What was the role of RSS chief Golwalkar in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi?

It was only about three weeks after Golwalkar threatened to “silence” Gandhi on December 8, 1947, that Godse set out to work on an assassination plan.

Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the second sarsanghchalak of the RSS (right), with Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, leader of the Hindu Mahasabha and fellow Hindu nationalist thinker, in Pune. Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, was a member of both the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha and was obsessed with the idea of making India a Hindu Rashtra. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

The final act of Golwalkar’s conflict with Gandhi was played out by Nathuram Godse, the RSS hothead from Poona. At the time, Godse edited a local Marathi journal, Hindu Rashtra, just as his mentor, Kashinath Bhaskar Limaye, the chief of the Maharashtra unit of the RSS and one of the closest aides of Golwalkar, edited Vikram, another pro-Hindutva Marathi journal published from Sangli. N. D. Apte, a member of the Hindu Mahasabha, was the general manager of Hindu Rashtra. Limaye, Godse and Apte were also bound by their loyalty to V. D. Savarkar and had in the past organized the Hindu Rashtra Dal as a joint venture between the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha. There is no specific evidence to suggest that Golwalkar, as the chief of the RSS, ever disapproved of the Hindu Rashtra Dal. The idea of a Hindu Rashtra, which Golwalkar pushed through his nationwide network of shakhas, was of profound significance to all three, but seems to have exercised a particularly strong hold over Godse.

While most of the RSS men shared Golwalkar’s anger on Gandhi’s determined bid to obstruct efforts to force Muslims to leave India, a few of them possessed Godse’s intent to remove this stumbling block through violent means. In fact, it was only about three weeks after Golwalkar threatened to ‘silence’ Gandhi on 8 December 1947 that Godse set out to work on an assassination plan. Did Godse, an excessively enthusiastic RSS man, see in those threatening words of the sarsanghchalak some kind of a fatwa to kill Gandhi? Did he ever come to a secret understanding with Golwalkar? Or did he move in that direction on his own? There were theories, but, as there was no thorough investigation into the conspiracy angle in the immediate aftermath of Gandhi’s murder, there could be no certainty or straightforward explanations.

In any case, there were reasons for Godse wanting to kill Gandhi. As a passionate member of the RSS and the editor of Hindu Rashtra, he had been acting in close concert with the Hindutva movement and was obsessed, like any other member of the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, with the idea of making India a Hindu Rashtra. He was, therefore, part and parcel of a subterranean and organized Hindutva resistance to the Gandhian project of secular democracy—a resistance which had existed since before 1947, before the country was even thought to be partitioned. Through his nationalism and secularism, Gandhi had comprehensively countered the idea of a Hindu Rashtra, forcing its proponents—the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha—to the margins of Indian politics. This made Gandhi the main target of attack not only by Golwalkar but also by individual members and leaders of the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha. Thus, if Godse, imagining himself as the deliverer of the idea of the Hindu Rashtra, set out to kill Gandhi, he seemed to have been resolving what might be described as a battle for the soul of India, an anxious and longstanding conflict to define the emerging nation state. The putative resolution posited by Godse can be seen a desperate attempt, but it was very much part of the struggle that Golwalkar had launched.

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In twenty-four hours, the RSS had fallen apart, its members scattered or at odds. It seemed as though Golwalkar’s period of ascent was over. With the assassination of Gandhi, all hopes for his project of a Hindu Rashtra collapsed. Prior to the assassination, Golwalkar and his cadres had been riding a tide of anti-Partition, anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim feelings. No doubt, Gandhi’s fast had weakened the tide, but it had not vanished completely—sections of Hindu and Sikh refugees and those under the spell of the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha still carried the hatred against Muslims. The assassination shook India to normalcy. Rapidly, almost instantaneously, the tide turned. In one stroke, public opinion took a great swing away from the champions of a Hindu Rashtra. Coming soon after Gandhi’s painful fast, the murder appeared to be an act of reactionary conspirators desperate to set India in new ideological directions.

What the events would mean ultimately for the RSS was difficult to predict, but within twenty-four hours of the assassination, Golwalkar was searching for ways to save the organization from ruin and to salvage some of its standing. The grief of the multitude was unendurable, and people seemed to have lost their minds. On Sunday, 1 February, Golwalkar issued a statement to the press. ‘In the presence of this appalling tragedy I hope people will learn the lesson and practice the doctrine of love and service,’ it said. ‘Believing in this doctrine, I direct all my brother swayamsevaks to maintain a loving attitude towards all, even if there be any sort of provocation born out of misunderstanding and to remember that even this misplaced frenzy is an expression of unbounded love and reverence, in which the whole country held the great Mahatma, the man who made the name of our motherland great in the world. Our salutation to the revered departed one.’

This was not the usual language for the RSS to use about Gandhi. When he was alive, it had spread venom against him and had even wished his death when he sat on fast a fortnight ago. Golwalkar’s own view of Gandhi, as he explained it to RSS men on 8 December 1947 in Delhi, was that the Mahatma had gone off the deep end and become disloyal to Hindus by blocking efforts to cleanse India of Muslims, the reason why he had threatened to ‘silence’ him. Now, panicked at people’s fury, Golwalkar espoused a new line, abandoning—at least publicly—his plan of undertaking ethnic cleansing of Muslims and establishing a Hindu Rashtra. What he claimed instead was that he believed in the ‘doctrine’ of Gandhi.

In actual fact, Golwalkar no longer had a choice. There was not much he could do except to desperately look for a way out. Making new pledges could not be an issue at a time when hesitation seemed fatal. This also explains why the RSS leadership did not take time to abandon Godse, even though he had served the organization for fourteen years.

Dhirendra K. Jha is a Delhi-based journalist and author. Excerpted with permission of Simon & Schuster India from Golwalkar: The Myth Behind the Man, The Man Behind the Machine by Dhirendra K. Jha.