Golwalkar, Madhavrao Sadashivrao (1906-1973)

Indian Hindu nationalist. Trained as a zoologist and a lawyer, Golwalkar became head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Corps) in June 1940 and developed it into a powerful and fiercely anti-Muslim and anti-Christian youth movement. He crusaded for a united India and advocated a union of India and Pakistan but believed that non-Hindu peoples had to either adopt the Hindu culture and religion or remain ‘wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation’.

The most comprehensive statement of his ideas was made in his book We or Our Nationhood Defined (1938) in which he praised Hitler's theories of racial supremacy as ‘a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by’.