Intolerance: Gandhi, Golwalkar, Germany

Gandhi, Golwalkar, Germany

“The man who has no sense of history is like a man who has no ears or eyes.”

- German Führer Adolf Hitler

Media

In 1938, Communism's victims were in millions compared to Nazis's hundreds yet nobody questioned the legitimacy of the Bolshevik regime. Young impressionable Nehru came back completely captivated from a Russian trip in 1927 like numerous Western and westernized intellectuals who applauded Communism and called for its implementation in their homelands. Narrative theorists invoked construction of identities, developed plots, characters and events to convey authenticity to the socialist utopia because a foundational legend or so-called golden age (past or future) helps in the consolidation of the social category being mobilised. This process of accentuating intergroup differences simultaneously also involves accentuation of intragroup similarities, groups traditionally viewed as different become viewed as more similar when the comparative context is widened or dissimilar when narrowed.

New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty privately estimated the death toll of the Ukrainian famine-genocide of 1932-33 at ten million, but in his journalistic despatches, he denied the genocide completely. Gandhi first surfaced in American awareness in 1920. While Americans relied on British news agencies in the 1920s, by 1930s, American journalists had gained indepepence from British influences. He was revered or reviled when his first non-cooperation campaign struck a first mortal blow to the myth of the benevolent white British raj. Gandhi’s iconic Dandi March in 1930 was the second. It trained the western media spotlight on India since it was designed so. Gandhi had been in touch with the Director of Indian Independence League in New York, directing him to publicise the protest. And so the New York Times published Gandhi’s appeal under the headline - Gandhi Asks Backing Here: Urges Expression of Public Opinion for India’s Right to Freedom. The cover feature titled 'A Pinch of Salt' argued that had an English politician in a loin cloth walked 80 miles to London barefoot, the Englishmen would have thought him mad¹⁠.

The following year, in 1931, Gandhi became Time Magazine’s Man of the Year. Eight years later in 1939, Time chose Adolf as the Man of the Year. Media made Gandhi and Hitler who they are today. Underneath the stark, black-and-white illustration was the caption, “From the unholy organist, a hymn of hate.” The dramatisation of Indian nationalism in 1930 in the form of Salt Satyagraha prompted the Time magazine to feature Gandhi on his cover, under the title, 'Saint Gandhi'. Time defended the choices by " Man of the Year, now Person of the Year, was not an honour but instead should be a distinction applied to the newsmaker who most influenced world events for better or worse." The British raj was helpless beyond a point to censor or repress American journalists, whose nationality served as an immunity of sorts.

Pre-Golwalkar

“We, the undersigned, demand that Ambassador resign or, failing that, be recalled.” - Indian outragers

“I went to educate myself about the organization.”

- German Ambassador Walter Lindner after his visit to RSS office in Nagpur (July 2019)

Robert Paxton, an American political scientist and historian, listed seven features of fascism.

(i.) The certainty in the supremacy of the group

(ii.) The belief in the victimisation led justifications.

(iii.) The fear of harm from liberal or foreign influences.

(iv.) The need for integration of a 'purer' national community.

(v.) The insistence on the group’s right to rule others.

(vi.) The sense of the existence of a severe crisis.

(vii.) The belief in the need for an authoritative leader.

An All India Trinamool Congress parliamentarian used this list to point out fascism in India while accusing the ruling right-wing BJP government of fomenting the trend. Funnily, she forgot to mention how TMC fits squarely within the definition with its penchant for political violence, victimisation led justifications, intolerance led non-engagement, frequent crises harking, fierce anti-left sentiment in the indulgence of a supreme leader. Such double standards are not limited to politics. Many cultist denominations display these features.

Linear patterns of casuality such as the Burkean pentad method are popular methods of analyzing social movements, but they are less suited to study the Hindutva movement because the Hindutva movement does not speak for a monolithic audience. Unimaginative academics are unable to comprehend the unique success of Hindutva in consolidation of the Hindus for a developmental cause, so they utilise run-of-the-mill models like guilt-redemption-purification cycles²⁠.

There are people in Bharat who are ignorant of Hitler and his history, but defend him by using many false equivalences and superficial rationales. Conversely, there are people who know all about Hitler, being especially fond of his management style, his oratorical skills and his gifts as a strategist. Researchers keep citing the increase in sale of copies of Mein Kampf, adorned with Hitler’s image and all. A man in Meghalaya named Adolf Lu Hitler-Marak is currently running for his fourth consecutive term in the state assembly. There is a popular Indian soap opera called Hitler Didi. Mein Kampf has a legitimate fan base just like The Communist Manifesto, written by fellow Germans Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and responsible for manifold more deaths than Mein Kampf.

Nazi-Soviet enamoured Indians are ardent Hitler-Stalin fans. The southernmost states of India have both Stalins and Communists. Like all other communist governments, the Communist Party of India (CPI) in Kerala understands that sometimes action has to be taken, law has to be broken, and then it has to be evaded. Conservatives are often called fascists by the Left. Here is a typical case of a CPI committed political murders in Kerala -

“The district court trial of 7 CPI (M) workers for the murder of the BJP-Yuva Morcha leader, Jaykrishnan Master in December 1999, was about to commence. The defense team’s work was cut out and the area secretary was supposed to assist the lawyers; witnesses had to be gathered and evidence for the defense had to be mobilised. The secretary had to make sure that once the law had been broken it could also be evaded. At the time of the murder, the first accused, Acharaparambath Pradeepan, was a CPI (M) branch secretary. At the end of their trial, prosecution lawyers sought capital punishment for Pradeepan and the other men accused of Jaykrishnan Master’s murder. As per section Section 235(2) of the CrPC, the judge gave Pradeepan and his co-accused the opportunity to speak before he pronounced his judgment. It is notable that in the court Pradeepan did not evoke his membership in the party. Instead he described himself as a ‘social worker’ who dealt with “social problems” and helped to “improve things³⁠.”

"From this standpoint, sanctioned by the experience of shrewd old nations, the foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e. of the Hindu nation, and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race; or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment not even citizen's rights."

- MS Golwalkar's first book, We and Our Nationhood Defined (1939) P.47-48/p.55-56

"To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by."

- We and Our Nationhood Defined P.35/p.43

Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar was the second Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. He was born in 1906, the year after the partition of Bengal. He was 33 and non-secular when he got his first book ‘We and Our Nationhood Defined’ published. When Gandhi was 37 and racist, he was commanding the corps of 21 in support of the British colony, against the native Zulus of Africa. Golwalkar's book went to print the same year as World War II began, in 1939. Golwalkar's oftest-quoted line from We and Our Nationhood Defined is that the minority people must "not claim even citizen's rights". This is not enough to brand all Right-leaning people Nazis when Golkwalkar's senior Lokmanya Bapuji M S Aney confirmed in the foreword of the book itself that Golwalkar was applying to Islam an arrangement developed by Islam itself. M S Aney chided Golwalkar for coming to an understanding that Indian muslims were uncivilised, undemocratic and incapable of transcending religion. Young Golwalkar's views most certainly do not live up to modern democratic-republican standards but those who say that it amounts to fascism often forget that Golkwalkar was not living in modern democratic-republican times.

In judging Golwalkar's position, the fair mind must keep the political atmosphere of 1938 at the centre of the controversy for the simple reason that Golwalkar was not living in a vacuum. Muslim League had not yet officially adopted the Pakistan resolution but the stench of a separate state was dense. The league showed hands only in 1940, despite the card conclusively known to all ever since it's enunciation as far back as in 1888 by Syed Ahmed Khan’s Meerut Speech. The basis for this demand was the two-nation theory. Congress coterie accepted this slightly pyrrhic victory because the principle was internationally accepted. It was applied in Austro-Hungarian, Czarist and Ottoman cases. It was supported by Lenin too and theoretically applied in USSR.

The founding of the Indian National Congress (1885) was preceded by the establishment of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (1875) at Aligarh by Syed Ahmed Khan who espoused the two-nation theory in his 1888 speech at Meerut. In this speech, Syed announced that he believed Muslims had lorded over India hence reserved the customary right to rule once the British left. He spoke how his Muslim nation had hitherto stayed silent on the question of the Indian National Movement and to say that the Mohammedans have joined the Indian National Movement because a few did, was quite wrong and a false accusation against the Muslim nation. He feared that the Hindu majority INC would suppress Mohammedan religious rites. The fear was so belligerent that Syed went on to frankly advise his Hindu 'friends' that if they wished to cherish their religious rites, they can never be successful by supporting Congress, that if they are to be successful, it can only be by friendship and agreement with the Muslims. He talked of Bengal, NWFP and Assam. He asserted many times that the rulers and ruled must belong to one nation.

Syed Ahmed asked if "in the times of the Mohammedan empire, would it have been consistent with the principles of the rule that when Emperor was about to make war on a province of India, he should have asked his subject-peoples whether he should conquer that country or not?" He asserted that the Muslim nation itself wielded empire, and people of his nation were even then ruling. He asked if "it was consistent with any principle of the empire? If there is any principle of empire by which rule over foreign races may be maintained in this manner?"

Syed Ahmed spoke of the Hindu majority Indian National Congress whom he lovingly called Bengalis, "Bengalis have never at any period of time held sway over a particle of land. They are altogether ignorant of the method by which a foreign race can maintain its rule over races. You can appreciate these matters, but they cannot who have never held a country in their hands nor won a victory. Oh, my brother Musalmans! For seven hundred years in India, you have had imperial sway. You know what it is to rule.” He quoted Chapter V of the Holy Koran to lend support to the British government, “Thou shalt surely find the most violent of all men in enmity against the true believers to be the Jews and the idolators: and thou shalt surely find those among them to be the most inclinable to entertain friendship for the true believers, who say we are Christians.”

The reasons Syed gave for this support was - "We can mix with the English in a social way. We can eat with them, they can eat with us. Whatever hope we have of progress is from them. The Bengalis can in no way assist our progress.” Syed Ahmed exhorted, “Is it possible that under the circumstances two nations – the Mohammedans and the Hindus, could sit on the same throne and remain equal in power? Most certainly not. It is necessary that one of them should conquer the other and thrust it down.”

He also warned Hindus of the might of the pan-Islamic Ummah, “Probably Mohammedans would be by themselves enough to maintain their own position. But suppose they were not. Then our Musalman brother, the Pathans, would come out as a swarm of locusts from their mountain valleys, and make rivers of blood to flow from their frontier on the north to the extreme end of Bengal. This thing – who after the departure of English would be conquerors – would rest on the will of God. But until one nation had conquered the other and made it obedient, peace cannot reign in the land.”

The Khilafat movement (1919-1924) became an agitation by Indian Muslims allied with Indian National Movement in the years following WWI with express purposes of pressurising the British government to preserve the authority of the Ottoman Sultan as Caliph of Islam because integral to this was the Indian Muslims’ desire to influence the treaty-making process following the war in such a way as to restore the 1914 boundaries of the Ottoman Empire, even though the Turks, allies of the Central Powers, had been defeated in the war.

Indian supporters of the Khilafat cause sent a delegation to London in 1920 to plead their case, but the British government correctly treated the delegates as quixotic pan-Islamists and did not change its policy toward Turkey. The Indian Muslims’ attempt to influence the provisions of the Treaty of Sevres failed and the victors went ahead with territorial adjustments, including the institution of mandates over formerly Ottoman Arab territories. Gandhi espoused the Khilafat cause, as he saw in it the opportunity to rally Muslim support for his Non-Cooperation movement. It was none other than the Turkish nationalists, the ones Khilafatis had sought to help in the first place, who hammered the final nail in the coffin for the movement by abolishing the Ottoman sultanate in 1922, Gandhi called off Non-Cooperation movement same year after Chauri Chara incident citing growing violence. He had earlier let Moplah riots happen with no issues.

Golwalkar was a realist who was wary of the leadership of the Khilafat movement which included the Ali brothers (newspaper editors from Delhi), their spiritual guides Maulana Abdul Bari of Lucknow, Maulana Abu’l Kalam Azad of Calcutta and Maulana Mahmud ul-Hasan of Deoband. These Ulemas used an oft-repeated strategy to consolidate forces, they declared the European attacks upon the authority of the Caliph as an attack upon Islam and thus as a threat to the religious freedom of Muslims under British rule. This is what Syed Ahmed Khan had attempted in 1888.

Dr BR Ambedkar wrote about pre-partition Hindu-Muslim Unity in his book, Pakistan or The Partition of India. Dr Ambedkar wrote about Muslim Moplahs in Malabar were progenies of the Muslim sea-faring traders who married Hindu women and settled in Malabar over a long time. The invasions of Hyder Ali (1766) and Tipu Sultan (1789) who gave strict orders to his army to “surround and extricate the whole race of Nairs from Kottayam to Palghat” had emboldened the Moplah Muslims, so they began rioting which was painted as revolting in what is now known as the Moplah Rebellion.

The women of Malabar pleaded to Lady Reading: “It is possible that your Ladyship is not fully appraised of all the horros and atrocities perpetrated by the fiendish rebels, of the many wells and tanks filled up with mutilated, but often only half-dead bodies of our nearest and dearest ones who refused to abandon the faith of our fathers, of pregant women cut to pieces and left on the roasides, with the unborn babe protruding from the mangled corpse, of our innocent and helpless children torn from our arms and done to death before our eyes and of our husbands and fathers tortured, skinned and burnt alive, of our hapless sisters forcibly carried away form the midst of kith and kin and subjected to every shame and outrage which the vile and brutal imagination of these hell-hounds, of our places of worship desecrated and destroyed and of the images of deity shamefully insulted by putting the entrails of slaughtered cows where flowers garlands use to lie, or else smashed to pieces, we remember how driven out of native hamlets, we wandered, starving and naked, in the jungles and forests⁴⁠.”

Dr Ambedkar wrote, “The agitations were carried out by two Muslim organizations, the Khuddam-i-Kaba (Servants of the Mecca) and the Central Khilafat Committee. Agitators actually preached the doctrine that India under the British Government was Dar-ul-Harab and that the Muslims must fight against it and if they could not, they must carry out the alternative principle of Hijrat. As soon as the administration had been paralysed, the Moplahs declared that Swaraj had been established. A certain Ali Musaliyar was proclaimed Raja, Khilafat flags were flown, and Ernad and Walluvanad were declared Khilafat Kingdoms. The Hindus were visited by a dire fate at the hands of the Moplahs. Massacres, forcible conversions, desecration of temples, foul outrages upon women such as ripping open pregnant women, pillage, arson and destruction – in short, all the accompaniments of brutal and unrestrained barbarism, were perpetrated freely by the Moplahs upon the Hindus until such time as troops could be hurried to the task of restoring order through a difficult and extensive tract of the country. This was not a Hindu-Muslim riot. This was just a Bartholomew. The number of Hindus, who were killed, wounded or converted, is not known. But the number must have been enormous⁵⁠.”

Bose wrote in his memoir, The Indian Struggle 1920-34 (published in 1935), that "the Moplah rising was directed against the local Hindus, nevertheless, it was also an attack on the Government. It has significance also because it was the first incident to loosen Hindu-Moslem unity. The Muslims had the All-India Moslem League as the most important organisation, having been started as early as 1906. During 1920 and 1924, the Moslem League was eclipsed by the All-India Khilafat Committee. But after the abolition of the Khalifate in 1924, the Khilafat movement in India collapsed, and the Moslem League regained its former.” Bose listed prominent communal Muslim leaders - Aga Khan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Mohammed Ikbal of Lahore, Mohammed Yakub of UP, Shafi Daudi of Patna, Moulana Shaukat Ali. As a counterblast to the All-India Moslem League, the Hindu Mahasabha came into existence for the avowed object of protecting the rights of the Hindus." Bose listed the leaders Ramananda Chatterji of Calcutta, BS Moonje of Nagpur, Bhai Parmanand of Lahore and N. C. Kelkar of Poona. Bose mentioned the non-Brahmin and pro-government Justice Party of Madras and the Sikhs of Punjab who were on the whole strongly nationalist. Bose had long complained that the “false unity of interests that are inherently opposed is not a source of strength but a source of weakness in political warfare.”

Gandhi tried burying the issue because it squarely hit his alliance with the Khilafat Committee. He spoke of “brave God-fearing Moplahs” whom he described as “patriots who were fighting for what they consider as religion, and in a manner which they considered as religious⁶⁠.” He went on to add: “Hindus must find the causes of Moplah fanaticism. They will find that they are not to blame. They have hitherto not cared for the Moplah. It is no use now becoming angry with the Moplahs or Mussalmans in general”, while the Khilafists passed resolutions congratulating the Moplahs. This became a standard Gandhian appeasement pattern, often at severe costs. Gandhi wrote two letters to Hitler. One started with “Dear Friend. That I address you as a friend is no formality. I own no foes⁷⁠.” Truth remains Hitler and Gandhi were both delusional, they both died by bullets shots. The other letter began with Gandhi massaging Hitler’s ego before buttresing his own, "We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents, but your own writings and pronouncements and those of your friends and admirers leave no room for doubt that many of your acts are monstrous and unbecoming of human dignity, especially in the estimation of men like me who believe in universal friendliness." Hitler obviously did not read either because between the two letters he attacked and defeated Poland, Czechoslovakia and Denmark.

Gandhi wrote in a 1938 article in Harijan,"My sympathies are all with the Jews. If there ever could be a justifiable war, in the name of and for humanity, war against Germany to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war⁸⁠." Gandhi was equally coy about supporting Jewish aspirations for independence in the Holy Land, saying the Jews should engage only in non-violence against the Arabs and “offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them.”

The Manchester Guardian highlighted: “One certain element is the desperate religious fanaticism.. India broods the horror of the cold blooded massacres by the Moplahs, still daily showing how Hindus fare in the hand of fanatical Mohammedans. The public, obscurely but rightly, connects the holocaust of Hindu lives and property with Khilafat preachers and realise that the rule even of the arrogant British is better than no rule⁹⁠.”

Gandhi appeased Khilafists for two reasons –

(i.) He wanted to keep Hindu-Muslim unity alive

(ii.) The saint had mastered the man.

Gandhi’s personality frequently ranged from saint to Caesar. His practices of asceticism, simple life, vegetarianism and adherence to truth gave him a halo of saintliness. Bose observed that the Mahatma fully exploited the weak traits of his countrymen –

(i.) inordinate belief in fate and the supernatural

(ii.) Indifference to scientific temper.

Bose lamented the deaths of men like CR Das, Motilal Nehru and Lajpat Rai, who could reason with Gandhi. The Mahatma has understood the character of his people, he did not understand the character of his opponents. The Mahatma has understood the character of his people, he did not understand the character of his opponents^10,11.

To the neutral eyes of the foreign British rulers, the two-nation theory seemed eminently reasonable. Jinnah had pointed out, the Muslims were distinct from the Hindus by religion, language, dress, food habits, marriage customs, inheritance laws, holy days, arts, and they often lived in separate neighbourhoods, so that they lived an entirely separate life and were fit to be considered a separate nation. While it was reasonable to the modern British rulers, it was equally self-evident to the Islamic orthodoxy and ummah.

Golwalkar

John Stuart Mill (Considerations on Representative Government, 1861, p.292-294): "Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. It is in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities." (Mill is mentioned as a source of inspiration for Hindu nationalists by M.S. Aney in his foreword to Golwalkar: We, p.ii.) That Golwalkar was so particular about looking to democratic authorities for advice is of course never mentioned in the secondary literature seeking to portray him as a Nazi.

Even M.S. Aney (We, p.ii) also mentions a long list of non-Nazi inspiring thinkers on nationhood in his foreword including Israel Zangwill, an Anglo-Jewish nationalist playwright. While the Hindu nationalists rejected Mahatma Gandhi's passive pacifism and envisaged the necessity of preparing for confrontation, they never entertained the nihilistic or vitalistic belief in war for war's sake which is so typical of Fascism. At the time of Golwalkar's writing, Hitler's ‘final solution’ only consisted of legal discriminations and vague plans to banish the Jews either to Madagascar or to Palestine, there were secret negotiations between Nazis and Zionists i.e. removing them from Germany rather than killing them.

When Golwalkar wrote that Germany was proving (in a way which he explicitly considered "shocking") the impossibility of culturally distinct nations to live together, he was not referring to the Shoah, which was still three years in the future, but to the removal of Jews from office, their loss of citizenship and their resulting exodus from Germany, phenomena paralleled by the treatment of non-Muslims in Muslim countries even today.

Nothing indicates that Golwalkar understood the exact nature and antecedents of the anti-Jewish policies in Germany and other countries. The intricate story of anti-Judaism in Europe was beyond his politically uneducated intellect. Though many RSS people consider Guruji a great thinker, his assessment of contemporary political phenomena including Nazism was amateurish and poorly conceived when not downright mistaken. Rather, it seems he simply projected his Indian concerns on a world situation of which he knew little and understood less.

The Jews had become less and less distinct from the 18th century onwards, more and more assimilated, and therefore more and more part of German society including its upper layers, for whom Hitler created an elaborate class so as to bracket them like Stalin and Mao. While Muslims had been increasingly dissimilating themselves from their mother society. The Khilafat, Antifa, Intifada, Tabligh movements are all examples of growing chasms between democratic and Muslim worlds. In the 1930s, a new political articulation was given, viz. Muslim separatism crystallizing around the demand for Partition. This had no parallel at all in the situation of the Jews in Germany.

While Golwalkar wanted the Muslims to identify with India rather than with their transnational community, Hitler wanted to dis-identify the assimilated Jews with the German nation and to push them back into their transnational communal identity. Hitler forced Jews into visiblilty by wearing the yellow David star, a practice modelled on the enforced recognizability imposed on the Jews in the medieval Islamic empire, typically by means of a yellow strip of cloth. Talibani orthodoxy encourages dissimilation, proritises faith over nation, to gather fodder for self-sustenance.

John Stuart Mill wrote in his Considerations on Representative Government (1861), "Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. It is, in general, a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities." M.S. Aney in his foreword to Golwalkar's We and Our Nation Defined mentioned Mill as a source of inspiration for Hindu nationalists. M S Aney mentions a long list of non-Nazi inspiring thinkers on nationhood in his foreword, including Israel Zangwill, an Anglo-Jewish nationalist playwright. While Hindu nationalists rejected Mahatma Gandhi's passive pacifism and envisaged the necessity of preparing for confrontation, they never entertained the nihilistic or vitalistic schools. At the time of Golwalkar's writing of We and Our Nation Defined, Hitler's solution consisted of legal discriminations and vague plans to banish the Jews either to Madagascar or to Palestine i.e. removing them from Germany rather than killing them.

When Golwalkar wrote that Germany was shockingly proving the impossibility of culturally distinct nations to live together, he was not referring to the Shoah, which was still three years in the future, but to the removal of Jews from office, their loss of citizenship and their resulting exodus from Germany. Nothing indicates that Golwalkar understood the exact nature and antecedents of the anti-Jewish policies in Germany and other countries. Golwalkar wrote "The Russian nation adheres with religious fervour" to Communism at a time when Stalin had just murdered millions of Russians and Ukrainians. In 1939, Golwalkar did not know that Russia had been turned Communist by brute force rather than by the people's will.

Golwalkar’s racial definition of nation and nationality, in consonance with his time, was composed of what he called five unassailable and scientific units, namely, country, race, religion, culture and language. ‘Race’ (jati) was the foundational component of a nation for Golwalkar. Scientists at one point identified as many as nine races: African, American Indian or Native American, Asian, Australian Aborigine, European, Indian, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian. It is incorrect to base races on physical attributes as we often tend to do. There are physical differences within a race as well. For example, Scandinavian whites have lighter skins than Mediterranean whites. Some whites (as Europeans like being called) have darker skin than some blacks (as Europeans like to call African Americans). If clear racial differences ever existed, they have most certainly become increasingly blurred. A century ago, for example, Irish, Italians, and Eastern European Jews who left their homelands for a better life in the United States were not regarded as white once they reached the United States.

Truth is no person born in the country, whose ancestors have enjoyed rights of citizenship for centuries together, can be called a foreigner on the ground that it follows a different religion. Religions evolve as humans do. They witness evolutionary ebbs and flows. It is these ebbs and flows that carve faiths and people. Some faiths emphasize time while some faiths are timeless. The difference between past and future, between cause and effect, between memory and hope, between regret and intention, appears to be no difference in the elementary laws that describe the mechanisms of the world. It is for these reasons that religion (as we know it in the 21st century) can never be successful criteria for nationhood if the aim is national progress. Israel, a much-touted example of a faith-based nation, thrives because it shares a border with Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. It would have struggled if it had Saudi Arabia, Iran or Pakistan as next-door neighbours. Carlo Rovelli, an Italian theoretical physicist, deduces the crux of time, “In Hindu mythology, the river of Cosmos is portrayed with the sacred image of Shiva dancing, his dance supporting the course of the universe, it is itself the flowing of time. What could be more universal and obvious than this flowing?”

The intricate story of anti-Judaism in Europe was beyond his young inexperienced intellect. Though many people consider Golwalkar a great thinker, his assessment of contemporary politics was ill-conceived, when not incorrect. He was simply associating Indian concerns with the world situation. The Jews had assimilated into the German society, particularly the upper class, for which Hitler had created an elaborate structure to identify and categorise them, just like Stalin and Mao did in USSR and China. Muslims, on the other hand, had increasingly dissimilated themselves from their motherlands, becoming more and more Arabic over time. In India of the 1930s, a new political articulation was given to Muslim separatism by allowing crystallization around the demand for Pakistan. This had no parallel in Germany. The Khilafat, Antifa, Intifada, Tabligh movements are all examples of growing chasms between democratic and Muslim nations. Muslim orthodoxy encouraged dissimilation and prioritised faith over motherlands to gather recruits and fodder for self-sustenance. While Golwalkar simply wanted the Muslims to identify with India, not Arabia, Hitler wanted to dis-identify the Jews. Hitler, like the Taliban, forced Jews to wear Yellow Badges, a practice modelled on the medieval Islamic empires which enforced Jews to wear a yellow strip of cloth for recognisability.

Why neither Savarkar nor Golwalkar elaborated upon exactly how the Hindu nation and people could re-vitalise the Hindu national consciousness and re-establishing Hindu nationhood might be attributed to their acceptance that the Indian vision can not be rallied behind singular individuals as Netaji Bose and Dr Ambedkar has warned, that it needs a more democratic approach. The writings of Veer Savarkar and Guru Golwalkar are not operating manuals of the Hindu nationalist movement or the theory of nationhood as accepted by all Hindus. Their theories were mere continuity of the Burkean tradition in daring to bring the ugly versions of truth even in face of destructively dominant narratives and counter-narratives, even on topics as serious as nationhood, good-vs-evil, protagonists and antagonists. The mobilisation strategies of all movements should be continuously scrutinised by academics, political commentators, and journalists alike, bearing in mind the intellectual harm caused by eventual depletion on account of prejudices.

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7. When Mahatma Gandhi chided Hitler and called his actions monstrous - News Analysis News. https://www.indiatoday.in/news-analysis/story/when-mahatma-gandhi-chided-hitler-and-called-his-actions-monstrous-1605346-2019-10-02.

8. Unearthed Mahatma Gandhi’s WWII letter wishes Jews ’era of peace’- The New Indian Express. https://www.newindianexpress.com/world/2019/sep/25/unearthed-mahatma-gandhis-wwii-letter-wishes-jews-era-of-peace-2038567.html.

9. Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924 - Vikram Sampath - Google Books. https://books.google.co.in/books?id=E46nDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT559&lpg=PT559&dq=gandhib+patriots+who+were+fighting+for+what+they+consider+as+religion,+and+in+a+manner+which+they+considered+as+religious.&source=bl&ots=zBcYomnd93&sig=ACfU3U29FWPBfVFZelH2pSMji-81VEFzmg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjRjNzVzMrpAhXH6XMBHcxRAAkQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=gandhib patriots who were fighting for what they consider as religion%2C and in a manner which they considered as religious.&f=false.

10. No, dear land of liberty, you can’t judge Bose. He sought it, too. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/clicklit/no-dear-land-of-liberty-you-cant-judge-bose-he-sought-it-too/.

11. A Beacon Across Asia: A Biography of Subhas Chandra Bose - Google Books. https://books.google.co.in/books?id=hYaMBfgT2y8C&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=Your+Excellency,+I+have+been+in+politics+all+my+life+and+I+do+not+need+any+advice+from+anyone.&source=bl&ots=CeH5lB_mQS&sig=ACfU3U2GCOsO3_YxPBUQAzL8DXsQJhqhaQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJ8qWmmsrpAhX46nMBHfolCEUQ6AEwAHoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=Your Excellency%2C I have been in politics all my life and I do not need any advice from anyone.&f=false.