India in the Shadow of Its Birth

Every modern nation tells a story about its birth. Some declare themselves forged in revolution; others claim civilization as their inheritance. India, however, was born out of something stranger, more fragile, more luminous: an idea.

It was an idea stitched together by men and women who stood on the ruins of empire and dared to imagine a republic where religion would not determine destiny, caste would not imprison the soul, and power would be constrained by law. That idea was fragile not because it lacked clarity but because it faced an implacable enemy—an idea of India that was narrower, older, darker, coiled around mythic grievances.

On one side stood Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and B.R. Ambedkar—thinkers and builders of the modern republic. On the other stood an ideological formation that rejected their vision: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), its political forebears, and its companions in sectarian agitation, who longed for an India of hierarchy, religious exclusivity, and cultural uniformity.

The difference between these two visions was not merely political; it was moral, philosophical, and civilizational. At the heart of this contest stood one frail, bespectacled figure whose death would announce the dangers ahead—Mahatma Gandhi.

His assassination did not merely silence a man. It exposed the faultline that still threatens the republic: the conflict between pluralism and majoritarianism, between fraternity and exclusion, between the ethical imagination of India’s founders and the violence of those who despised them.

This is the story of how Nehru, Azad, and Ambedkar built modern India even as the RSS and its ideological cousins opposed them “tooth and nail,” a phrase Nehru himself used in despair in 1948. It is also a story for young Indians misled by propaganda—invited to forget the blood that built their freedoms and the brilliance that shaped their Constitution.

The Idea of India: A Republic Born in Argument

Unlike France or America, India’s founding was not the product of a single political tradition. It was the product of an argument. Gandhi’s moral politics, Nehru’s scientific humanism, Azad’s Islamic rationalism, and Ambedkar’s emancipatory constitutionalism formed the four pillars of a structure built not on uniformity but on deliberate pluralism.

Nehru’s Dream: A Scientific, Secular Republic

Nehru, often caricatured today by propaganda as elitist, sought to rescue India from the prison of mythic nationalism. He insisted that a new India could not be founded on the hierarchies of the past: “A country with many religions must be secular; otherwise, it will cease to be a country.” Under him, the state became the guarantor of equality, not the handmaid of any faith. He built scientific institutions, universities, and the Planning Commission because he believed that freedom meant little without opportunity.

Azad’s Faith in Pluralism

Maulana Azad, perhaps the most misunderstood of the founders, anchored his nationalism in Islamic theology yet reached an explicitly universalist conclusion. In his 1940 presidential address at Ramgarh, he declared, “I am proud of being an Indian. I am part of the indivisible unity that is Indian nationality… Islam has now as great a claim on the soil of India as Hinduism.” Azad’s scholarship, his Sufi temperament, and his linguistic mastery gave him a unique perspective: India’s unity was not an accident; it was a civilizational achievement.

Ambedkar: Architect of the Republic

If Gandhi was India’s conscience, and Nehru its visionary, then B.R. Ambedkar was its architect. He had no patience for romanticism. He rejected the Congress’s sentimental approach to social reform and challenged Gandhi directly on caste, calling it “a system of graded inequality.” Ambedkar’s critique was ferocious because it was factual. His scholarship—Annihilation of Caste, Who Were the Shudras? The Buddha and His Dhamma laid the intellectual foundation for India’s liberation from Brahminical hierarchy.

It was Ambedkar who insisted that the Indian Constitution enshrine fraternity, equality before law, fundamental rights, affirmative action, and protection against majoritarian tyranny. His role was not decorative; it was foundational.  Today’s India forgets that Ambedkar feared majoritarian rule above all. He warned: “Hindu Raj will be the greatest calamity for this country.” His words, prophetic and severe, were aimed squarely at the ideology of the RSS.

The Ideology That Opposed Them

In 1925, K.B. Hedgewar founded the RSS, inspired by European ethnic nationalisms. The organization saw Muslims and Christians as aliens; it insisted that only Hindus could be true Indians because only they shared the “Hindu Rashtra” (Hindu nation). M.S. Golwalkar, its most influential ideologue, wrote in We, or Our Nationhood Defined (1939): “The foreign races in Hindustan must adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion… Otherwise, they may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation.” This was not nationalism; it was sectarian hegemony. The RSS opposed: Gandhi’s Hindu-Muslim unity, the Quit India movement, and the draft Constitution. Secularism. Reservations for Scheduled Castes, interfaith equality, Gandhi called their vision “a doctrine of hatred.” Ambedkar saw it as “a menace to liberty.” Nehru dismissed it as “Hindu communalism of the worst kind.” When Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948 by Nathuram Godse—a former RSS pracharak—the fault line was exposed completely.

Gandhi’s Assassination: The Ideology Behind the Bullet

To tell young Indians the truth is to strip away the distortion that a lone fanatic killed Gandhi. A worldview killed him. Nathuram Godse belonged to a network of Hindu nationalists who believed that Gandhi was too sympathetic to Muslims. Partition required vengeance. India should become a Hindu theocratic state. In his own defense statement, Godse declared: “I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus.” Notice the collectivist logic: Gandhi was not killed for an act but for an idea—the idea of a plural India.

The Aftermath

After Gandhi’s murder, the RSS was banned. Its leaders were arrested. India entered a period of soul-searching. Yet Nehru refused retaliation. Azad urged calm. Ambedkar sharpened his constitutional protections. They believed India could outgrow hate through institutions. But they also knew that hate had not died—only retreated.

How They Built Modern India Against Relentless Opposition

Nehru: Building Institutions That Outlived Him. The RSS fought Nehru’s vision at every stage. They mocked the scientific temper. They denounced secularism as “anti-Hindu.” They rejected the idea of composite nationalism. Yet Nehru persisted, creating IITs, AIIMS, CSIR, and the Planning Commission, and atomic research institutions, public sector undertakings, and a non-aligned foreign policy. These decisions prevented India from becoming Pakistan’s mirror image.

Azad: Laying the Foundations of India’s Education System

As India’s first Education Minister, Azad created the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the University Grants Commission (UGC), national libraries, academies, and cultural institutions. He believed that education must defeat prejudice. At a time when the RSS spread conspiracy theories about Muslims, Azad taught that knowledge dissolves fear.

Ambedkar: Creating a Constitution to Contain Majoritarianism

He wrote not a Hindu Constitution, not a Congress Constitution, not a British Constitution—but a Republican Constitution. Ambedkar’s goal was simple: “To hold together a large, diverse society by ensuring that liberty, equality, and fraternity become constitutional obligations, not optional virtues.” The RSS opposed universal adult franchise, reservations, and secularism. They even called the Constitution “un-Indian.” Ambedkar did not yield.

For the Youth of Today: Understanding the Battle of Narratives

Young Indians must understand that the RSS opposed India’s founding not because of political disagreement but because its philosophy was incompatible with democracy.

The RSS advocated: a nation defined by a single religion, obedience to a cultural hierarchy, and suspicion of minorities, mythic history instead of empirical history.

Nehru, Azad, Gandhi, and Ambedkar envisioned a nation defined by citizenship, equality before the law, fraternity across Communities, and empirical thinking over superstition.

These visions are incompatible.

To pretend otherwise is to rewrite history.

The Poetry of the Republic: India as a Moral Imagination

If this essay has lingered in grief, let it now rise into poetry—because the story of India’s founding is ultimately a story of moral imagination. Picture Gandhi walking barefoot into riot-torn Bengal, fasting to break the madness of men. Picture Nehru writing The Discovery of India at the Ahmednagar Fort, dreaming of an unborn nation while imprisoned by an empire in decline. Picture Azad in the Constituent Assembly, reciting the Qur’anic verse “Lakum deenukum wa liya deen”—to you your faith, to me mine—to argue for secularism. Picture Ambedkar, after a lifetime of humiliation, shepherding Article 14—equality before law—into a constitution that would outlive him. These were not perfect men. They were great men—great because their imagination was larger than their wounds. They believed India could be larger than its fears.

The Republic as an Act of Faith

India today stands at a crossroads that Nehru anticipated, Azad feared, Ambedkar warned against, and Gandhi died resisting. If the republic is to survive, young Indians must reclaim the truth: pluralists built India. The RSS opposed them. Gandhi’s assassin was shaped by a worldview still alive. The Constitution was written to contain that worldview. Ambedkar’s warnings were prophetic. Azad’s pluralism remains relevant. Nehru’s institutions protect India still, when allowed to function.

A nation is not held together by borders but by a shared imagination of justice. Suppose India today is to be admired by the world and embraced by all its children. In that case, it must return to the founding vision: a republic where power bows before law, where identity does not determine destiny, and where the dignity of every human being is upheld not as charity but as the very definition of nationhood.

ENDNOTES

1. M.S. Golwalkar, We, or Our Nationhood Defined (Nagpur: RSS Publications, 1939).

2. B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India (1945).

3. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Presidential Address, Ramgarh Session, Indian National Congress, 1940.

4. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (1946).

5. B.R. Ambedkar, Speech in Constituent Assembly, 25 November 1949.

6. Testimony of Nathuram Godse, in The Assassin’s Shadow: The Court Papers of the Gandhi Murder Trial.

7. A.G. Noorani, The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour (LeftWord Books, 2000).

REFERENCES

• Noorani, A.G. Savarkar and Hindutva: The Godse Connection.

• Thapar, Romila. Indian History and Nationalist Imagination.

• Guha, Ramachandra. India After Gandhi.

• Brown, Judith. Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope.

• Rodrigues, Valerian. The Essential Writings of B.R. Ambedkar.

• Hasan, Mushirul. Legacy of a Divided Nation.

• Pritchett, Frances. Nehru and the Idea of India.