:  Some Searching Questions

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Dr Satish Misra

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New Delhi | Monday | 26 May 2025

Since facts and truth have a very close relationship, one without the other remaining incomplete or questionable, the new found love of the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh (RSS) for Mohanchand Karamchand Gandhi among its followers in the current ruling dispensation including Prime Minister Narendra Modi requires to be seriously looked at and probed for a big majority of the country’s population which is being led up the garden path because of their sheer ignorance or disinterest in the legacy that the great Mahatma left for us including the ‘Idea of India’.

While other Hinduva groups like the Hindu Mahasabha, Hindu Vahini etc. continue to hold Gandhi responsible for the partition of the country and injustice meted out to Hindus by the Apostle of Peace, the RSS top leadership is bending backwards to create an impression by building a narrative that it was not against the Mahatma. However, it was not in full agreement with him nor did not fully endorse his views and policies or politics.  

Need for creating an alternative narrative has arisen as the RSS’s political arm Bharatiya Jana Sangh- slowly but surely inched towards achieving its objective of capture of political power in late 1970s when the Janata Party under Prime Minister Morarji Desai.

Jan Sangh’s top leader Atal Behari Vajpayee, who was the Minister of External Affairs in the Janata Party government, was confronted with the reality of how Mahatma Gandhi was respected all over the world and willy-nilly the Father of the Nation can’t be either ignored or insulted.

 

Article at a Glance
The article critiques the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS) recent attempts to align itself with Mahatma Gandhi's legacy, particularly under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership. It highlights the historical tension between Gandhi and Hindutva groups, such as the Hindu Mahasabha, which have long blamed him for the partition of India. The RSS, while trying to reshape its narrative to appear more favourable towards Gandhi, faces contradictions as some of its leaders openly praise Nathuram Godse, Gandhi's assassin. The article argues that Gandhi's vision of a united India, inclusive of Muslims, starkly contrasts with the RSS's ideology. Historian Ramchandra Guha emphasises that Gandhi had reservations about the RSS, which the current political climate seeks to obscure through propaganda. Ultimately, the article suggests that the RSS's efforts to appropriate Gandhi's legacy are disingenuous and historically inaccurate.

 

After the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980, when the Jana Sangh was forced to step out of the Janata Party on the issue of dual membership, Vajpayee, who became the founder President of the newly formed party declared that the new party would work towards Gandhian socialism. He initially attempted to incorporate Gandhian socialism as one of the ideological influences of the party in the 1980s to moderate its Hindu nationalism, but the BJP failed to achieve electoral success from this.

After a serious electoral debacle of the BJP in 1984 Lok Sabha polls, which were held after the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the party under new President L K Advani returned to the hard Hinduatva path bringing the issue of the Ramjanmabhoomi Temple in Ayodhya as its main agenda. 

Returning to its ideological moorings and the original path, the BJP embarked upon the hard Hinduatva path while the ruling Congress party deviated from its secular course giving enough room for the saffron party to grow electorally. In 1998, BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee formed a coalition government which lasted in power till 2004.

Because of constraints primarily that of lack of a clear majority in the Lok Sabha and being dependent on the support of its coalition partners along with Vajpayee’s moderate style of leadership, the party cadres and leaders remained somewhat subdued and did not go overboard with their deep- rooted hatred towards Gandhi and other leaders of the freedom movement.

Conditions changed dramatically in 2014 when the BJP won a clear majority in the Lok Sabha polls and the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi took oath as the 16th prime minister of the country. The RSS and the BJP, internally, primarily saw the success in the Lok Sabha elections as the rise of the Hinudatva forces which in turn emboldened its tank and file to become aggressive and truthful to their convictions and inculcated belief that rightful interests of Hindus were ignored by Gandhi and the successive Congress governments.

While newly acquired political power made middle ranking leaders like Union Minister Giriraj Singh, former Uttarakhand chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and former Bhopal MP Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur effusive in their praise of Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, the RSS and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi were seen paying lip service to the Father of the Nation. These statements also reflected the RSS- BJP’s ambivalence and expediency when it comes to taking positions on Gandhi and Godse.

Neither RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat nor PM Modi either openly condemned such utterances or imitated any disciplinary action against such leaders which was seen as a tacit approval. Some of the defining traits of the RSS character like double-speak, double standards and vast gap between the preaching and practise became evident. The RSS-BJP leadership followed the popular saying of running with the hare and hunting with hounds was on display.

Attempts to appropriate the Mahatma’s legacy of being a Hindu aside, the world views of Gandhi and the RSS, the BJP’s ideological fountainhead, were at odds, especially on the concepts of nationhood and the place of minorities, particularly Muslims, in Indian society.

Notwithstanding the RSS-BJP effort to project a positive view of Gandhi, historical facts tell an altogether different tale. In his lifetime, Gandhi had deep reservation towards Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS.

Eminent historian and Gandhi’s biographer Ramchandra Guha has categorically dismissed all claims that Gandhi had a positive view of the RSS. “On 15th November, he made a remarkable speech to the All India Congress Committee, where he asked its members to ‘be true to the basic character of the Congress and make Hindus and Muslims one, for which ideal the Congress has worked for more than sixty years’., Guha has pointed out in an article published in The Telegraph on 28 September 2019.

He urged his party colleagues to do all they could to make Muslims feel safe in India. ‘Violent rowdyism’, he remarked, ‘will not save either Hinduism or Sikhism.’ Then he added: ‘I hear many things about the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. I have heard it said that the Sangh is at the root of all this mischief. Let us not forget that public opinion is a far more potent force than a thousand swords. Hinduism cannot be saved by orgies of murder. You are now a free people. You have to preserve this freedom. You can do so if you are humane and brave and ever-vigilant, or else a day will come when you will rue the folly which made this lovely prize slip from your hands. I hope such a day will never come’.

The next day, at his regular prayer meeting, Gandhi said that while religious polarization was being furthered by the Muslim League, ‘there is also the Hindu Mahasabha assisted by members of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh who wish that all the Muslims should be driven away from the Indian Union’.

Gandhi was now no longer any illusions about the RSS. The Sangh, for its part, had hardened its hatred of the Mahatma, for all that he had been doing these past months to ensure that, whatever Pakistan did to its Hindu and Sikh minorities, all Muslims who chose to stay on in independent India would be accorded the rights of equal citizenship. In the first week of December 1947, M. S. Golwalkar addressed an RSS meeting in Delhi. Here Golwalkar remarked, ‘referring to Muslims’, that ‘no power on Earth could keep them in Hindustan. They would have to quit the country. Mahatma Gandhi wanted to keep the Muslims in India so that the Congress may profit by their votes at the time of election. But, by that time, not a single Muslim will be left in India. … Mahatma Gandhi could not mislead them any longer. We have the means whereby such men can be immediately silenced, but it is our tradition not to be inimical to Hindus. If we are compelled, we will have to resort to that course too.’

Guha’s words leave no doubt whatsoever that Gandhi never accepted the RSS but the current rulers continue to make gullible masses believe complete lies and half-facts through the massive propaganda machinery.

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