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The RSS organization was started in India on the day of Vijayadasami in the year 1925. Subramania Bharathi, though, died on 11.9.1921, before RSS was even created. But, by talking about all the ideologies that the organization had taken up today, even before RSS was created, Bharathi laid the base for its creation. Let’s see them one by one.

“It is my desire to make all the twenty crore Hindus into something like one family. It is my belief that if this desire besets someone, he will consider this more important than all other things like ruling and so forth. I think that upholding the Vedas is the greatest dharma in comparison to all other dharmic acts. Hindus should be gathered together and made into one instrument. I will explain how this can be done when the time is right”.⁽¹⁾

“Indra, Agni, Vayu, Varuna are the important Gods among those in the Vedas. But in later times, they started considering these gods as inferior gods. If this disorderly state of affairs is to cease, and Hindu religion attains a state of unity with the Hindu people being united and attaining divine knowledge, developing to live with the position of the Acharyas of this earth, the following are the steps we need to take for this to happen: 

1. The Vedas, Upanishads, and Puranas should be translated clearly into the national languages prevalent in these times.
2. We should take true knowledge from the Puranas, only those aspects that show the greatness of their respective Devas, and the portions that explain the Vedic principles of Meditation, Upasana, and Yoga. The other aspects that say blasphemous things about the devas should be considered lifeless and removed.
3. Large-scale campaigning work should be conducted using books, magazines, and upanyasas in the whole country through the pandits who are mediatory saints and have realized the true ideas of the Vedas. Don’t divide yourselves and die! Realize the meaning of the Vedas and search for ways to live better.” ⁽²⁾

Bharathi was very worried about religious conversion back in those days itself. 

“It seems that on the first of this month, Chennai’s head pastor ordained approximately three hundred people, including men, women, and children into the Christian religion. This keeps frequently happening in different places in our country. This is something that can cause great sadness to all those that are fond of the Hindu religion… 

Yes.. this is news that Hindus should be sad about. The Hindu population is decreasing day by day. Let the Hindus not sleep like the mountain snake in the poem when the tail is on fire anymore. Wake up. Those who simply keep watching when the population decreases are sleeping even while they are awake. They are blind even if they have eyes” ⁽³⁾

said Bharathi. Without providing a way for economic development, he said that the population should be increased from a religious perspective.

Moreover, when he’s talking about Hindu dharma,

“Even if more caste divisions occur among the Hindus, it is not a big thing; we will not be destroyed by it but only find it troublesome. It is not a big thing if poverty increases among the Hindus even today. The dharmic angel’s eyes will be hurt because of it. Even so, we won’t be led to absolute destruction. If we remain indifferent without paying attention to Hindu dharma, our group will definitely be destroyed. There is no doubt in that.” ⁽⁴⁾

said Bharathi. In the Sudesamithiran edition of 19 November 1917, Bharathi wrote that Hindu dharma should be spread all over the world. It is notable that he’s writing this only after the October Revolution in the Soviet Union.

“Come, friends, if we have to make Hindu dharma spread in Europe and America, this is the right time for it. Aha, if there are ten people like Swami Vivekananda now, we can hoist the victory flag of Hinduism all over the world within a year… war time is what is good for us (the first world war happened between 1914 and 1918. Bharathi wrote this during that time). I pray to the heads of Mutts, Rajas, Zamindars, and Chettiars to think deeply about this and send hundreds of preachers from here to foreign countries”. ⁽⁵⁾

It seems like following him, today, people like Ramagopalan (Founder of Hindu Front) had written, “Let’s assume that a third world war begins. During that time, Asian countries will need to come together to defend themselves. Naturally, India will take on the leadership of the Asian collective. It will be possible during that time for Akhand Bharat or an equivalent landmass to be created”.

Moreover, “The Christians are taking the way people from the lower castes of our country to their side now. This will be the axe with which they’ll destroy us” ⁽⁶⁾ said Bharathi. 

Bharathi told the reason why India should be named Bharat.

“Bharat was established by Bharathan. This Bharathan is the son of the king Dushyant. This country came to be known by the name Bharat because he unified our country that extends right from the Himalayas to the tip of Kanyakumari and creates the first empire.” ⁽⁷⁾

RSS people say they want this name only even today. Until today, we haven’t gotten any historical evidence that Bharathan ruled the whole of India, as Bharathi said. Even in the Bharat story, we can only see that there were 56 countries in India ruled by 56 different kings. There is no evidence for the existence of a single country called India before the British came.

About the religious conversion that happened when Islamic kings ruled India:

“During Tipu Sultan’s time, a Mohammedan army chief came with a small army and made some Brahmins stand before the Palakkad fort after removing their top cloths; unable to withstand the horror of this humiliation of the Brahmins, the Thambiran community left the fort without any resistance. When he started controlling the Hindus in Kozhikode, Tipu Sultan caught hold of 200 Brahmins, converted them to Islam, and made them eat cow meat” ⁽⁸⁾ said Bharathi.

But we haven’t gotten any evidence that Tipu Sultan really did something like that. Instead, we only get news of Tipu Sultan supporting the Brahmins. During his rule, 45000-50000 Brahmins had been in government jobs. He didn’t even take on the right to punish them if they committed mistakes, delegating that to Sringeri Sankaracharya. We learn of this from the letter Tipu wrote to the Sringeri Sankara Mutt in 1791:

There are more than 45 to 50 thousand Brahmins in our service. It is wondered if the Government alone is bestowed with judiciary powers of handing their cases and punishing them for offenses like theft, liquor, and Brahmahati. Hence the authority to punish such offences on your premises is given to you. You could punish them in any manner as given in sastras. ⁽⁹⁾

Going one step further, Tipu requested Sringeri Sankaracharya to conduct the Sastra Sandi Jabam to ensure his lasting rule. Thousand Brahmins performed Jabam for 40 days. Tipu took care of all those expenses himself. ⁽¹⁰⁾

Could this Tipu have tortured Brahmins in the way Bharathi detailed? This merely shows the hatred Bharathi nurtured towards the Muslims. Many people write that Bharathi shows sympathy towards the Pariahs. Bharathi did that because he thought they would go to the Christian religion. 

“1200 years ago, when religious converts from the north came into the Punjab region, aggrieved by not being able to withstand the trouble our people gave them, the sacred texts say that the Pariahs welcomed the enemies and joined with them. The disease that caught our caste then has not been cured still.” 

“...the English pastors who came from some foreign land help the famine-affected people in various ways and ordain hundreds of people, importantly even unknowing children, into Christianity. The Hindu population keeps decreasing in dangerous amounts every year. The mutt heads and santhithans think of their bellies growing as the growth of knowledge and feel happy. Hindu people, Hindu people! Our blood, our flesh, our bones, our life. We should cleanse them by making them abstain from eating cow meat, integrating them into our community, providing education, dharma, and god, and supporting them ourselves. If we don’t do so, they will become complete enemies to us. ⁽¹¹⁾

Because people who have been oppressed by caste discrimination and violence converted religion in large numbers, Bharathi, like Kizhachamban (Old Pariah) said, had written that religious conversion is not needed.

He said:

“Christian pastors said that our position is inferior in Hinduism and our situation will be better if we join Christianity, and converted some of us to Christianity. We didn’t get any benefit from that. One person in a hundred gets a job with a salary of 10000-15000. All the others are still doing the old jobs of working in the kitchens of the Durais, farm work, and trash collection. My ancestor’s religion is the greatest for me. We don’t have any relationship, give-and-take, or food in common with the Christians. Whatever difficulties we face, we will not leave Hinduism.” ⁽¹²⁾

This shows us how Bharathi thought towards upholding Hinduism. So, he mentioned Christians and Muslims as enemies. Bharathi raised the cacophony for a law prohibiting cow slaughter that the RSS is now championing then itself. Bharathi had written the following about prohibiting cow slaughter in the Sudesamithiran edition of November 8, 1917:

“We can say that Agni is the only equivalent medicine for relief from uncleanliness in the world that is comparable to cow dung. We wash the house, the temple, and the yagna place with cow dung and cleanse it. We make it into ash and provide that as vibhuti for long-lasting life. The cow is equal to the wife and mother. Vibhuti is nothing but its dung. Its milk is amirtham. The doctors and the yogis say that the cow’s milk is amirtham. The Vedas also say the same thing. 

Because we Hindus worship the cow as a god, it is only respectful that in this country, that is our inheritance and where we are the majority, that no one commits the terrible act of killing a cow. This is what Amir Sahib from Afghanistan told his Muslim countrymen and left. Do whatever you want out of sight of the Hindus” ⁽¹³⁾.

Bharathi had already said what the RSS is today saying about how people shouldn’t put their children in Christian missionary schools, in his editorial in India on 18.8.1906 that said these missionary schools should not be patronised.

“Those who study there will not learn about Hindu religious deities. Therefore they won’t be patriotic. They will become Christians. Therefore we should not put children in those schools.” ⁽¹⁴⁾

In 1906, Bharathi had mentioned that Christians were unpatriotic, and they had come to destroy the Hindu religion. In 1909, he wrote, along with a cartoon, that Muslims were unpatriotic in India.

Today’s RSS people say that “the only solution to India’s problem of the common language is to make Sanskrit’s India’s common language” ⁽¹⁵⁾. Bharathi has put forth the same idea in 1920 itself, saying that Sanskrit should only become India’s common language. ⁽¹⁶⁾

People in the RSS say that Sanskrit is the only divine language (deva bhasha). Bharathi had also said the same thing. ⁽¹⁷⁾ Bharathi had gone one step further and written under the title ‘Loga Guru Bharat Mata’ in 1921 that India needed freedom because Hindu dharma should be saved.

“Vedantic principles have been steeped in India’s heart for hundreds of years. But it was not possible to nurture this principle fully under foreign rule. Therefore swaraj for us is essential. India attaining swaraj is the way to save the human world from destruction.” ⁽¹⁸⁾

Bharathi endorsed the idea of Akhand Bharat. He was very firm in the conviction that India should never be divided. In 1917, during Bharathi’s time itself, the Telugu people put forth their demand for a separate state. Bharathi put forth the following opinion:

“In my opinion, their demand seems justified. But rather than dividing Andhra into a separate region, all Hindus from Afghan to Kumari are the same group, all those who believe the Vedas are siblings, all the people of the Bharat land are children from the same mother, there is no differentiation among us in terms of religion, caste, clan or language- this principle is what is right for this time. All those who truly believe Hindu religion are one soul, one life, one body, one blood, one gut, one.” ⁽¹⁹⁾

Even in his Paapa Pattu, hadn’t Bharathi said,

Undamaged Hindustan, worship it as a god, child?

Like today’s RSS people, Bharathi also calls the women who committed Sati after their husband’s death as ‘great women’. ⁽²⁰⁾ We can firmly say that Bharathi put forward the ideologies of today’s RSS members at that time. 

In short, the continuing decrease in Hindu population, Muslims and Christians are involved in religious conversion, they are unpatriotic, Hindu children should not be put in Christian schools, Muslims and Christians are enemies of Hindus, the whole of India should be a single nation; the Hindu religion should be spread all over the world, Hindus should be united; they should not get divided, Vedas and dharma should be upheld, the four varna system should come back, there should be no specific rights based on community, the Aryan/Dravidian division is a lie, the Bharat Mata is the world’s teacher, there should be no cow slaughter, Sanskrit is the greater language, and it should be India’s common language - that Bharathi already framed all these ideologies of RSS members and laid a strong base then itself for the formation of the RSS, is something that can be gathered from his writings.

Written by Valasaa Vallavan

Translated by Alagammai

Footnotes:

1. Bharathi Katturaigal, Vanathi Pathippagam, pp. 423
2. Above book, pp. 121-123
3. Above book, pp. 379
4. Above book, pp. 381
5. Bharathi Tamizh, Pe. Thooran, Vanathi Pathippagam, pp. 281-282
6. Bharathi Puthaiyal Perunthirattu, R. A. Padmanabhan, Vanathi Pathippagam, Chennai 1982, pp. 478
7. Bharathi Katturaigal, pp. 53
8. Above book, pp. 176
9. Tippu Sultan, A Fanatic? , V. Jalaja Sakthidasan, Nithyananda Jothi Nilayam, Chennai- 28, pp. 25
10. Above book
11.  Bharathi Katturaigal, pp. 334-335
12. Bharathi Tamizh, Pe. Thooran, Vanathi Pathippagam, pp. 241
13.  Above book, pp. 278-280
14. Bharathi Darisanam Thoguthi 1, Ni. Se. Pu. Ni., pp.258
15.  Bunch of Thoughts, MS Golwalkar, pp. 150
16.  Bharathi Puthaiyal Perunthirattu, pp. 274-275
17.  Bharathi Katturaigal, pp. 46
18.  Bharathi Puthaiyal Perunthirattu, pp. 500-501
19.  Bharathi Tamizh, Pe. Thooran, pp. 255
20. Bharathi Puthaiyal Perunthirattu, pp. 331-332

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