The Murderer, The Monarch and The Fakir by Appu Esthose Suresh & Priyanka Kotamraju

Author:Appu Esthose Suresh & Priyanka Kotamraju [Suresh, Appu Esthose & Kotamraju, Priyanka]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Published: 2021-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

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The Militarization of the Hindus

DR Balkrishna Shivram Moonje has the distinction of playing mentor and disciple, respectively, to two leaders who shaped the militant Hindu identity in India. He was mentor to K.B. Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS, and a disciple and confidant of V.D. Savarkar, the father of Hindutva.

The Moplah rebellion in 1921, as the violent uprising of Muslim peasantry from the Malabar region of Kerala is popularly referred to, had far-reaching consequences. The Muslim leaseholders and cultivators rebelled against Hindu feudal lords who had the patronage of the British Raj.

This was around the time when both Hedgewar and Moonje were making a mark as emerging Hindu leaders. In the aftermath of the Moplah rebellion, the prominent citizens of Nagpur, the city both of them originally belonged to, set up a commission led by Moonje. Its report was finalized in 1923 and concluded that during the rebellion there were cases of forced conversion. It reaffirmed the worst fears of the proponents of Hindutva that the Hindus were ill-prepared for any clash as compared to the Muslims, and that a face-off was imminent. The solution they thought of was to organize Hindus into a militant outfit. Thus, the Moplah rebellion laid the foundation for the mobilization and militarization of Hindus.

The man who was most suited to handle this task of mobilization was Moonje, a practising doctor who had served in the Boer War in South Africa. His commitment towards the militarization of Hindus got a real boost when he visited Europe in the beginning of the 1930s. Moonje took advantage of his visit to London—presumably to attend the Round Table Conferences between 1930 and 1932—to visit military schools in Europe.

On his return, Moonje mooted the idea of setting up a Hindu military school. From 1934, he rallied prominent Hindu businessmen, princes and maharajas to mobilize resources for creating such a school under the aegis of the Hindu Mahasabha.

The application by B.S. Moonje to the executive engineer, Nagpur Division, on 11 April 1934 clearly lays out the aim of the school. This four-page note brings out the fear of an imagined enemy at the gates and his frustration at the divisiveness of the Hindu caste system, which was a deterrent against a unified defence of the motherland from potential aggressors from within and outside.

At its core was the idea of a ‘military regeneration of Hindus’ by breaking caste barriers, establishing one such school in every province and eventually setting up an All India Military College for training the teachers employed at these institutes.

Moonje’s first-hand experience of visiting the areas where the Moplah rebellion had taken place allowed him to reimagine the centuries-old fault lines between Hindus and Muslims. In that light, Moonje identified the Hindu weakness as the single largest threat to Hindus in future.

According to the document:

It is said and also honestly felt by many who have witnessed and carefully analysed the results of the Hindu Muslim disturbance during the last four or five years that the Hindu cannot defend themselves even in places where they preponderate in numbers.

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