Nagpur: Mahatma Gandhi was wrong in his assessment that India lacked unity before British rule, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat said in Nagpur on Saturday.
This idea came from colonial teaching rather than the country’s history, he said at a book festival during the day.
“Gandhiji wrote in Hind Swaraj that we were not united before the Britishers, but that is a false narrative taught to us by the British,” Bhagwat said.
According to him, Gandhi’s observation “that before the British came, we were not one” was shaped by colonial teaching.
“We were taught by the British,” the RSS chief said, adding that the Bharatiya rashtra existed long before the formation of nation-states and cannot be understood through modern political terms.
“Our ‘rashtra’ was not created by a State. We have existed since forever. Even when there was no State, we were there. We were there when we were free, we were there even when we were enslaved, and we were there when there was only one Chakravarti Samrat,” he said.
Bhagwat claimed that the distinction between “state” and “nation” often leads to confusion.
“If you use the word state in your writing… then the feeling you want to convey will not be conveyed. That is a completely different feeling,” he said.
Speaking on how nationalism is perceived, the RSS sarsanghchalak said: “People ask me, are you a nationalist? I say, I am a nationalist. Why do you have to talk about this? Are you a nationalist because of your feelings, or are you a nationalist because of your rationality?”
The idea itself cannot be processed through pure logic, he said and added: “How much logic can you use for that? You cannot use too much logic. A lot of things in the world are beyond logic. It is beyond logic.”
Bhagwat highlighted that India’s nationhood cannot be compared with Western models. Western political thought developed in conflict-heavy environments, according to him.
“Once an opinion is formed, anything apart from that thought becomes unacceptable. They close doors to other thoughts and start calling it ‘…ism”, he said.
That is why India’s civilisational identity was labelled “nationalism” by outsiders, he claimed.
“They do not understand our views about nationhood, so they started calling it ‘nationalism’. Our concept of a rashtra is different from the Western idea of a nation,” Bhagwat said.
According to him, the RSS prefers the term “nationality”.
