'The RSS, that advocated military strength, remained in the ideological doghouse for over half a century. Many of the RSS' responses even today carry the burden of this past,' points out Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
As expected, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's centenary celebrations has prompted a heated national and international debate.
As is the reality of the 21st century and prevalent 'instant' opinion culture, the debate is highly polarised and both sides are cherry picking facts and missing the nuanced reality of our immediate past.
Dynasts and biological successors to Mahatma Gandhi have been at the forefront of criticising the RSS while RSS supporters have been inventing facts to justify the RSS' past policies and stance, especially during the freedom struggle.
Here is a historian's take on the RSS centenary and the challenges it faces in the future.
Historical analyses do not confine itself to just chronicling events but attempts to answer the 'why' of an event.
A historian has to also clearly situate past events in the then prevailing circumstances to understand the course of history.
Far too often we find modern pop historians (mostly with a management background) trying to evaluate personalities, ideologies and events of the past in the present environment, forgetting the context. Even this is subjective.
For instance, the RSS' ideological shift post-Independence and in the last few decades are derided as fake while Gandhiji's own evolution from an enthusiastic pro-British supporter, his getting the Kaisar E Hind award from the British is swept under the carpet.
That the Mahatma changed his stance post the 1919 Jalianwalla Bagh massacre is known, but seldom held against him, and rightly so.
But Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar's pronouncements during the Partition riots are resurrected after 78 years.
The RSS was founded in Maharashtra and dominated by Maharashtrians for a fairly long period. However, the RSS, like its ideological icon Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, always had an all India vision.
The RSS path to Hindavi Swarajya, Shivaji's goal, went through building an individual and his character.
The emphasis on discipline and drill, an alien concept in India, stemmed from memories of how the Marathas lost the decisive battle of Panipat in 1761 due to lack of discipline.
The phrase 'Bhau gardi' or chaos in that battle is firmly etched in the Marathi mind.
The 19th century success of small but disciplined and drilled armies over Indians was a constant theme in Marathi literature.
The RSS is also a product of the Indian Renaissance that took place in the 19th and 20th centurie.
Unlike Bengal where Ram Mohan Roy and his Brahmo Samaj rejected ancient Indian wisdom, the reformers in Maharashtra built on the foundations laid by saint poets and Maratha warriors.
This context needs to be kept in mind while understanding the RSS.
Analysts who have no understanding of Marathi or Maharashtra (like the authors of Brotherhood in Saffron) are unlikely to see the truth.
The necessity of violence or force to achieve its objective set the RSS apart from Gandhi who preached non-violence.
The last violent Indian challenge to the British rule in 1857 failed in the face of a modern military machine.
Much of Asia and Africa had succumbed to the 'Gun Powder Imperialism' of Europe.
There was major churning in India and society began to search for an answer to the question as to why it lost its freedom.
A section of Indians believed that reform of society was the answer while some like Bal Gangadhar Tilak prioritised political independence.
There was a well-known debate between Lokmnaya Tilak and Agarkar, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule, who believed in social reform.
There were also religious figures like Swami Vivekananda, Dayanand Sarswati of the Arya Samaj movement or the Theosophical society who went their own way and did not directly take part in the freedom movement.
The RSS under its founder Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar made the development of an individual its goal.
The RSS consciously stayed away from politics like social and religious reformers.
Critics of the RSS who hold the organisation's aloofness from the freedom movement as a sin are deafeningly silent about the social reformers who also did likewise.
The freedom struggle involved four different and separate strands of society. Firstly, there were the individual revolutionaries and martyrs who attacked the pillars of the British Raj and were hanged as criminals.
Then there was the Gandhi-inspired mass non-violent movement. Thirdly, there was the Bose-inspired Indian National Army.
Lastly were millions of officers and men who joined the British Indian armed forces during World War II [1939-1945] and forced the Raj to realise that it could no longer prevent the rapid Indianisation of the armed forces and could not ignore the national sentiments of that force.
The Indian naval mutiny of 1946 drove home this point most painfully.
Regrettably, many politicians/academicians while discussing the contributions made by freedom fighters to the struggle for Independence conveniently play down the revolutionaries, Bose's role and totally ignore the indirect role of the armed forces.
Most of our people dislike violence and hesitate to kill a mad dog, what to speak of a ruthless terrorist.
Millions subscribe to a romantic belief that non-violent actions are a better [nobler] substitute for military action.
These detractors of force argued that if Gandhian tactics could confront and defeat powerful Imperial Britain, then non-violent non-cooperation can surely deal with internal violence and external aggression.
The RSS, that advocated military strength, remained in the ideological doghouse for over half a century. Many of the RSS' responses even today carry the burden of this past.
But none of the RSS' past record has been more damaging than the anti-Muslim stance of the 1940s.
This was the time when the British were playing the game of 'divide and rule' to the hilt.
The British bias to the Muslim League was an open secret.
Muslims also had greater representation in the police and armed forces.
The intrigues of British colonialists were vividly brought out by George Orwell in his book Burmese Days.
Unfortunately, while the literature glorifying the British Raj has flooded the market, there is hardly any Indian counter to expose this dark underbelly of colonial rule.
The RSS' early leadership had seen how efforts of Lokmanya Tilak (Lucknow Pact of 1916) and Gandhi's support to the Khilafat movement for restoration of the caliphate in Turkey failed to persuade Muslims to join the freedom movement.
It is very likely that the Congress leadership including Gandhi saw the RSS as a useful counterweight to Muslim militancy.
Mahatma Gandhi's assassination in 1948 was a catastrophic event that shaped Indian attitudes to right of centre organisations like the RSS.
The Congress leadership made full use of this opportunity to curb the RSS as it was thought to be a threat to the emergence of a secular India.
The Hindu civilisational heritage was seen in a negative light and for over four to five decades Hindus were made to feel ashamed of their faith.
- Part 2 of the column: Why RSS Must Choose Bharatiyata Over Hindutva
Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) is a military historian and author of Let the Jhelum Smile Again (1997) and Nuclear Menace The Satyagraha Approach (1998).
His earlier columns can be read here.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
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