How a Washington Post columnist laundered the Sangh’s violent history
THE RASHTRIYA SWAYAMSEVAK SANGH has been on a spree, celebrating a century of its existence. Over this period, it has demonstrated its ability to patiently expand, mobilise and grow. Thousands of people, including the former president Ram Nath Kovind, attended the hundredth anniversary celebrations in Nagpur, on 2 October. But the most intriguing guests were not Indian. Among other international attendees was a small contingent of US journalists, showcased prominently as trophies of foreign validation. It included Jim Geraghty, a senior political correspondent at National Review and, since 2022, a contributing columnist for the Washington Post; Megan McArdle and Jason Willick, columnists at the Washington Post; Nicholas Clairmont, an editor at the Washington Examiner; and Lena Bell, the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page.
All of them were proudly paraded on stage. The RSS has, for years, invested in cultivating its image abroad, particularly in the United States. A recent investigation by the US-based outlet Prism revealed that the lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs had been engaged by another consultancy, One+ Strategies, to push Sangh interests in Washington. In June this year, Bob Shuster, a co-founder of One+ Strategies, visited the RSS headquarters with his brother Bill, a former Republican legislator, and the Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead.
The presence of the US journalists at the Nagpur event conferred international legitimacy on an organisation known for its fascist moorings and violent past. “They all seemed happy sitting on the stage,” a reporter covering the event for an international news agency told me. “When their names were announced, they appeared more than willing to stand up and get introduced.” The Sangh’s PR seems to have worked, with some of them carrying forward many of the RSS’s oft-repeated lies. “To my American ears,” Geraghty wrote in a Washington Post article published on 14 October, “it sounds a little odd to hear the group regularly referred to as a paramilitary organisation when its members march around with long sticks instead of firearms.” The article depicted the RSS in exactly the manner the Hindutva militia would have desired.
Does the absence of visible firearms disqualify an organisation from being considered paramilitary? What constitutes a paramilitary force? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “a force formed on a military pattern especially as a potential auxiliary military force.” Collins describes it as a group, “organised like an army,” that performs civil or military functions. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, drawing from the history of European fascism, notes that such organisations adopt military values—discipline, obedience, physical rigour—and the outward symbols of military culture, including uniforms and salutes.
Two points emerge clearly: first, it is the military pattern—not the carrying of guns—that defines a paramilitary formation; second, such formations are hallmarks of fascist movements, not democracies. Since 1925, the RSS, like the Nazis in Germany and the Fascists in Italy, has always combined political and paramilitary functions. Before MK Gandhi’s assassination, this was reflected in the division between the Sangh and the Hindu Mahasabha; later, in the symbiotic pairing of the RSS with, first, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and, then, the Bharatiya Janata Party. The two streams are formally distinct but practically inseparable: they share cadre, ideology and long-term objectives, each reinforcing the other. Both want a Hindu Rashtra. The difference lies primarily in the secrecy and martial discipline of the RSS. While the BJP, like the Mahasabha and the BJS before it, is a recognised political party, the RSS remains an unregistered, communal, militarist organisation with no legal accountability.
Besides, the “military pattern” Geraghty could not find at the event is evident in RSS camps and daily gatherings, which are characterised by uniforms, parades, physical exercises, drills with lathis, hoisting a saffron flag, rituals of saluting, oath-taking and standing-at-attention, and ideological classes. Military-style bands play martial music, creating an atmosphere akin to a rough military encampment. The three years of training camps for Sangh members are patterned on military training. These officer training camps are now characterised as part of the Sangh Shiksha Varg—education wing—but the training pattern remains the same. The Dalit activist and writer Bhanwar Meghwanshi, who had joined the RSS in 1987 at the age of 13, and left it in 1991, stated in an interview to The Caravan that in these camps, swayamsevaks, or activists, “are trained in using a knife, spear, lathi and gun.” He recalled learning “how to make sutli—twine—and petrol bombs. This is necessary, since you are in a religious war and you can’t do without it.”
In his article, Geraghty also attempted to obscure the organisation’s sectarian nature, which is its core mission. “For those recruited into this movement,” he wrote, “it is easy to see the group’s appeal—instilling India’s men with pride and a sense of duty.” Does the RSS claim to work for “India’s men,” or only Hindu men? This is a rhetorical question. Even the RSS does not pretend to be a religion-agnostic movement; its core goal is to will into being a majoritarian state, the Hindu Rashtra. The fact that Hinduism is only one of the many faiths in a pluralistic nation is an obstacle, to circumvent which, many methods are used. Geraghty’s use of “India’s men” serves to camouflage the Sangh’s exclusivist character, to make it palatable to the West.
Geraghty’s argument that the RSS is instilling its members “with pride and a sense of duty” is taken straight from the Sangh’s public positioning that its members engage in activities aimed at character-building, physical fitness and the promotion of Hindu values. The reality is that its members proudly display their Hindu identity and perceive themselves as part of a Hindu resistance against what are presented as Muslim conspiracies.
Meghvanshi’s account provides a clear picture. “In my panchayat, there were no Muslims, to the extent that even the sound of azan never reached my home,” he said. “In spite of this, my mind had been filled with hatred towards Muslims. It was not filled in a straightforward manner, by saying that ‘one should be averse to Muslims’ but by saying, ‘We are Aryan, this is our country, we are the best and our blood is the best. Muslims are outsiders, who invaded us, looted our country, destroyed our culture, broke down temples to build mosques and ruined universities such as Nalanda. Whatever bad situation came to this country, whether it be of caste, of untouchability or purdah—these are all given by these people.’” These things, he added, were “slowly hammered into my brain. Whenever I saw a Muslim, then, I used to feel that they are the root of all evil—they broke down the Somnath temple, they ruined the Ram Janmabhoomi temple. This happens so naturally, and with such ease, that you would not feel when your brain has been filled with these things.”
Geraghty also reproduces the Sangh’s most persistent and consequential falsehood, that Nathuram Godse had left the organisation long before he assassinated Gandhi. “In 1948,” he writes, “Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, who had been a member of the RSS.” For almost eight decades, the RSS has attempted to obscure its ties to Godse. Pro-RSS writers have echoed the Sangh’s claims without evidence. Archival material, however, is unequivocal that Godse never left the RSS. He spent nearly fifteen years in the organisation, from 1934 until his execution on 15 November 1949. These facts need constant reiteration since we are living in times when the Hindu Right is using every means—legal, academic and journalistic—to whitewash the truth of its bloody antecedents.
The lie originates with Godse’s own written court statement of 8 November 1948—nine months after he killed Gandhi—in which he claimed to have left the RSS to join the Hindu Mahasabha. “I am one of those volunteers of Maharashtra who joined the Sangha in its initial stage,” he told the court. “I also worked for a few years on the [RSS’s] intellectual side in the Province of Maharashtra. Having worked for the uplift of the Hindus I felt it necessary to take part in the political activities of the country for the protection of the just rights of Hindus. I therefore left the Sangha and joined the Hindu Mahasabha.”
It is well established that the statement was crafted, at least in part, by Godse’s legal advisers—a fact disclosed later by PL Inamdar, one of the defence lawyers in the case—and aimed at shielding the RSS at a moment when it was under intense scrutiny. In fact, everyone who was familiar with Godse knew that neither the impeccable English of the statement nor its smart juridical phraseology was of his making. At any rate, the court found no merit in his claims.
Even Godse’s brother Gopal—also an accused—later admitted the truth. “He said it because Golwalkar and the RSS were in a lot of trouble,” he recalled in an interview. “But he did not leave the RSS. 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.”
In fact, months before the trial, Godse confessed during the interrogation that he continued to work for the RSS even after joining the Hindu Mahasabha. Archival records recovered from the RSS headquarters in Nagpur after the assassination confirm that Godse continued working for the organisation even after joining the Mahasabha in 1938. His allegiance endured until the end. On the morning of their execution, according to Gopal and a contemporaneous account in the Times of India, Godse and his co-accused Narayan Apte recited verses from the Bhagavad Gita and then the first four lines of a Sanskrit prayer that the RSS had introduced only in 1939, replacing an earlier Marathi version. Godse’s familiarity with the new version meant that he had associations with the organisation even after he had claimed to have left it.
Despite the existence of such records, Geraghty made no effort to examine them. His interview with the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, contains no probing questions. Instead, he uncritically reproduces the Sangh’s narratives—effectively serving as a conduit for an organisation desperate to conceal its true story from American readers.
https://caravanmagazine.in/politics/washington-post-columnist-laundered-sangh-violent-history
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