but a necessary start to this. We must remem-
ber that it was Noorani who through his pivotal
work on Hindutva’s own V. D. Savarkar (Savarkar
and Hindutva: The Godse Connection; Leftword
Books, 2002), exposed a particular side of his his-
tory and a strong case against this figure, which
pierced right through the Mahasabha and RSS’s
aggressive and fraudulent claims to nationalism
as well as his projection into a supreme national-
ist figure. It was Noorani who dug up Savarkar’s
letters of desperate apology sent to British offi-
cials as part of his tenure as a political prison -
revelations that shattered the attempts of the RSS
and Hindu Mahasabha to deconstruct the pro-
jection of ‘Veer’ Savarkar that’s beyond truth, and
that continue to question the prefix attached to
his name.
The book is divided into 25 crisp and compre-
hensive chapters that deal with the formation,
their role (or no role) in the national move-
ment, the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), the Emergency and the Janata Party, the
2002 pogrom and how it contributed to the im-
age-building of the then Gujarat CM Narendra
Modi, Hindu Mahasabha, ABVP & VHP, etc. All
these tell us the history of RSS, unlike any be-
fore, through meticulous legal research, in classic
Noorani style. Let us turn to some of the most
striking contributions of the book.
The Multiple Identities of RSS
One of the most interesting chapters in here
deals with the contradictions in the RSS’s claim
to being a ‘cultural’ as well as a philanthropic or
‘charity’ organization. With the keen investiga-
tive skills of a lawyer, Noorani digs out intricate
details about the RSS’s income tax and other fi-
nancial documents to weave the case that the
RSS’s very existence is based on falsehood. At the
very outset, he shatters this organization’s con-
struction of itself like a pious, dutiful bunch - on
the other hand, their activities seem nothing but
downright “anti-national, subversive and vio-
lent” as Nehru wrote in his 1948 letter to its then
chief M. S. Golwalkar (1906-1973), the second
Sarsanghchalak of the RSS. Noorani says in the
Preface, “To evade income tax, it claimed to be
a charitable organization before the Income Tax
Officer. It said the opposite of the Charity Com-
missioner to escape registration as a charitable
trust.” (pp. 11)We have entered a post-truth society, argues most
scholars - and it is the right wing that is almost
always linked to post-truth politics. The RSS too
has in the past and continues to be involved in
politics of post-truth or constructed truth, twist-
ing facts and meanings according to their whims.
Here we see that its very identity is based on such
a premise. To this string, Noorani adds, “More, it
claimed a right to attribute to well-known terms
meanings which it chose to assign to them, rather
like Humpty Dumpty’s scornful retort to Alice in
Through the Looking Glass: ‘When I use a word,
it means just what I choose it to mean - neither
more nor less’. In one breath, the RSS says that
all Indians are Hindus, only to assert, in the next
breath, that Hindus constitute the majority. Rea-
soned debate is impossible”. (pp. 11)He goes deeper into the issue in the last chapter
titled, ‘RSS’s Self-Revelation to Tax and Charity
Authorities’ (pp. 416-424). Typical of most of
Noorani’s works, he delves into it with the exper-
tise of a legal specialist and brings to us docu-
ments that might otherwise be overlooked. He
argues his case with the help of some crucial le-
gal proceedings and litigations including some
applications initiated as early as the 70s, by Dr
Manoharkant Dayalji Kamdar, a member of RSS
since 1942 at Nagpur. As per Dr Kamdar, and
quoted by Noorani, the RSS amended its Con-
stitution, which existed since 1933, many years
later in 1972, to accord legal status to ‘Guru Dak-
shina’ (donations to the Guru*).
The book is especially useful for the host of caseStudent Struggle | June - July 2019 45