Hindu Mahasabha

The Hindu Mahasabha (Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha) is a Hindu nationalist organisation. Wikipedia dates its formation to April 1915, when regional Hindu Sabhas met at the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar and formed an umbrella body, with Madan Mohan Malaviya as its founder. It took its present name in April 1921 and became a political party in 1933. One of the regional bodies behind it was the Punjab Hindu Sabha, founded in 1909, whose Ambala session of 8 December 1913 resolved to create an all-India Hindu Sabha.

Its leaders, in order

• Madan Mohan Malaviya, founder and early leader.
• Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who developed the ideology of Hindutva and led the party in the 1930s and early 1940s. In his presidential address at Ahmedabad in 1937 he called Hindus and Muslims “two nations in the main.”
• Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who joined in 1939, served as acting president that year and working president in 1940, and was elected president in 1943. Wikipedia’s text says he held the post until 1946, when Laxman Bhopatkar succeeded him; its infobox says 1947.

Where it meets the Panth

Savarkar’s Hindutva took Sikhs inside the Hindu fold. Wikipedia reports that he described Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism as “one and the same,” and a Hindu as a patriotic inhabitant of Bharatavarsha. He left out Muslims and Christians.

In 1947 the Mahasabha first opposed Partition and called a hartal on 3 July. Mookerjee then pressed for the partition of Bengal and, in the words of a publisher’s summary of Chhanda Chatterjee’s book on him, “took a leaf out of Master Tara Singh’s plans in the Punjab” for regrouping provinces. The Mahasabha and Master Tara Singh therefore ended on a parallel line over dividing the Punjab; the sources describe parallel strategy, not a formal alliance.

Key moments

• 1909: Punjab Hindu Sabha founded.
• April 1915: the Mahasabha formed at Haridwar.
• 30 January 1948: Nathuram Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi in New Delhi. Godse and several of the other accused were Mahasabha members. Savarkar was tried and acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence; the Kapur Commission, reporting in 1969, concluded that the facts pointed to a conspiracy to murder.
• December 1948: the Mahasabha suspended its political activities, and Mookerjee left. Wikipedia gives one reason as the rejection of his proposal to admit non-Hindu members.
• 21 October 1951: Mookerjee founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in Delhi.

Where it stands today

The Mahasabha is registered but not recognised by the Election Commission of India and holds no seat in Parliament or in any state assembly. Its last Lok Sabha seat was won in 1989. After independence it was eclipsed by the Jana Sangh, whose successor is the BJP.