My comments posted on Livemint website over article:The gospels of Maududi and Golwalkar
Though the essential genre of the politicizing of religious ideals was about the same as conceptualized by both, Maulana Maududi had the advantage of a vast Muslim World out there in firmament after the post war decolonization and liberation of so many Muslim countries, including Pakistan; Guru Golwalkar had less success in his own country, due to powerful consolidation of power by Pandit Nehru's Fabian democracy. Even now, though Prime Sevak Modi has declared from Red Fort in his extempore speech that appeared to be similar to his political election harangues, that he wants India to be Jagat Guru spreading the word of Swami Vivekananda around the globe, the crucial vote is mortgaged with the West, if he will be allowed and to what extent. Still, if Aakar Patel, turning a bit nationalist would find Guru Golwakar to be Bharat Ratan material, so will be Maulana Maududi too, a son of the soil that need to be recognized for the global impact of his work and ideas.
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http://www.livemint.com/
The gospels of Maududi and Golwalkar
Modi has popularized Golwalkar’s ideas through democracy, just as Maududi’s ideology is dominant in Pakistan’s constitution and its civil society
Though the essential genre of the politicizing of religious ideals was about the same as conceptualized by both, Maulana Maududi had the advantage of a vast Muslim World out there in firmament after the post war decolonization and liberation of so many Muslim countries, including Pakistan; Guru Golwalkar had less success in his own country, due to powerful consolidation of power by Pandit Nehru's Fabian democracy. Even now, though Prime Sevak Modi has declared from Red Fort in his extempore speech that appeared to be similar to his political election harangues, that he wants India to be Jagat Guru spreading the word of Swami Vivekananda around the globe, the crucial vote is mortgaged with the West, if he will be allowed and to what extent. Still, if Aakar Patel, turning a bit nationalist would find Guru Golwakar to be Bharat Ratan material, so will be Maulana Maududi too, a son of the soil that need to be recognized for the global impact of his work and ideas.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>----- ----- ----- ----- -----
http://www.livemint.com/
The gospels of Maududi and Golwalkar
Modi has popularized Golwalkar’s ideas through democracy, just as Maududi’s ideology is dominant in Pakistan’s constitution and its civil society
Aakar Patel
Inception: (left)
Maududi founded the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1941: Photo: Wikimedia Commons;
and Golwalkar was the second sarsanghchalak of the RSS. Photo: Courtesy:
VHP.org
In the 1900s sprang the
two great men from Maharashtra who would trouble the world with their
ideas before they were 40. One was M.S. Golwalkar of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The other, from Aurangabad, was Abul A’la
Maududi of the Jamaat-e-Islami.
This is not widely known, but Maududi has provided the intellectual underpinning for Islamism across the world.
Very briefly, he did this through his brilliant interpretation of the word tawheed (indivisibility of Allah). Traditionally Muslims were always suspicious of things such as the Christian Trinity and insisted there be no violation of Allah’s godhead. Maududi extended this principle of indivisibility and said tawheed “totally negates the concept of the legal and political independence of human beings, individually or collectively”.
From here, Maududi arrived at the idea that because of tawheed, all sovereignty belonged to God and not to the people. Thus he rejected Western democracy, which was not Islamic and had to be resisted. The other thing Maududi did, through his text Al Jihad Fil Islam (Jihad In Islam), was to lay down the way in which Muslims were to establish the theocratic state.
Every Islamist, from Sayyid Qutb of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia’s Osama bin Laden to Iraq’s ISIS, has located his rebellion inside the theoretical structure provided by Maududi. There is not a single idea that the Arab jihadists have put out that eclipses Maududi (our loonies being brighter than their loonies) and in several ways he remains more advanced.
He rejected Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s tribal jihad in Kashmir against India, saying only the state could wage war and such freelance jihad was not lawful.
Maududi conceived a small vanguard (exactly as in the Marxist sense) of Muslims who would take over the state and impose piety on society top-down.
Today, the Jamaat-e-Islami seeks to implement Maududi’s ideas in Pakistan through electoral politics, and I hope to be able to write again about these soon.
Though the founder of the RSS was K.B. Hedgewar, its true identity emerged after the young Golwalkar took it over in his 30s. Hedgewar was a doctor but he didn’t have the sharpness of his successor, who was also well educated.
Golwalkar expanded the RSS with an unrelenting focus on the shakha, a word that means branch, and its morning activity. Golwalkar theorized, correctly, that it was simple physical work, playing games, singing anthems together, that would build a disciplined neighbourhood Hindu community from a society fragmented by caste.
This Hindu brotherhood would be deployed where Golwalkar needed it, for relief during a natural disaster, protecting Hindus during a riot, and spreading the cultural message of Hindu nationalism. Golwalkar’s stress is also, like Maududi’s, on indivisibility. But here the suspicion is of diversity not in godhead but in nation.
It is breaking from Hindu culture and Indianness that is unacceptable and everyone must fold their cultural expression into it. Golwalkar was the real father of Hindutva, figuring out exactly how he could use the ideas of Hindu nationalism on the ground.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi recognizes his genius. In his biographies of 16 great men, Modi writes his longest chapter on Golwalkar. Though the Prime Minister doesn’t engage with his master’s ideas intellectually, offering only anecdotes that show his character, the reverence is total.
Here is how Modi describes Golwalkar’s release from jail: “After Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, the Sangh was banned. It was later found to be not guilty. Guruji was released from jail. This man, who spoke of loving all humanity, was to be felicitated in Delhi. He was a young man of only 40. Lakhs of swayamsevaks were ready to sacrifice their lives for him. Lakhs of ears were eager to listen to him in Delhi. Journalists from all over the world were at hand. Everyone was eager to know what instruction Guruji would send out. Would he urge them to bring down Pandit Nehru’s government violently? To spread anarchy across India? Instead, after 19 months in jail, this great man said: ‘Forget all that happened. Those who did it are our people. If the tongue is caught between the teeth, we don’t break the teeth to punish them because the teeth are also ours. Forget it.’”
Ultimately, of course, the ideas of the two great thinkers Maududi and Golwalkar turned out to be dangerous and violent both to their own communities and to others.
Maududi had international impact, but we must consider that Golwalkar’s heirs are only just taking over.
The papers say Modi is thought to be considering the Bharat Ratna for two men, Subhas Chandra Bose and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. This is being written a couple of days before 15 August and I don’t know if he will announce this. In any case I doubt Bose and Vajpayee are particularly important to him. The man whom Modi would really want to give the Bharat Ratna to is Golwalkar.
The Congress has given Bharat Ratnas to its leaders and one could say it has done so indiscriminately, handing it to everyone from Gulzarilal Nanda to K. Kamaraj to Rajiv Gandhi.
The RSS feels aggrieved by this and rightly so. In 2003, The Times of India’s Akshaya Mukul reported that an RSS man, Dattopant Thengadi, refused the Padma Bhushan under Vajpayee, saying he couldn’t accept it before “Shri Guruji”, meaning Golwalkar, was given the Bharat Ratna.
This had been attempted in 1998, but Vajpayee was careful in managing relations with his “secular” allies and wisely kicked the can further down the road. Modi’s management of Godhra destroyed Vajpayee’s coalition. After that he was forced to ignore his Hindutva instincts but lost the election in any case.
Modi has never disowned or forsaken Golwalkar and at some point in his tenure, I believe, will give him the Bharat Ratna. Modi has popularized Golwalkar’s ideas through democracy, just as Maududi’s ideology is today dominant in Pakistan’s constitution and its civil society. ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
This is not widely known, but Maududi has provided the intellectual underpinning for Islamism across the world.
Very briefly, he did this through his brilliant interpretation of the word tawheed (indivisibility of Allah). Traditionally Muslims were always suspicious of things such as the Christian Trinity and insisted there be no violation of Allah’s godhead. Maududi extended this principle of indivisibility and said tawheed “totally negates the concept of the legal and political independence of human beings, individually or collectively”.
From here, Maududi arrived at the idea that because of tawheed, all sovereignty belonged to God and not to the people. Thus he rejected Western democracy, which was not Islamic and had to be resisted. The other thing Maududi did, through his text Al Jihad Fil Islam (Jihad In Islam), was to lay down the way in which Muslims were to establish the theocratic state.
Every Islamist, from Sayyid Qutb of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia’s Osama bin Laden to Iraq’s ISIS, has located his rebellion inside the theoretical structure provided by Maududi. There is not a single idea that the Arab jihadists have put out that eclipses Maududi (our loonies being brighter than their loonies) and in several ways he remains more advanced.
He rejected Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s tribal jihad in Kashmir against India, saying only the state could wage war and such freelance jihad was not lawful.
Maududi conceived a small vanguard (exactly as in the Marxist sense) of Muslims who would take over the state and impose piety on society top-down.
Today, the Jamaat-e-Islami seeks to implement Maududi’s ideas in Pakistan through electoral politics, and I hope to be able to write again about these soon.
Though the founder of the RSS was K.B. Hedgewar, its true identity emerged after the young Golwalkar took it over in his 30s. Hedgewar was a doctor but he didn’t have the sharpness of his successor, who was also well educated.
Golwalkar expanded the RSS with an unrelenting focus on the shakha, a word that means branch, and its morning activity. Golwalkar theorized, correctly, that it was simple physical work, playing games, singing anthems together, that would build a disciplined neighbourhood Hindu community from a society fragmented by caste.
This Hindu brotherhood would be deployed where Golwalkar needed it, for relief during a natural disaster, protecting Hindus during a riot, and spreading the cultural message of Hindu nationalism. Golwalkar’s stress is also, like Maududi’s, on indivisibility. But here the suspicion is of diversity not in godhead but in nation.
It is breaking from Hindu culture and Indianness that is unacceptable and everyone must fold their cultural expression into it. Golwalkar was the real father of Hindutva, figuring out exactly how he could use the ideas of Hindu nationalism on the ground.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi recognizes his genius. In his biographies of 16 great men, Modi writes his longest chapter on Golwalkar. Though the Prime Minister doesn’t engage with his master’s ideas intellectually, offering only anecdotes that show his character, the reverence is total.
Here is how Modi describes Golwalkar’s release from jail: “After Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, the Sangh was banned. It was later found to be not guilty. Guruji was released from jail. This man, who spoke of loving all humanity, was to be felicitated in Delhi. He was a young man of only 40. Lakhs of swayamsevaks were ready to sacrifice their lives for him. Lakhs of ears were eager to listen to him in Delhi. Journalists from all over the world were at hand. Everyone was eager to know what instruction Guruji would send out. Would he urge them to bring down Pandit Nehru’s government violently? To spread anarchy across India? Instead, after 19 months in jail, this great man said: ‘Forget all that happened. Those who did it are our people. If the tongue is caught between the teeth, we don’t break the teeth to punish them because the teeth are also ours. Forget it.’”
Ultimately, of course, the ideas of the two great thinkers Maududi and Golwalkar turned out to be dangerous and violent both to their own communities and to others.
Maududi had international impact, but we must consider that Golwalkar’s heirs are only just taking over.
The papers say Modi is thought to be considering the Bharat Ratna for two men, Subhas Chandra Bose and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. This is being written a couple of days before 15 August and I don’t know if he will announce this. In any case I doubt Bose and Vajpayee are particularly important to him. The man whom Modi would really want to give the Bharat Ratna to is Golwalkar.
The Congress has given Bharat Ratnas to its leaders and one could say it has done so indiscriminately, handing it to everyone from Gulzarilal Nanda to K. Kamaraj to Rajiv Gandhi.
The RSS feels aggrieved by this and rightly so. In 2003, The Times of India’s Akshaya Mukul reported that an RSS man, Dattopant Thengadi, refused the Padma Bhushan under Vajpayee, saying he couldn’t accept it before “Shri Guruji”, meaning Golwalkar, was given the Bharat Ratna.
This had been attempted in 1998, but Vajpayee was careful in managing relations with his “secular” allies and wisely kicked the can further down the road. Modi’s management of Godhra destroyed Vajpayee’s coalition. After that he was forced to ignore his Hindutva instincts but lost the election in any case.
Modi has never disowned or forsaken Golwalkar and at some point in his tenure, I believe, will give him the Bharat Ratna. Modi has popularized Golwalkar’s ideas through democracy, just as Maududi’s ideology is today dominant in Pakistan’s constitution and its civil society. ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
Readers' comments:
- Ghulam Muhammed • 26 minutes agoThough the essential genre of the politicizing of religious ideals was about the same as conceptualized by both, Maulana Maududi had the advantage of a vast Muslim World out there in firmament after the post war decolonization and liberation of so many Muslim countries, including Pakistan; Guru Golwalkar had less success in his own country, due to powerful consolidation of power by Pandit Nehru's Fabian democracy. Even now, though Prime Sevak Modi has declared from Red Fort in his extempore speech that appeared to be similar to his political election harangues, that he wants India to be Jagat Guru spreading the word of Swami Vivekananda around the globe, the crucial vote is mortgaged with the West, if he will be allowed and to what extent. Still, if Aakar Patel, turning a bit nationalist would find Guru Golwakar to be Bharat Ratan material, so will be Maulana Maududi too, a son of the soil that need to be recognized for the global impact of his work and ideas.
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Guest • 6 hours agoMaududi is truly the architect of the anarchy model that is destroying the Islamic world from Afghanisthan to Iraq from within. Golwalkar's ideals are not that radical and in any case do not enjoy the kind of blind acceptance in India as Maududi's does in the Islamic world. Strangely Maududi's model could not succeed fully in Pakisthan due to its westernised ( unislamic?) army which does not want to lose political power
- Guest • 6 hours agoMaududi is truly the architect of the anarchy that is destroying the Islamic world from Afghanistan to Iraq from within. Golwalkar's ideals are not that radical and in any case does not enjoy the kind blind acceptance in India as Maududi's does in the Islamic world.
- Gopi Maliwal • 9 hours agoIntellectual const....n at its worst...
such a weekly waste of precious, limited op-ed space on this Kansa-like Modi-obsessed sour loser....!
- rathore • 12 hours agoRSS has zero , repeat zero standing in Maharashtra. All these "xxx.kar's" are forsaken by Marathis esp. those in vidarbha. Let any one from RSS run and win a single election in Nagpur. A discredited bunch of senile Marathi Brahmans is now pushing RSS along. Brahmans are a shunned , minuscule portion of Maharashtra today and organizations like the RSS are their only way of staying relevant.
As for the RSS support base in North , it is primarily from the gang of refugees who have come from Pakistan. M J Akbar once said that the biggest mistake India made was to let these Pakistani Hindus come into India and specifically into Delhi post partition. Khatris and their like have destroyed Delhi and turned it into a cesspool of corruption by their unscrupulous ways . They have always backed the RSS to get back at Muslims and Pakistan and it is these people who will never allow any normalization of relations with Pakistan.
- Vinayak rathore • 4 hours agoYou are hallucinating. I can suggest a good physician if you need one.
Gopi Maliwal rathore • 9 hours ago...gang of refugees.. such compassion... LOL~
Also, can you pl cite ref / link to the supposed comment by MJ Akbar mentioned by you above.
cheguramanakumar • 15 hours agoThere is one striking, massive earth shattering difference between the two: Maududis ideas have already resulted in tearing apart a civilisation 5,000 years old. The Indian subcontinent is now a neighborhood with nuclear daggers drawn. It has set fire to the entire Middle East with grave peril to human lives, esp minorities. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost to jihad, to Islamic terrorism. The whole of humanity seems to be under threat.
Maududis ideology is also at the root of failure of democracy on Islamic states.
Golwalkars ideas have spread only thru democratic means. It is not a threat to mankind. It may help in unifying Indians as a people.
So please don't equate the two men, thanks !
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