How Hindutva’s founders learned from Hitler & Mussolini
Over the past weeks, Rahul Gandhi has alleged large-scale manipulation of voter lists and patterns, pointing to Mahadevapura in Bengaluru as a case study; the Election Commission has demanded a formal declaration, shifting the burden on the accuser. That’s a move that is designed to shield the game-riggers. And in a move aimed at chilling protest, opposition leaders were briefly detained during a march to the Commission in Delhi on August 11. These are not stray incidents. They land on a terrain poisoned decades ago — an ideology that insists dissenters and “outsiders” survive here only on fragile sufferance, exposed to rejection at any moment, treated not as citizens but as tenants on probation.
I say this because MS Golwalkar, the RSS’s key ideologue, wrote the exclusion into doctrine itself. In his 1939 book We or Our Nationhood Defined, he decreed that “foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment not even citizen’s rights”.
This is not theory — it is humiliation scripted into the very idea of nationhood
He went so far as to hold up Nazi Germany as a teacher, praising its “purging” of Jews as an act of “race pride”: “To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by purging the country of the Semitic race, the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by”.
This isn’t cultural pride; it is a cold architecture of exclusion, a blueprint for abandonment and subjugation. His doctrine exposes all Indians who practice ‘a foreign faith’ to a brutal ultimatum: merge into the “national race” or exist at its mercy, fragile, unwanted, and always at risk of erasure.
Crucially, Golwalkar’s admiration for Nazi Germany went beyond race — it stretched into the realm of rule itself. He derided democracy as a Western weakness and praised dictatorship to enforce uniformity and suppress dissent, precisely the logic of Mussolini and Hitler. The RSS absorbed that poison structurally: A rigid hierarchy with the Sarsanghchalak wielding “absolute authority,” cadre drilled to obey without question, and an avowed leader-principle mirroring Hitler’s Führerprinzip (Supreme Leader).
This is where “only we should rule” stops sounding like rhetoric and hardens into an operating procedure - a manual for domination. What was once a chilling dream of domination now reads as cold instruction: silence dissent, erase pluralism, replace democracy with submission.
Hindutva thinkers have consistently endorsed an anti-democratic order. Historian Marzia Casolari in In the Shadow of the Swastika, exposes what they admired most: the militarisation of society and the suffocation of dissent.
To them, the anti-democratic system was not a warning but a promise, a seductive alternative to democracy. She notes the chilling parallels with European fascism: Secretive operations, rigid hierarchies, and the demand for unwavering loyalty. It is a portrait not of strength but of obsession, intimidation and control.
Casolari goes further: by 1938, Nazi Germany had become the chief point of reference for the Hindu Mahasabha, under Savarkar’s presidency. Germany’s rabid racial policies were studied as a “model”
for solving India’s so-called ‘Muslim problem’. What followed was an organisation steeped in secrecy and blind obedience to a supreme leader. In this frame, the bending of institutions is not a slip or excess — it is the method, coldly calculated and merciless. And this is the figure arendra Modi calls his inspiration. In his 2008 book Jyotipunj, Modi dedicated the longest chapter to Golwalkar — “Pujniya Shri Guruji”, as he reverently addresses him. Time and again, Modi has praised Golwalkar’s “values” and claimed his “legacy” guides his service to the nation.
But what is being praised here? Men who openly admired Hitler, borrowed freely from Nazi ideology and sketched a blueprint of submission. To elevate such figures is not homage, it is a betrayal of democratic India’s soul.
That betrayal of India’s pluralist promise showed itself early. The RSS elevated the saffron flag above the Tricolour, mocking the symbol of unity the freedom movement had chosen. Golwalkar sneered in Bunch of Thoughts: “Our leaders have set up a new flag for our country. Why did they do so? It is just a case of drifting and imitating….Then, had we no flag of our own?” RSS founder Hedgewar went further. In his circular on January 26, 1930, as the nation saluted the Tricolour, he ordered shakhas to bow to saffron - “the true guru and god of the Hindu nation”. In that act, the organisation revealed contempt for the nation’s chosen emblem of unity, placing allegiance to saffron above service to all its people
When the country rose for Quit India in 1942, Golwalkar later admitted, “Sangh decided not to do anything”. To him, the largest mass mobilisation for freedom was “reactionary”, a distraction from the priority of indoctrination. While our forefathers were braving prison, exile and the bullet for self-rule, the Sangh stood aside - loudly telegraphing that its loyalty lay not with the nation’s struggle but with its own project of control.
Savarkar had by then supplied the blunt majoritarian creed to match this one-party hunger. In 1938, he declared, “A Nation is formed by the majority living therein. What did the Jews do in Germany? They being in a minority were driven out from Germany.” Two years later, he praised authoritarian “tonics”: “Who are we to dictate to Germany, Japan or Russia or Italy to choose a particular form of policy of government simply because we woo it out of academic attraction? Surely Hitler knows better than Pandit Nehru does what suits Germany best. The very fact that Germany or Italy has so wonderfully recovered and grown so powerful as never before at the touch of Nazi or Fascist magical wand is enough to prove that those political “isms” were the most congenial tonics their health demanded.” Minorities, he argued elsewhere, “must live here as the subordinate allies of the Hindus.” An idea presented as inclusion, with inclusion already defined by its limit: never as equals.
Stripped to its core, the ideology sanctifies a hierarchy: the majority rules unchallenged, dissent is treachery, and institutions exist to ratify the will of the chosen. That is why today’s allegations of padded, pruned and tilted voter rolls feel less like scandal than continuity. It is the same logic at work: seize the referee, control the field, tilt the game. The Election Commission’s combative replies to Mr. Rahul Gandhi are thus the ideology made visible, an umpire re-trained to play for one side.
How does an ideology like this travel from text to power? By training obedience early and organising for capture. B.S. Moonje, mentor to Hedgewar, toured Mussolini’s youth brigades in 1931 and wrote admiringly: “Mussolini saw the essential weakness of his country and conceived the idea of the Balilla organization for the military regeneration of Italy. India, and particularly Hindu India, needs some such institution for the military regeneration of the Hindus”.
The RSS answered that call with its shakha as a unit of drills, salutes, uniforms and baudhik sessions, binding boys into a brotherhood that pledged lifelong allegiance “with whole body, heart, and money.” Around the saffron flag - “true guru” - they rehearsed blind obedience and hierarchy. It was the Indian mirror of Hitler Youth: indoctrination as muscle memory.
So when I say “vote chori” carries a genealogy, I’m recognising a pattern.
Indoctrination plus hierarchy: that is the formula for domination. Vote chori is not just theft - it is the symptom of a ruthless project: the hunger to be the only ruling force by deciding who matters and who can be erased as if their voices never existed. A movement that spurned the Tricolour and boycotted freedom’s call now parades itself as the sole claimant to rule. It is revolting, carrying with it a stench of betrayal that makes democracy itself gag.
Mr. Gandhi’s argument is already in public record: an exclusionary idea of the nation breeds an exclusionary practice of power. And in our present, the battlefield has shifted from the parade ground to the electoral roll, the polling booth, the role of the umpire. That is why India must insist- calmly, firmly, without flinching - on transparent rolls, open processes, and institutions of courage to withstand pressure.
The writer is Chairman, Media and Publicity Department, AICC; Member, Congress Working Committee