Over more than seven decades of its legacy, Organiser has served as a national platform for numerous eminent scholars, intellectuals and writers from India and abroad transcending political and religious boundaries, to voice their thoughts. Adopting the slogan, ‘Voice of the Nation, ‘ the weekly featured articles are characterised by the true spirit of cultural nationalism that transcended politics and religion. Among these luminaries who contributed to the weekly in the 1950s, is a Catholic priest who wrote a series of thought-provoking essays that drew national attention. His name is Father Anthony Elenjimittam.
Born on June 22, 1915, in a Christian family in Kochi, Anthony Elenjimittam later emerged as a philosopher, theologian, writer, and political commentator. Well-versed in Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, he authored over fifty books. His works spanned interfaith studies and political critique and included translations and interpretations of major Hindu-Buddhist texts.
He also made significant contributions to India’s political thought. The phrase “pseudo-secularism,” which gained wide traction in Indian politics through senior BJP leader L K Advani, was in fact first coined and repeatedly used by Father Elenjimittam in his political writings. Through his essays in Organiser and his books, he introduced this term as a critique of the hollow secularism of Nehru and the Congress. It is quite likely that Advani, who served as an editor of Organiser during that time, was influenced by Elenjimittam’s writings and later popularised the term during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement to expose Congress’s political duplicity.
A Decade-Long Association with Organiser Weekly
A staunch anti-Nehruvian Father, Elenjimittam began contributing to Organiser in 1949-50 and continued for over a decade. A passionate nationalist, an RSS sympathiser, and a staunch opponent of Islamism, pseudo-secularism, and communism, his razor-sharp articles stood as testaments to his uncompromising ideological positions.
In the early 1950s, when the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh completed 25 years of service, Father Elenjimittam authored his book Philosophy and Action of the RSS for the Hind Swaraj. The book was published on Vijayadashami Day, 1951, by Lakshmi Publishers in Mumbai. Spanning over 200 pages, it was arguably the first comprehensive and positive study of the RSS.
Interestingly, the term ‘pseudo-secularism’ also made its appearance in this book, in which he criticised Congress leaders for their superficial commitment to secularism. A review of the book, published in Organiser on December 3, 1951, describes it as “a sympathetic attempt to understand the ideology and working of the RSS, despite the natural limitations of an outsider’s perspective.”
“The book is welcome as a sympathetic attempt to understand the ideology and working of RSS despite its all shortcomings and natural incompleteness of an outsider’s insights into the Sangh,” the review reads. At the same time, it also shares an apprehension that the preface of Jamnadas Mehta and the introductory chapters of the author lend an anti-Nehru anti-Congress tinge to the book.
The review also acknowledges the book’s anti-Nehru and anti-Congress undertones while praising Elenjimittam’s understanding of the Sangh’s perspective, noting that “Hindu” was presented not as a narrowly religious concept but as a territorial and cultural identity. “The quintessence of the Sangh’s standpoint is that Hindu is not a narrowly religious but a catholically territorial-cum-cultural concept, and the author of this book is to be congratulated upon for being one of those very few outsiders who have grasped it, though he expressed his understanding a bit clumsily,” it added.
While his early writings for Organiser focused on critiquing Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress party’s pseudo-secular agenda, his later work reflected a deeper interest in spirituality and comparative religion. One such article, Buddhism: The Daughter of Hinduism, published on May 21, 1956, explored his growing engagement with Hindu spiritual traditions, the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda movement, and Buddhist philosophies.
His Views on RSS as described in the Book
The book is divided into two parts: the first part elaborates on the RSS’s philosophy and ideals, while the second delves into its organisational structure, discipline, the concept of economic self-reliance, and the challenges posed by communism.
In his long and marvellous dedication to the book that reflects his patriotic fervour and pride of the nation, he wrote:
“To the vanguard battalion for national Unity and Solidarity, the auto-charging dynamo of Power and Light, the well-knit, solid, disciplined National Army in renascent and reflorescent Vedantic India—the members, friends, and sympathisers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.”
He dedicates his book to the following category of people:
- Anti-communal, anti-secular, caste-creed-sex-free, steel-nerved, iron-willed, all-renouncing Patriots of New Bharat
- Countless sages, seers, bards, prophets, rishis, missionaries and apostles of Hindu-Buddhist Dharma who built up Greater India in Asian Continent
- Intrepid, chivalrous, indomitable soldiers who will defend the inviolable Unity, Freedom, Humanity, Catholicity, Culture, Civilisation of Aryavarta.
- Youth of Bharatvarsha, boys and girls, men and women of the New World Order, New Dispensation, whose lofty ideals, punty and strength of character will make India impregnable
- Artisans and architects of India’s all-sided Nation-building, peasants and labourers who struggle and strain to wipe out exploitation of Labour by Capital, destroy money -mammon-power that kills values and ethics, to emancipate Indian womenfolk, eradicate illiteracy, ignorance, poverty, unemployment from India
- Members, friends and sympathizers of the RASTRIYA SWAYAMSEVAK SANGH, the vanguard battalion for national Unity and Solidarity, the auto-charging dynamo of Power and Light, the well-knit, solid, disciplined, National Army in renascent and reflorescent Vedantic India.
- Who repudiate the liability of birth-religion-labels and will consecrate, immolate, crucify, annihilate your individual interests for the good of your bigger whole, your Family, sacrifice your family for Society, give up society for the welfare of Mankind, and renounce Mankind, universe and all for attaining Truth, God, Over-Soul, Reality Supreme, Paramatman, according to the Vedic dictum:
“Tyajet ekam Kulasyarthe,
Gramasyarthe Kulam tyajet,
Gramam Janapadasyarthe,
Atmarthe prithivim tyajet.”
To you, to you to you … Are the following pages dutifully, conscientiously and lovingly dedicated
Anthony Elinjimittam
About the mission of the Sangh, he writes
“The historic mission of the RSS, as a successor to the Indian National Congress, will be to work for and achieve the national unity at all cost. As Sri Aurobindo said,“India is free, but she has not achieved unity, only a fissured and broken freedom. But, by whatever means, the division must and will go.” (SRI AUROBINDO’S MESSAGE ON 15TH AUGUST 1947) This unity means that all nationalist Indians, whether they are labelled as Hindus, Muslims or Christians, have always believed that they are all children of the soil and that they have not acquiesced in any way to the artificial vivisection that has been brought about as a passing political expediency.”
In his views, the RSS translates the patriotic heritage of the Congress into action.
He writes: “In an independent India, the RSS is destined to combine the nationalistic and patriotic heritage of the Congress with the most dynamic urge for action, as embodied in the lives of men like Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Netaji Subhas Chandra, the great hero of Hindustan, whose sacrifice became the life-blood and inspiration to the new patriotic soldiers of the INA in Free India.”
Countering the propaganda against the RSS that it distributed sweets when Gandhiji was assassinated, Father Elinjimittam writes: ”The RSS owes much to Gandhiji’s inspiration and guidance. Only there is not going to be any exclusive hero-worship to the detriment of the integrative and complementary mission of the rivals to Gandhiji in Indian politics. In fact, it was not the RSS that distributed sweets at Gandhiji’s martyrdom, but it was the black-marketers and many Congresswalas who felt secretly happy because the old saintly man, Bapu, would no longer preach to them about Brahmacharya, Asteya and abaya.”
“We have now to choose which ideology is to be presented to our youth so that they may arise from slough and despondency and work for the much-needed socio-economic and cultural revolution in the country. It is at this juncture that the RSS offers the youth of India an ideology, a dream which is not the undiluted materialism of orthodox Marxian Communists, but the saving leaven of centralised discipline and highest self-sacrifice based on the idealistic patrimony of Indian culture. Because the RSS base their stand on the philosophy of the Upanishads, the Ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, the psychology of Buddhism, the metaphysics of Vedanta, the so-called secularists say, “These are Hindu revivalists, let’s put them down.” These secularists have no philosophy, no ideals to build up Indian youth, nor their own sweet selves,” he adds.
Father Elinjimittam goes on to add: “we shall take pride in being called Hindus, if by the term ‘Hindu’ we mean to be true to the cultural heritage and national spirit of the Indian soil. If the Muslims, Christians, Parsiees should still be called Muslims, Christians and Parsiees, even within the confines of their sectarian religions, why should a Hindu be ashamed to be called a Hindu if Indian culture remains to this day the Universal Mother of Religions, the broadest possible Catholicity and the most philosophical and enlightened humanism of history?”
In the book, he extensively quoted Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, Doctor Ji to narrative the mission and growth of the Sangh.
Father Elinjimittam writes
“The life of Dr Hedgewar was itself a lesson of service, sacrifice, purity embodied. He did not wear the gerua colour nor he put ashes and sack clothes around him, but he was a sanyasin without these external paraphernalia, which more often are being utilised by the sycophants to deceive the ignorant and serve their own selfish ends. Similarly, today, Shri Golwalkar is at heart and spirit a sanyasin and teaches a practical vedantin, and yet there is no show and glamour about him, for his eyes and heart are firmly fixed on the rock of Indian culture. “Culture, which”, he says, “that includes also food.”
“Young Keshav Baliram Hedgewar will ever remain in Indian history as a supreme pattern of patriotism, political realism and social justice and one of the boldest soldiers who fought the battle of righteousness and fell to consolidate the defences and inner resources of young India. His short life (1890-1940) is the argument and proof of a dedicated soul who lived but for one sole purpose – the resurrection of Mother India. Because he sought and fought to revive Bharatiya culture, there is no justification whatsoever to charge him of the sin of communalism. For the fundamental thesis all sane nationalists hold is that India is their Motherland and the culture and spirit of the soil, prior to the Muslim or Christian domination, is the spirit and culture of every true Bharatiya.”
When he brought out his book, the RSS had just survived the ban imposed following Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. In such a sensitive situation, if a prominent Catholic priest chose to publicly support the RSS and write a full-length book in its favour, it shows the author’s nationalistic spirit and his faith which he reposited on the Sangh. This historical context amplifies the book’s importance alongside its content.
His Social and Spiritual Life
Father Elenjimittam’s academic journey began in Kerala, before he joined the Dominican Order in 1935 and moved to Italy. During his ordination, Bishop Monsignor Benedetto Cialiò remarked:
“… you are the first Indian Dominican appointed priest in this modern era, after centuries of decadence since the Dominicans left India […] Your country has a rich and vast spiritual culture that you have inherited in your veins. You have a mission to fulfill in India, and is to find a meeting point between Tomistic philosophy and our theology with the immense and valid spiritual traditions of your country. I know how much you love St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a pioneer in the attempt to integrate the Catholicism of the Middle Ages with Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle.”
(Cosmic Ecumenism)
However, his progressive views and intense nationalism invited suspicion from British intelligence agencies and discomfort within the Catholic hierarchy. From 1936 to 1941, he studied philosophy in Rome. During his return journey to India in 1942, he came into contact with Subhas Chandra Bose in Lisbon—an interaction that made British agencies wary of him.
Intercepted letters to Mahatma Gandhi and various handwritten documents in his luggage led British authorities to block his entry into India at the Liverpool port, stating:
“You are an Indian nationalist and a potent patriot, so we cannot allow you to return to India, we have to examine all your notebooks, notes, diaries and manuscripts contained in your trunks and suitcases, to make sure that you are not a spy sent to England for the Italian Government …”.
(Cosmic Ecumenism)
While detained in England, he enrolled as a research scholar at Cambridge University. He returned to India in 1945 and became chief editor of The Indian Messenger, an English weekly inspired by the Brahmo Samaj. After his return, he also visited Mahatma Gandhi at Santiniketan and later wrote:
“..because I saw in him the authentic copy of Jesus Christ, Socrates and Abraham Lincoln, the three fused in him surrounded by the halo of a Saint Francis of Assisi.”
(Cosmic Ecumenism)
His nationalist leanings and sympathy for Hindu-Buddhist ideals earned him resentment from conservative factions within the Church. This animosity culminated in a severe conflict with the Archbishop of Mumbai, eventually leading to his exile. In 1975, Father Elenjimittam returned to Italy, choosing to dedicate the rest of his life to causes beyond the confines of institutional religion in spaces that offered greater freedom for his ideals.
He passed away in Italy on October 5, 2011, as he had once quoted Bhagavad Git and written: “The body is but a garment—once worn, it must be cast off…”
Father Anthony Elenjimittam lived a life that stands as a luminous example. A visionary who grasped the potential of the RSS in shaping modern India from its very inception, he remained a steadfast patriot and nationalist even as he served as a devoted man of God. Advocating interfaith harmony, he cooperated closely with Hindutva and nationalist movements, perhaps becoming the first Christian cleric to recognize and act upon the need for Christian-RSS collaboration.
We should not allow the legacy of such a noble soul, who dedicated his life for social harmony, to fade into the margins of history. In his memory, why not commemorate his birth anniversary as a National Interfaith Harmony Day? Let us hope that both the Christian Churches and Hindutva organisations will carry on his great legacy and continue the dialogue initiated by him.
Comments