By A.G. Noorani
(There was a news item recently stating that the RSS has decided to celebrate the 150th anniversary of 1857’s war of independence on its own. Here we reproduce an article by eminent jurist and author A. G. Noorani written in December 1995 that appeared in Frontline magazine. The article shows as to how they played a ‘crucial role’ in freedom struggle.)
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www.khabrein.info)It would be extremely unfortunate if Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh’s telling remarks on the Sangh Parivar’s role during the Quit India Movement in 1942 were to be forgotten and the furor they created dismissed as one of the more lively episodes in the country’s politics. The matter merits careful study by students of history and politics. For, it reveals the psyche of the Parivar and is very relevant today. Digvijay Singh told presspersons on September 20: “The RSS, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League had not backed Mahatma Gandhis’s ‘Quit India’ call in 1942”.
Truth hurts. There was such a furor in the Assembly the next day that speaker Sriniwas Tiwari had to adjourn the House for the day. The Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) members demanded an apology from the Chief Minister for his remarks. He refused, saying he had spoken a “historical truth which could not be denied”. He said he had offered them 30 minutes in the Assembly to refute his charge but the BJP members’ behavior proved the party was “fascist in thought and action”.
The BJP was born in 1980 formally but it has a far longer lineage. For all the diversity of its elements, the Sangh parivar is closely knit ideologically. Clashes of ego in the past and now do not obscure that.
The BJP is the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and a reincarnation in 1980, under a different name, of the Jan Sangh which had merged in the Janata Party in 1977, continued to work as a faction within it, and came out of it in the open three years later. The Jan Sangh was founded by a former president of the Hindu Mahasabha, Shyama Prassad Mookherjee, after he resigned from the Union cabinet in April 1950. But by that time the Constituent Assembly had passed a resolution, on April 3, 1948 in the wake of Gandhiji’s assassination, affirming a resolve “that communalism should be eliminated from Indian life” and declaring, in consequence, that “no communal organization … should be permitted to engage in any activities other than those essential for the bona fide religious, cultural, social and educational needs of the community, and that all steps, legislative and administrative, necessary to prevent such activities should be taken”.
Mookherjee was party to this resolution. He knew also that the Indian Law Ministry was then seized of the problem of framing appropriate legislation to implement the resolve. He hit upon a solution of the kind that comes naturally to such --- a communal body in all but name. An acolyte of those days, Balraj Madhok frankly described the course Mookerjee followed: “It was clear to him as to any other observer of Indian scene that he must have a political platform outside the Parliament to project his point of view. Hindu Mahasabha was there. Dr. S. P. Mukherji suggested to Hindu Mahasabha leaders that they should open their door to all Indians, irrespectively of their caste and creed, and become a really democratic nationalist platform for men like him. This was not acceptable to Hindu Mahasbha. He, therefore, decided to create a new political platform. In this endeavor, he got encouragement and willing cooperation from a number of persons including some in the RSS who also felt the need for a party nearer to their basic nationalistic approach and outlook.”
In his biography of Mookerjee, Madhok mentioned the details: a meeting was arranged between the RSS chieftain M.S. Golwalkar and Mookerjee. “A compromise was struck “. The RSS would function as before, “but it should actively support a political party for the running of which it would spare some senior workers and allow its goodwill to be used by such a party.”
The BJP—as the Jan Sangh was – a fusion of both stream, the Mahasabha and the RSS. Which explain why the Jan Sangh’s general Secretary, Deendayal Upadhyaya’s emphatic statement at a press conference: “No we do not consider the Hindu Mahasabha a communal party”(Organiser, January 9, 1961).
Mookerjee, the founder of the Jan Sangh had patron saint of the BJP, was quite clear in his mind as to how the Government should respond, if the Congress gave a call to the British rulers to Quit India. In a letter to the Governor of Bengal, on July 26,1942 – less than a fortnight before the all Indian Congress Committee passed the Quit India resolution on August 8— he wrote: “Let me now refer to the situation that may be created in the province as a result of any widespread movement launched by the Congress. Anybody, who during the war, plans to stir up mass feeling, resulting internal disturbances or insecurity, must be resisted by any Government that may function for the time being” (Leaves from a Dairy; Oxford University Press; Rs. 300; p. 179. It is a neglected book that deserves notice). None that he was not against acts of violence alone. He was against what the British rulers dubbed “sedition “. He was against arousal of “mass feelings” which led to “insecurity” in the regime as distinct from (“or”) internal disturbances.Mookerjee knew whom he was writing to when he provided his unsolicited advice. It was the iron-fisted Sir John Herbert. Against this explicit advice to such a man, qualifications like “mere repression is no remedy” were pointless and for the record.
As the historian Sumit Guha recalled in an article, “The Governor, Sir John Herbert, felt he knew best. On August 9, he summoned the Haq Ministry and told its members to endorse the Government crackdown or resign. Nobody resigned, and a brutal campaign of repression was launched” (Indian Express; August 17, 1992).Mookerjee was then Finance Minister in the Bengal Government headed by a member of the Muslim League, Fazlul Haq, who had broken from it – only to rejoin it later. That was the day—August 9 ---when Mookerjee should have resigned. He did not, hoping that the Governor would make a deal with him on power-sharing as proposed in his letter. It expressed in his letter. It expressed Mookerjee’s “sense of loyalty to my leader”, Fazlul Haq, and made a concrete proposal: “The question is how to combat this movement in Bengal? The administration of the province should be carried on in such a manner that in spite of the best efforts of the Congress, this movement will fail to take root in the province. It should be possible for us, especially responsible Ministers, to be able to tell the public that the freedom for which the Congress has started the movement, already belongs to the representatives of the people. In some spheres it might be limited during the emergency. Indian have to trust the British, not for the sake for Britain, not for any advantage that the British might gain, but for the maintenance of the defense and freedom of the province itself. You, as Governor, will function as the constitutional head of the province and will be guided entirely on the advice of your Minister.In other words, if the British transferred power to the Haq-Mookerjee rump, Mookerjee was very willing to continue as Minister though the Congress leaders, MLAs and rank and file were behind bars. He resigned on November 16, 1942 and tottered out in his letter of resignation a whole set of belated prevarication on why he did not resign when, in his own conscience, he ought to have. He had written to the Viceroy on August 12 and received a reply in “early September”. Explanations of the two months’ delay were few and laboured. The talk of a “settlement” was disingenuous. For, his proposal to the British for power-sharing was made in a specific context mentioned at the very outset – “The question is how to combat this movement (Quit India) in Bengal.”
Mookherjee began his political career in 1929 when he was elected to the Bengal Legislative council from the University constituency – as a Congress candidate. He was again elected to the Assembly in 1937 from the same constituency. In February 1939 Vinayak D.Savarker toured Bengal. Mookherjee was “a discovery of Savarkar’s tour in Bengal” writes Savarkar’s biographer, Dhananjay Keer. It was only in May 1937 that the newly-elected Congress Government of Bombay removed completely the humiliating conditions to which Savarker had submitted in order to secure his release from prison. That sordid episode is fully documented. (“Far from heroism: The tale of ‘Veer Sarvarkar’ by Krishnan Dubey and Venkites Ramakrishnan; Frontline, April 7, 1995). Savarkar became president of the Hindu Mahasabha immediately thereafter. Mookerjee was his prize catch.
The Congress’ historian, Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, recorded that “on the day of the arrest of Gandhi and his colleagues, Savarkar’s call to the Hindu was one of ‘no support to the Congress move’. There was nothing in it to be surprised at. All along he has preached the gospel of Hinutva, Hindu communalism, not Indian nationalism. In the formation of Minister in Muslim-majority province while the Congress (leadership) was in prison, he encouraged Hindu participation in them in different provinces on different ground…” (The History of the Indian National Congress, Vol. 11, p. 512).He proceeded to mention how, only a few month after his resignation from the Bengal Cabinet, Mookerjee’s interest in regaining his job revived. “This revival of interest not in election but in the formation of Ministries while the Congress was in duress sounds strange, indeed; not because it was rooted in any intrinsic strength of the Sabha but because it was traceable to an unholy and an uncouth (sic.) Combination with the opponents of the Congress. The sad fate of the Sabha candidates during the General Election of 1937 is well known. Nor has the Sabha run any of its candidates at the time of the by-election” (P.513). This very fact that the Mahasabha had no roots in popular support drove Mookerjee to try to strike a deal over the heads of the people with the British rulers. The Congress leadership, in Bengal and at the Central level, had done little to satisfy his ambitions, Savarkar did.
Sitaramayya supported his charges by citing another fact which sounds incredible today. The Hindu Mahashabha was in a coalition Government with the Muslim League in Sind. Though the Sind Assembly passed a resolution endorsing the demand for Pakistan, the Mahasabha Ministers did not resign from the Government but “contented themselves with a protest”, for the record (P. 514).
Mahasabha president Savarkar issued an edict on September 1942: “I issue this definite instruction to all Hindu Sabhaites in particular and all Hindu Sangathanists in general… holding any post or position of vantage in the Government services should stick to them and continue to perform their regular duties.” This was dutifully followed. So much so that, according to an intelligence report of June 10, 1943, when Aruna Asaf Ali pleaded with her friend Sarla, daughter of Sir Jwala Prasad Srivastava, a member of the Viceroy’ Executive council, to “force her father to resign on the issue of Gandhi’s fast….
Sarla replied that as her father has taken the line of Hindu Mahashbha, he could not follow her advice.” (Quit India Movement: British Secret Documents; edited by P. N. Chopra and S.R. Bakshi; Interprint, New Delhi; 1986; p. 3140).
Indeed, the Mahasabha’s working committee had passed a resolution on August 31, 1942 asking all Mahasabhaites to remain at their jobs. Savarkar’s edict was a follow-up to it. So much for the Mahasabha. What of the RSS? It must be born in mind that in the first half of the Forties, the Mahasabha loomed larger on the political horizon than did the RSS. Ego clashes between Savarkar and Golwalkar strained relations at detail by Wlater K. Andersen and Shrdhar D. Damle in their superb work The Brotherhood in Saffron.
It was G.D (alias Babarao) Savakar, elder brother of Vinayak, who helped the RSS to expand into the Western Maharashtra. Savarker was close to the RSS’ founder K. B. Hedgewar but had “disdain for Golwalker….both men were apprehensive regarding the other’s role in the Hindu unification movement”. Eventually, as we know, Savarker emerged discredited despite his acquittal in the Gandhi assassination case. His favorite pupil Mookherjee strayed in the RSS camp and was made its captive. After his death in June 1953, the RSS lost no time no completing its grip over the Jan Sangh. This grip holds the BJP leaders—far smaller men than Mookherjee – completely in its thrall.
To revert to the RSS’ role in the early 1940s, Andersen and Damle record: “Golwalkar believed that the British not be given any excuse to ban the RSS. When the British banned military drill and the use of uniforms in all non-official organization, the RSS complied. On April 29, 1943, Golwalkar distributed a circular to senior RSS figures, announcing the termination of the RSS military department. The wording of the circular reveals his apprehensions regarding the possibilities of a ban on the RSS: “We discontinued practices included in the Government’s early order on military drill and uniforms … to keep our work clearly within bounds of law, as every law abiding institution should … Hoping that circumstances would ease early, we had in a sense only suspended that part of our training. Now, however, we decide to stop it altogether and abolish the department without waiting for the time to change.”
Golwalkar was not a revolutionary in the conventional sense of the term. The British understood this. In an official report on RSS actively prepared in 1943, the Home Department concluded that “It would be difficult to argue that the RSS constitutes an immediate menace to law and order…” Connecting on the violence that accompanied the 1942 Quit India Movement, the Bombay Home Department observed: “The Sangh has scrupulously kept itself within the law, and in particular, has refrained from taking part in the disturbances that broke out in August, 1942…”
But Golwalkar drank freely at the fount of the Mahasabha. His famous book We or Our Nationhood Defined, published in 1939, was an abridgement he had done of Babaro Savarkar’s work Rashtra Mimans. Later, Golwalkar publicly acknowledged this.
The Mahasabha and the RSS merged not only in the Jan Sangh but also in the person of Gandhiji’s assassin, Nathuram Godse. Not surprisingly. The RSS apologists would have us believe that he was not a member of RSS but was only a Mahasabhaite and a follower of Savarkar. That, he was, but more, besides.
Godse said in court: “Millions of Hindu Sanghathanists looked up to him (V.D. Savarkar) as the chosen hero, as the ablest and most faithful advocate of the Hindu cause. I too was one of them.”
The whole truth emerged 46 years later, in December 1993, with the publication of the assassin’s brother Gopal’s book “Why I assassinated Mahatma Gandhi” Speaking in New Delhi on the occasion of the release of his book, Gopal Godes said that he and his brother had been active members of the RSS ( The Statesman, December, 24 1993). Their styles may vary: but each constituent of what Savarkar called the Sangathana and the press calls the parivar today follow the main course – capture of power by the spread of hate and recourse to violence.
The Parivar’s collaboration with the British was of a piece with the policy pursued for decades by Hindu revivalists like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. His novel Ananda Math was pro British and anti- Muslim (vide the writer’s Vande Matarm: An Historical lesson; Economic and political Weekly; June 9, 1973).
By the late 1930s and especially after the war, British rule was well on its way out. The issue was the future set up in India. In 1939 Jinnah propounded the poisonous two-nation theory and demanded, in 1940, the country’s partition. Savarkar had propounded the theory in his book Hindutva, a decade and a half earlier.
In 1942 Shyama Prasad Mookherjee made a bid for power by a deal with the British in order to install Hindu Raj. His innermost thoughts, bared to the pages of his Dairy, expose the parivar’s motivations and also illustrate the central problem of all plural societies: “As seventy-five per cent of the population were Hindus, and if India was to adopt a democratic form of government, the Hindus would automatically play a major role in it” (p. 106). In plain words, people would not act politically as citizens of India, but communally as members of a community.
This is the mentality which led to India’s partition and threatens the unity of many others today. The majority community seeks to use its numbers to form a permanent communal majority, flouting the basics of democratic government, which envisage a transient political majority, cutting across the communal divide. It rules one day only to give away to another political majority after the next elections. The minority then seeks, not participation, but partition in order to set up its own majoritarian state. It is a vicious circle. Arend Lijphart’s classic Democracy in Plural Societies grapple ably with that problem. The Sangh Parivar, a collaborator of the British Raj, seeks to resolve it by spreading two of the basest human emotions—hate and fear—in order to install Hindutva in power. (Frontline, December 1, 1995)
