Govind Sahay exposed the ideological DNA of the RSS in 1948—drawing chilling parallels with Nazi Germany. Eight decades later, as the Sangh prepares for its centenary with unprecedented reach and power, its foundational text remains buried but never disowned. This article traces the unbroken thread from Golwalkar’s call for Hindu supremacy to the lived reality of Moditva, revealing how silence, not rejection, has kept the core, exclusionary ideology alive.
In 1948, Govind Sahay wrote a book that read like a warning. “R.S.S.: Ideology, Technique, Propaganda” came out just months after Mahatma Gandhi was killed. The book looked closely at the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and compared it directly to the Nazi Party.
Sahay worked as a bureaucrat in the Uttar Pradesh government. He first wrote “R.S.S.: Ideology, Technique, Propaganda” as a pamphlet, then made it into a book. One chapter called “Nazi Technique and R.S.S.” stood out the most.
Sahay was clear about what he saw. The daily military-style exercises at RSS meetings, the flag worship, and the blind following of leaders reminded him of Hitler Youth. The emotional speeches, matching uniforms, and the idea that minorities could not be full citizens – all of this, he said, came straight from Nazi Germany’s playbook.
This was not a fringe opinion at the time. Many Indian intellectuals and administrators had begun drawing parallels between the Sangh’s methods and European fascist movements. Sahay’s work, in retrospect, stands out not for its radicalism but for its clarity.
The Core Text
Every organisation has a book that shows what it really believes. For the RSS, that book is “We or Our Nationhood Defined“, written in 1939 by M.S. Golwalkar. RSS members simply call it “We”. Even before independence, this book had become the RSS’s main guide.
In the book, Golwalkar says India is a “pure Hindu nation.” He writes that people who don’t accept Hindu culture are foreigners – even if they were born in India. Then comes the passage that critics have quoted for decades:
“The foreign races in Hindusthan 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 glorification of the Hindu race and culture… in a word, they must cease to be foreigners or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even citizens’ rights.”
By “foreign races,” Golwalkar meant Muslims and Christians. This was not just rejecting the idea of a diverse India – it was saying that only Hindus could be real citizens. What Golwalkar offered was not a vision of cultural coexistence but of ideological domination – a nation built on exclusion and submission.
The Nazi Reference
Then comes the line that has troubled critics for decades:
“To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by purging the country of the Semitic Races—the Jews. Race 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 Hindusthan to learn and profit by.”
Calling Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews a “good lesson” was not just a comment – it was approval. At that time, both Jews and Muslims were seen as “Semitic races” – foreign and unable to fit into the nation.
This alignment of admiration is essential to remember, especially today when revisionist narratives seek to underplay or whitewash this connection. Golwalkar’s invocation of Nazi racial policies was not accidental; it reflected a worldview in which unity was achievable only through enforced homogeneity.
The Contradiction— or Its Absence
After independence, especially from the 1990s, something strange happened. The RSS and its groups began to praise Israel, the country created as a homeland for Jews, the same people once called examples of racial impurity. Israel’s military strength, Jewish identity, and defense methods became talking points for the RSS.
This contradiction has never been explained. On one side is a foundational book that was the organization’s ideological guide. On the other side is a complete change in how they talk about Jews and Israel. The RSS has not republished We, nor has it officially rejected the passages praising Nazi policies. Instead, there is silence.
But perhaps this contradiction isn’t a contradiction at all. It reveals something else: the RSS’s ideological framework remains deeply invested in ethno-religious nationalism. Its appreciation of Israel is less about historical reconciliation and more about its model—of a militarised, identity-based nation-state. In that light, the RSS’s early admiration for the Nazi racial state and its later support for Israel are not opposites, but expressions of the same principle: national purity, enforced borders, and religious primacy.
Golwalkar’s exclusionary vision from We echoes today in concrete measures enacted under RSS-influenced governance. Since 2014, laws like the Citizenship Amendment Act fast-tracking non-Muslim immigration, and the National Register of Citizens in Assam raised fears of Muslims being rendered stateless; moves that echo Golwalkar’s vision of differential citizenship.
The Sangh’s ideological roots are also visible in repeated communal violence spikes, such as periodic attacks on Muslim communities during religious festivals, often occurring when BJP-led state governments, aligned with RSS ideology, tighten moral policing. These are not theoretical correspondences but real-world outcomes of exclusionary ideology.
The Distancing
After Gandhi’s assassination, when the RSS was briefly banned, Golwalkar and the organization quietly moved away from We. Golwalkar claimed it wasn’t his original work, but just a shortened version of Babasaheb Savarkar’s Rashtra Mimansa. But in the 1939 edition, Golwalkar had written:
“Rashtra Meemansa in Marathi has been one of my chief sources of inspiration and help. An English translation of this work is due shortly out.”
If Rashtra Mimansa was only inspiration, why write a whole new book? And if We was just a translation, why deny responsibility for it?
This distancing wasn’t just for safety. It was managing memory. In later editions, even the foreword by M.S. Aney, a senior leader, was removed. In that preface, Aney had written:
“No person born in any country can be denied citizenship merely because he does not accept the religion of the majority. The author, in using aggressive language against minorities, has violated the basic tenets of modern politics and morality.”
What Others Said
In 1951, J.A. Curran Jr. called We the “Bible of the RSS” in his book Militant Hinduism in Indian Politics. He wrote:
“This book articulates the deepest ideological convictions of the RSS, and embodies its vision for the Indian state.”
In 1993, Shamsul Islam in “RSS and Its Ideology” called it “the Indian version of fascism.” He said RSS members were removing copies of the book from public libraries.
From Golwalkar to Moditva: Where We Are Now
Today, the RSS stands on the cusp of its centenary. Founded in 1925, it has spent the better part of a century building a social and political base that now dominates India’s state machinery. In the decades following Independence, the RSS remained largely apolitical but steadily amassed social capital through schools, relief work, and moral policing. The 1990s saw a political ascent, especially after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992—culminating in the Modi government of 2014, which institutionalised RSS priorities: revoking Kashmir’s autonomy (Article 370), banning triple talaq in 2019, and driving the CAA initiative.
As the Centre has embraced Hindutva policies, the RSS’s ideological blueprint—and even its most extreme passages—have translated into governance without public reckoning. The silences of We are mirrored in silences within court judgments and legislative debates.
Now entering its 100th year, the RSS is not celebrating quietly. On July 4–6, 2025, its nationwide prant pracharak meeting reviewed centenary preparations: launching the outreach programme (‘Grih Sampark Abhiyan’), setting 1.03 lakh shakhas, and scheduling 1.5 k Hindu Sammelans and 11 360 “social harmony” events. The centenary drive is being framed as ‘inclusive outreach’—but it is precisely this expansion, into every basti and household, that cements ideological penetration.
Publicly reframing itself as inclusive and culturally oriented seems futile. If the Sangh wishes to truly reckon with its past, the centenary should be more than a nationwide outreach campaign—it should be a moment of transparency, contextual engagement with its foundational texts, and accountability for the social fractures they inspired.
The Silence
Today, as Israel finds an important place in RSS politics, We or Our Nationhood Defined remains buried but not forgotten. It is no longer shown, but it is not officially rejected either.
What Golwalkar wrote, and what was later written about it, shows something important: we cannot judge ideologies only by public statements. We must look at written texts and the history of what organizations actually do.
History does not disappear when ignored. It speaks even from beneath silence.
