Ramjanmabhumi: Hinduizing Politics and Militarizing Hindudom 117reasoning, they all share the same religious culture, same social life, and
same personal law. So they are one, and the government should not divide
them. The RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, editorially commented that when
the government did not make any distinction between Shias, Sunnis,
Khojas, Memons, and Ahmediyas among Muslims, or between Catholics,
Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, and so on among Chris-
tians, why should they "divide the Hindus for smaller differences"?^26 A
Hindutva zealot claims, despite all the religious and linguistic differences,
frequent quarrels, and lack of political unity, there had always been a fun-
damental unity transcending these divisions. For him, the binding factors
of the Hindu Rashtra have been the Hindu religion, Sanskrit language,
and the Indian culture.^27
This allegedly homogenous Hindudom has a great heritage of innocence
to strive for. According to Golwalkar, they started their work in the RSS
to rouse a just appreciation of our past, to note its greatness for emulation and its
evils for avoidance, to revive the memory of our being one people, with one holy
Motherland, one heritage, one culture and therefore one Nation, to wipe off all
fissiparous tendencies whether based on sects and faiths, caste and creed, or on
political, economic or linguistic differences, to create absolute purity of character
in all individuals, to inculcate in them the spirit of service, sacrifice and selfless
dedication to the people, to teach that individual interests need to be subordinated
to those of the people, as a whole, to build up an integrated, organized and dis-
ciplined corporate social life in place of the present disintegrated, disorganized,
undisciplined life of individual self-seeking, to establish inviolable ties of abiding
brotherhood in this great ancient Hindu People—thus to bring about an all-round
regeneration of this greatest of all peoples and set it up once again on its high ped-
estal of the Cultural Guide of the World.^28
The glorious and triumphant past was incessantly interrupted by invad-
ers, and every time the Hindus emerged as victors. In Golwalkar's words:
"During the last one thousand years of our struggle with those aggres-
sors never had we accepted their sovereign rights over any part of this
land. Even when they held sway over vast portions of our country as in
the times of an Akbar, or an Aurangzeb not a day passed without a Rana
Pratap, a Guru Govind Singh, a Chhatrasal or a Shivaji challenging them
and asserting our national freedom." But "for the first time in 1947, we
gave up the fight,... and acquiesced in an unchallenged domination of the
aggressor over huge portions of our land."^29
The Hindu somatic came to be vivisected as a consequence of lack
of strength: "The tearing away of the limbs of our mother and the gory
blood-bath of millions and millions of our kith and kin is the price that
we have paid for that ignoble attitude." Keeping up with the valiant tra-
dition, "if partition is a settled fact, we are here to unsettle it." Golwalkar
reasons, "How can a son forget and sit idle when the sight of his muti-