Appendix A
Hindutva: The Growth of Violent Hindu Nationalism
This appendix provides detailed support and elaboration of the
descriptions and arguments in Part 1 of this report. Accordingly,
it follows in large part, the same structure as Part 1 of this
report. We cover the following ground in this appendix:
1. Hindutva, the RSS
and the Sangh Parivar
2. The Sangh Parivar: The Institutional Infrastructure of Hindutva
3. The Effects of Hindutva: Violent Pogroms and the Destruction
of the National Fabric
A.1 Hindutva, the RSS and the Sangh
Parivar
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, or the
‘Sangh,’-- literally ‘National Volunteer Corps’),
was started in 1925 for ‘propagating Hindu culture.’
As an organization, the RSS is elusive and shadowy—it is
only open to Hindu males – primarily upper caste, it maintains
no membership records; it has resisted being registered with the
government of India as a public/charitable trust; it has no bank
accounts and pays no income tax.
The RSS advocates a form of Hindu nationalism,
which seeks to establish India as a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation),
and rejects the notion of a composite Indian identity brought about
by a synthesis of different cultures and faiths. This particular
ideology is variously called an ideology of Hindu pride, Hindu patriotism,
Hindu fundamentalism, Hindu revivalism, Hindu chauvinism, Hindu
fascism or Hindutva. What is beyond doubt is the exclusionary and
discriminatory nature of the ideology. The last mentioned –
Hindutva (Hinduness/Hinduhood) – is the term most popularly
attached to this ideology and will be term of choice in this appendix.
This exclusionary and discriminatory ideology is built around
a complex and ingenious definition of “who belongs”
or “does not belong” to the Indian nation. Probably
the most explicit characterization of the question of “belonging”
is outlined by the second sarsanghchalak (supreme leader) of the
RSS, M. S. Golwalkar. He writes:
The foreign races in Hindusthan [India] 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
the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the
Hindu nation and must loose (sic) their separate existence to
merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated
to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges,
far less any preferential treatment — not even citizen's
rights. There is, at least, should be, no other course for them
to adopt. We are an old nation; let us deal, as old nations ought
to and do deal, with the foreign races, who have chosen to live
in our country.”[53]
Golwalkar’s commentary on who belongs to the Hindu Nation,
apart from its open fascist overtones, is peculiar because it
contradicts the popular understanding of Hinduism as a religion.
Instead, it frames Hinduism as a culture and Hindus as a race
who adhere to a Hindu culture. In this peculiar but brilliant
redefinition lies the specificity of Hindu fascism. It is unlike
most of Euro-American fascism – whether it be Nazi Germany
and its notion of Aryan purity or neo-fascist movements such as
the KKK or BNP – which are all biologically defined ideas
of racial purity. Hindutva’s cultural basis seems to remove
it from such standard forms of fascism. However, the equation
of race with culture – as in Golwalkar’s “Hindu
race and culture” – introduces a notion of purity
through the back door. Lochtefeld (1996), analyzing Savarkar,
the man who preceded Golwalkar and the first Supreme Leader of
the RSS, unpacks this redefinition as follows:
Savarkar [who first expounded on the Hindu Nation] defined a Hindu
as anyone regarding India as a fatherland and holy land, and to
this day these remain the litmus test. This defines the Hindu
nation on cultural criteria—as a people united by a common
cultural heritage—and from the start Hindutva proponents
have insisted that the word ‘Hindu’ refers to a cultural
rather than a religious community…. One must look at who
this definition excludes. Savarkar’s definition of a Hindu
is plastic enough to include everyone in a notoriously polyform
tradition, but the condition that one regard India as the Holy
Land largely excludes both Muslims and Christians. This definition
equates Hindu identity and Indian nationalism, meaning that religious
minorities are not only ‘aliens’, but because of their
‘extraterritorial loyalties’ (to holy lands in Arabia
and Israel), they are also potential traitors.”[54]
The ingenuity of tying culture and race together
is that it makes possible a definition of a “pure”
nation where none is otherwise possible. India, per se, is a fascinating
melting pot of races and cultures. Even distinctions such as white
and black as available in the US (though those are also mostly
spurious) are entirely impossible in India. By defining belonging
through a territorially contained notion of culture, it becomes
possible to denote some minorities as within the ambit of “the
Hindu” and others as outside it. A large number of minorities
– Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains, for instance are objects of
integration. So also, Dalits and tribals (adivasis) though historically
oppressed by upper caste Hindus are in this definition not excluded
from the nation. The idea here is to redefine these minorities
as “Hindu” – where a certain specific upper
caste Hinduism (Sanatan Dharma), is the hegemonic pure form and
all others are at varying distance from this purity. In contrast,
Muslims, Christians, Parsis and Jews, are clearly defined as outside
the fold of the Nation, not because they have not been part of
India for centuries but because their cultural signifiers are
seen as lying external to the territorial nation.
The definition of “pure” is what aligns Hindutva with
classical fascism of the Nazi kind. Golwalkar is clearly inspired
and convinced by the Nazi experiment of attempting to purge a
land of all those who don’t fit into a definition of German-Aryan
purity. He writes:
German national pride has now become the topic
of the day. To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture,
Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic
races — the Jews. National 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 Hindustan to learn and profit by. [55]
Today, the political leadership of the Sangh
spends some marginal effort at denying any relation to Nazi Germany
but does little to explain the distinction between its ideology
and that of Nazi Germany.
In terms of ideology then, the Sangh’s brand of fascism
is simultaneously indigenous and imported. Clearly their broad
ideas of purity and exclusion are not very different from Nazi
Germany. However, the peculiar conflation of culture and race
does make this brand of fascism unique.
A.2 The Sangh Parivar: The Institutional
Infrastructure of Hindutva
Institutionally, given that the RSS is itself an organization that
is secretive and without specified membership, its visibility is
low. It functions primarily through a broad range of organizations
that exist in every aspect of sociopolitical life in India –
what is referred to as the Sangh Parivar (Sangh family) of organizations.
However, before we explicate this visible structure of the Sangh
Parivar and its chief constituent organizations, we need to pay
some attention to the minimal aspects of what is visible as the
RSS.
A.2.1 The Role of
the RSS Shakha
The core unit of the RSS is referred to as a shakha (cell). The
shakha is a place for swayamsevaks (volunteers) to come together
for physical and ideological training. These shakhas operate in
large numbers of neighborhoods in India (and are now spreading across
the US), and produce a constant stream of 'volunteers' who become
the foot-soldiers for the Sangh's projects and organizations. Here
too, specific links can be drawn between European fascism and the
RSS. B. S. Moonje, the mentor of the founding father of the RSS,
Hegdewar, visited and met with Mussolini and was granted permission
by Mussolini to observe and understand the nature of the fascist
organizational structure[56].
Moonje played a crucial role in molding the RSS along Italian (fascist)
lines. The deep impression left on Moonje by the vision of the fascist
organizations is confirmed by his diary.
The idea of fascism
vividly brings out the conception of unity amongst people...
India and particularly Hindu Indians need some such institution
for the military regeneration of the Hindus: so that the artificial
distinction so much emphasised by the British of martial and
non–martial classes amongst the Hindus may disappear…
Our institution of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of Nagpur under
Dr. Hedgewar is of this kind, though quite independently conceived.
I will spend the rest of my life in developing and extending
this Institution of Dr. Hedgewar all throughout Maharashtra
and other provinces. [57]
Moonje’s central concern while looking
at Italian fascism was, as he says, with the aim of “developing
and extending this Institution.” Thus the RSS cell structure
of shakhas (cells) grew with some clear similarity to the cell
structure of Mussolini’s National Socialists, also borrowing
with it the core ideas of physical training of youth and militarism.
Moonje’s diaries are very explicit in acknowledging the
centrality of violent militarism to the RSS strategy.
This training is meant
for qualifying and fitting our boys for the game of killing
masses of men with the ambition of winning victory with the
best possible causalities (sic) of dead and wounded while causing
the utmost possible to the adversary. [58]
The swayamsevaks generated at the Shakhas
are seamlessly tied into the Sangh Parivar infrastructure. Swayamsevaks
go on to direct and run, projects of every size and shape –
from Bal Vihars (Children’s centers) to opening up new shakhas,
from student politics (through the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad)
to paramilitary operations (through the Bajrang Dal). The Sangh
permeates every aspect.
A.2.2 The Sangh Parivar and Its Constituents
At the national level, swayamsevaks emerge to direct and run its
most important institutions – the BJP, the VHP, the BD and
the Sewa Vibhag. Each of these institutions also have an equivalent
organization in the US – the RSS has its image mirrored
through the HSS, the BJP in the OFBJP, the VHP in the VHP of America
and its student wing – the HSC, the BD in Hindu Unity and
finally the Sewa Vibhag in IDRF. Below is a brief description
of each – the Indian organization first, followed by its
US equivalent as well as a summary chart.
- RSS –Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh: The core fount of Hindutva Ideology.
- HSS: The Hindu Swayamsevak
Sangh is the US equivalent of the RSS. HSS is registered
as a tax-exempt charity in the US, and like the RSS in India,
is one of the main proponents of Hindutva in the US. According
to one of its flyers, “HSS is started in the USA and
other parts of the world to continue what RSS is doing in
India.”[59]
The RSS website states that the primary purpose of the HSS
is to protect the children of Hindu parents from the “vicious
propaganda and corrupt conversion techniques of Christians
and Muslims”[60].
Note the central concern of diasporic life in this definition
is the possible “impurity” of Christian or Isamic
influence. Much like the RSS branches in India, HSS also
holds physical training exercises and camps, where the Hindutva
doctrine is expounded. The structure of the RSS is duplicated
in the US, with the Sanghchalak being the highest office
bearer in the US.
- BJP: The Bharatiya Janata Party:
This is a political party that participates in electoral politics.
It is currently in power in the Indian state of Gujarat, which
recently witnessed some of the most gruesome violence against
Muslims. At the center in New Delhi, it is the leading member
of a coalition that is currently in power.
- OFBJP—Overseas Friends
of BJP: This is the BJP
support group in the US. While it cannot monetarily support
the BJP directly from the US, many OFBJP functionaries work
with other Sangh operations in the US to propagate Hindutva.
In addition, it works to mobilize opinion in Washington
D.C and invites BJP leadership from India to the US to meet
with the Indian Diaspora.
- VHP—Vishwa
Hindu Parishad: It was formed in 1964 with the explicit
purpose of forming an aggressive and an activist wing to promote
Hindutva. The first general secretary of the VHP, S.S. Apte,
made its goals clear as follows: “It is therefore necessary
in this age of competition and conflict to think of, and organize,
the Hindu world to save itself from the evil eyes of all three”
[all three being Christianity, Islam and Communism]. [61]
Since its formation, the VHP has played an aggressive and agitational
role in India. It rose to prominence for spearheading from the
early 1980s onwards the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that ultimately
led to the violent take over and destruction of a 16th century
Babri mosque in Ayodhya, India. This mobilization that lasted
the better part of a decade was a watershed event in terms of
creating new levels of polarization between Hindu and Muslim
communities in India. More recently, its international working
president, Mr. Ashok Singhal, called the carnage against Muslims
in Gujarat a ‘successful experiment’ and warned
that it would be repeated all over India [62].
In other words, the VHP, is the core political mobilization
unit that is used to create and spread conditions of religious
intolerance and violence.
- VHP— America
: This is the US counterpart of the VHP in India, and is
active at two levels – as the VHP of America chapters
in large parts of the North East and the South with the
primary function of support work for the Sangh in India
among the professional Indian diaspora and as a student
organization called the Hindu Student Council (HSC)
with significant presence on prestigious American university
campuses. Its work within the professional Indian diasporic
community is essentially both ideological and fund raising.
Though it claims to be independent of the VHP itself, this
claim is at best a legal/technical claim. In real terms
it works actively and in close cooperation with VHP, India.
For instance, VHP America’s biggest event to date
in the US was the World Vision 2000, a conference organized
in Washington D.C. The guest list for that event included
nearly every potential luminary in the VHP India hierarchy
– from Ashok Singhal to Uma Bharati and Vijaye Raje
Scindia. In addition, the VHPA promotes fund collection
for a range of Sewa Vibhag activity in India. [63]
The HSC in
contrast works primarily with second generation Indian Americans
with a project of bringing them under the influence of Hindutva.
It does this through multiple levels of ideological work
– by organizing mass meetings and readings on campuses
on a narrow range of Hindu thought, that is ideologically
a perfect fit for Hindutva, (such as Gita readings) and
for those who wish to get more involved as a gateway to
larger Hindutva operations in the US.
- Bajrang Dal is the paramilitary
wing of the VHP, and was started in 1984 to provide muscle and
manpower to the VHP agitations. The Bajrang Dal regularly organizes
arms training camps for its members, where it teaches them the
use of firearms and trishuls (tridents). According to one of
the participants, the training is imparted in order to teach
them “how to beat those who do not respect Hinduism.”[64]
Bajrang Dal has been at the forefront of recent communal attacks
against Christians in the tribal regions, against artists and
intellectuals and against Muslims in Gujarat.
- HinduUnity.org,
a website run from the US claims to be the official website
of the Bajrang Dal. This site is a virulent hate-filled
site that has already once been yanked by a web-hosting
service Addr.com because of the spiteful vitriol that it
publishes, and its frequent calls to violence against Muslims.
A typical passage from the Website under the pop-up window
called Hindu Force is given below as a sample:
“Revenge on Islam must become the
sole aim of the life of every Hindu today. Islam has been
shedding Hindu blood for several centuries. This is something
we should neither forget nor forgive. This sinister religion
has been striking at Hinduism for just too long. It is time
we resist this satanic force and kick it back into the same
pit it crawled out of.”
- Sewa Vibhag: The Service
Wing of the Hindutva Movement is the RSS’s most incoherent
structure. However, in its very incoherence lies its ingenuity.
The service wing operates through hundreds of organizations
spread across the country – many different names and functions
– all presented as if they were entirely independent organizations.
This proliferation of Sewa Vibhag projects as independent organizations
gives an impression of seeming incoherence. However, it is also
the most inconspicuous way of placing swayamsevaks distributed
across the country and creating entry points for them to do
their ideological work. Often it is difficult to place an organization
as an RSS Sewa Vibhag operation. It takes systematic matching
of organizational trustees with other known RSS operations to
establish the links. However, while this is true for a large
number of RSS Sewa Vibhag operations, the role of the Sewa Vibhag
as an entry point to do the core ideological work of the Sangh
creates some long term patterns and institutions. For instance,
education offers an effective cover for ideological work and
the remaking of identities. Thus many Sewa Vibhag operations
are crafted as educational activities. Following such patterns
it becomes possible to identify Vidya Bharati as an RSS operation.
Similarly, it becomes possible to identify a whole range of
organizations that work with tribals (adivasis) as RSS operations
because the adivasis are an important target constituency for
the RSS. As these multitude of projects are what is the object
of funding from the US, in a sense, these organizations of the
Sewa Vibhag that do the core work of spreading the ideology
of the Sangh are an extremely critical part of this report.
Thus two more appendices – F and G – attached to
Part 3 of this report (Funding Hate?) are on the Sangh’s
work in tribal (adivasi) areas and on the Sangh’s educational
work.
- India Development and Relief
Fund (IDRF): IDRF is the US based funding arm of
the Sangh and primarily funds the Sangh through its Sewa
Vibhag operations. It is directly connected to Sewa International,
the part of the Sewa Vibhag that coordinates international
Sewa activity. Sewa International itself operates as the
equivalent to IDRF in the UK.
A.3 The Effects of Hindutva: Violent Pogroms and the Destruction
of a Multicultural Society
Violence is a core aspect of Hindutva. It
has never been shy of advocating violence for the achievement
of its goals of a Hindu Rashtra. It depicts ‘Hinduism’
as constantly under threat from external/foreign forces (of Islam,
Christianity and ‘Secularism’), and hence, portrays
violence against Muslims, Christians and advocates of pluralism
in India as a form of ‘self-defense.’ This, self defense
is further positioned as the process of regeneration of Hindu
manhood. This twin trope of self-defense and a lost manhood that
is in need of recovery are part of the daily rhetoric of Hindutva.
This psychological justification of violence is under girded by
a more open strategic and essential appreciation of it –
some of which we have already recorded in this appendix –
whether it be Golwalkar’s open appreciation for the efforts
to “purge” the German nation of all Jews by the Nazis,
or Moonje’s hope that the RSS would create conditions of
a “military regeneration of Hindus”, and prepare “our
boys in the game of killing masses of people.” Here violence
is clearly both essential to purge the nation of all that it does
not desire, and strategic in Golwalkar’s goal to ensure
that the minorities live in fear and seek no privileges.
There is ample evidence that this essential
and strategic understanding of violence is central to the Hindutva
project. Numerous government reports have clearly indicted the
Sangh for fomenting communal violence:
“If the Jaganmohan
Reddy Commission on the Ahmedabad riots (1969) and the Madan
Commission on the Bhiwandi riots (1970) exposed the Unified
Front tactics of the RSS and its political wing, the Jan Sangh,
ancestor of the BJP, Justice Vithayathil’s report on the
Tellicherry riots (1971) censured the RSS for ‘rousing
up’ communal feelings and for ’preparing the background
for the disturbances’. Justice Jitendra Narain’s
Report on the Jamshedpur riots (1979) censured the RSS supremo
M.D Deoras personally for the communal propaganda that had caused
the riots. The RSS had held a conference there ‘only four
days before the Ram Navami festival (when the riots erupted)
and the speech delivered by Balasaheb Deoras contributed their
full share in fomenting these communal feelings’. The
RSS had created ‘a climate for these disturbances’.
The report of Justice P Venugopal of the Madras High Court,
on the riots in Kanyakumari in March 1982, found the RSS guilty
of fomenting anti-Christian feelings: ‘It has taken upon
itself the task to teach the minority their place and if they
are not willing to learn their place, teach them a lesson. The
RSS has given respectability to communalism and communal riots
and demoralise (sic) administration.’ ” [65]
With a history of inciting and conducting violent
campaigns going back to the partition of India and Pakistan, for
the RSS violence is part of a strategy of breaking the back of an
integrated multi-religious society and creating polarized communities
of Hindus, Muslims and Christians. In a recent film on the RSS –
“Men in the Tree” – filmmaker Lalit Vachani records
a series of critical interviews with former RSS members –
D. R. Goyal and Purshottam Agrawal. Both men speak openly of how
it was part of their work as RSS swayamsevaks to create and spread
rumors that would produce conditions conducive for a communal riot.
The gradual but continuos polarization of the religious communities
through violence is a fundamental fact of the Sangh strategy.
As Hindutva has grown more and more powerful
and gained State power over the years, its strategic use of riots
to polarize religious communities has slowly began to transform
into a process of fundamentally destroying and displacing minority
communities. In other words, over the last decade religious violence
in India is no longer cases of Hindutva cadre fighting a Muslim
or Christian right wing forces cadre on the streets but has increasingly
become organized pogroms to eliminate and reduce minority communities
to rubble. The recent Gujarat riot is a case in point.
A.4.1 From Riots to Pogroms: Gujarat
2002
On February 27, 2002, a train carrying Hindu activists was set
afire in Godhra, a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat,
allegedly by a Muslim mob, resulting in the death of 58 people.
The following excerpt from the Human Rights Watch report describes
what followed:
“Between February
28 and March 2, thousands of attackers descended on Muslim neighbourhoods,
clad in saffron scarves and khaki shorts, the signature uniform
of Hindu nationalist groups, and armed with swords, sophisticated
explosives, and gas cylinders. They were guided by voter lists
and printouts of addresses of Muslim-owned properties-information
obtained from the local municipality… The groups most
directly involved in the violence against Muslims include the
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP), the Bajrang
Dal, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) that heads the Gujarat state government” [66]
Over 2000 people were
killed, and more than 100,000 were rendered homeless—around
90% of the victims were Muslims. In addition, reports from women’s
groups state that hundreds of Muslim women were gang-raped by
the Hindutva mobs and then burnt. [67]
The State government, headed by the BJP—the parliamentary
arm of the Sangh Parivar, was strikingly ineffective in controlling
the rioters, and has also been accused of complicity in the violence
by several Human Rights groups [68].
Instances of direct support of the Hindu rioters by the police
and the administration have also been documented. What gives much
credence to the accusation that the Gujarat State government actively
participated in the riots, is a well documented story in a leading
news magazine – Outlook India – where a minister of
the State cabinet informed the press of a meeting on the evening
of February 28th at the residence of the chief minister Narendra
Modi where State administration officials were instructed not
to stop the Hindu backlash that was coming. [69]
Many independent fact-finding missions have verified the central
role played by the different Sangh Parivar organizations in orchestrating
the violence:
“In testimony
after testimony, people identified by name members of the Bajrang
Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad involved in inciting and committing
violence. The fact-finding team spoke with women activists and
victims in the camps about their views on the growing polarization
between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Both sets of people
linked it to the aggressive agenda of the Sangh Parivar - particularly
the Bajrang Dal, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and, in some cases,
the Shiv Sena. In the rural context, women directly linked a
rise in tension with the establishment of local units of the
Bajrang Dal and the VHP. They spoke of meetings organized by
these groups, and the arms they distributed at these meetings.
Many believe that the tension has really escalated in the last
six months.” [70]
Everything about Gujarat
points in the direction of a pogrom. There is evidence that the
distribution of arms was an on going activity. The material used
in the violence, apart from the swords and trishuls was some variety
of a chemical solvent which could not have been procured spontaneously.
Voter lists and the specific targeting of Muslim businesses and
homes is another clear indication of the organized nature of the
violence. Even at the time of writing this report, eight months
after the pogrom began, many Muslims remain homeless and are unable
to return to their homes because of the fear that they will be
killed.
A.4.2 The Confidence to Kill Without
Cover
If Gujarat is a stark testimony that the Sangh’s violence
has reached the fascist proportions that Moonje and Golwalkar
had in mind, then the complete confidence of the Sangh that it
can carry out violent campaigns without any fear is also indicated
by its targeted violence against individuals. The best case to
illustrate this would be the continuos targeting of Christian
nuns, priests and Evangelists by the Sangh activists. Human Rights
Watch, New York published a report on anti-Christian violence
in India in September 1999 [71]
and also indicted the Sangh Parivar for their role in fomenting
ethnic hatred against Christians:
Attacks against Christians
throughout the country have increased significantly since the
BJP began its rule at the center in March 1998. They include
the killings of priests, the raping of nuns, and the physical
destruction of Christian institutions, schools, churches, colleges,
and cemeteries. Thousands of Christians have also been forced
to convert to Hinduism.
Frontline, a mainstream newsmagazine, recorded
over 50 incidents of violence, targeted against a specific individual
or institution, in an organized effort to push Christian missionaries
out of India [72].
These specified and directed attacks against individuals and institutions
are equally important to note as organized mass violence because
they are indicative of the fact that the movement has reached
a point where it feels the confidence to undertake such violent
campaigns without even the cover of a presumed communal riot.
A.4.3 Hindutva’s First Indian
Act: The Murder of Gandhi
Probably there is no more a poignant way to underscore the issue
of Hindutva’s definition as a violent movement than the
murder of Mahatma Gandhi by a prominent Hindutva activist Nathuram
Godse. On January 30 1948 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was shot
dead by Nathuram Godse. Inspite of the fact that the RSS disassociated
itself from Godse, the then government of India banned the organization.
That the RSS’s denial of any involvement with Gandhi’s
murder is false, is clear from many associated facts.
- Godse’s successful
attempt to kill Gandhi was not the first but the sixth attempt
on Gandhi’s life by the Hindutva movement [73].
The thesis that Godse was an exception and a misguided young
man marginally associated with Hindutva, fades in light of this
history of attempts from within the movement.
- Further, the reaction
to the murder of Gandhi within the RSS, was one of open elation
– where RSS swayamsevaks were on streets celebrating. Clearly
the sentiment was an openly available one within the Sangh. Sardar
Patel, the first Home Minister of India, confirmed this in a letter
to the RSS supreme, M.S. Golwalkar in a letter dated September
11, 1948, he wrote [74],
“As a final result of the poison, the country had
to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji.
Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government or of the people
no more remained for the RSS. In fact, opposition grew. Opposition
turned more severe when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed
sweets after Gandhiji's death.”
- Years later, Gopal
Godse, one of the co-accused in the Gandhi murder case and Nathuram
Godse’s brother, confirmed that both he and his brother
were actively involved with the RSS at the time of the assassination.
In an interview in 1994, he stated [75]:
“All the brothers
were in the RSS. Nathuram, Dattatreya, myself and Govind. You
can say we grew up in the RSS rather than in our home. It was
like a family to us. Nathuram had become a baudhik karyavah
[intellectual worker] in the RSS. He has said in his statement
that he had left the RSS. He said it because Golwalkar [the
RSS Supremo] and the RSS were in a lot of trouble after the
murder of Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS.”
A movement, that began its work in a newly
independent India, with the murder of an apostle of peace and
respect for all communities, has today surfaced in its open and
naked form – as a fundamentally fascist movement.
53. We or Our Nationhood
Defined, Golwalkar, 1939, pp. 47-48
54. James G. Lochtefeld
(1996) New
Wine, Old Skins: The Sangh Parivar and the Transformation of Hinduism,
Religion 26, 101-118
55. We or Our Nationhood
Defined, MS Golwalkar, 1939
56. M Casolari, (1993)
Hindutva’s
foreign tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence, Economic and Political
Weekly, Jan 22, 2000
57. M
Casolari, (1993) Hindutva’s
foreign tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence, Economic and Political
Weekly, Jan 22, 2000
58. M
Casolari, (1993) Hindutva’s
foreign tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence, Economic and Political
Weekly, Jan 22, 2000
59. http://www.idrf.org/flyers/balvihar/html/hss.html
60. http://www.rss.org/rssstor.htm
under the subtitle ‘Towards Maintaining Cultural Identity’
61. The Organiser,
Diwali Special, 1964.
62. ‘We’ll
repeat our Gujarat experiment’ Indian Express, Sept 4th,
2002
63. James G. Lochtefeld
(1996) New
Wine, Old Skins: The Sangh Parivar and the Transformation of Hinduism,
Religion 26, 101-118
64. Bajrang
Dal activists take up arms, The Times of India, June 13th, 2001
65. A
Half Century’s Gory Record, AG Noorani, The Statesman, January
15, 2000
66. India:
Gujarat Officials Took Part in Anti-Muslim Violence: Press Release
by HRW, April 30, 2002
67. How
Has The Gujarat Massacre Affected Minority Women? The Survivors
Speak : A fact finding report by a Women’s Panel, Citizen’s
Initiative, Ahmedabad, April 16th, 2002
68. See for example,
the National Human Rights Commission’s Report, Final
order on Gujarat dated May 31, 2002,
69. A
Plot From The Devil's Lair, Manu Joseph, S. Anand, Outlook June
3, 2002
70. How
Has The Gujarat Massacre Affected Minority Women? The Survivors
Speak : A fact finding report by a Women’s Panel, Citizen’s
Initiative, Ahmedabad, April 16th, 2002
71. Anti-Christian
violence on the rise in India: New Report details politics behind
extremist Hindu attacks Press Release by the HRW Full Report
at POLITICS
BY OTHER MEANS: Attacks Against Christians in India HRW Report,
September 1999
72. A
catalogue of crimes, Pravin Swami, Frontline, Vol. 16 (3) Jan.
30 - Feb. 12, 1999
73. Tushar Gandhi,
http://www.mahatma.org.in/murderattempts/attempts.jsp?link=ld&id=1&cat=murderattempts
74. A
Law Unto Itself, AG Noorani, Frontline, Volume 15 (17), Aug
15-22, 1998 http://www.flonnet.com/fl1517/15171170.htm
75. Frontline, January
28, 1994 quoted in The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour, AG
Noorani, Leftword Books, 2000 p. 30 http://www.sabrang.com/gujarat/rssbible.htm
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