Golwalkar's View on Territorial Nationalism

Golwalkar was of the view that territorial nationalism was inadequate to define nationhood. Regarding territorial nationalism, he narrated a telling example: once in the Zoology department of a college, the students planned to crack a joke with their old professor. They removed the legs of a water bug and joined the legs of another species to it. They brought it to their professor and asked him in a puzzled tone, “Sir, we could not make out what this is. What new type of bug is it”? The old professor examined it under a microscope and remarked gravely, “How is it, boys, you do not know such a simple common bug as this? The name of this bug is ‘humbug’.” Golwalkar opined: “It is this ‘humbug’ type of nationalism that was vivified. Such a nation cannot be a living body and so it is that we see today, the germs of corruption, disintegration and dissipation, eating into the vitals of our nation for having given up the natural living nationalism in the pursuit of an unnatural, unscientific and lifeless, hybrid concept of territerial nationalism”.

Golwalkar felt that the evolution of nation, nationhood and nationalism in India had been unique and had no parallel in the history of nationalism in Europe. Indian nationalism was based on eternal laws governing man, society and cosmos. Nationalism in Europe, according to Golwalkar, was more or less based on the social contract theory. He described it as a partnership between shareholders in a joint stock company. Indian nationalism or rashtravad was based on individual contribution and sacrifice for the larger interest of the Rashtra which was a bigger entity. The commercial nationslism of the west was highly individualistic. According to Golwalkar, in this variety of alien nationalism the individual’s mind was not trained and tuned for sacrifices, renunciation in favour of the bigger entity- the nation. Therefore, there was every possibility of the growth of parochial tendencies and give-and-take relationship between different sub-groups. In such a condition the integrity of the nation would be at stake. In Golwalkar’s words: “Pseudo-secularism is the inevitable product of the foreign concept of nationalism that we move into our constitutional fabric.” According to him, Indian nationalism is Rashtravad which stipulates unity, convergence and assimilation in a mainstream culture.

In his theorization Golwalkar differentiated the nation from the state. That the exclusive dependence of national life on state authority could not but lead to decay and destruction was sought to be substantiated by him with references drawn from a comparative study of civilizations. He posed the dependence problematic thus: “Why did all those nations and civilizations who once led the world in the field of material progress vanish in the darkness of the ancient past? 

Golwalkar was of the view that since the national life in those countries was highly dependent and centred around state power, they got destroyed. He thought that the power of the organized life of the people imbued with the spiritual urge of our ancient heritage has been the secret of our immortality all through these ages. He affirmed that for nationhood the essential ingredient is a land inhabited by a people who treat the land to be their mother. This mother child relationship was the essence of nationhood, the Rashtra.

Mere common residence in a particular territory cannot forge an unified national society with common character and qualities. The mere fact of birth or nurture in a particular territory, without a corresponding mental pattern, can never give a person the status of a national in that land, mental allegiance has been, in fact, the universally accepted criterion for nationality. So the Muslims and Christians here should give up their present foreign mental complexion and merge in the common stream of our national life. This is our concept of Hindu Nation and our attitude towards the non-Hindus residing here-the only rational, practical and right approach. In spite of this rational and positive approach, there are some who imagine that the concept of Hindu Nation is a challenge to the very existence of the Muslim and the Christian co-citizens and they will be thrown out and exterminated. Nothing could be more absurd or detrimental to our national sentiment. It is insult to our great and all- embracing cultural heritage.

Golwalkar asked question to our political leaders talked about national integration, and emotional integration. what is that ‘common emotion’, that common basis on which all can come together? What are those eternal life-springs of our national life that go to make it unified, resurgent and glorious? He suggested three points for Indian nationhood— feeling of burning devotion to the land, the feeling of fellowship, of fraternity, and the realisation as the children of one great common Mother, and the intense awareness of a common current of national life. This trinity of values or, in a word, Hindu Nationalism, forms the bedrock of our national edifice.

In Golwalkar’s view this emotional bond between the masses and the motherland was the most important ingredient of nationhood in India. According to him, the attitude imprinted in the minds of the Indians towards the motherland had been unique. In this country people were taught incidentally and non-formally that the land was a mother to them. For centuries the people lived together in a bond of oneness. They identified the geographical unit of territory as India and treated this piece of land as mother. The society having mother-son relationship with the land through simple acts and gestures in the course of centuries evolved a set of value systems of its own. Those special traits and qualities had been summed up by Golwalkar as Hindutva. 

In his own words: “We find that this great country of ours, extending in the north from the Himalayas with all its branches spreading north, south, east and west, and with the territories included in those great branches right upto the Southern Ocean inclusive of all islands, is one great natural unit. As the Child of this soil, our well-evolved society has been living here for thousands of years. This society has been known, especially in modern times, as the Hindu society. This also is a historical fact. For, it is the forefathers of the Hindu people who have set up standards and traditions of love and devotion for the motherland. They also prescribed various duties and rites with a view to keep aglow in the people’s mind for all time to come, a living and complete picture of our motherland and devotion to it as a Divine Entity. And again it is they who shed their blood in defence of the sanctity and integrity of the motherland.” The theories of territorial nationalism is a common danger, which formed the basis of our concept of a nation, had deprived us of the positive and inspiring content of our real Hindu Nationhood.

That all this has been done only by the Hindu people is a fact to which our history of thousands of years bears eloquent testimony. It means that only the Hindu has been living here as the child of this soil.... The cannon adoration for the motherland has made our people, in a way, related by blood to one another—  from the man in Kashi to the man in Kanyakumari and from a forest-dweller to a city-dweller. All the various castes, the various ways of worshiping god, the various languages are all expressions of one great homogeneous solid Hindu people -the children of this motherland..... Therefore, we say that in this land of ours, India, the national life is of the Hindu People. In short, this is the Hindu nation”. Thus in Golwalkar’s conceptualization the Hindus constituted the life-blood and the spirit of the nation in India.