Hindutva Ideology of Golwalkar

 

Golwalkar preferred the idea of purity of race and culture. He was convinced that intermingling of races was neither desirable nor feasible. The following is what he said in this context: “To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races like the Jews; Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by”.

The quotation cited above makes it clear that Golwalkar was in no mood to incorporate races other than the Hindu race in his framework. He was totally opposed to the idea of a multi-racial composite pattern of nationhood. He held Hindutva to be the quintessence of Indian nationhood.  He also claimed that the Hindus came into this land from nowhere, but are indigenous children of the soil always, from times immemorial. He considered this racial factor to be the most important ingredient of a nation. According to Golwalkar, the origin of the Hindu people, the date since when they were living here a civilized life, was unknown to the scholars of history. He held that to define such a people was impossible, just as someone could not express or define reality because words came into existence after the reality. Similar was the case with the Hindu people. They existed when there was no necessity for any name.

Golwalkar was of the opinion that the Hindus were the good and enlightened people. They were the people who knew about the laws of nature and the laws of the spirit. They built a great civilization, a great culture and a unique social order. They had brought into actual life almost everything that was beneficial to mankind. Then the rest of humanity were just bipeds and so no distinctive name was given to the Hindus.

Golwalkar held that when different faiths arose in foreign lands in course, of time and those alien faiths came in contact with the Hindus, the necessity for naming was felt. Various names were given at different times, just as the river Ganga was called Gangotri, Bhagirathi, Jahnavi and Hooghly at different stages. According to him: “Nor is it historically correct to say that the name ‘Hindu’ is of recent origin or that it was given to us by foreigners. We find the name Sapta-Sindhu in the oldest records of the world - the Rig Veda itself - as an epithet applied to our land and our people. And it is also well-known that the syllable ‘S’ in Sanskrit is at times changed to ‘H’ in some of our Prakrit Languages and even in European Languages. And thus the name Hapta-Hindu and then ‘Hindu’ came into currency. Thus ‘Hindu’ is a proud name of our own origin and others learnt to denote us by it only later on”.

Refuting the diversity of Hindu life in terms of faiths, sects, castes, languages, customs and habits, Golwalkar held that the view upholding the so-called diversity in Hinduism was simply superficial and partial. He was of the opinion that just like a tree which appeared to be full of heterogeneous parts like the branches, leaves, flowers and fruits the diversities of Hindu social life also had one single root. According to Golwalkar, the first special characteristic of this diversity happened to be the bewildering variety of sects and subsects like ‘Shaiva, Vaishnava, Shakta, Vaidik, Bouddha, Jain, Sikh, Lingayat, Aryasamaj, etc.’ He was of the opinion that the great masters and sponsors of all these sects founded these various forms of worship to suit the various mental aptitudes of the Hindu people, they were well aware of the fact that all such sects, in the last analysis, aimed at the same goal of realizing the ‘ultimate truth’.

Golwalkar strongly opposed the attempt by some designing people to separate the Hindus from the Sikhs. He opined categorically that this kind of attempt was unconstitutional as it was clearly written in our Constitution that Hinduism included, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist sects. He was also opposed to the expression ‘Hindus and Harijans’. He held that the new rulers of independent India delivered favour to non-Hindu, even anti-Hindu people. The very word ‘Hindu’ had become an anathema to them.  Golwalkar opined: “How unfortunate that our own leaders, our own people, should be digging at the roots of our social cohesion arid destroying the spirit of identity that informed and blended all the various sects into a harmonious whole in the past”.

Golwalkar identified another important feature that distinguished Indian society from other societies. It was the caste system. He held that many people had come to feel that the mere mention of caste system was something derogatory. They often confused the social order implied in it with social discrimination. Golwalkar opined that the feeling of inequality, of high and low, which had crept into the caste system was comparatively of recent origin. The confusion was given a further fillip by the Britishers in line with their ‘divide and rule’ policy. But in its original form the distinctions in the Indian social order did not imply any discrimination of big or small, high or low, among its constituents. In the ancient Indian society the individual, according to Golwalkar, who did his assigned duties in life in a spirit of selfless service only, worshiped God through such performance.

Golwalkar, however, agreed that the caste system had degenerated beyond all recognition. He held that a new factor had been introduced into the body-politic which had further intensified the rigidity and perversity of castes by those very persons who were most vociferous in their denunciation of the system. During elections, their chief consideration for selection of candidates was caste and their appeal to the voters was mainly to their castes. Golwalkar regretted in the following words: “Even the state machinery is being prostituted for further widening these dissensions. Separatist consciousness breeding jealousy and conflict is being fostered in sections of our people by naming them Harijans, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and so on and by parading the gift of special concessions to them in a bid to make them all their slaes with the care of money”.

From this statement it is clear that Golwalkar did not accept the idea that the caste system itself provided a repressive machinery that kept the people of lower castes in utter misery and discomfort. Instead of criticizing the inherent paradox, Golwalkar went on complaining against others who might have threatened the monolithic and rigid system of ‘homo-hierarchy’.

The diversity of our national heritage, according to Golwalkar, had also expressed itself in the field of languages.... Even, in the same language there was a remarkable variance in the usage of words and expressions from place to place owing to the closeness to other languages. From these Golwalkar concluded that it only proved that all these languages were intrinsically one. In his words: “It is like the gradual break-up of colour in a rainbow. Though it appears resplendent with a variety of hues, it is the same ray of the sun which has taken those charming garbs. Similar is the glory of our languages”.

Massive agitations for linguistic identity especially in South India, the official language issue, demands for the linguistic reorganization of the provinces of India whose boundaries during British rule did not conform to linguistic divisions, and the question of the status of minority languages within reorganized states in independent India collectively provide, the critics of Golwalkar are perhaps entitled to say, an empirical refutation of Golwalkar.

Golwalkar was opposed to the formation of linguistic states. He was of the opinion that the formation of linguistic states had given a powerful handle to politicians to work up linguistic chauvinism in the minds of the people. Golwalkar strongly advocated the view that in the interest of national unity and self-respect the Hindi language should get a proper place in Indian national life, “In fact, with the rise of Hindi”, Golwalkar opined, “all our sister languages also will flourish”.

Thus Golwalkar conceptualized Hindu nationhood in terms of one religion, one rigid social order and one language. No other deviation from this ideal construct seemed practicable to Golwalkar. So far as the minorities were concerned. Golwalkar wrote: “The non-Hindu peoples in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of glorification of Hindu race and culture....in a word, they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment - even citizen’s rights”.