The Brotherhood in Saffron Read online

  Among the most active of these secret societies was the Mitra Mela (Friends’ Group), later known as the Abhinava Bharat Society (Young India Society) formed in 1899 by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Recruiting primarily among college students, the various units of this group promoted traditional forms of exercise, and popularized nationalist ballads and poetry to serve as tools in spreading their message among the masses. The Abhinava Bharat Society advocated armed revolution to throw off the shackles of foreign rule.39 Links between the Abhinava Bharat Society and its Bengali counterpart, the Anushilan Samiti, were established to coordinate revolutionary activity.

  Revolutionary activity increased significantly after 1905 when the partition of Bengal was announced.40 This activity was most pronounced in Bengal, Bombay and Punjab. Both the Abhinava Bharat Society and the Anushilan Samiti sought mass support to foment a national uprising. However, by addressing themselves almost exclusively to the political issue of independence, the middle-class group could tap the social discontent of neither the lower classes nor the peasantry. The educated youths who led these organizations were virtual strangers among the peasantry, and they appear to have had little comprehension of rural society or how to organize it.

  The most popular revivalist group in northern India was the Arya Samaj.41 Like the earlier reform societies, the Arya Samaj sought to change Hindu religious and social behaviour. It opposed, among other things, the hereditary aspect of the caste system, the ritual supremacy of brahmins, child marriage, and idol worship. It advocated a strict monotheism and a simplified ritual.42 To counter the proselytizing activities of Christian missionaries, it borrowed many organizational techniques from them. The Arya Samaj relied on printed material to further its cause, sponsored missionary activities to convert Muslims and Christians, and performed ceremonies to raise outcast Hindus to the twice-born status. The desire of the Arya Samaj leadership to establish Hindu nationalism on the foundations of religious and social unity resulted in the formation of shuddhi sabhas (conversion councils) and the formation of the All-India Shuddhi Sabha in 1909.

  EXPANDING COMMUNICATIONS FACILITIES

  The spread of any movement depends on the existence of facilities for disseminating its message. Modern concepts of nationalism and self-government were introduced from the West at the elite level and filtered down to the population through the educational system and the press. Education, however, was not universal and Western education was limited to a tiny elite segment of the population. Since most Western education was controlled by the Christian missionary societies or by the government, a major goal of many revivalists was to form educational societies that were free from pro-Christian or pro-British influence. Technical advances in printing provided the revivalists with new opportunities for building self-esteem and for communicating with larger audiences. Exposure to Western culture and literature created a demand among the literate for printed material that touched on contemporary problems and regional tomes.

  Newspapers espousing the revivalist cause in both English and the vernacular were established in cities all over India. English-language newspapers linked nationalist groups all over the country. Newspapers in the vernacular broadened the nationalist impact among the masses. Vernacular narrative prose often focused on heroic figures and events from a region’s past, thus helping to inculcate a pride in things Indian. In addition, the revivalists recognized the mobilization potential of traditional forms of communication. Religious festivals were organized to revive the glory of Hinduism, to praise the exploits of its heroes, and, more importantly, to establish a national identity based on distinctly Hindu symbols.

  REVIVALIST RESPONSE TO GANDHI

  Mohandas Gandhi, when he emerged publicly on the Indian political scene after World War I as the Mahatma, received widespread revivalist support. Indeed, many believed him to be one of them. Around his style of leadership there developed a charisma which attracted a large number of Indians to the nationalist cause. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph argue that his charisma had traditional roots; his asceticism in personal and public life convinced many that he was able to realize ideals which many held, but which few could realize.43 The concept finds ample support in Hindu thought. Since desire is the root cause of the bonds that chain people to the cycle of rebirths, desire must be quenched.44 Various Hindu sects practice different forms of ascetic austerities in order to quench desire and teach a path to moksha. Linked to the concept of asceticism is the doctrine that its practitioners can acquire power.45 Gandhi himself publicly practised tapasya (a form of austerity) to induce changes in Indian life.46 This saintly style attracted to Gandhi an enormous following who trusted the ‘inner voice’ that spoke to him and who believed in the potency of his power.

  To reach the Indian masses, Gandhi rationalized the Congress organization and involved it with activities that touched on the lives of the masses. The tool that he employed to express protest against British rule and other perceived injustices was satyagraha (‘truth force’).47 The technique had been practised in India for centuries. It consisted of resisting injustice through fasting and non-violent protest, to bring moral pressure against the agent of injustice.48 Gandhi refined the technique to fit it to social, economic and political injustices by employing vast numbers in civil disobedience. He implemented the techniques of satyagraha in a series of non-violent disobedience campaigns that would bring all sides of a dispute together in harmonious recognition of justice (or ‘truth’).

  While Gandhi had much in common with the revivalists, many came to oppose him as they became better acquainted with his ideas. They were disturbed by his ascetic, non-kshatriya style of leadership, his definition of dharma as the non-violent pursuit of ‘truth’, and his assimilationist conception of the Indian nation, which he saw as a brotherhood or a confederation of communities. Some opposed his vision of an economy, society and polity based on the self-sufficient village. But it was on the first three objections that they took issue with his leadership, for they felt his views would not sustain the militancy necessary to force the British out of India.

  Regarding tactics, many Hindu revivalists questioned Gandhi’s assertion that non-violent action was the only morally permissible technique of protest. Perhaps more disturbing to them was their concern that Gandhi’s emphasis on ahimsa (nonviolence) discouraged the ‘energism’ and militancy needed to conduct a prolonged struggle against British imperialism. Tilak justified himsa (violence) in Hindu ethics with the proposition that the sacred canon made self-protection a higher duty than ahimsa.49 According to him a ‘villain’ who comes to do harm should be punished, even killed if he ‘does not listen to reason’.50 Means and ends were not convertible terms for him, or for many other revivalists. Consequently, violence, collaboration, or almost any other means was justifiable if it led to the elimination of the British ‘villain’. Dr Kurta-koti, Shankaracharya (a Hindu spiritual guide) of Karvir Peeth, expressed the views of many revivalists when he wrote in the 1920s that Gandhi’s use of ahimsa in the non-cooperation movement would ‘uproot the very principle of Hinduism and Aryan philosophy’.51 He claimed that ahimsa as employed by Gandhi undermined Hindu self-respect and encouraged the Muslims to dominate the Hindus. Moreover, he maintained that ‘passive and non-resisting sufferance is a Christian and not-Aryan principle’. He implored Hindus to return to the militancy advocated by Tilak, Vivekananda and Ghose. Many other revivalists were in agreement, and when Gandhi took control of the Congress in the 1920s, the stage was set for a revivalist search for new forms of protest against colonial rule. The issue that triggered their departure from the Congress was Gandhi’ s conciliatory approach towards Muslims, which they characterized as appeasement.

  2

  Formation and Development of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

  The RSS emerged during a wave of Hindu-Muslim riots that swept across India in the early 1920s. Its founder viewed the communal rioting as a symptom of the weakness and divisions within the Hindu comm
unity. He argued that independence could be achieved only after the splintered Hindu community—divided by caste, religion, language and sect—coalesced. He believed that the Congress, in which he had been an active participant, had appeased Muslims and was therefore unable to unite the Hindus; and in his view Hindu unity was the necessary precondition for any successful independence struggle.

  DETERIORATION OF HINDU–MUSLIM RELATIONS

  In 1916, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League made a major effort at Lucknow to draw Hindus and Muslims together politically at the national level. The leadership of the two organizations agreed, among other things, to support the demand for complete self-government and for the continuation of separate Muslim electorates in the legislative councils.1 Some revivalists, such as Madan Mohan Malaviya, a political activist from the United Provinces, opposed the Lucknow Pact on the grounds that this approach to Hindu–Muslim unity in fact seriously undermined Hindu interests.

  Most revivalists also argued that Gandhi’s efforts in the early 1920s to strengthen Hindu–Muslim bonds by lining up the Congress organization behind the Muslim protest against the dismemberment of the Turkish empire, referred to as the Khilafat movement, would encourage Muslim separatism. When he launched his first major non-cooperation movement in India on 1 August 1920, one of the issues was the British unwillingness to satisfy Muslims on the Turkish issue. Gandhi called for a complete boycott of government institutions, while simultaneously including the doctrine of non-violent resistance as an integral part of the movement. A considerable number of Congress members, including many revivalists, opposed both the objectives and tactics of the boycott.2 Particularly outspoken were those Hindu Congress members who were followers of Tilak. G. S. Kharpade, a Maharashtrian colleague of Tilak, prepared a formal statement which claimed that the non-cooperation movement might ‘develop powers of endurance, but cannot breed the energy or resourcefulness and practical wisdom necessary for a political struggle’.3 This proposition was to become accepted wisdom among Gandhi’s revivalist critics. Nevertheless, many Hindu revivalists did support the 1920–21 non-cooperation movement. There was no other viable nationalist organization.

  The apparent failure of Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement, which was followed by widespread communal rioting, convinced many Hindu revivalists that a different approach was needed. Many believed that the ‘weakness’ of the Hindu community could be overcome only if Hindus strengthened community bonds and adopted an assertive kshatriya outlook. Accordingly, communal peace, they argued, would result only if Muslims and Hindus both realized that an attack on one community would result in a devastating response by the other. When conflicts developed between members of the two communities, communal allies were often sought through appeals to the most sharply defined cleavage separating Hindus and Muslims, namely, religion.4 The success of that appeal depended, in large part, on the degree of cultural differentiation in a particular area. Violence frequently erupted over some alleged dishonour to the symbols of the two communities. As a result of violence, a history of communal affronts could be drawn upon to arouse communal tension.5

  Hindu revivalists were particularly alarmed by the widespread communal rioting which occurred on the Malabar coast of south-western India during August 1921. Events there underscored the revivalist concern about the dangers facing the Hindus of the subcontinent. Muslim resentment against British rule in the Malabar area was coupled with anti-Hindu sentiment, and the rioting grew to such proportions that the civil administration was unable to contain the violence in many places.6 This uprising, which also was accompanied by forced conversions of Hindus, confirmed the fears of many Hindus that the violence on the Malabar Coast was a covert attempt to enhance the political influence of Muslims at the expense of the Hindu community. Many Hindus feared that similar outbreaks would occur elsewhere, and these apprehensions fuelled revivalist sentiment.

  The All-India Congress Committee condemned the events on the Malabar Coast, but not forcefully enough to suit some Hindu congressmen.7 N. C. Kelkar, a senior Congress y figure from Bombay province, told the Congress Enquiry Commission, which was investigating the rioting, that ‘the condemnation by Mahomedans of the forced conversion of Hindus in Malbar [sic] was not as full throated and did not ring as true as it should in these days of Hindu-Muslim unity’.8 Dr B. S. Munje, a revivalist leader of the Congress in the Central Provinces, suggested that ‘we [Hindus] should devise a scheme for encouraging and providing for settlement in Malabar of the martial communities of the Hindus such as Mahratta, Rajputs, and Sikhs’.9 The Dehra Dun branch of the Hindu Mahasabha warned, ‘The Hindu race once so great and glorious is truly speaking “nobody’s child” now. The result is that it is usually the Hindus who fall an easy prey to the aggression of those more united and virile.’10

  HINDU NATIONALISTS ORGANIZE

  As a result of the intensification of Hindu–Muslim tension between 1921 and 1923, the dormant Hindu Mahasabha, formed in 1915 as a forum for a variety of Hindu interests (e.g., cow protection, Hindi in the Devanagari script, caste reforms, etc.) was revitalized.11 Hindus, alarmed at the entry of Muslim ulema into politics, the talk of holy wars, and the pan-Islamic aims of some Muslim leaders, were convinced that they had to create an effective organizational mechanism if they were to contain a revived and aggressive Islam. A large number of new Mahasabha centres were formed in north India, particularly in Punjab, Delhi, the United Provinces and Bihar, areas where communal antagonism had reached alarming proportions. Such centres were also organized in areas where the Mahasabha had previously made very little impact, such as Madras and Bengal.12

  Hindu leaders called a national meeting at Benares in August 1923 to revive the Hindu Mahasabha, and it was attended by a broad spectrum of the Hindu community. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, a spokesman of Hindu revivalism in the United Provinces, stated that the major objectives of the session were to ‘devise means to arrest the deterioration and decline of Hindus and to effect the improvement of the Hindus as a community.13 Malaviya, in his presidential address to the session, stated: ‘If the Hindus made themselves strong and the rowdy section among the Mahomedans were convinced they could not safely rob and dishonor Hindus, unity would be established on a stable basis.’14 To attain this end, he suggested that caste Hindus accept untouchables as ‘true’ Hindus, and end their segregation at schools, wells and tenpins. He also suggested that a movement should be launched to reclaim Hindus ‘who had been willingly or forcibly converted’.15 At this session, Hindus were encouraged to form gymnasiums for both men and women. The kshatriya model, combining elements of militancy, vigour and domination, was called upon to overcome the perceived cowardice of Hindus.

  The call for greater fraternal unity among Hindus was often frustrated by orthodox Hindu opposition to reforms that could lead to greater social integration. The orthodox members of the Hindu Mahasabha were particularly disturbed by the reformist revivalists’ advocacy of interdining between untouchables and caste Hindus, and by their proposal that untouchables wear the sacred thread. Din Dayal Sharma, a leading spokesman of the orthodox group within the Mahasabha, charged that these resolutions ignored traditional theological injunctions.16 Nevertheless, the Mahasabha’s increasing commitment to Hindu solidarity and social reform demonstrated the growing power of its revivalist members. The orthodox were gradually to withdraw from it.

  In his presidential address to the eighth Hindu Mahasabha session in 1925, Lajpat Rai proposed that non-violent non-cooperation could seriously weaken Hindu solidarity and thus adversely affect the freedom struggle. ‘We cannot afford to be so weak and imbecile as to encourage others to crush us, nor can we be so obsessed by the false ideas of ahimsa but at our peril’.17 He stated that nonviolence would result in ‘laziness’, ‘fake contentment’, ‘cowardice’, ‘lack of spirit’, and a ‘slave mentality’ among Hindus.18 These charges were similar to those raised earlier by the revivalists in their criticism of Hindu orthodoxy.

  Th
is growing belligerency also undermined support for Gandhi. His inability to bring about the premised swaraj and to calm the communal frenzy led many to question his leadership. In late 1924, a Home Department report on a visit of Mahatma Gandhi to Punjab stated ‘It is literally true that people who not long ago credited the Mahatma with superhuman and even divine powers, now look upon him as a “spent force”, “an extinct volcano”, and a person altogether divested of power and capacity’.19

  The challenge from Islam in the early 1920s was viewed by many Hindus as a threat to their self-esteem. The proliferation of Hindu sabhas and other ‘defensive’ Hindu associations were reactions to the growing communal violence, the increasing political articulation of Muslims, the cultural ‘Islamization’ of the Muslim community, and the failure to achieve independence. While these organizations probably had little effect on British policy, they did advance Hindu unity, while simultaneously generating a heightened sense of Muslim political and cultural consciousness. Such organizations provided Hindus with an opportunity to express their hostility towards the ‘oppressors’ (the Muslims and the British); and, through them, Hindus may have experienced an increased respect for themselves and their co-religionists for having repudiated the impulse of giving in to their ‘oppressors’.20 It is in this setting of Hinduism in danger that the RSS was established.