Golwalkar's Three World Views: Capitalism, Communism, and Hindu Spiritualism • PolSci Institute

The twentieth century was largely defined by a battle between two economic systems: capitalism and communism. One promised prosperity through free markets, the other promised equality through collective ownership. But M. S. Golwalkar, the second chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, refused to accept that these were the only two options on the table. In his major work Bunch of Thoughts, he framed capitalism, communism, and Hindu spiritualism as three distinct “world views of change,” arguing that the third was superior to both. Understanding why he reached this conclusion gives us a window into one of the most influential strands of modern Indian political thought.

What Golwalkar meant by “world views of change”
The critique of capitalism
Freedom that became exploitation
The threat to cultural identity
The critique of communism
A different system, the same blind spot
Promises that went unfulfilled
Hindu spiritualism as the third path
A different purpose of life
Harmony instead of conflict
The goal of a Dharmic society
Reading Golwalkar critically

What Golwalkar meant by “world views of change”

For Golwalkar, the central question of any society was not just how to produce wealth, but what the very purpose of human life should be. He saw capitalism and communism as two responses to the same problem of how to organise society in the industrial age. The trouble, in his view, was that both responses were built on a flawed foundation: materialism, the belief that satisfying physical wants and maximising material comfort is the goal of existence.

According to Golwalkar, Hindu spiritualism was the third perspective of change, one that he considered superior to both capitalism and communism. He believed that a system rooted in the spiritual heritage of the land could correct the failures he saw in the two dominant Western ideologies. To grasp his argument, we need to look at how he critiqued each of the first two, and what he offered in their place.

The critique of capitalism

Golwalkar’s first target was capitalism, the system built on private ownership and the free market. While many people associate capitalism with progress and prosperity, he focused on what he saw as its darker consequences.

Freedom that became exploitation

In Bunch of Thoughts, Golwalkar argued that the promise of “equality of opportunity” had been hollowed out in practice. He claimed that those with greater wealth and intelligence cornered the new avenues of production and became, in his words, financial overlords who eventually captured the political machinery itself. The ordinary person was left with little more than the right to vote, a right that meant little under harsh economic pressure. For Golwalkar, this turned the high ideal of individual freedom into the freedom of a privileged few to exploit everyone else.

He pointed to the grim conditions of early industrial labour, where men, women, and even children worked in factories under conditions of misery, as evidence that capitalism produced new tyrants in place of the old ones. This is not a uniquely Indian observation. Critics of capitalism across the world have highlighted a similar story of exploitation, displacement, and widening inequality running alongside its undeniable creation of wealth.

The threat to cultural identity

Golwalkar’s objection to capitalism was not purely economic. He also worried that the globalisation built into capitalism could erode unique cultural traditions and replace them with consumerist values. In his framework, a society that measured success only in terms of profit and consumption would slowly lose touch with its deeper spiritual moorings. The danger, then, was twofold: capitalism exploited people materially and impoverished them spiritually.

The critique of communism

If capitalism was the disease, Golwalkar argued, communism was a flawed cure. He acknowledged that communism arose as a genuine reaction against the tyranny of capitalism. But he believed it had failed to fix the underlying problem because it shared the same materialist foundation.

Golwalkar contended that communism was overly focused on material wealth and class struggle, and therefore neglected the spiritual and cultural dimensions of human life. By treating people primarily as economic units, communism in his view reduced individuals to cogs in a machine and stripped them of their spiritual depth. He rejected the Marxist idea of inevitable class conflict, preferring a vision in which different sections of society cooperated rather than fought one another.

Promises that went unfulfilled

Golwalkar also charged that communism failed to deliver on its own promises. Despite preaching equality, communist regimes had often produced authoritarian rule and widespread suffering. He saw a recurring pattern in which revolutions that aimed at a utopian society instead ended in oppression and tyranny. Closely tied to this was his objection to communism’s atheistic core. Because the ideology rejected spiritual and religious values, he viewed it as fundamentally incompatible with the dharmic worldview he considered essential. For this reason, his book famously and controversially listed communists, alongside Muslims and Christians, as “internal threats” to the nation, a characterisation that the RSS itself later distanced itself from in 2018.

Hindu spiritualism as the third path

Having rejected both Western systems as materialist, Golwalkar presented Hindu spiritualism as a holistic, culturally rooted alternative. This was the constructive heart of his argument.

A different purpose of life

At the foundation of his vision lay a different answer to the question of what life is for. Golwalkar held that the satisfaction of material needs was not the goal of human existence. Instead, he believed that human life was permeated by a supreme spirit and that this oneness was the basis of all genuine equality. A person, in this view, lived not to maximise personal pleasure and power but to help and serve others.

Harmony instead of conflict

This spiritual premise produced a very different model of social relations. Where capitalism encouraged competition and communism assumed class conflict, Golwalkar emphasised harmony, mutual help, and accord. He argued that the interests of the individual and society were not contradictory but complementary. Every person was a part of the larger social body, and their well-being was bound up with the welfare of the whole.

To express this, Golwalkar often used the image of the human body, in which different organs perform distinct functions yet work together for the welfare of the entire organism. Society, he believed, should function the same way, as a cohesive unit bound by cooperation rather than antagonism. This idea also shaped his interest in social work, including efforts to integrate tribal communities into the wider Hindu fold.

The goal of a Dharmic society

The ultimate aim of Golwalkar’s third path was the establishment of a society organised around Dharma, the principle of righteous duty and moral order. In this framework, politics and economics would not be separated from ethics; instead, spiritual values would guide both. This stands in sharp contrast to systems that, in his reading, either subordinated morality to material goals or abandoned universal morality altogether.

This dharmic orientation strongly influenced later Hindu nationalist thought. Deendayal Upadhyaya developed it into the doctrine of Integral Humanism, which sought an indigenous economic model with the human being, understood as body, mind, intellect, and soul, at its centre. Both thinkers shared the conviction that true progress requires balancing material prosperity with spiritual values, rather than pursuing one at the expense of the other.

Reading Golwalkar critically

Golwalkar’s three-fold framework is a significant piece of twentieth-century Indian political thought, but it is also deeply contested. Critics point out that his vision of a dharmic society was closely tied to a hierarchical social order, and that his definition of national belonging excluded religious minorities. Scholars and commentators have described his ideas as exclusionary and have subjected both his philosophy and his biography to sharp scrutiny. His critique of materialism, in other words, came packaged with a politics that many find troubling.

For a student of political science, the value of studying Golwalkar lies in understanding how he positioned spirituality as a response to the perceived failures of both major Western ideologies. Whether or not one accepts his conclusions, his work is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the intellectual roots of Hindu nationalism and the broader debate over whether economic systems alone can answer the deeper questions of human purpose.

What do you think? Can any social system genuinely balance material prosperity with spiritual or ethical depth, or is this an inherent tension every ideology must manage? And when a thinker offers a powerful critique of existing systems, how should we weigh that critique against the exclusionary politics it may be tied to?

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Table of Contents

What Golwalkar meant by “world views of change” 🔗

The critique of capitalism 🔗

Freedom that became exploitation 🔗

The threat to cultural identity 🔗

The critique of communism 🔗

A different system, the same blind spot 🔗

Promises that went unfulfilled 🔗

Hindu spiritualism as the third path 🔗

A different purpose of life 🔗

Harmony instead of conflict 🔗

The goal of a Dharmic society 🔗

Reading Golwalkar critically 🔗