What Does Hindu Rashtra Mean?
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with leading industrialists of the country.
The objective of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is to establish a Hindu state (“Hindu Rashtra”) in India. But what exactly does a Hindu State mean? The obvious and immediate answer would be that instead of the present Constitutionally-guaranteed equality for all citizens irrespective of religion, there would be in such a State a superior status of the Hindus compared with those belonging to other religions, especially the Muslims who constitute the largest religious minority in the country.
Such an inequality, however, cannot be sustained without a specifically repressive State; all states in a class-oppressive society are repressive but a state that institutionalises inequality in this manner would have to be even more specifically repressive. Would a Hindu State then mean a dictatorship of a collectivity, called the Hindus, exercised over those belonging to other religions?
The moment this question is posed, the answer is obviously “no”. A rickshaw puller would remain a rickshaw puller no matter what his religion in a Hindu state; a peon would remain a peon no matter what his religion in a Hindu state; a gig-worker would remain a gig-worker no matter what his religion in a Hindu state.
The so-called Hindu State does not promise and would not achieve any change in the material condition of life for the majority of the Hindus; then in whose interests would the dictatorship, the form with which such a State would necessarily be associated, be exercised? The obvious answer is: in the interests of monopoly capital. A Hindu state, unlike what its name suggests, is nothing else but a dictatorship of monopoly capital.
There would, of course, be a veneer of Hindu rituals and Hindu religious practices before State functions, and there would no doubt be a preference for Hindus compared with others in selections for jobs; but new jobs themselves would not just be as non-existent as they are today, but there would even be a disappearance of existing jobs owing to the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by the corporates. While the Muslims and other members of religious minorities would face severe and multiple oppressions, the Hindus would not experience any alleviation of their oppression.
The class whose power would be greatly strengthened is monopoly bourgeoisie, and even within this class the new group of monopoly bourgeoisie. A Hindu State, in other words, would be a State lorded over by the Indian big corporates in general, and the Adanis and the Ambanis in particular.
This is reminiscent of the situation in Germany in the 1930s where the Nazis claimed to be giving effect to “Aryan superiority” by victimising “non-Aryan” populations like the Jews (the Nazis considered it impossible for a person to be an “Aryan Jew”) and the Gypsies (an “Aryan Gypsy” was likewise considered impossible).
The Nazi State, however, was not an “Aryan state”. The dictatorship it set up was, in the words of Georgi Dimitrov, President of the Communist International, at its Seventh Congress in 1935, the “open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital”.
The description of the State by those who lead it does not necessarily correspond to its reality; the question to ask is: which is the class that is using the State to further its own interests, and all States that claim in contemporary times to be furthering the interests of some ethnic or religious or linguistic group by scuttling democracy and reducing other groups to the status of second-class citizens, are in reality furthering the interests of monopoly capital by instituting its dictatorship and seeking to divide the working people along ethnic, religious or linguistic lines. The imposition of a sectional State in a modern, multi-sectional society amounts in reality to a dictatorship of monopoly capital.
The question may be raised: since even the existing “secular” State is already dominated by monopoly capital, why should monopoly capital need, and hence aid the coming into being of, a new, and altogether different, Hindu-supremacist, State that embodies its dictatorship? The need for such a change obviously arises only when the earlier form of the State faces a serious threat; and that happens in a period when the economy runs into stagnation and greatly increased unemployment. The current move toward a dictatorship of monopoly capital, under the guise of a Hindu State, reflects the dead-end of the neo-liberal regime that has brought stagnation to the economy, and greater unemployment and acute distress to the vast mass of the working people.
Democracy provides greater scope for resistance and struggle to the working people, because of which in any period of crisis efforts are made to attenuate democracy, so that the threat to the hegemony of monopoly capital is kept in check; but when the crisis is protracted and the threat to its hegemony is persistent, monopoly capital adopts more extreme measures. It forms an alliance with whatever force is most capable of dividing the people, in order to generate an alternative distractive discourse, to prevent the working people from launching a united fight, and to justify the scuttling of democracy in the name of instituting a sectarian State, which in the Indian context is the promised Hindu State.
The distractive nature of the RSS-BJP discourse is absolutely obvious at present. When the country’s workforce, especially its youth, is weighed down by unemployment, when the incidence of educated unemployment is extremely high, the country’s rulers have not a word to say on this pressing problem; instead, they are crying hoarse about infiltration from Bangladesh! Ironically, since by the BJP’s own reckoning a nation’s per capita gross domestic product is the index of its progress, Bangladesh, which according to the IMF has a higher per capita income at present than India, should be considered more advanced than India; how then can the BJP explain such massive infiltration as it claims from a more advanced to a less advanced country?
Liberal opinion has been trying to explain for some time why there has been such an upsurge of Hindutva in India of late. But it fails to notice that the rise of Hindutva in India is part of an upsurge of neo-fascism all over the world, because of which no India-specific explanation of this rise would be adequate. The rise of Hindutva in other words is not a sui generis phenomenon; to a significant extent it is orchestrated by monopoly capital through financial and media support, in India, as elsewhere in the capitalist world from Argentina, to the US, Italy, France, Germany, and the UK, in the context of the dead-end that neoliberal capitalism has brought to the world economy.
The RSS recently celebrated its centenary; the fact that it suddenly finds itself ensconced in power while for a hundred years it had been nowhere near it, and can boast today to be the “richest political party” in the world, is to be attributed to the massive support it receives from monopoly capital at present.
But it is not only monopoly capital that has become well-disposed toward Hindutva. The Hindutva elements, too, have changed their attitude toward monopoly capital. The main support base of the RSS had originally been among shop-keepers, small capitalists and the urban middle class, and it had enjoyed the financial backing of certain feudal elements. It had never, of course, adopted an anti-monopoly rhetoric, unlike, say in Germany, where the Nazis had adopted an outwardly anti-monopoly stance before coming to power; but the RSS had not been exclusively pro-monopoly capital either. There had been alternative voices within the Hindutva camp regarding economic policy, though economic policy itself had not been explicitly an area of great concern to the Hindutva forces.
The contribution of Narendra Modi has been to change all this. His importance in the Hindutva hierarchy arises because he became an architect of the corporate-Hindutva alliance; and it is by forming this alliance that Hindutva came to power. Indeed, the very idea of promoting Modi as the Prime Minister of the country was mooted at a gathering of capitalists at an “Investors’ Summit” in Gujarat when Modi was the Chief Minister of that state. And Modi became an unashamed, no-holds-barred, promoter of monopoly capital, especially of the newer elements within it.
In the process he also became a promoter of international finance capital with which Indian monopoly capital had become integrated in the neo-liberal era. In the era of stagnation of neo-liberal capitalism, Modi with his neo-fascist agenda has become a particularly useful asset to Indian monopoly capital.
The writer is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views are personal.
Should RSS be Accountable to People of India?
After the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-trained pracharak (propagator) Nathuram Godse pumped three bullets in to the lean chest of ‘Father of the Nation’, Mahatma Gandhi, because Gandhi held that the nation belongs to people of all religions, Godse and his parent organisations, RSS-Hindu Mahasabha held that the nation is only for Hindus.
A hate propaganda was spread against the Indian national movement and Gandhi, leading to his assassination at point blank range. Due to this Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minster, banned the RSS. “All their speeches were full of communal poison,” he wrote after banning the Sangh in 1948. As a final result of this poison, the “country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji." The ban on RSS was lifted after it gave an undertaking that it will have a written constitution and will work only as a cultural organisation.
As a matter of fact, RSS became a “supra political” organisation in the garb of culture. It had already founded Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and was later instrumental in the formation of Bharatiya Jansangh, the predecessor of Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP, which is currently in power at the Centre and many state governments.
The RSS claims that it is run by money from ‘Guru Dakshina’, collected on the day of Dasara festival. The Income Tax tribunal somehow has exempted this source of income from taxation. However, RSS has been spending infinite money in its programmes, running shakhas (branches) even on public land. The expenses involved in its route marches are not disclosed. The value of the RSS head office in Delhi is reported to be above Rs 100 crore. All these massive expenditures are above State scrutiny.
This ‘cultural organisation cover’ was accepted by the State and people at large at face value and it has been merrily expanding itself to lakhs of shakhas and lakhs of swayamsevaks. Nehru had understood the nature of RSS quite early. But till a few years ago no political party, including the Indian National Congress (INC), raised any questions on the issues such as how this organisation has been enjoying a free ride, ignoring the laws and morality of the State.
But better late than never, from the past few years, the INC and Rahul Gandhi, in particular, has been raising logical and legal questions on RSS. Rahul Gandhi had stated that it was RSS people who had killed Mahatma Gandhi, for which he is facing a legal case.
In the line of confronting RSS, now Priyank Kharge, the Home Minister of Karnataka, has ask RSS to get itself registered and be accountable to the State of India.
In a letter (June 13, 2026) to RSS supremo, Mohan Bhagwat, Kharge sought details on the organisation’s legal status, finances, office-bearers and tax compliance. The Karnataka Home Minister also details and type of activities, which has RSS officially claimed that it had over 60,000 shakhas and crores of swayamsevaks across India and abroad.
Kharge outlined in this in his publicly released communication, saying that registration was not simply a legal requirement but also a moral issue. He wrote, “It is precisely because of this scale, influence and reach that the RSS must be held to the highest standards of transparency, accountability and constitutional compliance.”
In response to this letter, the RSS Sarsanghchalak, Mohan Bhagwat, said that he was ignoring the letter and would not reply to it. This smacks of Bhagwat thinking that he and his organisation are above the law and Indian Constitution.
As such, RSS does not believe in the Indian Constitution. Three days after the Indian Constitution was implemented, the RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, in its editorial, stated that this Constitution coming from the Indian Constituent Assembly and drafted by Babasaheb Ambedkar was not fit for our country as the glorious values of Indian holy books were not there. RSS chief Rajendra Singh had said that it should be scrapped.
K. Sudarshan, another RSS chief, went on to say that this Constitution was based on Western values, so it should be replaced by the Constitution based on an Indian holy book. Changing the Indian Constitution was one of the undercurrents of BJP’s slogan of ‘400 paar’ in the 2024 general elections.
Bhagwat’s feeling that his organisation is above the Constitution may also be stemming from the fact that though he does not hold any official position in the government of India, he enjoys security on par with the the Prime Minister.
In response to Priyank Kharge, Bhagwat said, “We are not secretive; we are working on open ground. We are calling people and telling them about us. This is politics, and all kinds of gimmicks are being tried… Hindu Dharma is not registered, and many other entities are not registered.” So, did they discuss the demolition of Babri Mosque in the open?
One recalls that the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recently recommended that the US government impose targeted sanctions on RSS. The proposed measures include freezing the organisation's assets and denying visas to its members.
One of the arguments proffered by Bhagwat for non-registering is that even Hindu religion is not registered! This statement equating Hinduism with RSS is an insult to Hindu religion in a way. Hinduism has many streams of thought-- Nath, Tantra, Shaiva, Siddhanta and Bhakti. The Hinduism which RSS projects is Brahmanism, the one based on caste and gender hierarchy. This argument does not hold water in the least.
The surprise is not that the demand for registration of RSS is coming up. What is surprising is why this demand did not come up earlier. Many officials sympathetic to Hindu nationalist ideology are there to protect the RSS. But the simple rule of donations and expenditure needs to be the major reason for registration. Similarly, political activities in the name of culture need to be admitted. Also, how RSS is violating the commitments it gave while requesting for lifting of ban need to be kept in mind.
The time has come to give importance to the Indian Constitution and Indian nationalism and demand registration of not only RSS but all other organisations fulfilling such conditions.
The writer is a human rights activist, who taught at IIT Bombay. The views are personal.
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