It is indeed ironic that the political forces who lay claim to being the most ardent nationalists today played no role at all when the actual struggle for India’s freedom was being fought against British colonial rule. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue and chief, M.S., Golwalkar, in fact went so far as to say that anti-British nationalism was reactionary:The theories of territorial nationalism and of common danger, which formed the basis for our common concept of nation, had deprived us of the positive and inspiring content of our real Hindu Nationhood and made many of the “freedom movements” virtually anti-British movements. Anti-Britishism was equated with patriotism and nationalism. This reactionary view has had disastrous effects upon the entire course of the freedom movement, its leaders and the common people. (Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 152–53)The facts are as follows: The RSS, which provided the organisational and ideological heft to the Hindu Mahasabha, the Jana Sangh and then the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was set up in 1925 by Dr. K.B. Hedgewar. In the entire period from 1925 till 1947, it did not participate in any campaign or movement launched by the Congress or any other party or group.Nor did it initiate any movement against the British by itself, as the Akali Dal did for reform of the gurdwaras from 1920-25 Neither did they indulge, like the revolutionaries, in any ‘action’ such as assassination of British officials, or, like the Ghadar Revolutionaries, in fomenting disaffection in the army and among immigrants. This is indeed remarkable for an organisation which claims nationalism as its creed.Giving the impression of being nationalist but keeping away from the actual national movementThe mystery is solved very easily, however, if we realise that its creed is a sectarian religious nationalism, which our freedom struggle termed as communalism, but not Indian nationalism. Its primary purpose therefore was to consolidate Hindu society against the perceived threat of Muslim domination. Its founder, Hedgewar, before he founded the RSS, had in fact been a middle level leader in the Congress in Nagpur and even went to jail in the Non Cooperation Movement.But he was a staunch follower of Dr. B.S. Moonje, a Hindu Mahasabha leader who visited Italy, met Mussolini and studied Italian fascist institutions and was greatly impressed by them. It is also believed that he was influenced by V.D. Savarkar’s Hindutva which had been published in 1923 but had been in circulation earlier, in which Savarkar set out the essentials of the Hindutva ideology of India being a land that belongs to Hindus and those whose punyabhoomi and pitribhoomi are in India, thus excluding Muslims, Christians, and any others who fitted the bill from being part of the Indian nation.Two years after the foundation of the RSS, the anti-Simon Commission protests swept the country but the RSS was nowhere to be seen. A little later, in December 1929, Jawaharlal Nehru as president unfurled the national flag at the annual session of the Congress at Lahore, and declared complete independence as its goal. The Congress also decided to observe January 26, 1930 as Independence Day when the national flag would be raised in every town and village, and the national pledge taken by all present.Hedgewar claimed that since the RSS believed in complete independence it should observe Independence day but it would raise the Bhagwa jhanda and not the tricolour, which was the national flag. This was a perfect example of the RSS method, of giving the impression that they were nationalist but keeping away from the actual national movement.In a similar vein, when the Civil Disobedience movement was launched later in the year, Hedgewar decided that he would join as an individual but the RSS as an organisation would stay away. Accordingly, he resigned his position as the head of the RSS. So he went to jail to keep his nationalist credentials intact, and also, according to his official biographer, to attract Congress cadre in the jail to the RSS.There is also evidence to suggest that Hedgewar became increasingly less inclined to oppose the British and even described their rule an “act of providence”. This is in line with his refusal to even meet Subhas Chandra Bose, who had just resigned from the presidentship of the Congress in 1939. Bose in April 1939 approached Gopal Mukund Huddar, an old associate of Hedgewar, in Bombay with a request to arrange a meeting with Hedgewar.Huddar, in turn, went to Deolali, where Hedgewar was staying with a rich colleague, to convey the request. Huddar later recounted that Doctor Saheb, as Hedgewar was known, seemed to be in good health as he found him chatting and laughing with some young admirers, refused to meet Bose on the plea of bad health. Predictably, this incident finds no mention in the recent reconstructions of the nationalist credentials of the Hindutva icons.Subhash Chandra Bose criticised the Hindu MahasabhaInstead, much hype has recently been built around a reported meeting between V.D. Savarkar, the then president of the Hindu Mahasabha, and Subhas Bose in Bombay in 1940. It is claimed that it was Savarkar who suggested to Bose that he leave India and go to the Axis powers for help against the British and more recently that Savarkar was the inspiration for Bose (and Bhagat Singh and Khudiram Bose).These claims have recently been strongly challenged by the family members of Bose and the revolutionaries, and by other commentators as well, who have cited chapter and verse to show how critical Bose was of the Hindu Mahasabha and of Savarkar’s association with it.The facts are that a little before his arrest in July 1940, Bose had indeed met Savarkar and also Jinnah in an attempt to make a joint front to fight the British but, as he recorded in his memoirs (The story of My Struggle, Part 2), he found that Jinnah “was then thinking only of how to realise his plan of Pakistan (the division of India) with the help of the British” and Savarkar seemed to be “oblivious of the international situation and was only thinking how the Hindus could secure military training by entering Britain’s army in India”.That Savarkar remained politically active from behind the scenes during the period of his internment is shown by the fact that the moment he was released from restrictions in 1937, he became the president of the Hindu Mahasabha and remained so for six years till ill health forced him to give up the responsibility. It must be remembered that Savarkar had been released from the Andamans and then Yervada prison only on the condition that he would not indulge in any anti-British activity, and he was more than keen to keep that promise.Savarkar’s articulation of the two nation theoryHe was even given an allowance for his upkeep. As soon as he assumed charge of the Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar lost no time in articulating the two nation theory. Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations, he said, pre-empting Jinnah who followed soon after. His presidential addresses to the Hindu Mahasabha were virulent in their anti-Muslim, anti-Congress and anti- Gandhi rhetoric.The outbreak of the Second World War brought the Mahasabha’s and the RSS positions into sharp focus. The Congress Ministries in the provinces resigned in protest against the British declaring India as party to the War without any consultation with Indian political opinion. Immediately, communal forces jumped in to fill the gap. The Muslim League, true to its loyalist character, offered co-operation to form governments.Not to be outdone, Savarkar, then the president of the Hindu Mahasabha, told the Viceroy in October 1939 that the Hindus and the British should be friends and made an offer that the Hindu Mahasabha would replace the Congress if the Congress ministries resigned from office. (Linlithgow, Viceroy, to Zetland, Secretary of State, 7 October 1939, Zetland Papers, Vol. 18, Reel No. 6)Savarkar, as President of the Mahasabha, appealed to Hindus ‘to participate in all war-efforts of the British Government’ and not to listen to “some fools” who “condemn” this policy ‘as cooperation with Imperialism’. He also advised Hindus to join the army. This fitted in with his slogan of “Militarise Hinduism” and with his goal of reducing the weight of Muslims in the Army which he thought was not desirable. In pursuance of this policy, the Hindu Mahasabha then proceeded to join governments, often in coalition with the Muslim League.In fact, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, the Hindu Mahasabha leader, was a minister in the Bengal government led by Fazlul Haq, who had moved the Pakistan Resolution at the Muslim League session in 1940, at the time the British brutally suppressed freedom fighters when the Congress launched the Quit India movement in 1942.In fact, anticipating the movement, Mookerjee had written to the Governor of Bengal that “any widespread movement launched by the Congress….must be resisted by any government” and it should ensure “that in spite of the best efforts of the Congress, this movement will fail to take root in the province.” (Syama Prasad Mookerjee had been described by Giuseppe Tucci, the Italian professor who taught at Shantiniketan and Dacca university, and was the major conduit for spreading fascist ideas among Bengali students and teachers as “our most important collaborator” in Calcutta. Casolari, In The Shadow of the Swastika, p16.)Hindu Mahasabha had no compunctions in forming coalition governments with the Muslim LeagueThe Hindu Mahasabha also had no compunctions in forming coalition governments with the Muslim League in Sind and the North-west Frontier Province during the War, when the League had already declared Pakistan as its goal in 1940. In fact, while the Hindu Mahasabha was part of the coalition government in Sind, the Sind legislative Assembly passed a resolution proposed by G.M. Syed stating that “Muslims of India are a separate nation”.The Hindu Mahasabha kept up appearances by voting against it, but was not so offended as to leave the government! Interestingly, both the League and the Mahasabha saw the Congress as their main enemy and were willing to be friends with the British – at the same time claiming to be nationalists, the former espousing Muslim nationalism and the latter Hindu nationalism!The fact remains, however, that despite their claims, in the specific context of colonial India, when the main nationalist struggle was of all Indians against the British, they can only be described as communalists and loyalists. It is another matter that all this loyalism could not get them electoral success and they suffered a rout in the 1946 elections, winning only three seats in all the provinces put together! (In the first general elections as well in 1951-52, all the Hindu communal parties could win only 10 seats in a house of 489.) It was perhaps this total political marginalisation, this rejection by the Indian people, including Hindus that led to acts of desperation and cowardice such as the one embodied in the assassination of the Mahatma.The RSS, too, as in the previous big mass struggle, the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930-32, remained aloof from the real nationalist battle – the Quit India movement. They advised their young enthusiastic cadre, many of whom believed in the nationalist rhetoric which attracted them to the RSS in the first place, to save their energies for the big battle that was about to come. A Home Department note on the RSS reported that, ‘At meetings of the Sangh during the Congress disturbances (1942), speakers urged the members to keep aloof from the Congress movement and these instructions were generally observed’.H.V.R. Iyengar, Home Secretary, Bombay, pointed out on February 16, 1944 that ‘the Sangh has scrupulously kept itself within the law and, in particular, has refrained from taking any part in the disturbances that broke out in August 1942’. ( Home Department (Political) Proceedings, File 28/8/42-Poll(I) and File 28/3/43-Poll(I).Thus, in the final analysis, we are obliged to say that as an organisation, the RSS did not participate in any anti-British movement during the entire period of its existence from 1925 -1947.But it suddenly came to life when the communal situation took a turn for the worse in 1946. Clearly, this was the real battle they were waiting for. It was easy to emerge as “protectors” of Hindus when communal violence began to spread. Enough documentary evidence exists of Hindu Mahasabha and RSS leaders giving speeches and their followers writing vituperative content in newspapers, both before and immediately following independence and partition.Mahatma Gandhi was a prime target and was vilified as an appeaser of Muslims. The Tiranga was rejected as the national flag of India with articles in the Organiser of August 14, 1947 including by Shyama Prasad Mookerjee saying that the Bhagwa, or Saffron flag, was the only true flag worthy of reverence by Hindus, that the “word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country”.RSS did not fly the tricolour till 2002In keeping with that faith, the RSS did not fly the tricolour till 2002, when the stronger pressures of the BJP being in power at the Centre made it embarrassing to continue the practice.Looking back to the hard-fought battle for freedom from colonial rule, the panorama that opens up before us includes the great revolt of 1857 fought by Hindus and Muslims shoulder to shoulder, the graphic theory of the drain of wealth propounded by Dadabhai Naoroji and his contemporaries which laid the economic foundations of Indian nationalism, the founding of the Indian National Congress as the headquarters of the movement for independence, the Swadeshi Movement which brought people out into the streets in Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab, the dramatic turn with the arrival of Mahatma Gandhi, the horrors of Jallianwala Bagh, the stoic non-violence of the Akali jathas at the Guru ka bagh Morcha, the quiet heroism of the Bardoli kisans, the defiance of the salt Satyagraha, the deathly silence on the hanging of Bhagat Singh and his comrades who refused to beg for mercy, the heady slogan of Quit India, the Azad Hind Fauj and the Red Fort trials, and India’s tryst with destiny at the midnight hour of 15 August 1947.In this vastness, one looks in vain for any presence of those whose claims to being nationalists are the loudest today. Despite this glaring absence, there is not the slightest inclination on the part of the Hindu communalists to acknowledge that the independence whose 75th anniversary was celebrated with ‘ghar ghar mein tiranga’ was the achievement of millions of people who were inspired by a vision very different from the one espoused by the current regime.Nor is there any soul-searching, admission of past mistakes of staying away from the freedom struggle, and remorse for and /or condemnation of actions promoting a communal atmosphere which ultimately led to the assassination of the Mahatma, or of refusal of the RSS to fly the Tricolour for 55 years after independence, till it became too embarrassing once the BJP came to power at the Centre in 1998.Mridula Mukherjee taught history at JNU for over four decades. She was also Chairperson of the Centre for Historical Studies and Dean, School of Social Sciences, JNU. She was also Director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.