Biography Of Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar

Table of Contents

EARLY LIFE

Golwalkar was born on 19 February 1906 to Sadashivrao and Lakshmibai in a Marathi Karhade Brahmin family at Ramtek, near Nagpur in Maharashtra.
His family was prosperous and supported him in his studies, activities. Sadashivrao, a former clerk in the Posts and Telegraphs Department, became a teacher in the Central Provinces and ended his career as headmaster of a high school.
Golwalkar was the only surviving son of nine children. Since his father was frequently transferred around the country, he attended a number of schools.

In 1922, Golwalkar enrolled in Hislop College, a missionary-run educational institute in Nagpur.
In 1924, Golwalkar left Hislop College for Benaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in 1925 and a master’s degree in biology in 1927.
His students called him “Guruji” because of his beard, long hair and simple robe, a practice later continued in a reverential manner by his RSS followers. Golwalkar returned to Nagpur, and obtained a law degree by 1935

The founder of the RSS, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar or ‘Doctorji’ as he was fondly called, came to know about Golwalkar through a student from BHU. He met Hedgewar in 1932 and appointed him sanghchalak at BHU.
In a search for spirituality, he left for Sargachi in Bengal in 1936, and spent two years in the service of Swami Akhandananda of Ramakrishna Math.
Upon his return, Hedgewar convinced him to dedicate his life to the Sangh. In 1940, when the RSS chief passed away, Golwalkar took over as sarsanghchalak at the age of 34.

Gandhi, the father of the nation, was assassinated on 30 January 1948 by Nathuram Godse, a radical Hindu nationalist who is said to have been an RSS member. The RSS maintains that he had quit before committing the assassination.
In the aftermath of the event, Golwalkar and RSS members were arrested in February 1948. The RSS was also banned by home minister Patel.
Golwalkar decided to challenge the ban on RSS with a satyagraha, launched on 9 December 1948 in Delhi. The ban was finally revoked only in July 1949 after the RSS pledged allegiance to the Indian Constitution.

RSS supreme leader for more than 30 years, Golwalkar made it one of strongest religious-political organisations in India; its membership expanded from 100,000 to over one million, and it branched out into the political, social, religious, educational and labour fields through 50 front organisations.
The RSS expanded into Jammu and Kashmir in 1940, when Balraj Madhok was sent as a pracharak to Jammu with Prem Nath Dogra as director

Bunch of Thoughts, which has become Golwalkar’s most cited work, is a collection of talks and lectures by him around RSS shakhas in India.
Published in 1966 in Bangalore (now Bengaluru), the book is divided into four parts: The Mission, The Nation and Its Problems, The Path to Glory and Moulding Men.
Golwalkar wrote about the glories of the motherland, or punyabhoomi, and its chief religion, Hinduism. The RSS chief wrote of Hindu society as the only one that could fulfil the grand mission of salvation of mankind. He also wrote about the caste system, defending it by saying that it kept Hindus organised and united through centuries.

However, the Sangh Parivar has argued that Golwalkar’s concept of ‘Hindu Rashtra’ has been misconstrued and vilified.
“Golwalkar believed that the values which the government adopted at the time of independence were from Russia in the form of Socialism, and Britain through the 1935 Government of India Act. And he believed that India should adopt its own culture and values. Hindu Rashtra had a broader meaning, which could be used to refer to faith as well as Indian society,” said Alok Kumar, international working president, Vishva Hindu Parishad

The VHP’s first conference was organised at the Prayag Kumbh Mela in 1966.
Guruji’s biggest achievement at the conference was to persuade the gathering to disown the varnashrama, or the caste system, and unanimously passed a resolution Hindavaha sadoraha, na Hindu patito bhavet (All Hindus are born out of the same womb (of Mother India). Therefore, they are brothers and no Hindu can be treated as untouchable.
RSS volunteers saved thousands of Hindus and Sikhs at the cost of their lives, home and families. They worked from Sindh to Punjab to Jammu and Kashmir to Bengal. Golwalkar was felicitated in Punjab by the jathedars (leaders of takhts) of Gurdwara Gursagar Mastuana Sahib, Sangru, in recognition of his work as a saviour of society.

He was as allergic to publicity as Hedgewar and even refused to release a book recounting the RSS’ role during this period.
“One doesn’t publish the news of serving one’s mother. We carried out our duty. We do not complement our swayam sevaks as they were just doing their duty to the motherland,” he said.
In his 33 years as RSS chief, he travelled through the whole country 66 times, mostly by train in the third class while battling cancer in the terminal stage

As his health started deteriorating, Golwalkar made one last tour across the country in 1972-73. It came just after India’s victory over Pakistan in the Bangladesh Liberation War, for which Golwalkar congratulated then PM Indira Gandhi.
In March 1973, he returned to Nagpur for the last time. He died three months later on 5 June.
But by then, Golwalkar had already established the RSS as a socio-cultural organisation with political ambitions. Today, its offshoot, the Bharatiya Janata Party, stands as India’s pre-eminent national party.