‘The activities of the RSS were a clear threat to the state’: What Sardar Patel told SP Mukherjee

The actions and propaganda of Hindu communalists in the months after Partition leading up to Gandhiji’s murder were not a mere threat to law and order. They constituted a challenge to the very nature of the Indian state. The government communiqué dated February 4, 1948, declaring the RSS unlawful, stated

“It has been found that in several parts of the country, individual members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoity and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunition. They have been found circulating leaflets exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, to collect firearms, to create disaffection against the government and suborn the police and the military.”

Gandhiji refused to be taken in by Golwalkar’s attempts in 1947–48 to convince him that the RSS stood for protecting Hinduism, not for killing Muslims. When a Gandhian worker present at the meeting praised the good work done by the RSS in the refugee camp at Wah in North West Frontier Province, Gandhiji remarked: “But don’t forget even so had Hitler’s Nazis and the Fascists under Mussolini.” The eminent Gandhian, Dr Sushila Nayyar, reiterated Gandhiji’s remark when she appeared as witness no. 53 before the Kapur Commission: “They...

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