Golwalkar

Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, or Guruji as he is reverentially referred to by his followers, is regarded as the demi-god of Hindutva politics and often accorded a status higher than even the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, K. B. Hedgewar.

In 1940, when 34-year-old Golwalkar unexpectedly assumed charge of the RSS on Hedgewar’s death, the Hindu militia was still in its nascent stage, with pockets of influence mainly in Maharashtra. Under Golwalkar’s leadership over the next three decades, the RSS and its allied organizations, known as the Sangh Parivar, extended its network across the entire country and penetrated almost every aspect of Indian society.

Golwalkar’s ideological influence was enormous—and it did not end with his death. Golwalkar’s prescriptions in his incendiary book We or Our Nationhood Defined, published in 1939, now became central to the ideological training and radicalization of youth dedicated to the idea of a Hindu Rashtra. Here, Golwalkar prescribed a solution to India’s ‘minority problem’ based on the Nazi treatment of Jews in the Third Reich. As Dhirendra K. Jha conclusively establishes in this book, this would eventually provide the core of the Sangh’s credo and, as events in the recent past have borne out, have a lasting influence on Indian politics.