Source: RA
While the Congress allied with the Bombay Lobby the Hindu Sanghatanists, were trying to warm up to the princes & feudals. The above paragraph (skipped) is from A Bunch of Thoughts written by Golwalkar, where he is defending the zamindars by saying that they shouldn’t even voluntarily give away their land in Vinoba Bhave’s Bhudan movement, because it will encourage the communists. Savarkar too glorified the martial cultures, and instead of viewing them as the upholders of the feudal order, portrayed them as brave freedom fighters who fought against foreigners. (Ref. Six Golden Epochs of Indian history). The princes too had grown resentful at the success of Congress and were willing to support anyone willing to fight the Congress, so many princes supported the Hindu Sanghatanists and later Rajaji’s Swatantrata Party.
In general, the princely states were quite hopeless. That’s why they felt the need to ally with some of the modern factions like HMS, RSS, Arya Samaj, etc. to preserve their influence over the people. They used to train and arm the RSS cadres and at times were themselves the sarsanghachalaks of RSS and presidents of VHP. Just to give you an idea of what you could expect to see living under princely rule. Any old woman “suspected” of witchcraft (of which there were quite a few in those times) could have a hook put through the muscles of her back and be swung, to torture her. This was infact a practice that was defended by the princes of Rajputana.
The Congress had passed a resolution that they weren’t going to interfere with princely state politics in 1918 itself, so the people from princely states who were demanding a “responsible government” started a movement parallel to the Congress. The Rajputana Madhya Bharat Sabha was started by people living in the North Indian princely states, these people were funded by their own Marwadi Businessmen. Calling these people Bolshevists, is like comparing the small states of Rajputana to “The Russian Empire”! By 1938, the movement had picked up enough popularity in its home ground for the Congress to decide that it actively wanted to support them.
Savarkar, Hindutva & princely states:
Savarkar’s concept of Hindutva, will be explained in depth some other day, but for now, I’ll just let you know that the idea of Hindudom was influenced by the concept of Christendom. Basically, he felt Hindus should have enough unity for them to be able stand up to their enemies. And that this brotherhood should extend across the contemporary borders of British provinces, princely states as well as the French & Portuguese territories. So that the Hindus from one independent Hindu state could help liberate their co-religionists from the foreign & Muslim rule, or at least help assure them basic civil rights.
However, in his book Hindu Rashtra Darshan (lit. Philosophy of Hindu Nation), he begins his address by congratulating the Hindu monarchy of Nepal. So he wasn’t against monarchy per se, just as long as it was a Hindu monarchy. He didn’t ask Nepal to accede to India, rather he congratulated it for being the only independent Hindu nation. Savarkar also supported Travancore states independence as a Hindu state. K.M. Munshi was a prominent princely state bureaucrat, whose idea of Akhand Hindustan was supported by Savarkar.
Presumably, because he didn’t want Hindus to become minorities in the new formed Pakistan as opposed to being a part of the majority in undivided India.