 Summary of this article
- Ambedkar’s critique of Savarkar’s Hindutva and nationalist ideologies was ignored across political and academic circles.
- RSS, founded by Brahmins, evolved from Hindu Mahasabha roots and remains politically tied to the BJP despite claiming to be cultural.
- Its ideology is caste-bound, excluding Dalits and OBCs while opposing social justice and reservation movements.
“If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country,” said B. R. Ambedkar in Pakistan or the Partition of India. Ambedkar was the first thinker in India to produce a critique of V. D. Savarkar’s Hindutva and Hindu nation, as well as barrister M. A. Jinnah’s ideas of nation. His book is a scathing critique and a tormenting of the ideas of nation and nationalism that were being advocated by the Congress, the Hindu Mahasabha, Gandhi, and many others. Sadly, the book never became part of higher studies, and the so-called intellectuals of this nation systematically bypassed this book, even though it is an important political commentary of that time. All camps, including the Congress, the Jana Sangh, the Socialist, and the Left have been hand in glove not to make the book an important pedagogic exercise and enthuse new ideas of thinking, but indulged in “Protected Ignorance”. The book also offers a critique of making a nation, and thereby, how nationalism gets constructed in colonial India. Does it help to foreground the critique of the present related to the organisation, like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)? The answer is positive, but it all depends on one’s consciousness. The consciousness of belief in divine and sacred is the consciousness of “protected ignorance,” which has been a guarding principle in India by the very followers of Hinduism, irrespective of their claims. |
