Golwalkar's View of Indian nationalism

Indian nationalism is complimentary to universal humanism as an integrated whole. Golwalkar felt that any arrangement evolved for achieving world welfare could be fruitful only if the men behind it were inspired by real love for mankind which would enable them to mould these individuals and their conduct in tune with the welfare of humanity. Golwalkar opined: “When cultural nationalism was vibrant our arms stretched as far as America on the one side, that was long before Columbus ‘discovered’ America - and on the other side, China, Japan, Cambodia, Malaya, Siam, Indonesia and all the South-East Asian countries and right upto Siberia and Mongolia in the north. Our powerful political empire too spread over these South-East areas and continued for 1400 years, the Shailendra’ Empire alone flourishing for over 700 years -standing as a powerful bulwark against Chinese expansionism”.

According to Golwalkar, during all those centuries there were neither uprisings by the local people nor their exterminations which would have been the inevitable result if there had been the slightest sign of domination or exploitation by a foreign people and a foreign culture. In his words, “On the contrary, those people were grateful to us. They adored our nation and longed to give up their mortal coils on the banks of Ganga. That stands in glowing contrast to the blood stained pages of history of expansion of Islam, Christianity and now communism and to the various ‘world conquerors’ produced by other countries ... our leaders were not prepared to revise and correct their territorial concept of nationalism which led to the unprecedented tragedy of partition of our motherland, with all its continuing and growing dangers, and the uprooting of over two crores of our brethren resulting in their indescribable miseries of desolation, distress, dishonour.... This is the price we have paid and are even now paying for their wrong and unnatural concept of nation that we have adopted.... The concept of territorial nationalism has verily emasculated our nation and what more can we expect of a society deprived of its vital energy)?”.