āThose who make gods of nations end up sacrificing men.ā
ā Rabindranath Tagore
1. A Nation to Worship
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) began in 1925 in Nagpur, founded by K.B. Hedgewar, a doctor who believed Indiaās decline was not due to colonial exploitation but to the ādisunityā and āweaknessā of Hindus.
While Gandhiās Congress fought the British through mass resistance, the RSS turned inward ā drilling boys, marching in khaki shorts, teaching them that the first duty of a Hindu was not to the poor or the oppressed, but to the imagined glory of the Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation).
It was a subtle shift with explosive consequences: faith became uniform, nation became deity.
2. Hindutva ā Hinduism: The Great Substitution
To understand the RSS, one must first separate Hindutva from Hinduism ā two words that share a root but not a soul.
Hinduism is an ocean ā fluid, philosophical, and inclusive.
It welcomes contradiction: from the materialism of the Charvakas to the renunciation of the Buddha, from the plural gods of the Puranas to the abstract oneness of the Upanishads.
Its moral heartbeat is tolerance ā a faith confident enough to question itself.
Hindutva, coined by V.D. Savarkar in 1923, is the opposite: a project of political uniformity.
It defines āHindusā not by worship or wisdom but by bloodline and geography ā only those who see India as both Fatherland and Holy Land truly belong.
That excludes Muslims and Christians by design, turning religion into ethnonational identity.
Where Hinduism speaks of inner liberation, Hindutva preaches external domination.
Where the Gita warns against attachment to power, Hindutva calls power sacred.
In short: Hinduism is a quest; Hindutva is a conquest.
3. Collaboration over Liberation
During the freedom struggle, most Indian nationalists went to prison; Hindutvaās architects went to meetings.
Savarkar, while heading the Hindu Mahasabha, wrote letters of loyalty to the British Crown.
His āmercy petitionsā from prison promised to āabide by the Constitution of the British Governmentā and āserve its interests.ā
Later, in 1942, when Gandhiās Quit India movement filled jails across the country, Savarkarās Mahasabha formed coalitions with the Muslim League and the British in Bengal and Sindh.
The priority was clear: not freedom from empire, but a Hindu order after it.
4. The Fascist Mirror
In 1931, B.S. Moonje, a mentor to Hedgewar, visited Mussolini in Rome and toured fascist youth camps.
He wrote in his diary that India needed the same militarization to awaken its āHindu soul.ā
Within years, RSS drills began to echo those fascist aesthetics ā discipline, flags, salutes, the cult of the uniform.
By 1939, Golwalkar, Hedgewarās successor, published We, or Our Nationhood Defined, praising Nazi Germanyās āpurgingā of Jews as a lesson in national unity.
The idea that āracial prideā could cleanse a nation became Hindutvaās psychological core ā purity over plurality.
5. Gandhiās Death and the Sanitized Sin
On January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was murdered by Nathuram Godse, a former RSS worker and disciple of Savarkar.
Though the RSS denied formal involvement, Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel wrote that the RSS and Mahasabha had ācreated an atmosphere in which such a ghastly tragedy became possible.ā
The organization was banned, only to be reinstated in 1949 after pledging to remain ācultural.ā
The RSSā preferred scripture was not the Gita of duty, but the Manusmriti of hierarchy.
6. The Crimes of the Faithful
Hindutvaās holy war has often turned literal.
- 1999 ā Odisha: Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burned alive by a mob led by an RSS-affiliated Bajrang Dal member.
- 2002 ā Gujarat: Following the Godhra train burning, riots killed over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. Human Rights Watch and citizen tribunals documented organized attacks, police complicity, and political silence.
- 2020 ā Delhi: Clashes during anti-CAA protests again saw minorities targeted after months of incendiary rhetoric by Hindutva politicians.
Across decades, one pattern repeats: RSS ideology inspires the storm, others face the courts, and the system stays silent.
7. The Seductive Power of Purity
Hindutva survives not because of its cruelty, but because of its seduction.
It offers the disoriented majority a sense of cosmic purpose: You are the nation; to doubt is betrayal.
It replaces introspection with identity, empathy with pride.
It tells the humiliated poor man that his poverty is not the fault of inequality, but of the neighbor who prays differently.
It is demonic because it sanctifies cruelty.
It is seductive because it disguises it as devotion.
8. The Cost of a Holy Nation
Today, India is richer in billionaires but poorer in justice.
The richest 1% own nearly half the nationās wealth, while millions of villagers still live without clean water or reliable electricity.
Meanwhile, minorities live in fear ā not always of laws, but of mobs emboldened by silence.
Hindutva promised unity and strength. What it delivered is polarization and obedience ā a nationalism that feeds on anxiety and calls it virtue.
9. Verdict: The Nation as Idol
A century after its birth, the RSS has achieved what the British Empire never could:
a psychological conquest of India, where people are taught to equate patriotism with conformity and dissent with sin.
It is not a religious movement; it is a political theology that replaced gods with geography and conscience with command.
The danger of Hindutva is not that it will destroy Hinduism.
It is that it will use Hinduism to destroy everything else ā freedom, equality, and the quiet moral pluralism that once defined India.
