M. S. Golwalkar’s Perspective on Hindu Social Organisation

Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, popularly known as Guruji, headed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from 1940 to 1973 and became one of the most influential ideologues of Hindu nationalist thought. His writings, especially Bunch of Thoughts and We or Our Nationhood Defined, lay out a distinctive way of looking at how Hindu society should be organised. At the centre of this vision sits a careful and often controversial distinction: Golwalkar defended the ancient Varna system as a functional model of social organisation while sharply criticising the rigid, discriminatory caste hierarchy and untouchability that he believed had corrupted it over time. Understanding this distinction is essential for any student of modern Indian political thought, because it shaped the social agenda of one of India’s largest organisations and continues to influence public debate today.

The organic view of society 🔗

Golwalkar did not see society as a collection of competing individuals. He understood it as a single living organism. This idea draws directly from the ancient Hindu concept of the Virat Purusha, the cosmic being from whose body the four social orders were said to have emerged. According to the Purusha Sukta hymn of the Rigveda, the Brahmin came from the mouth, the Kshatriya from the arms, the Vaishya from the thighs, and the Shudra from the feet of the primordial being.

For Golwalkar, this imagery was not about ranking people from high to low. It was about showing how different parts of a body work together. A hand cannot survive without feet, and a head is useless without limbs. In this reading, each Varna performs a necessary function, and society stays healthy only when all its parts cooperate. This organic understanding became the foundation for his entire theory of social organisation.

Function over hierarchy 🔗

The key move in Golwalkar’s thought was to treat the Varna system as a division of function rather than a ladder of worth. He argued that ancient society recognised four broad human capacities. In a speech in Gujarat, he explained that some people are thinkers, some are skilled in producing and earning wealth, and others have the capacity for labour, and that the four divisions reflected these natural differences. From this angle, a Brahmin teacher and a Shudra craftsman were doing different but equally essential work for the survival of the whole community.

This is why Golwalkar promoted the slogan “Sab jaati mahaan, sab jaati samaan” – all communities are great and all are equal. The argument was that the original system assigned roles without declaring any role inferior. Whether this claim holds up against historical reality is a separate and contested question, but it tells us clearly how Golwalkar wanted the Varna order to be understood.

Varna versus caste: a crucial distinction 🔗

One of the most important features of Golwalkar’s social thought is his refusal to treat Varna and caste as the same thing. To him, Varna referred to the four-fold functional order described in the scriptures. Caste, by contrast, referred to the thousands of rigid, birth-based jatis with their barriers on marriage, dining, and mobility that defined Indian society in his own time.

Golwalkar maintained that the inequality and bitterness associated with caste were not part of the original design. As recorded in his writings, the feeling of high and low that had crept into the Varna system was, in his view, of comparatively recent origin. He saw the original system as fluid and the later caste structure as a degenerated, frozen version of it. The disease, in his framing, was not Varna itself but what history had done to it.

Why he believed caste had degenerated 🔗

Golwalkar offered a historical explanation for this decline. He believed that over centuries the natural mobility of the Varna order hardened into hereditary compartments, and that foreign invasions and internal disruptions worsened these divisions. The original idea of complementary functions, he argued, was replaced by a hierarchy obsessed with purity and pollution.

This is also the line of reasoning that allowed him to praise the past while criticising the present. He claimed that the Varna system had given Indian society an inner cohesion that helped it survive repeated invasions. In Bunch of Thoughts he went so far as to argue that if caste had truly been the root of national weakness, India would have collapsed before foreign invaders far more easily than societies without such a system. Critics have strongly contested this interpretation, pointing out that the same texts he admired, such as the Manusmriti, codified deep inequality. But for Golwalkar the conclusion was that the structure deserved restoration, not abolition.

Golwalkar’s opposition to untouchability 🔗

Given his defence of Varna, Golwalkar’s position on untouchability is often misunderstood. He condemned untouchability clearly and treated it as a distortion rather than a feature of authentic Hindu society. He argued that it was a deviation from true Hindu principles that arose from historical disruptions rather than the original Varna framework, and he called for its elimination.

His diagnosis of why untouchability survived is revealing. He suggested that the practice persisted because ordinary people wrongly believed it was sanctioned by dharma, and that violating it would be a sin. In his view, this mistaken belief was so deeply rooted that centuries of effort by social reformers and religious leaders had failed to remove it. By separating untouchability from genuine religious teaching, Golwalkar tried to remove its moral legitimacy while keeping the Varna structure intact.

Social harmony, not social equality 🔗

This brings us to a concept that defines the RSS approach to caste: samajik samarasata, or social harmony. Golwalkar’s solution to caste tension was not the annihilation of caste, which thinkers like B.R. Ambedkar demanded, nor was it the language of samata or formal equality. Instead, he favoured assimilation and goodwill across communities within a shared Hindu identity.

The practical expression of this idea was the daily shakha, where young men from different castes were meant to come together, eat together, and learn the discipline of collective living as a kind of social laboratory. Critics argue that harmony without dismantling the underlying hierarchy leaves inequality untouched, and this remains one of the sharpest debates in Indian political thought. Golwalkar, however, believed unity could be built through shared belonging rather than structural overthrow.

Part of a wider reformist tradition 🔗

Golwalkar’s ideas did not appear in isolation. They belong to a longer current of modern Hindu thinkers who tried to defend and adapt ancient social structures rather than reject them. The Carnegie Endowment notes that Dayananda Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj, was the first major Hindu reformer to rehabilitate the Vedic Varna system by giving it a meritocratic reading, arguing that Varna should be based on qualities and conduct rather than birth.

This intellectual line continued after Golwalkar. Deendayal Upadhyaya, in his influential framework of Integral Humanism, described the four Varnas as analogous to the different limbs of the Virat Purusha, complementary to one another and bound by a shared identity of interest. Seen together, these thinkers form a tradition that treats the Varna order as a civilisational resource to be purified, not a colonial-era burden to be discarded.

Where the meritocratic claim runs into trouble 🔗

It is worth noting honestly that this reformist reading faces serious objections. Many historians argue that the Varna and jati systems were never cleanly separate in practice, and that birth determined social position throughout most of recorded Indian history. Scholars also point out that texts like the Purusha Sukta arrange the four orders in a clear descending order, which makes the claim of pure equality difficult to sustain. Some indologists even regard that hymn as a later interpolation meant to give divine sanction to an existing social division. These criticisms do not erase Golwalkar’s argument, but they show why his position remains deeply contested in academic and political debate.

Why this debate still matters 🔗

Golwalkar’s perspective on social organisation is not a museum piece. The distinction he drew between a virtuous Varna system and a corrupted caste system continues to shape how a large part of the political spectrum talks about inequality. The vocabulary of social harmony, the rejection of untouchability combined with a reluctance to dismantle caste structures, and the appeal to an idealised past all trace back to the framework he helped build.

For a student of political thought, the value lies in seeing how a single thinker could simultaneously condemn discrimination and defend the structure that critics say produced it. Whether one finds this position coherent or contradictory, it is impossible to understand modern Indian social and political debate without engaging with it seriously.

What do you think? Can a social structure that assigns people to fixed orders by birth ever truly promote equality, or does Golwalkar’s defence of Varna unavoidably preserve the very hierarchy he claimed to reject? And is “social harmony” enough to address caste injustice, or does justice require dismantling the structure altogether?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purusha_Sukta
2. https://sabrangindia.in/how-rss-golwalkar-hms-savarkar-glorified-caste-devanur-mahadevan/
3. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2931370-bunches-of-thoughts
4. https://cpim.org/rss-varna-caste-system/
5. https://organiser.org/2025/09/28/317519/bharat/rss-at-100-and-samajik-samarasta-bridging-divides-strengthening-bharat/
6. https://peoplesdemocracy.in/2025/1109_pd/rss-lost-caste-labyrinth
7. https://www.impriindia.com/insights/rss-samajik-samrasta-caste-dialogue/
8. https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2017/08/defenders-of-varna?lang=en
9. https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/05/21/caste-bigotry-and-the-apathy-of-modis-theory-of-atmanirbharta
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism)