Hindutva: The Growth of Violent Hindu Nationalism

Foreign Exchange of Hate IDRF and the American Funding of Hindutva

Full text of the report © 2002, Sabrang Communications & Publishing Pvt. Ltd, Mumbai, India, and The South Asia Citizens Web, France

Index

This appendix provides detailed support and elaboration of the descriptions and arguments in Part 1 of this report. Accordingly, it follows in large part, the same structure as Part 1 of this report. We cover the following ground in this appendix:

1. Hindutva, the RSS and the Sangh Parivar
2. The Sangh Parivar: The Institutional Infrastructure of Hindutva
3. The Effects of Hindutva: Violent Pogroms and the Destruction of the National Fabric

A.1 Hindutva, the RSS and the Sangh Parivar

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, or the ‘Sangh,’-- literally ‘National Volunteer Corps’), was started in 1925 for ‘propagating Hindu culture.’ As an organization, the RSS is elusive and shadowy—it is only open to Hindu males – primarily upper caste, it maintains no membership records; it has resisted being registered with the government of India as a public/charitable trust; it has no bank accounts and pays no income tax.

The RSS advocates a form of Hindu nationalism, which seeks to establish India as a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation), and rejects the notion of a composite Indian identity brought about by a synthesis of different cultures and faiths. This particular ideology is variously called an ideology of Hindu pride, Hindu patriotism, Hindu fundamentalism, Hindu revivalism, Hindu chauvinism, Hindu fascism or Hindutva. What is beyond doubt is the exclusionary and discriminatory nature of the ideology. The last mentioned – Hindutva (Hinduness/Hinduhood) – is the term most popularly attached to this ideology and will be term of choice in this appendix.

This exclusionary and discriminatory ideology is built around a complex and ingenious definition of “who belongs” or “does not belong” to the Indian nation. Probably the most explicit characterization of the question of “belonging” is outlined by the second sarsanghchalak (supreme leader) of the RSS, M. S. Golwalkar. He writes:
The foreign races in Hindusthan [India] 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 loose (sic) 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. There is, at least, should be, no other course for them to adopt. We are an old nation; let us deal, as old nations ought to and do deal, with the foreign races, who have chosen to live in our country.”[53]

Golwalkar’s commentary on who belongs to the Hindu Nation, apart from its open fascist overtones, is peculiar because it contradicts the popular understanding of Hinduism as a religion. Instead, it frames Hinduism as a culture and Hindus as a race who adhere to a Hindu culture. In this peculiar but brilliant redefinition lies the specificity of Hindu fascism. It is unlike most of Euro-American fascism – whether it be Nazi Germany and its notion of Aryan purity or neo-fascist movements such as the KKK or BNP – which are all biologically defined ideas of racial purity. Hindutva’s cultural basis seems to remove it from such standard forms of fascism. However, the equation of race with culture – as in Golwalkar’s “Hindu race and culture” – introduces a notion of purity through the back door. Lochtefeld (1996), analyzing Savarkar, the man who preceded Golwalkar and the first Supreme Leader of the RSS, unpacks this redefinition as follows:

Savarkar [who first expounded on the Hindu Nation] defined a Hindu as anyone regarding India as a fatherland and holy land, and to this day these remain the litmus test. This defines the Hindu nation on cultural criteria—as a people united by a common cultural heritage—and from the start Hindutva proponents have insisted that the word ‘Hindu’ refers to a cultural rather than a religious community…. One must look at who this definition excludes. Savarkar’s definition of a Hindu is plastic enough to include everyone in a notoriously polyform tradition, but the condition that one regard India as the Holy Land largely excludes both Muslims and Christians. This definition equates Hindu identity and Indian nationalism, meaning that religious minorities are not only ‘aliens’, but because of their ‘extraterritorial loyalties’ (to holy lands in Arabia and Israel), they are also potential traitors.”[54]

The ingenuity of tying culture and race together is that it makes possible a definition of a “pure” nation where none is otherwise possible. India, per se, is a fascinating melting pot of races and cultures. Even distinctions such as white and black as available in the US (though those are also mostly spurious) are entirely impossible in India. By defining belonging through a territorially contained notion of culture, it becomes possible to denote some minorities as within the ambit of “the Hindu” and others as outside it. A large number of minorities – Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains, for instance are objects of integration. So also, Dalits and tribals (adivasis) though historically oppressed by upper caste Hindus are in this definition not excluded from the nation. The idea here is to redefine these minorities as “Hindu” – where a certain specific upper caste Hinduism (Sanatan Dharma), is the hegemonic pure form and all others are at varying distance from this purity. In contrast, Muslims, Christians, Parsis and Jews, are clearly defined as outside the fold of the Nation, not because they have not been part of India for centuries but because their cultural signifiers are seen as lying external to the territorial nation.

The definition of “pure” is what aligns Hindutva with classical fascism of the Nazi kind. Golwalkar is clearly inspired and convinced by the Nazi experiment of attempting to purge a land of all those who don’t fit into a definition of German-Aryan purity. He writes:

German national pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races — the Jews. National 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 Hindustan to learn and profit by. [55]

Today, the political leadership of the Sangh spends some marginal effort at denying any relation to Nazi Germany but does little to explain the distinction between its ideology and that of Nazi Germany.

In terms of ideology then, the Sangh’s brand of fascism is simultaneously indigenous and imported. Clearly their broad ideas of purity and exclusion are not very different from Nazi Germany. However, the peculiar conflation of culture and race does make this brand of fascism unique.

A.2 The Sangh Parivar: The Institutional Infrastructure of Hindutva

Institutionally, given that the RSS is itself an organization that is secretive and without specified membership, its visibility is low. It functions primarily through a broad range of organizations that exist in every aspect of sociopolitical life in India – what is referred to as the Sangh Parivar (Sangh family) of organizations. However, before we explicate this visible structure of the Sangh Parivar and its chief constituent organizations, we need to pay some attention to the minimal aspects of what is visible as the RSS.

A.2.1 The Role of the RSS Shakha

The core unit of the RSS is referred to as a shakha (cell). The shakha is a place for swayamsevaks (volunteers) to come together for physical and ideological training. These shakhas operate in large numbers of neighborhoods in India (and are now spreading across the US), and produce a constant stream of 'volunteers' who become the foot-soldiers for the Sangh's projects and organizations. Here too, specific links can be drawn between European fascism and the RSS. B. S. Moonje, the mentor of the founding father of the RSS, Hegdewar, visited and met with Mussolini and was granted permission by Mussolini to observe and understand the nature of the fascist organizational structure[56]. Moonje played a crucial role in molding the RSS along Italian (fascist) lines. The deep impression left on Moonje by the vision of the fascist organizations is confirmed by his diary.

The idea of fascism vividly brings out the conception of unity amongst people... India and particularly Hindu Indians need some such institution for the military regeneration of the Hindus: so that the artificial distinction so much emphasised by the British of martial and non–martial classes amongst the Hindus may disappear… Our institution of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of Nagpur under Dr. Hedgewar is of this kind, though quite independently conceived. I will spend the rest of my life in developing and extending this Institution of Dr. Hedgewar all throughout Maharashtra and other provinces. [57]

Moonje’s central concern while looking at Italian fascism was, as he says, with the aim of “developing and extending this Institution.” Thus the RSS cell structure of shakhas (cells) grew with some clear similarity to the cell structure of Mussolini’s National Socialists, also borrowing with it the core ideas of physical training of youth and militarism. Moonje’s diaries are very explicit in acknowledging the centrality of violent militarism to the RSS strategy.

This training is meant for qualifying and fitting our boys for the game of killing masses of men with the ambition of winning victory with the best possible causalities (sic) of dead and wounded while causing the utmost possible to the adversary. [58]

The swayamsevaks generated at the Shakhas are seamlessly tied into the Sangh Parivar infrastructure. Swayamsevaks go on to direct and run, projects of every size and shape – from Bal Vihars (Children’s centers) to opening up new shakhas, from student politics (through the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) to paramilitary operations (through the Bajrang Dal). The Sangh permeates every aspect.

A.2.2 The Sangh Parivar and Its Constituents

At the national level, swayamsevaks emerge to direct and run its most important institutions – the BJP, the VHP, the BD and the Sewa Vibhag. Each of these institutions also have an equivalent organization in the US – the RSS has its image mirrored through the HSS, the BJP in the OFBJP, the VHP in the VHP of America and its student wing – the HSC, the BD in Hindu Unity and finally the Sewa Vibhag in IDRF. Below is a brief description of each – the Indian organization first, followed by its US equivalent as well as a summary chart.

• RSS –Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: The core fount of Hindutva Ideology.
   

  • HSS: The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh is the US equivalent of the RSS. HSS is registered as a tax-exempt charity in the US, and like the RSS in India, is one of the main proponents of Hindutva in the US. According to one of its flyers, “HSS is started in the USA and other parts of the world to continue what RSS is doing in India.”[59] The RSS website states that the primary purpose of the HSS is to protect the children of Hindu parents from the “vicious propaganda and corrupt conversion techniques of Christians and Muslims”[60]. Note the central concern of diasporic life in this definition is the possible “impurity” of Christian or Isamic influence. Much like the RSS branches in India, HSS also holds physical training exercises and camps, where the Hindutva doctrine is expounded. The structure of the RSS is duplicated in the US, with the Sanghchalak being the highest office bearer in the US.
     

• BJP: The Bharatiya Janata Party: This is a political party that participates in electoral politics. It is currently in power in the Indian state of Gujarat, which recently witnessed some of the most gruesome violence against Muslims. At the center in New Delhi, it is the leading member of a coalition that is currently in power.
   

  • OFBJP—Overseas Friends of BJP: This is the BJP support group in the US. While it cannot monetarily support the BJP directly from the US, many OFBJP functionaries work with other Sangh operations in the US to propagate Hindutva. In addition, it works to mobilize opinion in Washington D.C and invites BJP leadership from India to the US to meet with the Indian Diaspora.
     

• VHP—Vishwa Hindu Parishad: It was formed in 1964 with the explicit purpose of forming an aggressive and an activist wing to promote Hindutva. The first general secretary of the VHP, S.S. Apte, made its goals clear as follows: “It is therefore necessary in this age of competition and conflict to think of, and organize, the Hindu world to save itself from the evil eyes of all three” [all three being Christianity, Islam and Communism]. [61] Since its formation, the VHP has played an aggressive and agitational role in India. It rose to prominence for spearheading from the early 1980s onwards the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that ultimately led to the violent take over and destruction of a 16th century Babri mosque in Ayodhya, India. This mobilization that lasted the better part of a decade was a watershed event in terms of creating new levels of polarization between Hindu and Muslim communities in India. More recently, its international working president, Mr. Ashok Singhal, called the carnage against Muslims in Gujarat a ‘successful experiment’ and warned that it would be repeated all over India [62]. In other words, the VHP, is the core political mobilization unit that is used to create and spread conditions of religious intolerance and violence.
   

  • VHP— America : This is the US counterpart of the VHP in India, and is active at two levels – as the VHP of America chapters in large parts of the North East and the South with the primary function of support work for the Sangh in India among the professional Indian diaspora and as a student organization called the Hindu Student Council (HSC) with significant presence on prestigious American university campuses. Its work within the professional Indian diasporic community is essentially both ideological and fund raising. Though it claims to be independent of the VHP itself, this claim is at best a legal/technical claim. In real terms it works actively and in close cooperation with VHP, India. For instance, VHP America’s biggest event to date in the US was the World Vision 2000, a conference organized in Washington D.C. The guest list for that event included nearly every potential luminary in the VHP India hierarchy – from Ashok Singhal to Uma Bharati and Vijaye Raje Scindia. In addition, the VHPA promotes fund collection for a range of Sewa Vibhag activity in India. [63]
    
    The HSC in contrast works primarily with second generation Indian Americans with a project of bringing them under the influence of Hindutva. It does this through multiple levels of ideological work – by organizing mass meetings and readings on campuses on a narrow range of Hindu thought, that is ideologically a perfect fit for Hindutva, (such as Gita readings) and for those who wish to get more involved as a gateway to larger Hindutva operations in the US.
     

• Bajrang Dal is the paramilitary wing of the VHP, and was started in 1984 to provide muscle and manpower to the VHP agitations. The Bajrang Dal regularly organizes arms training camps for its members, where it teaches them the use of firearms and trishuls (tridents). According to one of the participants, the training is imparted in order to teach them “how to beat those who do not respect Hinduism.”[64] Bajrang Dal has been at the forefront of recent communal attacks against Christians in the tribal regions, against artists and intellectuals and against Muslims in Gujarat.
   

  • HinduUnity.org, a website run from the US claims to be the official website of the Bajrang Dal. This site is a virulent hate-filled site that has already once been yanked by a web-hosting service Addr.com because of the spiteful vitriol that it publishes, and its frequent calls to violence against Muslims. A typical passage from the Website under the pop-up window called Hindu Force is given below as a sample:
    
    “Revenge on Islam must become the sole aim of the life of every Hindu today. Islam has been shedding Hindu blood for several centuries. This is something we should neither forget nor forgive. This sinister religion has been striking at Hinduism for just too long. It is time we resist this satanic force and kick it back into the same pit it crawled out of.”
     

• Sewa Vibhag: The Service Wing of the Hindutva Movement is the RSS’s most incoherent structure. However, in its very incoherence lies its ingenuity. The service wing operates through hundreds of organizations spread across the country – many different names and functions – all presented as if they were entirely independent organizations. This proliferation of Sewa Vibhag projects as independent organizations gives an impression of seeming incoherence. However, it is also the most inconspicuous way of placing swayamsevaks distributed across the country and creating entry points for them to do their ideological work. Often it is difficult to place an organization as an RSS Sewa Vibhag operation. It takes systematic matching of organizational trustees with other known RSS operations to establish the links. However, while this is true for a large number of RSS Sewa Vibhag operations, the role of the Sewa Vibhag as an entry point to do the core ideological work of the Sangh creates some long term patterns and institutions. For instance, education offers an effective cover for ideological work and the remaking of identities. Thus many Sewa Vibhag operations are crafted as educational activities. Following such patterns it becomes possible to identify Vidya Bharati as an RSS operation. Similarly, it becomes possible to identify a whole range of organizations that work with tribals (adivasis) as RSS operations because the adivasis are an important target constituency for the RSS. As these multitude of projects are what is the object of funding from the US, in a sense, these organizations of the Sewa Vibhag that do the core work of spreading the ideology of the Sangh are an extremely critical part of this report. Thus two more appendices – F and G – attached to Part 3 of this report (Funding Hate?) are on the Sangh’s work in tribal (adivasi) areas and on the Sangh’s educational work.
   

  • India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF): IDRF is the US based funding arm of the Sangh and primarily funds the Sangh through its Sewa Vibhag operations. It is directly connected to Sewa International, the part of the Sewa Vibhag that coordinates international Sewa activity. Sewa International itself operates as the equivalent to IDRF in the UK.

A.3 The Effects of Hindutva: Violent Pogroms and the Destruction of a Multicultural Society

Violence is a core aspect of Hindutva. It has never been shy of advocating violence for the achievement of its goals of a Hindu Rashtra. It depicts ‘Hinduism’ as constantly under threat from external/foreign forces (of Islam, Christianity and ‘Secularism’), and hence, portrays violence against Muslims, Christians and advocates of pluralism in India as a form of ‘self-defense.’ This, self defense is further positioned as the process of regeneration of Hindu manhood. This twin trope of self-defense and a lost manhood that is in need of recovery are part of the daily rhetoric of Hindutva. This psychological justification of violence is under girded by a more open strategic and essential appreciation of it – some of which we have already recorded in this appendix – whether it be Golwalkar’s open appreciation for the efforts to “purge” the German nation of all Jews by the Nazis, or Moonje’s hope that the RSS would create conditions of a “military regeneration of Hindus”, and prepare “our boys in the game of killing masses of people.” Here violence is clearly both essential to purge the nation of all that it does not desire, and strategic in Golwalkar’s goal to ensure that the minorities live in fear and seek no privileges.

There is ample evidence that this essential and strategic understanding of violence is central to the Hindutva project. Numerous government reports have clearly indicted the Sangh for fomenting communal violence:

“If the Jaganmohan Reddy Commission on the Ahmedabad riots (1969) and the Madan Commission on the Bhiwandi riots (1970) exposed the Unified Front tactics of the RSS and its political wing, the Jan Sangh, ancestor of the BJP, Justice Vithayathil’s report on the Tellicherry riots (1971) censured the RSS for ‘rousing up’ communal feelings and for ’preparing the background for the disturbances’. Justice Jitendra Narain’s Report on the Jamshedpur riots (1979) censured the RSS supremo M.D Deoras personally for the communal propaganda that had caused the riots. The RSS had held a conference there ‘only four days before the Ram Navami festival (when the riots erupted) and the speech delivered by Balasaheb Deoras contributed their full share in fomenting these communal feelings’. The RSS had created ‘a climate for these disturbances’. The report of Justice P Venugopal of the Madras High Court, on the riots in Kanyakumari in March 1982, found the RSS guilty of fomenting anti-Christian feelings: ‘It has taken upon itself the task to teach the minority their place and if they are not willing to learn their place, teach them a lesson. The RSS has given respectability to communalism and communal riots and demoralise (sic) administration.’ ” [65]

With a history of inciting and conducting violent campaigns going back to the partition of India and Pakistan, for the RSS violence is part of a strategy of breaking the back of an integrated multi-religious society and creating polarized communities of Hindus, Muslims and Christians. In a recent film on the RSS – “Men in the Tree” – filmmaker Lalit Vachani records a series of critical interviews with former RSS members – D. R. Goyal and Purshottam Agrawal. Both men speak openly of how it was part of their work as RSS swayamsevaks to create and spread rumors that would produce conditions conducive for a communal riot. The gradual but continuos polarization of the religious communities through violence is a fundamental fact of the Sangh strategy.

As Hindutva has grown more and more powerful and gained State power over the years, its strategic use of riots to polarize religious communities has slowly began to transform into a process of fundamentally destroying and displacing minority communities. In other words, over the last decade religious violence in India is no longer cases of Hindutva cadre fighting a Muslim or Christian right wing forces cadre on the streets but has increasingly become organized pogroms to eliminate and reduce minority communities to rubble. The recent Gujarat riot is a case in point.

A.4.1 From Riots to Pogroms: Gujarat 2002

On February 27, 2002, a train carrying Hindu activists was set afire in Godhra, a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat, allegedly by a Muslim mob, resulting in the death of 58 people.

The following excerpt from the Human Rights Watch report describes what followed:

“Between February 28 and March 2, thousands of attackers descended on Muslim neighbourhoods, clad in saffron scarves and khaki shorts, the signature uniform of Hindu nationalist groups, and armed with swords, sophisticated explosives, and gas cylinders. They were guided by voter lists and printouts of addresses of Muslim-owned properties-information obtained from the local municipality… The groups most directly involved in the violence against Muslims include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP), the Bajrang Dal, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that heads the Gujarat state government” [66]

Over 2000 people were killed, and more than 100,000 were rendered homeless—around 90% of the victims were Muslims. In addition, reports from women’s groups state that hundreds of Muslim women were gang-raped by the Hindutva mobs and then burnt. [67]

The State government, headed by the BJP—the parliamentary arm of the Sangh Parivar, was strikingly ineffective in controlling the rioters, and has also been accused of complicity in the violence by several Human Rights groups [68]. Instances of direct support of the Hindu rioters by the police and the administration have also been documented. What gives much credence to the accusation that the Gujarat State government actively participated in the riots, is a well documented story in a leading news magazine – Outlook India – where a minister of the State cabinet informed the press of a meeting on the evening of February 28th at the residence of the chief minister Narendra Modi where State administration officials were instructed not to stop the Hindu backlash that was coming. [69]

Many independent fact-finding missions have verified the central role played by the different Sangh Parivar organizations in orchestrating the violence:

“In testimony after testimony, people identified by name members of the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad involved in inciting and committing violence. The fact-finding team spoke with women activists and victims in the camps about their views on the growing polarization between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Both sets of people linked it to the aggressive agenda of the Sangh Parivar - particularly the Bajrang Dal, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and, in some cases, the Shiv Sena. In the rural context, women directly linked a rise in tension with the establishment of local units of the Bajrang Dal and the VHP. They spoke of meetings organized by these groups, and the arms they distributed at these meetings. Many believe that the tension has really escalated in the last six months.” [70]

Everything about Gujarat points in the direction of a pogrom. There is evidence that the distribution of arms was an on going activity. The material used in the violence, apart from the swords and trishuls was some variety of a chemical solvent which could not have been procured spontaneously. Voter lists and the specific targeting of Muslim businesses and homes is another clear indication of the organized nature of the violence. Even at the time of writing this report, eight months after the pogrom began, many Muslims remain homeless and are unable to return to their homes because of the fear that they will be killed.

A.4.2 The Confidence to Kill Without Cover

If Gujarat is a stark testimony that the Sangh’s violence has reached the fascist proportions that Moonje and Golwalkar had in mind, then the complete confidence of the Sangh that it can carry out violent campaigns without any fear is also indicated by its targeted violence against individuals. The best case to illustrate this would be the continuos targeting of Christian nuns, priests and Evangelists by the Sangh activists. Human Rights Watch, New York published a report on anti-Christian violence in India in September 1999 [71] and also indicted the Sangh Parivar for their role in fomenting ethnic hatred against Christians:

Attacks against Christians throughout the country have increased significantly since the BJP began its rule at the center in March 1998. They include the killings of priests, the raping of nuns, and the physical destruction of Christian institutions, schools, churches, colleges, and cemeteries. Thousands of Christians have also been forced to convert to Hinduism.

Frontline, a mainstream newsmagazine, recorded over 50 incidents of violence, targeted against a specific individual or institution, in an organized effort to push Christian missionaries out of India [72]. These specified and directed attacks against individuals and institutions are equally important to note as organized mass violence because they are indicative of the fact that the movement has reached a point where it feels the confidence to undertake such violent campaigns without even the cover of a presumed communal riot.

A.4.3 Hindutva’s First Indian Act: The Murder of Gandhi

Probably there is no more a poignant way to underscore the issue of Hindutva’s definition as a violent movement than the murder of Mahatma Gandhi by a prominent Hindutva activist Nathuram Godse. On January 30 1948 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was shot dead by Nathuram Godse. Inspite of the fact that the RSS disassociated itself from Godse, the then government of India banned the organization.
That the RSS’s denial of any involvement with Gandhi’s murder is false, is clear from many associated facts.

• Godse’s successful attempt to kill Gandhi was not the first but the sixth attempt on Gandhi’s life by the Hindutva movement [73]. The thesis that Godse was an exception and a misguided young man marginally associated with Hindutva, fades in light of this history of attempts from within the movement.
   

• Further, the reaction to the murder of Gandhi within the RSS, was one of open elation – where RSS swayamsevaks were on streets celebrating. Clearly the sentiment was an openly available one within the Sangh. Sardar Patel, the first Home Minister of India, confirmed this in a letter to the RSS supreme, M.S. Golwalkar in a letter dated September 11, 1948, he wrote [74],
  
  “As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji. Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government or of the people no more remained for the RSS. In fact, opposition grew. Opposition turned more severe when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji's death.”
   

• Years later, Gopal Godse, one of the co-accused in the Gandhi murder case and Nathuram Godse’s brother, confirmed that both he and his brother were actively involved with the RSS at the time of the assassination. In an interview in 1994, he stated [75]:
  
  “All the brothers were in the RSS. Nathuram, Dattatreya, myself and Govind. You can say we grew up in the RSS rather than in our home. It was like a family to us. Nathuram had become a baudhik karyavah [intellectual worker] in the RSS. He has said in his statement that he had left the RSS. He said it because Golwalkar [the RSS Supremo] and the RSS were in a lot of trouble after the murder of Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS.”

A movement, that began its work in a newly independent India, with the murder of an apostle of peace and respect for all communities, has today surfaced in its open and naked form – as a fundamentally fascist movement.

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53. We or Our Nationhood Defined, Golwalkar, 1939, pp. 47-48

54. James G. Lochtefeld (1996) New Wine, Old Skins: The Sangh Parivar and the Transformation of Hinduism, Religion 26, 101-118

55. We or Our Nationhood Defined, MS Golwalkar, 1939

56. M Casolari, (1993) Hindutva’s foreign tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence, Economic and Political Weekly, Jan 22, 2000

57. M Casolari, (1993) Hindutva’s foreign tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence, Economic and Political Weekly, Jan 22, 2000

58. M Casolari, (1993) Hindutva’s foreign tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence, Economic and Political Weekly, Jan 22, 2000

59. http://www.idrf.org/flyers/balvihar/html/hss.html

60. http://www.rss.org/rssstor.htm under the subtitle ‘Towards Maintaining Cultural Identity’

61. The Organiser, Diwali Special, 1964.

62. ‘We’ll repeat our Gujarat experiment’ Indian Express, Sept 4th, 2002

63. James G. Lochtefeld (1996) New Wine, Old Skins: The Sangh Parivar and the Transformation of Hinduism, Religion 26, 101-118

64. Bajrang Dal activists take up arms, The Times of India, June 13th, 2001

65. A Half Century’s Gory Record, AG Noorani, The Statesman, January 15, 2000

66. India: Gujarat Officials Took Part in Anti-Muslim Violence: Press Release by HRW, April 30, 2002

67. How Has The Gujarat Massacre Affected Minority Women? The Survivors Speak : A fact finding report by a Women’s Panel, Citizen’s Initiative, Ahmedabad, April 16th, 2002

68. See for example, the National Human Rights Commission’s Report, Final order on Gujarat dated May 31, 2002,

69. A Plot From The Devil's Lair, Manu Joseph, S. Anand, Outlook June 3, 2002

70. How Has The Gujarat Massacre Affected Minority Women? The Survivors Speak : A fact finding report by a Women’s Panel, Citizen’s Initiative, Ahmedabad, April 16th, 2002

71. Anti-Christian violence on the rise in India: New Report details politics behind extremist Hindu attacks Press Release by the HRW Full Report at POLITICS BY OTHER MEANS: Attacks Against Christians in India HRW Report, September 1999

72. A catalogue of crimes, Pravin Swami, Frontline, Vol. 16 (3) Jan. 30 - Feb. 12, 1999

73. Tushar Gandhi

74. A Law Unto Itself, AG Noorani, Frontline, Volume 15 (17), Aug 15-22, 1998 http://www.flonnet.com/fl1517/15171170.htm

75. Frontline, January 28, 1994 quoted in The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour, AG Noorani, Leftword Books, 2000 p. 30