Shri Guruji Golwalkar on China Part I: A historical prediction that actually came true
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Jun 5, 2020, 01:24 pm IST
Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar (February 19, 1906 – June 5, 1973), popularly known as Poojyaniya Guruji, remains a constant source of inspiration, not only to RSS swayamsevaks but to several individuals and organisations in different walks of life. It was Shri Guruji who nurtured the RSS and helped it attain a pre-eminent position in Bharat’s national life. A seer and visionary, he articulated the basic guiding principles of the RSS. His thoughts on various issues concerning Hindu society are relevant even today. Truly, he was a Rashtra-Rishi.
Guruji on China
Right from 1950 China had started making inroads into the northeastern frontiers of Bharat by secret construction of roads and encroachments. In 1951, Shri Guruji expressed his views in newspapers thus, “China is expansionist by nature and is very likely to attack Bharat soon.” The point of reference was that of the military activities of China in Tibet. Those days Shri Guruji many a time warned, “It has been a terribly blunderous act to gift away Tibet to China. This is one governmental blunder which even the British did not commit.”
Those very days, Pt. Nehru was busy visiting the country with Chau-en-lai and harping hand-in-hand the slogans of Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai and the doctrine of Panchsheel. It was quite natural for the common man to be carried away by these slogans. But in those days, Shri Guruji was the only leader who sounded the alarm about an impending attack. Later in November 1962, China openly attacked Bharat along the borders in Arunachal Pradesh and occupied 64,000 sq. km of our land along the borders. Then, Pt. Nehru confessed: “We were in a dream state.” But Shri Guruji did not sit quiet even at such a time. He constantly appealed for keeping the spirits high and extending every possible help to the government. Then Shri Guruji gave yet another vital call regarding the security of the nation. He appealed publicly that it was most necessary for Bharat to make a nuclear bomb immediately. Unfortunately, the appeal fell on deaf ears. Otherwise, we would have been free from the Chinese terror by now.
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The guidance at this crucial time, also led the Swayamsevaks to be engaged in boosting the public morale and support to the government. Pt. Nehru had to acknowledge their timely contribution and he invited the Swayamsevaks of the Sangh to participate in the Republic Day parade of 1963, in spite of opposition from within the Congress. Needless to say, the march of a 3000-strong contingent of uniformed Swayamsevaks, in tandem with the band, was a major attraction of that parade.
Emotional Ties with Nepal
On the occasion of Shivaratri in 1963, Shri Guruji visited the famous Pashupatinath temple in Nepal. After this, an extremely cordial welcome was extended to him by the King of Nepal, Maharaja Mahendra. Prime Minister of Nepal Shri Tulasi Giri was also present there. The decisive defeat of Bharat in the 1962 war had made Nepal incline towards China. The King of Nepal also had some grudges against the Bharat government. Shri Guruji assured the King that he would inform all the points to the government in Delhi.
On his return from Kathmandu, Shri Guruji wrote letters to Sri Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru. He gave a detailed account of his meeting with the King of Nepal to them and suggested that it was necessary for Bharat to have cordial and respectable ties with Nepal. He also emphasized that there was a strong need for taking Nepal into confidence regarding the aims and objectives of Bharat’s policies towards it.
As the danger of the expansionist intentions of China was looming large, Pt. Nehru immediately responded to Shri Guruji and in his letter of 1st March, consenting to most of his suggestions. Later, in 1965, when Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee met Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri, the latter said, “Shri Guruji had already accomplished three-fourth of my job of improving Bharat-Nepal relations, during his visit to Nepal, having made the atmosphere.
(Source: A book on Sri Guruji Golwalkar by HV Sheshadri)
Guruji on China: Popular Quotes from Bunch of Thoughts
“Our own leaders chose to call the naked aggression by China and her occupation of tens of thousands of square miles of our territory as ‘border conflict’ or ‘boundary dispute’! Our leaders say, ‘borders shifting a few miles here or a few miles there in those snowbound mountainous regions does not matter much’, which has invariably meant thousands of square miles ‘here’ and never a single mile ‘there’! We have often heard them saying that those borders are yet undefined and under dispute. Once Pandit Nehru while referring to our territory occupied by the Chinese, even referred to it as ‘supposed to be ours’!”
“Under the grab of Socialism, what is it that is actually taking place? We find that all the measures being undertaken here are only an improved carbon copy of what has happened in China. The only difference is that these developments were brought about by brutal violence in China whereas here the same things are being done through polished propaganda. This will be quite clear to us if we compare the governmental measures of both countries. When the present Communist Government in China first came to power, they did not want any challenge to their absolute power. So they liquidated the old nobles, chiefs and industrialists and nationalized all industries. They liquidated the big landholders and ultimately the smaller zamindars and framers.”
Beware of This Dangerous Precedent : “As a matter of fact, tiny states have been formed in the old province of Assam where it is positively harmful. The British had kept the so-called NEFA separate form the rest of Assam. The same tradition is being carried forward by our Government also. Now NEFA has been given a different name so that its separate entity has been confirmed. Apart form that, under pressure or what I do not know, a small state called Meghalaya round about Shillong, and another, Mizoram, have been formed. These are economically bankrupt; in fact, they cannot help being bankrupt, so small is their population. Breaking up of that province into so many parts has in a way weakened our position in that border area which had been the seat of trouble from China since 1962.”
“China, even at this early stage of its growing power, has bared its claws in Korea and Indo-China. It has already sat tight upon Tibet, devoured parts of Ladakh and NEFA and is now poised for a further drive into the Himalayan States.”
“Those who visited China afterwards – and who had the mental poise and courage to call a spade a spade – had unequivocally stated that the average man there seemed to scent danger all-round and did not appear to be free in his behaviour. That was the result of Russians and their local agents sitting in their secret nooks and corners of every departments and dominating each sphere of national life, its army, its navy, its air force, its farming, scarcely coming out in the open but tightly holding their overall supremacy.”
“Of course, some people were there in China who went about singing the praise of ‘New China’, of ‘the great leap’ and ‘our great brother Russia’ and so on. Even in our country, when the British were ruling, there were some persons who went about the world saying that British rule was a godsend, a boon, as if the British were direct messengers of God, sent for our emancipation. We will always find such slaves who extol to the skies their masters. If the masters flog them they will praise the strength of the masters and say, “What a fine whip he has and how well he wields it”! Now, China is repeating the same story of ‘liberation’ in the case of Tibet.”
“We often hear the ‘wise man’ of our country assuring us that we need not to be worried about any foreign power risking a war with us as that would involve the whole of humanity in a nuclear conflagration. But it would be very naïve on our part to believe that others are as much afraid of war as we are. Even without a formal declaration of war, enemies invade and occupy territories. There is the glaring instance of our own country losing large chunks of territory to Pakistan in Kashmir and Kutch and to China in Ladakh and NEFA all without a declaration of war! The same story is being, repeated in Indo-China and other places even today.”
“The slogans and paper compromise like ‘peaceful co-existence’ and ‘Panchsheel’ that out leaders are indulging in only serve as a comouflage for the self-seeking predatory countries of the world to pursue their own ulterior motives against our country. China, as we know, was most vociferous in its expression of faith in Panchsheel. China was extolled as our great neighbour and friend for the last two thousand years or more from the day it accepted Buddhism. Our leaders declared that they were determined to stick to China’s friendship ‘at all costs’. Once, we had similarly resolved to win the friendship of Muslims in this land ‘at all costs’. How much it has cost us in terms of our national integrity and honour is all too well known. The same history has been repeated in this case also.”
“We have forgotten that the ancient Buddhist China is now dead for the past few years. The Russian wizard has called a spirit in that corpse turning in into a fiend. And we are today witnessing its devil-dance on our borders. When it devoured Tibet and Pandit Nehru mildly protested, he was curtly admonished not to poke his nose in their ‘internal affair’. Our late Prime Minister silently gulped down the national humiliation. Form then on, we had been continuously paying the ever-mounting price to maintain China’s friendship and the glory of ‘Panchsheel’-the historic treaty of ‘eternal friendship and fraternity’ between the two great countries – on which solemn signatures of the two great Prime Ministers were affixed at the same time when the Chinese army trucks were rolling on the military road they had constructed in Ladakh and were grabbing large chunks of our Himalayan territory!
Dr. J.C. Kumarappa, a great disciple of Gandhiji and an economist of repute, after his visit to Russia and China had even in those days categorically warned that in their eyes the treaty of Panchsheel was not worth the paper on which it was written. But our leaders continued to roam in their own dreamland, shutting their eyes to the glaring signs of the all-enveloping danger of Communist China’s aggression. The Communists in our country distributed copies of a new map of China showing therein portions of all Himalayan territories – Ladhakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and NEFA (indicating the five fingers of the aggressive fist of China protruding from Tibet)- and of Burma. Our Government did not even confiscate these maps.”
“SINCE the 20th of October 1962 there has been an invasion of our country by China. However, the present drive of the Chinese is not unexpected, though our Government seems to have been taken by surprise. When China invaded and annexed Tibet, it was clear that they had no benevolent intentions towards us. Surrounded by Russia on the one side and the ocean on the other, the only direction, the only weak spot China could look to for expansion was Tibet. The British had maintained an independent status for Tibet so that it may serve as a buffer State between Bharat and China. In their zeal to undo what the Britishers had done, our present rulers accepted sovereignty of China over Tibet. And again, as our Government itself has confessed, the Chineese had pressed forward and illegally occupied 12,000 square miles of our territory. In the face of these facts we can hardly accuse China of treachery. Their attitude to our country has been openly hostile for years.
Before we can think of devising effective measures to meet the present threat, we have to first disabuse our minds of preconceived notions and correctly analyse and access the true nature of the enemy and the magnitude of his preparations.”
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