Prime Minister Narendra Modi, celebrating the BJP's victory in the West Bengal assembly elections at the party headquarters in New Delhi on May 4, 2026, declared that "the soul of Syama Prasad Mookerjee must be at peace today." On earlier occasions too, Modi had described him as "a statesman, thinker and a patriot who devoted his life towards strengthening national integration."
Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) is a prominent Hindutva icon for the RSS/BJP brigade. It was he who, on the advice of M.S. Golwalkar — the second chief of the RSS and its most prominent ideologue — founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) in 1951, the predecessor of the present Bharatiya Janata Party, and became its first president.
Modi and the Hindutva brigade are fond of declaring Mookerjee a great nationalist and patriot who laid down his life for the unity of the nation. This rhetoric, however, needs to be cross-checked against contemporary documents available in RSS and Hindu Mahasabha archives. A careful reading of these documents makes it clear that the claim of Mookerjee being a selfless patriot is a plain lie. He never participated in the anti-colonial freedom struggle. If patriotism means being part of that struggle and making sacrifices for it, Mookerjee not only stood aloof but actively betrayed it — collaborating with the British rulers and the Muslim League to crush and communally polarise the anti-British liberation movement.
In the pre-Independence period, Mookerjee was a prominent leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, which was headed by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. When in 1942 the Congress gave a call to the British to leave India immediately through the Quit India Movement (QIM), the colonial rulers responded with a reign of terror. The Congress was banned, its provincial governments were dismissed, the entire country was turned into a jail, and thousands died in the repression unleashed by British armed forces and native rulers alike. Many of those killed had committed no greater crime than daring to carry or unfurl the Tricolour, the flag of resistance.
The Hindu nationalist organisations — the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS — along with the Muslim League, which since 1940 had been ferociously demanding the Partition of India, not only boycotted the QIM but actively decided to support the British government in its repressive campaign. The Hindu nationalists under Savarkar's leadership even ran coalition governments with Jinnah's Muslim League.
Savarkar himself joyously chronicled this collaboration in his presidential address to the 24th session of the Hindu Mahasabha at Kanpur in 1942:
"In practical politics also the Mahasabha knows that we must advance through reasonable compromises. Witness the fact that only recently in Sind, the Sind-Hindu-Sabha on invitation had taken the responsibility of joining hands with the League itself in running coalition Government. The case of Bengal is well known. Wild Leaguers whom even the Congress with all its submissiveness could not placate grew quite reasonably compromising and sociable as soon as they came in contact with the Hindu Mahasabha and the Coalition Government, under the premiership of Mr. Fazlul Huq and the able lead of our esteemed Mahasabha leader Dr Syama Prasad Mookerji, functioned successfully for a year or so to the benefit of both the communities." [Savarkar, V.D., Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Hindu Mahasabha, Poona, 1963, pp. 479–480.]
This coalition arrangement was subsequently extended to the North-West Frontier Province as well. Mookerjee served as Deputy Premier — the designation then used for what we today call Chief Minister — and held the Home portfolio, which oversaw the suppression of the QIM.
Following the Hindu Mahasabha directive to cooperate with the British, Mookerjee assured his colonial masters through a letter dated July 26, 1942. In an autobiographical work, he confessed:
"Let me now refer to the situation that may be created in the province as a result of any widespread movement launched by the Congress. Anybody, who during the war, plans to stir up mass feeling, resulting in internal disturbances or insecurity, must be resisted by any Government that may function for the time being." [Mookerjee, Shyama Prasad, Leaves from a Diary, Oxford University Press, p. 179.]
His letter to the Bengal Governor detailing how the Fazlul Haq-led Bengal Government and its alliance partner, the Hindu Mahasabha, had drawn up concrete plans to suppress the QIM is worth reading in full:
"The question is how to combat this movement (Quit India) in Bengal? The administration of the province should be carried on in such a manner that in spite of the best efforts of the Congress, this movement will fail to take root in the province. It should be possible for us, especially responsible Ministers, to be able to tell the public that the freedom for which the Congress has started the movement, already belongs to the representatives of the people. In some spheres it might be limited during the emergency. Indians have to trust the British, not for the sake of Britain, not for any advantage that the British might gain, but for the maintenance of the defence and freedom of the province itself. You, as Governor, will function as the constitutional head of the province and will be guided entirely on the advice of your Minister." [Cited in A.G. Noorani, The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour, LeftWord Books, pp. 56–57.]
The assertion that freedom "already belongs to the representatives of the people" and that "Indians have to trust the British… for the maintenance of the defence and freedom of the province itself" was an unabashed glorification of foreign rule. A prominent historian of India, R.C. Majumdar — regarded as a true 'Bharatiya' historian even by the Hindutva brigade — commenting on this letter, wrote:
"Shyam Prasad ended the letter with a discussion of the mass movement organised by the Congress. He expressed the apprehension that the movement would create internal disorder and endanger internal security during the war by exciting popular feeling, and he opined that any government in power has to suppress it, but that according to him could not be done only by persecution…. In that letter he mentioned item wise the steps to be taken for dealing with the situation…" [R.C. Majumdar, History of Modern Bengal, vol. 2, G. Bharadwaj & Co., Calcutta, p. 350.]
The Hindu Mahasabha's decision to betray the Quit India Movement found its echo in the RSS as well. M.S. Golwalkar, the then chief of the RSS, later admitted:
"In 1942 also there was a strong sentiment in the hearts of many. At that time too the routine work of Sangh continued. Sangh vowed not to do anything directly. However, upheaval in the minds of Sangh volunteers continued. Sangh is an organisation of inactive persons, their talks are useless — not only outsiders but also many of our volunteers did talk like this. They were greatly disgusted too." [Shri Guruji Samagra Darshan (collected works of Golwalkar in Hindi), vol. IV, Bharatiya Vichar Sadhna, Nagpur, n.d., p. 40.]
Nowhere in pre-Partition RSS literature is there any reference to work which the RSS might have done even indirectly in support of the Quit India Movement.
In an even more troubling development, the Hindu Mahasabha under Mookerjee's leadership decided to actively assist the British in the Second World War — at the very time when Subhash Chandra Bose, Netaji, was organising the Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) in a military campaign to drive the British out of India. The extent of the Hindu Mahasabha's willingness to serve British interests is evident from the following directive issued by Savarkar as its President:
"So far as India's defence is concerned, Hindudom must ally unhesitatingly, in a spirit of responsive co-operation, with the war effort of the Indian government in so far as it is consistent with Hindu interests, by joining the Army, Navy and the Aerial forces in as large a number as possible and by securing an entry into all ordnance, ammunition and war craft factories…. Again it must be noted that Japan's entry into the war has exposed us directly and immediately to attack by Britain's enemies. Consequently, whether we like it or not, we shall have to defend our own hearth and home against the ravages of the war and this can only be done by intensifying the government's war effort to defend India. Hindu Mahasabhaites must, therefore, rouse Hindus especially in the provinces of Bengal and Assam as effectively as possible to enter the military forces of all arms without losing a single minute." [V.D. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya: Hindu Rashtra Darshan, vol. 6, Maharashtra Prantik Hindusabha, Poona, 1963, p. 460.]
So, according to Prime Minister Modi and the Hindutva establishment, a 'patriot' and 'selfless freedom fighter' must be a stooge of the British, a collaborator of Jinnah's Muslim League, and an organiser of the suppression of those brave Indians who rose up against colonial rule. By that reckoning, all those who fought and laid down their lives for a free, democratic, and secular India were simply fools.
June 7, 2026
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