Nation building is as old as man. It has always been an attempt to strengthen the internal unity and cohesion of a family, tribe, clan, nation or modern state, in the face of a challenging environment, or an external foe, in order to triumph over it.
Members of a family, tribe, clan, nation or state often quarrel among themselves, at times bitterly and with deadly consequences. But nation building is always about forgetting and forgiving internal bickering and unite to face a shared future. It is never about raking up old quarrels, etching deeper fissures among members and trying to marginalise large sections as unwanted.
RSS claims its first and foremost aim is nation building. All its activities are geared towards creating a strong, cohesive, and united nation. Why then does RSS dig up old quarrels, that cannot but divide Indians? Why does it insist on identity-based politics, when it knows identities are never negotiable, being the very core of who you are? In fact, RSS’ world view was so at variance with the that of the mainstream after independence, that Sardar Patel had to ban it in the wake of Gandhi’s assassination.
RSS almost never talks of its vision of the shared future that awaits the nation that it wants to build. Why is RSS so rooted in the past, blinkered by the vicissitudes of history and so blatantly shy of delineating the shared future that awaits us as a nation? RSS’ idea of a nation, and who RSS thinks we are, has best been delineated by its three ideologues, V.D. Savarkar, M.S. Golwalkar and Deendayal Upadhyay. Of the three, Savarkar best explains RSS’ idea of who we are, in a generally accepted theoretical framework. So, let us examine his idea of Hindutva, nation, and state.