A group of Indian scholars has-recently published a tract tracing the history of the RSS and its affiliates. It projects in brilliant detail a sinister record of ideology and organisation structured around xenophobia, the project for a nation state which would relegate non-Hindus  to the status of a subject population. Savarkar first spelled out this new notion of Hindutva in 1923 when he declared that only those who thought of India as the Holy land as well as the Fatherland could be true patriots. Since this joy was inaccessible to Muslims, their patriotism should always be suspect. In 1925, in the wake of extensive communal riots on a scale without precedent, Hedgewar established the RSS in direct response to the new quest for  disciplined cadres of Hindu communalism.

The founder's analysis of the political situation which necessitated the new organisation is illuminating: "the yavan-snakes reared on the milk of non-cooperation were provoking riots with their poisonous hissing". The riots were Muslim riots because in every single case "it is they who start them". Thus "it became evident that Hindutva was Rashtriyata" i.e. Hinduness was the same as nationalism. It was hence necessary for dedicated Hindu youths to organise in self-defence. Golwalkar, who succeeded the good doctor to the leadership of the RSS, developed the notion of cultural nationalism as distinct from territorial nationalism. The idea that those who lived within the geographical boundary of a country constituted the nation was rejected.

He (Golwalkar) defined his notion of cultural nationalism along the following lines: "German national pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by purging the country of the Semitic races – the Jews. National pride at its highest h as been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hinduism to learn and profit by ... "

(Source: The Indian Currents, 5 March, 2000)