This is the inaugural discussion in an effort undertaken by the Samruddha Bharat Foundation to invite prominent scholars from various fields, including history, to present their academic research in a simple and accessible manner. The first scholar to join this series, Aditya Mukherjee, retired professor of Contemporary History, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, addresses several critical themes regarding the Indian national movement in his chat with Shashi Singh. Together, Singh and Mukherjee speak of the unique pluralistic foundations of the Indian nationalism, the historical inaccuracy of the “minority appeasement” charge, the collaboration between communal organisations and colonial powers, the dangerous attempt to appropriate historical icons like Bhagat Singh and Subhas Chandra Bose, and the systemic weaponisation of history to manipulate public perception. The video interview can be seen here. The full text below has been edited for brevity and clarity.On the plural foundations of the national movementShashi Singh: We often talk about the secular and plural foundations of the national movement, particularly of the mass movements led by Gandhiji. How do you think those foundations were constructed to ensure unity among a population that was so diverse and full of fault lines?Aditya Mukherjee: I’ll make a slight correction to that. Surely, Gandhi ji played a major role, but it is the Indian national movement from its inception that imagined a nation very differently from the way nations were imagined elsewhere in the world.Early nationalists were well aware of our unique diversity. Surendranath Banerjee, in one of his earliest works in the last quarter of the 19th century, aptly titled his book A Nation in the Making. He recognised that they were trying to forge a nation out of an incredibly diverse society. The consensus of the national movement – what Rabindranath Tagore called “the idea of India” – was that India would be a nation that celebrates diversity.This was unique in world history. When nation-states emerged in Europe during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, they typically formed around one religion and one language – like Catholic France, Protestant England, or the unification of Germany and Italy based on language. Because of this, the British dismissed the early national movement, claiming India was merely a “geographical expression” and could never be a nation.The Indian national movement, by contrast, imagined that the more languages and religions we had, the better. Consequently, the best Bengali poet, the greatest Urdu writer, and the finest Tamil thinker were also the greatest nationalists. There was no contradiction. Gandhiji and Nehru propagated this idea and brought it to the masses, but the conception itself was there from the 1870s and ‘80s onwards, even before the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885.The charge of ‘minority appeasement’Shashi Singh: Whenever one speaks about this inclusive history, a charge is often flung by right-wing circles that Gandhiji and others engaged in “minority appeasement.” Is this charge historically accurate?Aditya Mukherjee: No, it is obviously not. The very leaders being accused of “minority appeasement” are Gandhi and Nehru – and remember, it was on that exact ground that Gandhiji was murdered. The justification given by his assassin was that he appeased Muslims.Today, those making this charge are often the ones attacking minorities, permitting lynchings, and allowing open calls for genocide without punishment, while accusing the other side of appeasement. All the national movement did was practice inclusiveness, and inclusiveness is not appeasement.The communalists and colonial loyalists are the only people who did not share this vision of an inclusive, secular, democratic, and humane India. There was a complete agreement across the entire political spectrum—from Dadabhai Naoroji, Tilak, and Gokhale, to Gandhi, Nehru, Bhagat Singh, and Subhas Chandra Bose. Everyone agreed except the communalists.Carrying everybody together is the only way a nation can be built; otherwise, the nation itself is threatened. Mainstream journalists like Harish Khare have openly asked the RSS if they realise their politics could lead toward a civil war. Similarly, Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch, who famously predicted the Rwandan genocide, stated in a US congressional briefing that the path India is on could lead to one of the world’s biggest genocides.Democracy is about carrying everyone together, not just about numbers. Brute majorities can destroy democracy. Hitler and Trump both won elections, but their supremacist ideas and treatment of the press, opposition, and universities are entirely unacceptable in a true democracy. Winning an election does not give a majority the right to convert minorities into second-rate citizens.If you read the RSS’ core thinkers, Savarkar and Golwalkar, they state this objective clearly. Savarkar argued in his presidential address to the Hindu Mahasabha that Hindus and Muslims are two antagonistic nations. This antagonistic view was originally manufactured by the British in the 19th century. Before that, Hindus and Muslims never considered themselves natural enemies—if they were, why did they fight side-by-side to throw out the British in the 1857 Uprising?Savarkar later claimed that Hindus alone constitute the nation, while Muslims are just a community. To explain this, he explicitly compared the position of Muslims in India to that of the Jews in Germany, writing this even after millions of Jews had been annihilated. It is shameful to compare minorities to the victims of the Holocaust and then accuse the secular side of appeasement. By their very definition, minorities cannot be truly Indian. Savarkar explicitly wrote that an Indian is someone who considers India both their Pitri Bhumi (fatherland) and Punya Bhumi (holy land). Because the Prophet Muhammad was not born in India, Muslims cannot claim India as their Punya Bhumi. The same applies to Christians and Jerusalem. Through this definition, minorities are structurally turned into foreigners.The sheer absurdity of this theory becomes obvious if you apply it internationally. It would mean no Englishman, Frenchman, or Spaniard could claim to be a citizen of their own country, because their Punya Bhumi is in Jerusalem. It would mean Buddhists in Japan are actually Indian citizens rather than Japanese. It is an entirely untenable concept, yet it remains the driving framework used to divide our society.Communal organisations and the BritishShashi Singh: Regarding the freedom struggle itself, what was the actual role of organisations like the RSS? Did they stay aloof from the struggle altogether, as progressive scholars argue?Aditya Mukherjee: They had no option. When the RSS was formed in 1925, a powerful national movement had already been existing for half a century, having already launched the Swadeshi and Non-Cooperation movements. Because the RSS was founded with the contradictory goal of forming a Hindu nation, they could not be part of that mainstream movement.From their inception, they were anti-Congress and willing to join hands with the British to suppress the national movement. During the Quit India Movement of 1942, the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha actively collaborated with the British. They even formed coalition governments with the Muslim League in the provinces because they viewed the Congress as their chief enemy.Secularism is the natural enemy of communalism. So long as secularism survives, communalism cannot grow. That is why they killed Gandhiji instead of Jinnah. Jinnah was not their main enemy; the secular forces were. Even today, they tolerate minority communalism because it helps Hindu communalism grow. The secular vision remains their primary target.The appropriation of historical iconsShashi Singh: If they historically collaborated with the British, how are they able to claim a monopoly on nationalism today? Furthermore, why do they try to appropriate figures like Bhagat Singh, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Sardar Patel?Aditya Mukherjee: In the 1930s, Jawaharlal Nehru noted that while minority communalism leads to separatism, majority communalism can easily masquerade as nationalism. He squarely called communalism anti-national and defined it as the Indian version of fascism. Decades later, Amartya Sen similarly termed them “communal fascists.” Nehru warned that allowing these forces to grow would invite fascism, leading to the same disastrous end witnessed under Hitler and Mussolini.They appropriate these icons because they are desperate to occupy a nationalist space. However, the politics of these leaders were completely antithetical to the RSS. You cannot find a more secular person than Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh. In his writings, he explicitly called communalism as poisonous as imperialism. They try to exploit his use of violence to pit him against Gandhi and Nehru, ignoring that by the end of his life, Bhagat Singh’s prison writings show he had arrived at the Gandhian position that mass movements must be peaceful. When Bose formed the INA, he named his regiments the Gandhi Brigade, the Nehru Brigade, and the Azad Brigade. His closest companion, who was with him during his fatal air crash, was a Muslim. He even deliberately integrated Urdu words into his vocabulary to ensure language remained inclusive. The current regime opened up mountains of classified files hoping to find a Congress conspiracy against Bose, but they found absolutely nothing. Nehru and Bose were as close as family; even today at Bose’s house, you can visit the “Nehru Room” where Jawaharlal used to stay. Patel banned the RSS and put 25,000 of its members in jail. Today, they claim him as their own simply because he had economic and political differences of opinion with Nehru.But the national movement was built on healthy differences of opinion. The Congress was not a fascist party. Nehru’s autobiography, written at the peak of Gandhi’s popularity, contains a sharp critique of Gandhi, yet Gandhi still named Nehru his successor. After Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, Patel and Nehru wrote to each other, stating that despite their differences, it was their joint duty to save the country. When petty minds look back at history, they only see pettiness. They are incapable of seeing the grandeur of one of the largest mass movements in world history.The weaponisation of historyShashi Singh: You have spoken extensively on the distortion of history. How does this falsification happen, and what are its real-world implications?Aditya Mukherjee: The falsification of history is the very core of communal ideology. To argue that Hindus and Muslims are natural enemies, you have to systematically alter past realities. You have to erase the fact that they lived together peacefully for centuries, that Muslim emperors had Hindu prime ministers and generals, and that Akbar practiced universal tolerance (Sulh-i-kul) by hosting debates between Hindu priests, Muslim maulvis, Christian padris, and atheists.They have intentionally excised the Mughal period from textbooks, even though it was one of the greatest phases of our medieval history. When the British arrived, India produced eight times the GDP of England. The Mughal era did not destroy India; it produced an incredible composite culture. The entire Sufi and Bhakti movements – including Kabir, Tulsidas, and Guru Nanak – flourished during this period, bringing religions together.The RSS attacks history just as the British did to deny India’s status as a nation. When RSS members were released from prison after Gandhi’s murder, they signed a written condition promising to remain a purely cultural organization and stay out of politics. We can see how “cultural” they are today, with the Prime Minister and Home Minister being RSS-trained.Instead of open politics, they focused heavily on grassroots ideological indoctrination. They started the Shishu Mandir school network in the early 1950s, which today operates in 92% of India’s districts. Through these schools, they poison the minds of eight- and ten-year-old children. Their textbooks claim that “wherever Islam goes, rivers of blood flow,” and accuse the Christians for the partition of India. Ironically, the very forces that destroyed the Bhandarkar Library, demolished the Babri Masjid, and humiliated women in Gujarat are teaching children that minorities are inherently violent. When children grow up normalised to this rhetoric, they believe harming a minority is a heroic nationalist act. This is the weaponisation of history.We have seen this happen globally. In Yugoslavia during the 1990s, politicians whipped up a 14th-century grievance regarding a Muslim conquest over Christians, which directly led to the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims.In India, the destruction of the Somnath temple by Mahmud of Ghazni is constantly invoked to foster anti-Muslim sentiment. Yet, as Jawaharlal Nehru pointed out, Ghazni was a military warrior rather than a purely religious leader; he raised an army in India led by a Hindu general named Tilak to fight other Muslim rulers in Central Asia. Furthermore, Professor Romila Thapar’s historical research reveals that 150 years after the temple’s destruction in 1026, it was rebuilt, and local contemporary records do not even mention Ghazni’s name. More remarkably, 250 years later, a Muslim trader was given formal permission to build a mosque within the temple precincts, actively supported by the temple authorities and the local Hindu Raja.The narrative of a permanent, religion-based trauma over Somnath was actually invented in the British Parliament during the mid-19th century to divide the population and justify colonial rule. It is this imaginary British theory that is being weaponized today.Shashi Singh is researcher, Samruddha Bharat Foundation.