This essay, “Savarkar Against US,” is written in the context of the RSS/BJP Government of India starting to take several steps to change the basic structure of the present political system in the light of the Hindutva thesis proposed by their father of the modern nation, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The idea “US” refers to the Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis, who built this nation starting with the construction of the Harappan city civilization almost 1500 years before the Aryan Brahmins migrated to this land and composed their fundamental spiritual text, the Rigveda.
The Aryan Brahmins produced two ideological leaders—Kautilya and Manu—in ancient India. In modern India, they produced Savarkar. The RSS/BJP came into existence as by-products of Savarkar’s theory of Hindu-Aryan racial and spiritual supremacy.
This essay examines Savarkar’s fundamental anti-Shudra thesis in his well-known book Essentials of Hindutva. Though Savarkar was organizationally with the Hindu Mahasabha, he is being owned by the RSS as their own organic ideologue and thinker because he was the only Brahmin who wrote a theory for the continuation of their modern Brahminical system. His writings and the violently militant nationalism that he proposed became the core philosophical vision of the entire Hindutva forces. Quite tragically, Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis who believe in the RSS/BJP ideology and work in their organizations think that they will be integrated into Hinduism as equals with Brahmins.
The RSS has been organizing Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi forces with an anti-Muslim and anti-Christian agenda for the last hundred years, with ups and downs. Since the Dwija social forces cannot come to power with their own mass strength, the productive masses are drawn in as muscle power to fight against Muslims and Christians, but they are not allowed to emerge as intellectuals. If they become intellectuals, they will understand the modern designs of Brahmanism.
The Brahmin intellectuals running the RSS worked generation after generation for about 90 years to capture state power, and they succeeded in 1999 with Atal Bihari Vajpayee becoming a stable RSS-trained Brahmin Prime Minister and ruling India for a five-year term. That was the beginning of their future anti-secular and anti-democratic plans, with the support of ideologically domesticated Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis.
Thus, the turning point came when the RSS/BJP came to power in Delhi in 1999. It took a deeper turn after they came to power again in 2014 with Narendra Modi, who carried an image of being OBC. A Savarkarite, Mohan Bhagwat, head of the RSS, established his full grip over all institutions of power. He set up RSS Brahmin ideological managers in every institution, including schools, colleges, and universities. The Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis have no ideological control even in government structures. Some of them were given positions, but without any power to control. They work with an instilled fear of being punished by government and non-government agencies headed by Dwija RSS officials if they do not function according to the directions of RSS Brahmin leadership.
WHAT ARE THEY DOING FROM POWER?
They came to power in 1999 and ruled one full five-year term. Again, they came back to power in 2014 and since then have ruled India without any break. At the time of writing this essay, they have been ruling for eleven years with Narendra Modi as Prime Minister.
During the RSS and BJP rule, they reshaped India completely in their Hindutva image. The image of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi—a Bania secular democrat—is slowly being shifted to their Father of the Nation, Savarkar, a fundamentalist anti-Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi Brahmin thinker from Maharashtra.
Of course, Gandhi was declared the Father of the Nation by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s government, which had a strong Shudra leader, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, along with Nehru, a secular Brahmin. However, by bringing back Savarkar—a follower of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and his Brahminical authoritarianism—into a cunning moral authority over the nation, they want to reverse the fruits of the entire history of the freedom struggle. The freedom struggle was fought by millions of masses and leaders coming from Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi forces.
Both the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS were formed exclusively by the Brahmins of Maharashtra, descendants of the Peshwa rulers. Their design was to ensure that their civilizational path of Sanatana Dharma, where there was no respect for agrarian and artisanal production, would be resettled in a modern mode after British rule.
In the background of these forces getting organized, Mahatma Gandhi—though a Bania himself—had to take a pro–Varna Dharma stand and was forced to oppose Ambedkar’s plan of caste-based proportional representation, particularly Dalit representation. Gandhi himself was a strategic moralist. His Bania vegetarian Hindu heritage played its own role in influencing his decisions. However, his secular credentials cannot be doubted. That was one reason why Nathuram Godse, who belonged to Savarkar’s Hindu Mahasabha, killed Gandhi. The RSS has been a supporter of Savarkar, who trained Godse to be a militant Hindutva agent.
THE PESHWA BRAHMINISM
The Peshwas were the last Brahmin rulers in the Indian subcontinent who ruled the state of Maharashtra by implementing Vedic Sanatana Dharma principles. Strict practice of Varna Dharma was part of the Peshwa administration. They enforced human untouchability and graded inequality by following strict Manu Dharma rules. Phule wrote about the conditions of Shudra–Ati-Shudras during that period of Maharashtra’s social life. Those conditions, combined with colonial English school education for Shudras, produced Phule and Savitribai as the first great Shudra intellectual rebels.
Savarkar was the counter-intellectual to the Phule reform movement and the newly emerging Shudra intellectualism. Though the entire argument Savarkar developed in Essentials of Hindutva was about Hindu-Aryan pride, he hardly critiqued the British colonial system. The Hindu Mahasabha was an antithesis of the Satyashodhak Samaj, not so much an anti-British movement. He did not examine British exploitation in his book. The whole thrust of the text is to militarize Hindu religion and establish a strong Hindu Rashtra. The Shudras and Dalits in that Rashtra are expected to be muscle power, not intellectual power.
The RSS has so far used them in exactly the same way. There is not a single Shudra intellectual who has emerged from the RSS network to write critically. All Shudra/OBCs who work in these organizations follow Brahmin leaders like Mohan Bhagwat and Golwalkar. Savarkar’s writings provide the theoretical basis for this structure.
In the post-Peshwa period, the Brahmins of Maharashtra (which included present-day Gujarat) believed that Peshwa rule was their last golden age. From Bal Gangadhar Tilak onwards, they felt that British rule and Phule’s reforms led to an undesirable Shudra ascendancy. Tilak opposed the Phule reform movement. Savarkar was his disciple. Tilak encouraged him to go to England and learn English. Savarkar was a determined Brahmin with strong roots in Vedic education. Though he appeared rational, his core conviction was to re-establish a Pan-India Peshwa rule with Vedic thought as its guiding force. Naturally, graded caste inequality and human untouchability were to be restored in full force.
Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule challenged Brahminical history and hegemony just before Savarkar was born. Perhaps Savarkar read Phule’s Gulamgiri and was disturbed by such a Shudra awakening.
Savarkar was born in 1883 and died in 1966. He lived a long life and was responsible for establishing the Hindu Mahasabha. Later, Hedgewar established the RSS inspired by Savarkar’s Hindutva nationalism. Savarkar’s Essentials of Hindutva was written against the backdrop of Phule’s Gulamgiri (Slavery) and Mahatma Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, both of which aimed to shape a future democratic India.
Though Savarkar’s Hindu Mahasabha remained dormant during the freedom struggle, the RSS later grew into a ruling force and now uses Savarkar as its foundational thinker.
The RSS/BJP under the leadership of another Marathi Brahmin—Mohan Bhagwat—worked out strategies for dismantling secular democracy and moving toward the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra dictatorship. Savarkar’s Hindu Rashtra thesis does not provide any scope for electoral democracy. This is very clear from a serious reading of his book.
ENSLAVING SHUDRAS
The RSS, from power since 2014, has gone far beyond subduing Muslims and Christians. It has turned to re-enslaving Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis. Unfortunately, no Shudra thinker after Mahatma Phule emerged to challenge this Brahminical march in post-Phule modern India. Several Shudras got trapped in the myopic dogma of the RSS. They pretentiously appropriated Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, making Shudras believe that they were being integrated into Hindutva as equals.
Savarkar’s writings make it clear that the Hindu Rashtra is not meant for a casteless society. It is meant to re-stabilize Shudra/Dalit slavery. The Hindutva Brahmins realized that Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis were gradually getting liberated because of reform movements during the freedom struggle and the British liberal thought that entered Indian caste society. It was in this atmosphere that thinkers like Mahatma Phule and Savitribai emerged. Brahmin intellectual leaders like Tilak and Savarkar were enraged by this social change. Subsequently, Ambedkar’s constitutional democracy deepened this liberation process.
The RSS/BJP and their affiliate organizations are now working to reverse this process of change. Their declared agenda is to confront Pan-Islam and Pan-Christianity and completely subdue Muslim and Christian communities within India. However, their deeper agenda is to re-establish Brahmin-Bania absolute control over Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis by destabilizing democracy and establishing a Hindu Rashtra dictatorship. They know this process takes time, but they began by capturing power in Delhi through the electoral system itself.
During their second term (2014-2019), they were more cautious, possibly because of Modi’s careful approach after Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s term. The RSS allowed Modi to speak as if he were Gandhian. Due to his Gujarati roots, he did not initially appear as an explicit RSS spokesperson or an anti-Gandhi figure. They had already been appropriating Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, especially since the Indian National Congress sidelined him for a long time. They also began appropriating Ambedkar, as the Congress was not very fond of him either.
However, Ambedkar will eventually be discarded because he is a difficult thinker for them to manage or co-opt. Their core Brahmin-Bania ideology cannot accept his anti-Hindu image for long. If electoral democracy is dismantled and a Hindu Rashtra established, Ambedkar statues may not exist in India. Buddhism too may be targeted, similar to Islam and Christianity. Savarkar’s first major thesis written in 1923 subtly placed Buddhism in the enemy camp.
In their third term (2019–2024), the RSS/BJP focused on their anti-Muslim agenda. The construction of the Ram Temple, the abrogation of Article 370, and bringing Kashmir under Union Territory status were major anti-Muslim initiatives with long-term historical implications, which they successfully implemented.
Muslim leaders within their own structures have been marginalized. If Muslims within India are pushed too far, the Muslim world may unify in response, as the RSS/BJP are now increasingly viewed as anti-Islam. Signals from the Muslim world are becoming clear. The formation of an “Islamic NATO” is one such indication. They understand that if Muslims are cornered in India, 56 Muslim nations could unite against the Hindu Rashtra project.
They also targeted Christians through legal and illegal means, but the Western Christian world now appears to have understood this agenda as well. Trump’s anti-India policies can be seen as part of that Christian response.
Now they are turning toward a deeper agenda: the historical Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis must be brought under the complete classical hegemony of Brahminism by weakening electoral democracy. They know that Shudra/OBCs are decisive in the voting system. They are slowly encircling the constitutional framework that granted Dalit/Adivasi/Shudras the right to vote, property rights, and the right to exercise political power through elections.
Savarkar did not accept individualism as a systemic practice in India. In Essentials of Hindutva, he did not recognize the identities of Shudras, Dalits, and Adivasis. He spoke only of Aryans, the children of Vedic fathers. It is clear that Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis are not Aryans. They are not children of Vedic fathers; they are children of Harappan mothers and fathers. Savarkar did not even recognize Vedic mothers.
RSS/BJP OPEN FIGHT AGAINST NEHRU
Regarding Jawaharlal Nehru, the nation knows that the RSS/BJP have decided to erase him from national memory unless a major section of Brahmins inside and outside the RSS resists this process. Though Nehru was Brahmin by birth, his philosophy of secularism, democratic socialism, and his family’s continued stature are unacceptable to Savarkarites.
Apart from Ambedkar, Nehru was responsible for sustaining electoral democracy for 75 years. Because of democracy, some Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis became educated. The RSS/BJP hold Nehru responsible for this change, questioning how a Brahmin could allow such an “anti-Sanatan” transformation. Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis working within RSS/BJP do not understand this dimension of the anti-Nehru sentiment.
REMOVAL OF GANDHI’S NAME
The agenda to remove Gandhi from acceptable icons began with removing his name from the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Scheme, which feeds the poorest of the poor—mainly SC/ST/OBC communities.
Reports that Gandhi’s image will be removed from currency notes are widespread. Imagine removing George Washington’s image from American currency. From 1776 to 2025, no one dared to do so because he is recognized as the Father of that constitutional democratic nation.
In India, within just 75 years, radical changes are underway similar to those in certain Muslim countries where constitutions are frequently altered. A similar instability may emerge. In Savarkar’s theoretical framework, constitutional continuity was never expected. Since they cannot openly blame Ambedkar, they target Nehru. Gandhian morality—however problematic—also contributed to sustaining Indian electoral democracy, which is why they have subtly begun undermining Gandhi as well.
A careful reading of Savarkar’s Hindutva thesis shows that he did not support electoral democracy. He argued for an Aryan state based on Vedic Varna Dharma. Violence is central to his vision of India. History shows that violence preserved caste and untouchability for thousands of years.
Savarkar did not propose any social reform like Mahatma Phule did in his writings. His Essentials of Hindutva was written in the background of Mahatma Phule’s Gulamgiri (1873) and other Marathi writings that supported Mahatma Phule’s Satyashodhak movement, as well as Mahatma Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909). No Shudra/Dalit thinker reviewed Savarkar’s militant Brahminic writings from their historical point of view, which was encoded by Mahatma Jotirao Phule from the same Peshwa state where Savarkar came from. If Mahatma Phule was seen as a dangerous disruptor of the Brahmanic social order, Gandhi was seen as a negotiator with the Phule reform agenda by many Brahmin pandits of Maharashtra. Savarkar was a theoretical epitome of that Brahminism of the post-Phule era.
The advancement of this agenda depends on how the Shudra/OBC masses cooperate with the Brahmin-Bania plan of establishing a Hindu Rashtra. No Shudra/OBC thinker emerged in India who could study Savarkar’s vision of establishing a Hindu Rashtra. RSS Brahmin thinkers from different wings keep writing about the greatness of Savarkar’s modern thought based on his Vedic vision. It is not just Vikram Sampath’s (a right-wing Brahmin intellectual) books, but many other mainly Brahmin writers living in India and abroad who are working on his thought to make him the father of the Hindutva nation by removing the Gandhian nationalist legacy that the INC put in place.
IS THERE A COMMON INHERITANCE AMONG CASTES?
Let us examine some of the main propositions of Savarkar.
In his book Essentials of Hindutva, he says: “A Hindu inherits Sanskrit, Hindu civilization, history, heroes, literature, art, law, common fairs and festivals, rites, rituals, ceremonies, and sacraments. Not that each does all, mind you. But he has more of it in common with his Hindu brothers than with an Arab or Englishman.”
Do Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis inherit Sanskrit? Leave alone Dalits and Adivasis, the Shudras, who were the main food producers of India when Savarkar was writing this book, had no right to learn Sanskrit or use it as a ritual language for spiritual purposes. Only Brahmins had that right. For millennia, the Shudras who built the civilization of India had no right to learn Sanskrit after this language migrated to India along with the Aryans. Such a false claim by the Hindutva theoretician is only to hoodwink the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis.
What does he mean by Hindu civilization? Does his notion of civilization include the production of all human necessities from land and water by investing human labour? Does the name Hinduism include production and science? All the Sanskrit ancient and medieval books that Brahmins wrote have not mentioned the production processes, production technologies, and human relations that developed in the process. They told themselves and others that everything came from their Sanskrit books. There are two contradicting civilizations in India: the Shudra civilization and the Brahmin civilization. The Shudra civilization built this nation’s wealth through labour. The Brahmins constructed ritualism through myth and myth alone. Savarkar did not even mention how this nation was built through agriculture and artisanal production.
He was worried about Pan-Islamism and the Muslim presence in India. He says: “Great combinations are the order of the day, etc. The League of Nations, Pan-Islamism, Pan-Slavism are each little beings seeking to be incorporated into greater wholes, so as to be better fitted for the struggle for existence and power. ‘Who to those who have them already as their birthright and know them not; or worse, despise them!’ Can any one of you, Oh Hindus! whether Jain or Samaji or Sikh or any other subsection, afford to cut yourselves off or fall out of the organic combination that already exists? Strengthen these ties if you can: ‘pull down the barriers that have survived their utility, of castes and customs, of sects and sections… inter-marriages between provinces and provinces, castes and castes, be encouraged where they do not exist.’”
The RSS/BJP never worked for inter-caste marriages. If they allowed inter-province marriages, that was basically within the Dwija castes, who got educated in English. Before colonial rule, though Sanskrit was their national language, they did not allow inter-province marriages. Savarkar’s aim in proposing inter-province and inter-caste marriages was to appear somewhat progressive, but social reform was not at all his agenda.
It is very clear that he wanted all castes and non-Brahmanical religions like Sikhism to forge unity with Hindutva only under Brahmin control. He was not asking for the abolition of caste. He was not saying that the idea of Varna Dharma should be abandoned. At several places in the book, he argues that Varna Dharma is the core of Indian civilization, not productive labour. As a Sanatanist, he did not think of human equality in civil society or spiritual society.
Look at his definition of Hindutva. According to him, “Obviously Hindutva comes from the words Hindu and Hindusthan.” He says, “Hindutva, to serve as a word, must appeal to the geographic source of India’s cohesion. It does so via Hindusthan. This word is understood as Americans understand the word ‘India,’ without religious connotation.”
If that is purely geographical, what is wrong with the name India? Why should it be called Hindutva? The word Hindutva definitely has religious connotations, and that religion will be controlled by Brahmins. Savarkar’s hidden agenda is that Brahmin hegemony should continue after the British left India.
He further writes: “The word ‘Jati,’ derived from the root Jan, means ‘brotherhood, a race determined by a common origin, possessing a common blood.’ All Hindus have the Vedic fathers…”
This is a mischievous definition of Jati. The idea of Jati (caste) has its origins in Varna. While defining “Jan” (which actually means people) as “brotherhood” and calling all Indians Hindus, and telling them that they are all children of “Vedic fathers,” he completely misled the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis of India. He very cleverly tried to enslave the pre-Aryan civilization builders—who are the present-day Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis—forever, even after colonial forces left India.
He further says: “Speaking relatively alone, no people in the world can more justly claim to get recognized as a racial unit than the Hindus and perhaps the Jews. A Hindu marrying a Hindu may lose his caste but not his Hindutva.”
Do Brahmins accept uniting as national cohesion under the leadership of Dalits or Shudras? Never. For them, caste comes first and nation next.
Savarkar, while knowing the fact that Sanskrit was a language not allowed to be learned by Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis, says: “Sanskrit unites us as our best that enriches all the family of our sister languages, Hindi, Bengali, and more.”
In fact, Sanskrit divided us by remaining a language purely of Brahmins; it never became a language of food producers. While he says, “A Hindu marrying a Hindu may lose his caste but not his Hindutva,” Savarkar did not build any movement for inter-caste marriages. His Hindu Mahasabha subsequently became an organization of anti-inter-caste marriage networks. All its leaders were mainly Brahmins.
The RSS, which now owns Savarkar as their father of the nation, did not encourage inter-caste marriages. It never tried to protect inter-caste married couples from attacks and even murders. In areas where they are strong, there is evidence that the RSS did not take up activities of social reform through inter-caste marriages.
HOW TO FIGHT SAVARKARISM?
The fundamental thesis of Savarkar is that Hindutva should become the sole ideological basis of post-colonial India. Quite mischievously, he defined it as a name for India, like Hindustan or Sindustan; the argument was couched in a spiritual discourse of Vedic Sanatana Dharma. He tried to preserve the classical status of Brahmins in the modern world, where universal equality through a process of democratizing every aspect of Indian life was expected to happen. His book Essentials of Hindutva was written in the background of Mahatma Phule’s Gulamgiri (1873), which had already shaken the caste order.
Savarkar by then had become a staunch enemy of M. K. Gandhi, who wrote his first book Hind Swaraj, which did not treat Muslims as enemies or Islam as an enemy religion. Since Gandhi also came from a Bania background, the Brahmins of Western India did not like his rise as the leader of the Congress.
Though Ambedkar had not become a popular leader by 1923, when Savarkar wrote Essentials of Hindutva, he had already written his famous essay Caste in India, and in 1923 he earned his first PhD from Columbia University. Savarkar must have been following the intellectual movements of Ambedkar. Ambedkar wrote his fundamental thesis Annihilation of Caste in 1936, and Savarkar was very active in spreading his Hindutva ideology during that period.
The RSS/BJP and right-wing intellectuals want Savarkar to replace the Gandhi–Nehru legacy, as the Congress still survives around those two Bania-Brahmin liberal leaders. But in a more serious and conspiratorial way, they want to undo the Phule–Ambedkar legacy and the constitutional democracy that Ambedkar institutionalized by undermining Vedic Sanatana Dharma. Savarkarism can be fought more effectively with Phule–Ambedkarism than with Gandhism.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His latest book is The Shudra Rebellion.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd 