A Critical Analysis of M. S. Golwalkar’s Hindu Nationalism

Few thinkers have shaped the way modern India debates the meaning of “nation” as deeply as Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the man his followers called Guruji. As the second Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from 1940 to 1973, he gave Hindu nationalism a fuller ideological shape than his predecessor and built an organisation that still influences politics today. His vision drew on Indian spiritualism and the idea of a single cultural family. Yet the same framework that promised unity also drew sharp lines around who belonged, raising questions that remain unresolved. This is a critical study of that ideology: its foundations, its internal tensions, and the criticisms it has attracted.

Who was Golwalkar and why his ideas matter 🔗

Golwalkar took over the RSS after its founder, Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, and led it through the turbulent decades of Partition, Independence, and early nation-building. His two best-known works, We or Our Nationhood Defined (1939) and Bunch of Thoughts (1966), became foundational texts for the wider Sangh Parivar. Importantly, his thought built on but moved beyond Savarkar. Where Savarkar’s Essentials of Hindutva set out the idea of a state based on “Hindu-ness,” Golwalkar’s writing functioned more as a practical guide to the principles of a Hindu Rashtra. Understanding him is essential for anyone studying modern political thought, because his ideas continue to feed contemporary debates about secularism, citizenship, and identity.

The spiritual and cultural foundation of his nationalism 🔗

At the heart of Golwalkar’s thought was the conviction that a nation is born not from political arrangements but from a shared culture and spiritual life. He treated Hinduism not as one religion among many but as a complete civilisational way of life, encompassing philosophy, ethics, and social organisation. For him, this cultural continuity, stretching from ancient times to the present, was what gave India its real identity. Political boundaries and constitutions could change, he believed, but the cultural soul of the people endured.

This is why his model rested on what he called the “Unities.” Golwalkar argued that a true nation required five essential unities: Country, Race, Religion, Culture, and Language. A people that possessed all five, in his view, constituted a nation; a people lacking any one of them did not. This neat formula is the key to almost everything else in his ideology, and also the source of its most serious problems. [Image: A conceptual diagram showing Golwalkar’s five “Unities” – Country, Race, Religion, Culture, and Language – arranged around a central idea of “Nation”]

Cultural nationalism versus territorial nationalism 🔗

Golwalkar’s most significant theoretical move was to reject territorial nationalism in favour of cultural nationalism. Territorial nationalism holds that anyone living within a country’s borders and owing allegiance to its state is part of the nation, regardless of religion, language, or ancestry. This is broadly the principle that India’s Constitution later adopted. Golwalkar found this idea shallow and borrowed.

Why he rejected the territorial idea 🔗

He argued that defining a nation merely by geography reduced it to an accident of where people happened to live. For Golwalkar, a nation was an organic cultural community with a shared history and spirit, not a collection of strangers sharing a passport. He believed cultural nationalism had allowed Hindu civilisation to survive centuries of invasion, while a purely territorial idea could not generate the same loyalty or cohesion.

The critics’ response 🔗

Many scholars have pushed back firmly on this. Critics argue that in a society as diverse as India’s, equating the nation with one cultural tradition inevitably marginalises everyone outside it. They point out that India’s plurality has been a source of strength rather than weakness, and that territorial nationalism combined with democratic institutions can manage cultural difference successfully. The relative success of India’s democracy is often cited as practical evidence that a diverse society does not need cultural uniformity to stay united. It is also worth noting an irony that scholars have highlighted: to make his case, Golwalkar drew heavily on Western political theory and European examples such as Germany and Italy rather than ancient Indian philosophy.

The exclusionary stance towards minorities 🔗

The most controversial consequence of Golwalkar’s framework concerns religious minorities. If a nation is defined by a shared religion and culture, then those who do not share that religion and culture cannot fully belong. Golwalkar applied this logic directly to Muslims and Christians.

In We or Our Nationhood Defined, the book identifies India as a Hindu Rashtra and treats non-Hindus as outsiders unless they assimilate into Hindu culture. The language he used was stark. According to one recent biographical study, the text argued that non-Hindus were essentially either traitors, enemies, or at best harmless onlookers. In Bunch of Thoughts, he went further and categorised Muslims, Christians, and communists as “internal threats” to the nation. The expectation he set out was that minorities could remain only as subordinate members who renounced their distinct identity and adopted the majority culture.

This is where the tension in his ideology becomes impossible to ignore. A philosophy that presents itself as a project of national unity simultaneously defines a large share of the population as outsiders. Critics across the spectrum, including academic reviewers of his work, note that this approach treats religious minorities not as partners in nation-building but as obstacles to be assimilated or overcome. [Image: A historical photograph of an RSS shakha gathering from the mid-twentieth century]

The “race spirit” problem 🔗

An especially troubling element is Golwalkar’s invocation of a Hindu “race spirit” that must be protected. Analysts of his work observe that by framing minority presence as a threat to this race spirit, his ideology leans towards cultural supremacy and risks ethnonational conflict. It was this dimension, including approving references to ethnic nationalism in 1930s Europe, that later led even the RSS itself to officially distance itself from the book in 2006. The authorship of the 1939 text is itself debated, with some scholars suggesting Golwalkar translated rather than wrote it.

Negative and positive Hindutva 🔗

Golwalkar’s thought is often divided into two strands, and the distinction is useful for a fair assessment. Negative Hindutva describes the reactionary side of his ideology, the part defined against perceived enemies and threats. This is the dimension most associated with anti-minority rhetoric. Positive Hindutva, by contrast, was meant to be constructive. It focused on strengthening Hindu society from within through cultural revival, discipline, organisational efficiency, and a return to dharmic principles.

Golwalkar argued that political power without cultural strength was superficial and would not last. He often pointed to societies that were politically powerful but collapsed because of internal cultural decay. Positive Hindutva was therefore his prescription for building durable strength: reform education, revive spiritual traditions, and organise society around shared values. The catch, as critics point out, is that even this constructive vision rests on a definition of national identity that is culturally narrow and religiously exclusive. The uplifting language of service and unity in his writing sits uneasily with the boundaries it simultaneously draws around belonging.

Influencing political power from outside 🔗

One of the most distinctive features of Golwalkar’s strategy was his insistence that the RSS remain a cultural organisation rather than a political party. He believed real, lasting change came from transforming society itself, not from contesting elections. By building a dense network of grassroots organisations and shaping the cultural attitudes of ordinary people, he aimed to influence political power indirectly, from outside the formal political arena.

This stance was sharpened by circumstance. After Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, Golwalkar spent about six months in jail, and was released in 1948 only after giving assurances that he would keep the RSS away from politics and confine it to cultural activity. Yet here lies another tension that observers have repeatedly flagged. An organisation that claimed to be purely cultural was, in practice, deeply invested in shaping political outcomes. The line between “cultural” and “political” work, which Golwalkar drew so firmly in theory, proved far blurrier in reality, and the eventual rise of the Sangh Parivar as a political force suggests the separation was never absolute.

The central tensions in Golwalkar’s framework 🔗

Pulling these threads together, a critical reading reveals at least three deep tensions. First, his ideology promises unity but operates through exclusion, defining a unified nation by leaving out those who do not fit the cultural mould. Second, his rejection of territorial nationalism collides with the lived reality of a diverse, constitutionally secular democracy that has, by and large, held together. Third, his claim that the RSS was apolitical sits awkwardly against its sustained influence on political power.

None of this means Golwalkar was a marginal figure; the opposite is true. His emphasis on cultural identity, discipline, and long-term ideological work resonates with many people who feel that rapid modernisation has weakened traditional bonds. But intellectual influence and intellectual coherence are different things. The enduring power of his ideas is precisely why they deserve careful, critical scrutiny rather than uncritical acceptance or dismissal.

What do you think? Can a nation genuinely achieve unity and progress while defining significant sections of its own population as outsiders? And was Golwalkar right that culture, rather than territory and citizenship, is the truest foundation of a nation, or does India’s democratic experience suggest otherwise?

References

1. https://www.britannica.com/biography/M-S-Golwalkar
2. https://www.hindutvawatch.org/we-or-our-nationhood-defined-madhav-sadashiv-golwalkar/
3. https://www.academia.edu/36498386/_We_and_Our_Nationhood_Defined_Analysis_of_M_S_Golwalkars_Idea_of_Hindu_Nationhood_and_Nationalism_Subject_Nationalism_Multiculturalism_and_Minority_Rights
4. https://gaurilankeshnews.com/golwalkar-we-or-our-nationhood-defined-rss-bible/
5. https://scroll.in/article/1076123/a-new-biography-of-ms-golwalkar-shows-he-built-the-rss-for-political-power-without-joining-politics
6. https://mikharara.blogspot.com/2025/05/book-review-bunch-of-thoughts-by.html
7. https://www.academia.edu/49053408/_We_and_Our_Nationhood_Defined_Analysis_of_M_S_Golwalkar_s_Idea_of_Hindu_Nationhood_and_Nationalism
8. https://m.thewire.in/article/communalism/how-the-rss-achieves-its-goals-through-symbiotic-links-with-other-hindutva-organisations