The rhetorics of Ismet Inonu and M. S. Golwalkar are strikingly – and chillingly – similar. Inonu (1884–1973) was, of course, one of the founding leaders of the Turkish secular state. A key lieutenant of Mustafa Kemal, he served as chief of staff of the Turkish Armed Forces in 1920–21 and was referred to as milli sef, or national chief, during his long tenure as President of the Turkish Republic (Kemal was referred to after his death as the ebedi sef, or eternal chief, among other honorifics). Inonu returned as Turkey's Prime Minister later in life, from late 1961 to early 1965, to lead three shortlived coalition governments after Turkey's first military coup in 1960. He headed the Republican People's Party (CHP), the staunchly secularist party born of Kemal's politics and associated with the eternal chief's legacy, from the time of Kemal's death in late 1938 until 1972, shortly before his own death in 1973.

Unlike Ismet Inonu, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar never wielded state power. He was a dissident in India's secular state. But although far removed from state power, Golwalkar's political importance can hardly be overstated. He is probably the single most important figure of the Hindu nationalist movement, and the most influential voice of its creed of anti-secularism, since the movement's inception in the 1920s.