2.        HINDUTVA – The Genesis

(Continued from last post – Hindutva the Background.)

As time passed, human settlements multiplied. City states, then nations arose. The complexities of life increased manifold. Wealth was created and life became an unending struggle to acquire wealth. Consequently complexities entered religious life also in the form of rituals, dogmas and superstitions.

This prepared a fertile ground for philosophers and gurus to propagate. Some of them succeeded in establishing groups of followers which evolved into the present day ‘isms’ with all their sectarian qualities.  Some of the isms were patronized by the state and they chose to spread their state religions through the sword. Barbarians succeeded in scuttling civilized societies which explains the spread of Christianity and Islam. Buddhism and Jainism spread as a reaction to rituals and dogmas which infested Hinduism.

After independence, India was divided based on the theory that Muslims be given the landmass known thereafter as Pakistan. Jinnah foresaw that it would be difficult for Muslims to live honourably in a Hindu majority society. This implied that what remained behind was for Hindus. But the Congress chose to make India secular in order to reassure the Muslim minority. Basically this decision was taken as a reaction to the fact that RSSS wanted India to be a Hindu Rashtra. Vir Savarkar had defined the term ‘Hindutva’ in its widest sense and the RSSS wanted to fit all people living within the geographical boundaries of India into this definition. This theory was later explained by one of leaders of RSSS, Balraj Madhok in his published work ‘Indianisation? What, Why and How (S. Chand, 1970).

The feelings of Leftist parties and that of Congress were so worked up by ‘Hindutva’ that they made people believe that it would kill the Secular Democracy and that it will even harm Hinduism.

I was amused to read an article “HinduismVersus Hindutva - The Inevitability Of A Confrontation” published in the Times of India, February 18, 1991, by ASHIS NANDY.

Excerpts:

“Speaking pessimistically, Hindutva will be the end of Hinduism. Hinduism is the faith by which a majority of Indians still live. Hindutva is the ideology of a part of the upper-caste, lower-middle class Indians, though it has now spread to large parts of the urban middle classes. The ideology is an attack on Hinduism…”

“Speaking optimistically Hindutva has its geographical limits. It cannot spread easily beyond the boundaries of urban, semi-westernized India. It cannot penetrate southern India where Hinduism is more resilient, where it is more difficult to project on to the Muslim the feared and unacceptable parts of one's own self. Hindutva cannot survive for long even in rural north India where Hinduism is more self-confident and the citizens have not been fully brainwashed by the media to speak only the language of the state. Nor can it survive where the Hindus are willing to be themselves--proudly "backward" superstitious sanatanis rooted firmly in their svadharma and svabhava.”

One can see, how vociferous was the propaganda! This was, in fact, engineered to keep RSSS and Jana Sangh away from Power. RSSS was even banned. In 1991, Ashis Nandy could hardly imagine that after 25 years, the BJP would sweep through the length and breadth of India and Hindutva would rather strengthen Hinduism and widen its scope.

It is in this background we will discuss Hindutva and the possibility of Hindu Rashtra.

23-4-2017

(to be continued)