Book: Golwalkar: The Myth Behind the Man, The Man Behind the Machine
Author: Dhirendra K Jha
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Price: Rs 899
Dhirendra K. Jha’s book is divided into 18 chapters. This authoritative biography of M.S. Golwalkar makes an attempt to recreate the life and the times of the demi-god of Hindutva politics. Through a rich cache of historical sources, including previously unpublished archival material as well as oral testimonies and interviews, Jha brings to the fore many known and unknown aspects of Golwalkar’s personality.
The author delineates the early years of Golwalkar’s life which were full of uncertainties and failures. Many of the failures, intrinsic to Golwalkar’s life, were completely glossed over in the later years by Hindu right-wing ‘historians’ and political activists. Instead, there was a conscious attempt to portray him as a born genius and an intellectual par excellence. Besides his initiation into and rise in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh which, to an extent, was due to his close proximity to K.B. Hedgewar, the book also deliberates on the crisis that emerged in the RSS following the death of the founder of the body in 1940 and the political situation that catapulted Golwalkar to the position of sarsanghchalak the same year.
Prior to Golwalkar, the RSS was restricted primarily to the Marathi-speaking regions of Maharashtra. However, once he took charge of the organisation, the RSS and other splinter groups, known together as the sangh parivar, spread their wings to almost all parts of the country. A substantial portion of Jha’s work focuses on Golwalkar’s book, We or Our Nationhood Defined (1939). Following in the footsteps of V.D. Savarkar, Golwalkar sought to elaborate upon, albeit in an explicit manner, many of the arguments which Savarkar made in his work, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1923). Most of Golwalkar’s arguments were derived from Adolf Hitler and the Nazi ideology. Golwalkar, as his work shows, was in favour of imitating Hitler’s treatment of Jews when it came to the minorities in India.
Jha also sheds light on the dubious role of the RSS under the leadership of Golwalkar in the 1930s and the 1940s, especially during the years leading up to Partition. Playing second fiddle to the colonial regime, the RSS participated in the process of communalising Indian politics. In the concluding portion, the role of Golwalkar and the RSS in influencing two of the three killers of M.K. Gandhi — Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte — has been discussed at length. In the same section, readers are made aware of the political developments that took place following Gandhiji’s assassination which included a ban on the RSS and the imprisonment of Golwalkar.
Bereft of any jargon, Golwalkar makes for compelling reading. Besides highlighting several little-known facets of the RSS and the sangh parivar, Jha exposes many of the myths associated with Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar. By tracing the political trajectory of Golwalkar, Jha is able to successfully draw a sinister portrait of one of the most prominent faces of Hindutva and, at the same time, of the RSS and its world view that evolved under Golwalkar.