RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has said that Mahatma Gandhi was wrong to say that India lacked unity before British rule, arguing that the idea came from colonial teaching rather than the country’s history.

“Gandhi ji wrote in Hind Swaraj that we were not united before the Britishers, but that is a false narrative taught to us by the British,” Bhagwat said in Hindi at a book festival in Nagpur on Saturday.

He said Gandhi’s observation “that before the British came, we were not one” was shaped by colonial teaching.

“We were taught by the British,” he said.

Bhagwat said the Indian rashtra existed long before the formation of nation-states and cannot be understood through modern political terms.

“Our ‘rashtra’ was not created by a State. We have existed since forever. Even when there was no State, we were there. We were there when we were free, we were there even when we were enslaved, and we were there when there was only one Chakravarti Samrat [emperor],” he said.

He said that the distinction between “state” and “nation” often leads to confusion.

“If you use the word state in your writing… then the feeling you want to convey will not be conveyed. That is a completely different feeling.”

He also spoke about how nationalism is perceived.

“People ask me, are you a nationalist? I say, I am a nationalist. Why do you have to talk about this? Are you a nationalist because of your feelings, or are you a nationalist because of your rationality?”

According to him, the idea itself cannot be processed through pure logic: “How much logic can you use for that? You cannot use too much logic. A lot of things in the world are beyond logic. It is beyond logic.”

Bhagwat said that India’s nationhood cannot be compared with Western models and that Western political thought developed in conflict-heavy environments.

“Once an opinion is formed, anything apart from that thought becomes unacceptable. They close doors to other thoughts and start calling it ‘…ism’.”

According to him, this is why India’s civilisational identity was labelled “nationalism” by outsiders.

“They do not understand our views about nationhood, so they started calling it ‘nationalism’,” he said. “Our concept of a rashtra is different from the Western idea of a nation.”

Bhagwat said the RSS prefers the term “nationality”.

“Excessive pride about the nation led to two world wars, which is why some people fear the word nationalism,” he said.