RSS and Mahatma Gandhi’s Assassination: Myths vs Facts

     RSS and Mahatma Gandhi’s Assassination: Myths vs Facts

Detractors of the RSS, including the current Congress president Rahul Gandhi, have often accused it of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. The facts, however, tell a different story. RSS was not directly involvred in Killing of Mahatma Gandhi but its ideology inspired Godse to kill Gandhi.

There were reasons for Godse wanting to kill Gandhi. As a passionate member of the RSS and the editor of Hindu Rashtra, he had been acting in close concert with the Hindutva movement and was obsessed, like any other member of the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, with the idea of making India a Hindu Rashtra. He was, therefore, part and parcel of a subterranean and organized Hindutva resistance to the Gandhian project of secular democracy— a resistance which had existed since before 1947, before the country was even thought to be partitioned. 

Through his nationalism and secularism, Gandhi had comprehensively countered the idea of a Hindu Rashtra, forcing its proponents—the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha—to the margins of Indian politics. This made Gandhi the main target of attack not only by Golwalkar but also by individual members and leaders of the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha. 

Thus, if Godse, imagining himself as the deliverer of the idea of the Hindu Rashtra, set out to kill Gandhi, he seemed to have been resolving what might be described as a battle for the soul of India, an anxious and longstanding conflict to define the emerging nation state. The putative resolution posited by Godse can be seen a desperate attempt, but it was very much part of the struggle that Golwalkar had launched. With the assassination of Gandhi, all hopes for Golwalkar’s project of a Hindu Rashtra collapsed. 

In fact, a month after Gandhi’s assassination, Sardar Patel reportedly wrote to Nehru, “I have kept myself almost in daily touch with the progress of the investigations regarding Bapu’s assassination case. All main accused have given long and detailed statements of their activities. It also clearly emerges from the statements that the RSS was not involved in it at all.” In his another letter to the RSS chief, Sardar Patel said, “Only the people near me know as to how happy I was when the ban on Sangh was lifted. I wish you all the best.”

In 1966, the Congress government headed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi again set up a new judicial commission to thoroughly probe the assassination. Justice JL Kapur, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, headed it. The commission examined 101 witnesses and 407 documents. The panel’s report was published in 1969. Its key findings were:

1. They (the accused) have not been proven to have been members of the RSS, nor has that organisation been shown to have had a hand in the murder.

2.  There is no evidence that the RSS, as such, was indulging in violent activities against Mahatma Gandhi or the top Congress leaders.

We do not find RSS direct involvement in Gandhi’s assassination but its idealoggy and provocaton and Gandhi is responsible.