By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
President Modi and Hindutva
On 28 May 2020 Prime
Minister Narendra Modi, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, and others paid tributes
to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who popularized the term Hindutva. Today
exemplified by Modi Savarkar is loved by the Hindu right with centrists and
Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists, in
India, not to mention Kashmir, having a
different opinion.
On January 30, 1948,
Mahatma Gandhi was shot at point-blank range by Nathuram Godse, member of the Hindu Mahasabha and former member of the RSS
because it seemed to him not political enough; the Mahasabha, a political
party, was more congenial. As was shown by a letter written by Godse to
Savarkar in 1938 and submitted to the trial court, Godse had long had a close
relationship with Savarkar, whom he revered. “Since the time you were released
from your internment at Ratnagiri,” he wrote, “a divine fire has kindled in the
minds of those groups who profess that Hindustan is for the Hindus.” He speaks
of using the Hindu Mahasabha (of which Savarkar was then President) to build a
National Volunteer Army, drawing on the resources of the RSS, where Godse was
then a leading local organizer. Savarkar’s picture was on the masthead of
Godse’s newspaper, and the two cooperated increasingly closely, especially
after Godse left RSS for the Hindu Mahasabha. Savarkar appears to have known
about the existence of a plot to assassinate Gandhi, and some believe that he
was the mastermind behind at least the unsuccessful attack on January 20:
testimony from a witness includes the information that he said to the
conspirators, “Be successful and return.” (Savarkar was ultimately acquitted of
conspiracy because of insufficient evidence.) Godse asserts that he planned the
later, successful attempt on his own.
There is no doubt, at
any rate, about where Godse got his intellectual inspiration or about his
reasons and goals. At his sentencing on November 8, 1948, Godse read along
(book-length) statement of self-explanation, justifying his assassination for
posterity. Although the statement was not permitted publication at the time, it
gradually leaked out into the public. Translations into Indian languages began
appearing, and in 1977 the English original was published by Godse’s brother
Gopal under the polite title, May it Please Your Honour. A new edition, with a
long epilogue by Gopal, was published in 1993 under the more precise title Why
I Assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. Today the statement is also widely available on
the Internet.
Godse’s
self-justification, like Savarkar’s Hindutva, sees recent events against the
backdrop of centuries of “Muslim tyranny” in India, punctuated by the heroic
resistance of Shivaji, the Hindu emperor who carried on a military campaign
against the Moghul rulers in the eighteenth century, with brief success. Like
Savarkar, he describes his goal as that of creating a strong, proud, India that
can throw off the centuries of domination. On the contemporary scene, the two
major thinkers who vie for the loyalty of Indians, as they chart their course
for the future, seem to him to be Savarkar and Gandhi.
To Savarkar, Hindus
were not merely a religious community, but a historical, ethnic, linguistic,
and political group, a nation. Furthermore, this Hindu nation’s relations with
non-Hindus in South Asia was most thoroughly informed not by Brahmanical thought
but by Orientalism and fascism
often conflated with the RSS.
Towards the end of
his life, Savarkar was particularly noted for his detestation for Mahatma
Gandhi and was one among those arrested for the assassination of Gandhi, though
later he was acquitted. In redrawing the
borders of India and scrapping the discriminatory Article 370, the Narendra
Modi government has realized a long-cherished dream of Savarkar.
This initially
started to unfolded when the nineteenth-century witnessed the rapid development
of modern Hinduism. The Arya Samaj, for example, integrated the idea of a
unified Hindu community, reflected Christian theology by laying greatest stress
on a particular book from within the Brahmanical canon (Rigveda), raising it to
the level of the Bible in Christianity, and only emphasized that book’s
monotheistic elements. Various modern-style organizations, established and run
largely by middle-class Hindus, were influential in this process. They
contributed to the emergence of the idea of Hinduism as an objective
phenomenon, comparable to other, similar phenomena. It is widely understood
that such organizations, and their ideas about Hinduism as an objective
phenomenon, developed as a form of cultural
resistance to colonial rule.
In earlier years, Savarkar
(The Indian War of Independence 1857, Bombay: Phoenix. 1947) had written a
significant Indian nationalist text about the 1857 rebellion against the
British. He had also been transported for life to the penal colony of the
Andaman Islands in 1910 for his part in a conspiracy to assassinate two British
officials. In the classically heroic Indian nationalist context of this
incarceration, Savarkar was to produce what was to become a seminal text of
Hindu nationalism: Hindutva/Who is a Hindu? (1989). This short but rather
verbose text presented the `Hindu race' as a strong, martial people, who had
been struggling for a thousand years or more with various foreign invaders from
the north and west.
Hindutva/Who is a
Hindu was first published in 1923. In the early 1920s, both nationalist'
mobilization and communal violence were intensifying. As the profile of
communalism as a political issue expanded, a strain of militant secularism
became increasingly prominent within the Congress-led nationalist movement. In
this view, national liberation was characterized in the classic liberal
democratic sense, namely through the creation of a nation-state governed by the
rule of law, in which issues of culture and religion would be ushered into the
private sphere.
The secular tendency
never eroded the different approaches to the nationalism which sustained as a
kind of hegemonic rhetoric. During the final years of British colonial rule in
India, the predominance of this rhetoric enhanced the sense of the difference
between Congress nationalism and Hindu nationalism as represented by the
Mahasabha and other organizations. In addition, since the rhetoric of
secularism was developed in contradistinction to communalism, Congress
politicians increasingly represented Hindu nationalist ideology as a form of
communal ideology.
Hindu nationalism
thus became situated as a communal ideology, in contrast to Congress
nationalism, in a manner that marginalized the dialogue, the interaction, and
blending of these areas of thought about Indian politics and culture. Hindu
nationalism developed into a kind of trope, which acted to define or affirm the
non-communal credentials of the INC, a position which was only emphasized by
the traumas of partition and the assassination of Gandhi. This process has done
much to obscure the embeddedness of Hindu nationalism in developing ideas about
Indian culture and social relations among political elites. Recognizing the
shapes of Hindu nationalism, then, means looking beyond the discourse of
communalism and acknowledging the network of contexts in which key ideas
emerged.
As noted above,
Savarkar's text Hindutva/Who is a Hindu was to emerge as a significant
articulation of Hindu nationalist thought. Other key texts have been the
writings of Deendayal Upadhyaya and the work of M.S. Golwalkar, especially his
two books Bunch of Thoughts (1966) and We, or Our Nationhood Defined (1944).2
Together, these sources provide us with insight into some component elements in
Hindu nationalist thought, but one thing we should emphasize is this: they do
not form a coherent body of work or the consciously progressive development of
an ideological position. Perhaps this is best illustrated by the fact that
although Savarkar is often described as the ideological father of Hindu
nationalism and Hindutva/Who is a Hindu as the classic text of Hindu
nationalism, one will not generally find this book in Sangh Parivarbookshops in
India, nor will one find a reference to Savarkar on major Sangh websites.3 This
is principal because Savarkar was never a member of the RSS, and therefore
cannot, in that organization's version of history, be portrayed as too central
to the development of Hindu nationalism. But it also reiterates the fractured
quality of this set of ideas, its existence as a broad field of thought,
interacting with other fields of thought, rather than as a clear ideological
program. In this section, I want to unpack some of the themes that might help
us to identify the parameters of this field of thought. In doing so, the issue
of interaction will be emphasized; although it is hoped that acknowledging this
interaction will help us to identify a distinctive profile for Hindu
nationalist thought.
(i) Who is a Hindu? The formulas of nationhood
This question, which
forms part of the title of Savarkar's 1923 work, is at the heart of ideas of
Hindu nationalism. It is a question that may be related directly to those
processes of objectification we have noted above associated with the
development of Hinduism. Indeed, the difficulties experienced by elites in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century in conceptualizing Hinduism as a
religion, and the tensions that subsequently emerged, were highly influential
in the development of major lines of Hindu nationalist thought. This is because
these were, in the absence of any theological coherence, debates about the
parameters of Hinduism as a social phenomenon. Where one drew the boundaries of
Hinduism and how its shape was articulated, formed key underlying questions in
the contest over whether and how the religion needed to be `reformed' or
`regenerated'. Two broad patterns of response emerged: one which sought to
articulate the idea of Hinduism through the restructuring of society, as
exemplified by some elements within the Arya Samaj; and one which sought to
articulate the idea of Hinduism through the consolidation of the existing
structures of society, emphasizing the `organic' unity of the component parts.
Savarkar answers his
own question by emphasizing and extending the latter response. Hindutva/Who is
a Hindu? constructs a notion of Hindu nationality that is catholic, embracing a
broad range of religious and cultural systems. This catholicity is characteristic
of the spiritual, universalist approach to Hinduism and Hindu culture developed
in the nineteenth century by figures such as Vivekananda. At the same time,
however, Savarkar's notion works obsessively on the boundaries of this range,
producing some formulaic models through which an individual or a group may be
identified as Hindu or not. There is, for example, the widely recognized
formula of pitribhum-punyabhum (fatherland-holy land) (Savarkar Hindutva/Who is
a Hindu? Bombay: 1989: 111). Whoever can identify India as both may be
considered as Hindu. In consonance with this formula, he develops the idea of
rashtrayat=sanskriti (nation-race-culture), as components of Hinduness
(Savarkar 1989: 116). Identification with the Hindu race and nation is encompassed
by the recognition of pitribhum; whereas identification with culture is
encompassed by the recognition of punyabhum. On this reckoning, Savarkar's key
social exclusions are of Muslims and Christians, in that they locate their holy
land, their cultural identity, outside India. This formulaic approach has
proven to be remarkably resilient, turning up in later Hindu nationalist works,
although not always attributed to Savarkar.
Golwalkar develops a
similar approach in We, Or Our Nationhood Defined. He developed a formula based
around what he terms the `famous five unities' (We or Our Nation Defined,
Nagpur: Bharat Prakashan 1944: 18) of territory, race, religion, culture and language.
These may be related to the Savarkian formula of pitribhum (territory, race) -
punyabhum (religion, culture, language), and they follow the same pattern of
emphasizing a broad, catholic approach to cultural and religious identity
while identifying exclusions in a quite uncompromising manner. Golwalkar also
identifies Muslims and Christians as key exclusions, although he moves on to
encompass communists as anti-national or an `internal threat' (Golwalkar Bunch
of Thoughts, Bangalore: Vikram Prakashan 1966: 187ff.). This reflects a
developing concern, in the immediate pre- and post-Independence era, with the
strength of the left in Indian politics.
The quality of
inclusion and exclusion formulas identifying Hinduness forms the basis for a
consistent area of Hindu nationalist action: resisting conversion. The critical
exclusions exemplified in the pitribhumpunyabhum formula mean that conversion
to Islam or Christianity amounts to a process of 'de-nationalization'. Indeed,
this term was used by the RSS organiser, Kishore Kant, to describe the
activities of Christian missionaries in northeastern states during the 1990s.
At the same time, there has always been recognition of the vulnerability of
certain groups to the `threat' of conversion. These are principally low caste
and tribal groups, those who exist on the fuzzy margins of Hinduness - in a way
that Savarkar would have regarded as anathema - and who suffer oppression
precisely because of their status within Hindu society.
The success of
conversion campaigns among low caste or tribal groups, then, appears both as an
indication of the fragility of Hindu society, and confirmation of fears about
the erosion of Hindu identity. As such, resisting conversion has always been a
key concern of Hindu nationalism because it operates as a means of affirming
and consolidating the idea of a broad notion of Hindu identity, on the basis of
the pitribhum-punyabhum and other associated formulas.
(ii) Hinduness - a question of culture
In a rather
paradoxical fashion, we can see that as well as rationalizing exclusion, the formulaic
approach is designed to encompass a broad range of traditions, including such
historically resistant traditions as Buddhism and Jainism. Savarkar is able to
do this because he begins with the idea that Hinduness - or Hindutva as he
coins it - is not so much a religious as a cultural signifier, based on an
identified continuity of blood in the Hindu `race'. `Hinduism,' he says, `is
only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva'. Through this distinction,
Savarkar is able to go on to construct a grand, catholic vision of Hindu
identity as diverse, yet unthreatened by that diversity. The diversity itself
is perceived as a characteristic of Hindu culture.
As a model of
cultural development, we can relate this idea to some classic accounts of
Indian syncretism and tolerance, such as Jawaharlal Nehru's Discovery of India.
Nehru notes that `the mind of India' has been occupied for millennia by `some
kind of a dream of unity'. Within this idea of unity, he states that `the
widest tolerance of belief and custom was practiced and every variety
acknowledged and even encouraged'. Of course, Nehru is insistent on embracing
Muslim and Christian communities within this model, but the premise of `unity
in diversity' is similar to that of Savarkar. The latter's ideas about Hindu
culture, then, to a certain extent reflect a broader discourse about the Indian
nation.
Interestingly,
Golwalkar almost reverses Savarkar's formulation of the relationship between
Hinduism and Hinduness. He claims that culture is `but a product of our
all-comprehensive Religion, a part of its body and not distinguishable from
it'. This difference is partly explained by the use of contrasting conceptions
of religion. Savarkar works with a narrow definition of religion, based on the
idea of individual commitment and spiritual fulfillment. Golwalkar works with a
different kind of concept altogether, a broad, all-encompassing concept, which
provides a kind of framework for belief, culture, and social organization.
Indeed, Golwalkar criticizes the narrow conception of religion in We or Our
Nationhood Defined. It is possible that this critique is aimed at Savarkar, the
`secular Hindu'; certainly, there is a reverse echo of Savarkar's statement
quoted above when Golwalkar states that the individual spiritual fulfillment
view is `but a fractional part of Religion'.
Golwalkar's
conception of religion is rather as a broad framework, which `by regulating
society in all its functions, makes room for all individual idiosyncrasies, and
provides suitable ways and means for all sorts of mental frames to adapt and
evolve'. Golwalkar, then, is equally able to encompass diversity in the
tradition, by broadening the idea of religion in the context of India and
articulating it as `the elastic framework of our dharma'. It is this very
elasticity, he goes on, which operates to `protect and maintain the integrity
of our people', as various sects had emerged to counter threats to the
framework; Sikhism, for example, `came into being to contain the spread of
Islam in Punjab'. This is highly reminiscent of Savarkar's idea of diversity as
a defining feature of Hindu culture.
Ultimately, both
Savarkar and Golwalkar produce approaches that attempt to resolve the threat
posed by doctrinal diversity and fragmentation within Hindu identity by
reference to `framework' ideas, which endorse this diversity as archetypal.
This approach, following Savarkar's articulation, has emerged in contemporary
Hindu nationalism as a valorization of Hindu culture; indeed, despite the
tension noted between Savarkar and the Sangh Parivar, the idea of Hindutva has
been fully adopted and is used freely in Sangh literature (although again, it
is rarely attributed to Savarkar).
What, though,
characterizes this framework of Hindu culture or Hinduism. Both Savarkar and
Golwalkar locate the idea of Hinduness by reference to history. Even taking
into account its diversity, Hinduness is rooted in Aryan civilization and the
establishment of the Vedic tradition. According to Savarkar, there was a
gradual expansion of Aryan influence, leading eventually to the religious,
cultural, and political unification of the subcontinent under Lord Ram.
These then followed
periods of relative Hindu and Buddhist ascendancy, which in turn were
superseded by the `human Sahara' of Muslim incursion, the beginning of a long
period of struggle to maintain Hindu identity in the face of `foreign
invasion'. This interpretation of history was based on some familiar elements
of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Hindu worldviews. The idea of the Vedic
civilization of the Aryans was used as a reference point by a whole host of
movements and individuals involved in conceptualizing Indian religion and
society (e.g. Dayananda, Jotiba Phule); Ram Rajya also had a distinctive
resonance as indicative of perfect governance and harmonious society (e.g.
Gandhi). And the idea of `Muslim' rule creating a decisive break in Indian history
was most familiar and had been institutionalized in James Mill's influential
early nineteenth-century History of British India (1817). There is nothing
distinctive, then, in the use of these ideas to characterize the quality of
Hinduness. They serve again to emphasize the embeddedness of the Hindu
nationalist approach in developing ideas about Indian culture during the first
half of the twentieth century.
This version of
history is nevertheless used as the basis for the development of some further
key elements of Hinduness as Indian culture. Perhaps most significant is the
valorization of the geography of India.' This key feature is clearly indicated
by the emphasis on the land in Savarkar's pitribhum-punyabhum formula. He
writes:
Yes, this Bharat
bhumi, this land of ours that stretches from Sindhu to Sindhu is our
Punyabhumi, for it was in this land that the Founders of our faith and the
seers to whom `Veda' the Knowledge was revealed, from Vaidik seers to
Dayananda, from Jina to Mahavir, from Buddha to Nagasen, from Nanak to Govind,
from Banda to Basava, from Chakradhar to Chaitanya, from Ramdas to Rammohun,
our Gurus and Godmen were born and bred. The very dust of its paths echoes the
footfalls of our Prophets and Gurus.
Here, Savarkar
articulates archetypal diversity as indicative of Hinduness through the land
itself - the dust of its paths is representative of Hindu culture. Golwalkar,
who delineates Bharat as `a land with divinity ingrained in every speck of its
dust ... the holiest of the holy, the center of our utmost devotion',
reiterates this kind of reverential approach. Again, this reverence is present
in a broader discourse on the Indian nation during this period. Varshney has
used the example of Jawaharlal Nehru's will, in which he expresses a desire for
some of his ashes to be thrown into the Ganga, because that river has been `a
symbol of India's age-long culture and civilization, ever-changing,
ever-flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga' (Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life:
Hindus and Muslims in India, New Haven: Yale University Press. 2002: 63).
Varshney makes a
distinction between Nehru's view of the river, and that encompassed by Hindu
nationalism, on the basis that Nehru's vision of sacred geography was
`metaphorical', rather than `literal'. The quality of this distinction is not
clear, particularly since he goes on to say that the `emotions and attachment
generated by the geography were equally intense'. Rather than emphasizing
difference, we can see here again the way in which Hindu nationalist thought
has emerged within a broader complex of ideas about the emerging nation, and
that the idea of polarization between these ideas is apparently untenable.
One further aspect of
Hinduness as Indian culture needs emphasizing at this point. This is the focus
on Ram and Sita, the heroes of the Ramayana, as archetypal Indians. There has
been a fair amount of work in recent years on the developing ways in which these
figures have been represented in art, film, and other media. The emphasis of
this work has been on the representation of Ram as a martial hero, defending
the honor of Hinduism with the aid of a mighty bow. Sita has operated
increasingly as the site of that defense, a meek and pure individual who needs
protection from violation (Basu `Feminism inverted: the gender imagery and real
women of Hindu nationalism', in T. Sarkar and U. Butalia (eds) Women and the
Hindu Right: A Colection of Essays, New Delhi: Kali for Women1995: 158-80.). In
the context of Hindutva, these figures are national, rather than religious.
Hence, the desire in recent times to build a temple at the proclaimed
`birthplace' of Ram in Ayodhya is perceived as a
national project, and resistance to this project is interpreted as
anti-national, regardless of your religious persuasion.
This valorisation of
Ram and Sita is indicative of a wider point on the idea of Hinduness or
Hindutva. It denotes a set of ideas that is consciously articulated as
cultural, rather than religious, and yet there is constant slippage into what
we might perceive as more clearly religious territory. On the one hand, this
appears to be a reflection of slippage in the original pitribhumi-punyabhumi
formulation, which claims to include on the basis of cultural space, but
clearly excludes on the basis of religious identity. On the other hand, it is
also a reflection of the problematic identification of Hindu nationalism as
religious nationalism, if religion is defined as a discrete category, in the
manner critiqued by Golwalkar as noted above. To an extent, this is a set of
ideas that exists in broader discursive fields than those signified by such a
category.
(iii) Sangathan -ordering society
Nothing demonstrates
this latter point more clearly than what has emerged as the most influential
organization propagating Hindu nationalism during the twentieth century: the
RSS. As is well documented, the Sangh emerged in the mid-1920s with specific cultural
objectives. It was established in Nagpur in Central Provinces, a city with a
minimal Muslim minority, and its first formal public action was at the Ram
Navami festival at nearby Ramtek. The Sangh volunteers, led by the founder of
the organization KB. Hedgewar, engaged in a form of crowd control, enforcing
queues, providing drinking water, and keeping an eye on the commercial activity
at the festival, among other tasks.
This first public
action is interesting because it exemplifies two significant features of Hindu
nationalist thought. First, as we have just noted, Ram was an important
cultural symbol of the nascent Hindu nation. There was an intervention in a
festival dedicated to Ram. However, the Sangh was apparently not interested in
the form of religious practice articulated at the mela (festival); rather, it
pursued the objective of establishing a sense of order within this environment.
Not only does this reiterate the idea of the focus on Ram as a cultural, rather
than an explicitly religious symbol, it also points us towards the second
significant feature: the establishment of a sense of order, discipline, and
organization in Hindu social and cultural relations. This idea, expressed in
Hindi as sangathan, has emerged as a fundamental Hindu nationalist concern.
The specific
trajectory of this concern with discipline and organization. Sangathan is
significant because it is directed at the organization of society. A Hindu
nationalist vision of the Hindu nation is intimately bound up with the
progressive realization of a society which operates harmoniously, in an
integrated fashion. Most generally, this vision has been articulated as a kind
of organicist approach: society operates like a body, each component part having
its own valuable function. Golwalkar comments:
All the organs,
though apparently of diverse forms, work for the welfare of the body and thus
subscribe to its strength and growth. Likewise is the case with society. An
evolved society, for the proper functioning of various duties, develops a
multitude of diverse functional groups. Our old social order laid down a
specific duty for each group and guided all the individuals and groups in their
natural line of evolution just as the intellect directs the activities of the
innumerable parts of the body.
The ideal Hindu,
then, knows his place in this organism. Fulfilling one's function in the
organism, in a disciplined and orderly manner, is each individual's dharmic
duty. Members of Sangh organization, to a certain extent the swayamsevaks
(volunteers), but more specifically the pracharaks (full-time workers) - act
both as a vanguard working to bring this society into being, and as examples of
how to conduct oneself in accordance with dharma. In fact, the Sangh itself has
been described as a model for Hindu society; the RSS, for example, see the
Sanghas not an organization in society, but of
society.
Such a vision, of
course, entails addressing the issue of caste, and Hindu nationalism is rather
ambivalent on this issue. At times, a fullfledged defense of the caste system
has been articulated; at others, a `return' to varnashrama dharma is advocated;
at others, the Sangh's vision is perceived as the eradication of caste
altogether. A consistent element in this position, however, is a
non-confrontational approach to established caste structures. Any
transformation of caste structure is perceived as occurring through `organic'
development, rather than as requiring radical change. This approach reflects
the development of Hindu nationalist thought in high caste, middle-class social
groups, and explains the strong antipathy to any forms of independent low caste
assertion (Zavos Conversion and the assertive margins: an analysis of Hindu
nationalist discourse and the recent attacks on Indian Christians', South Asia,
24(2):73-89.2001).
This refers us back,
of course, to the concerns noted earlier over the shape of Hinduness in the
modern world. The organization of society emerges as a key means of
articulating this shape. As an institution, the RSS has consistently focused on
this objective and rationalized its actions in relation to it. Indeed, one way
of understanding the Sangh Parivar is as a project to establish a focused
presence within the various spaces of society, with the objective of
demonstrating the Sangh's vision of organisation in microcosm and in relation
to specific issues. Politics and the state may be regarded as one of the
identified spaces.
(iv) Integral humanism - the politics of social order
The argument that
politics must be seen as a component space within the Hindu nationalist
conception of society is exemplified by the idea of integral humanism. This
term enjoys a prominent profile in the BJP's main website (along with the
notion of Hindutva), and it refers to a set of ideas developed in lie 1950s and
1960s by Deendayal Upadhyaya.6
Upadhyaya was an RSS
pracharak who had been influential in the Bharatiya Jana Sangh since it was
established in 1951 as the Sangh Parivar's first venture into the world of
post-Independence politics. Integral humanism was fully articulated as a
political program in 1965. In a series of lectures, Upadhyaya sought to pitch
this program into what he perceived as a sea of cynicism and opportunism in
politics. `Parties and politicians have neither principles nor aims nor a
standard code of conduct,' he opined. In particular, he pointed to Congress as
lacking any kind of ideological coherence. `If there can be a magic box which
contains a cobra and a mongoose,' he continues, `it is Congress'.
The set of ideas
which he went on to develop are based around a series of key themes. First, the
need to articulate specifically Indian answers to modern problems (through, for
example, promoting swadeshi and small scale industry); second, the need for politics
to be practiced in consonance with the chiti (specific essence) of the Hindu
nation; and lastly, the need to sustain the `natural' balance between the
individual and different institutions in society - institutions like the
family, caste and the state, by acting in accordance with principles of dharma.
This set of themes has been interpreted as the incorporation of Gandhian idioms
into Hindu nationalist politics, in order to enhance the potential for forging
alliances with other anti-Congress forces, after twenty years of total
domination of the polity by that party. Integral humanism, then, maybe
interpreted as a means of increasing the possibilities of power. As it so
happens, new possibilities were created in the late 1960s and early 1970s, particularly
in association with the Gandhian political leader, J.P. Narayan. The
involvement of Hindu nationalist forces in Narayan's anti-Indira agitations
undoubtedly gave the Jana Sangh the credibility to take a share in power in the
post-Emergency Janata Party coalition government. It is quite possible, then,
to view this key element of Hindu nationalist ideology in terms of electoral
strategy, a resolve to bid for power in the late 1960s. A similar
interpretation of the VHP strategy around the issue of the Babri Masjid in the
1980s is also well established (Jaffrelot The Hindu Nationalist Movement and
Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-Building,
Implantation and Mobilisation (with Special Reference to Central India),
London: Hurst & Company. 1996). In these interpretations, Hindu nationalism
as an ideology is framed to support the primary interest of an organization or
set of organizations in state power.
The trajectories of Hindu
nationalist thought discussed so far in this chapter, however, must lead us to
consider a different kind of interpretation in relation to integral humanism.
In particular, Upadhyaya's ideas appear to follow the logic of the emphasis on
the organization of society as a principal objective. This may be seen in the
key role he gave to the concept of dharma (duty) in his lectures. Dharma, that
is, in the same sense noted in relation to the Hindu nationalist vision of
society: a harmonious, integrated system in which each individual and group has
a specific function or duty. Although Upadhyaya presents dharma as part of an
integrated regulation of human activity based on purushartha (the four
universal objectives of humanity), in his discussion he demonstrates this
integration by referring each objective (and in particular the `worldly',
political objectives of artha (gain) and kama (pleasure) to dharma. 'Dharma,'
he says, `defines a set of rules to regulate the social activity, Artha and
Kama, so as to progress in an integral and harmonious way, and attain not only
Kama and Artha but also Moksha eventually . Without reference to dharma, then,
other objectives may not be reached.
The invocation of
dharma indicates a further articulation of the idea of order or organization of
society as central to a nationalist worldview. Upadhyaya interprets dharma as
a kind of dynamic network of interrelated regulations by which life should be
led. It is these regulations that govern social relations. Upadhyaya seeks
authority from the Mahabharata to argue that in the kritayuga (the first of the
four eras of the world), `there was no state or king. Society was sustained and
protected mutually by practicing dharma'. In subsequent yugas (epochs), he
explains, `disorganization came into existence', and as a result, the state was
introduced as an additional form of regulation, but the state was only ever
legitimate if it operated in accordance with dharma. The primacy of society,
then, is clear here, and the state exists as an institution - `an important
one, but not above all other', which is
framed and governed by this idea.
This approach locates
integral humanism within the context of developing Hindu nationalist
ideas-focused primarily on the transformation of society, rather than viewing
it as an instrumentalist appropriation of Gandhian idioms designed to increase
the possibility of power. There is certainly evidence of the appropriation of
Gandhian idioms, if not ideas, in Upadhyaya's lectures, but what this
demonstrates primarily is interaction in ideas about the development of
society. I have argued elsewhere that Gandhian idioms, ideas, and strategies
were quite significant in the articulation of Hindu nationalism in the 1920s.
This significance was not because of instrumentalist appropriation, or indeed
because Gandhi was a surrogate Hindu nationalist. Rather, Gandhian ideas and
Hindu nationalist ideas developed in the same discursive spaces, drawing on a
similar range of ideas about and experiences of history, culture, and political
mobilization.
Whether in the 1920s
or the 1950s, the dialogue between Gandhian and Hindu nationalist ideas has to
be viewed as a straightforward element of the development of ideological forms.
These are, after all, perspectives on the world that exist primarily in what
Stuart Hall has called the `mental frameworks' of people, both individually and
in groups. These individuals and groups exist in time and space, and they formulate
their `mental frameworks' in accordance with the `languages, the concepts,
categories, imagery of thought and systems of representation' which are
available to them. In this context, the blending of ideological forms, the
borrowing of idioms and symbols, the adaptation of existing ideas has to be
perceived as the way in which meaning is constructed.
The structure of
Indian politics, with its sharp division between the secular and the communal,
does not help us to recognize this point.
Recognizing the shapes of Hindu nationalism
A key conclusion to
be drawn from this analysis is that Hindu nationalist ideas about identity,
culture, and politics draw on and to some extent reflect the construction of
ideas about the Indian nation and its cultural heritage in the late nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Nevertheless, I have suggested that the use of
formulas and explicit religious symbols to draw the boundaries of national
identity may be construed as distinctive. Two lines of thought, the obsessive
concern with conversion and the aggressive assertion of ownership over sites
projected as sacred - are indicative of this distinctiveness.
Yet even here, there
is a degree of embeddedness in broader fields of thought. Perhaps the clearest
post-independence example of this point is the restoration of the Somnath
temple in 1947/8.
Conversion issues
also indicate a broader reach for ideas associated with Hindu nationalism than
the formal organizations of the Sangh Parivar.
The conversion of some Dalits to Islam in Meenakshipuram in 1981 is a good
example of this, in that the concerns expressed about this event were far
broader than those generated by the Sangh. Jaffrelot notes that `leading
articles in newspapers not known for their support of Hindu nationalism
suggested that the converts had been paid sums of money', and that the whole
process had been sponsored by rich Arab nations inspired by pan-Islamism. This
view was also taken by certain sections of the INC Government, and the Indian
Express published a poll revealing that as many as 78 percents of north Indian
urban Hindus wanted the government to ban conversions in the wake of
Meenakshipuram. Such figures, of course, need to be taken with a pinch of salt,
but these responses do indicate again a degree of embeddedness of some key
ideas associated with Hindu nationalism in Indian political life. The shapes of
Hindu nationalism, in this sense, are not The shapes of Hindu nationalism
necessarily constrained by the limits of the Sang-Parivar and other overtly
Hindu nationalist organizations.
A further conclusion
concerns the focus on society rather than the state, through the realization of
correct dharma. Formal politics and the control of the state is significant,
but it needs to be placed within the context of this broader focus, which conceptualizes
society as a range of segmented areas and `functional groups', as Golwalkar
would have it. This point is graphically demonstrated by the network of
organizations that constitute the Sangh Parivar. These organizations focus on a
variety of issues, from tribal welfare to education to labor relations, and
this is an expanding network across areas of social and cultural life.
The RSS, the `parent
organization' - maintains a loose, rather informal sense of control over the
Sangh network. The current sarsanghchalak (leader) of the RSS, KS. Sudarshan,
explained the relationship in a recent interview. `For the overall development
of society', full-time RSS workers are encouraged to enter `different fields
according to their abilities'. Their general objective is common: `to try to
find solutions to problems in those assigned areas, under the Hindutva
ideology'. Although the organizations are independent, Sudarshan continues, the
RSS maintains a guiding relationship with its workers, who remain swayamsevaks
(RSS cadre). It is well known, for example, that the Prime Minister and his
deputy during the NDA's tenure, A.B. Vajpayee and L.K Advani, have remained as
swayamsevaks. Other key figures in the BJP, for example, Gopinath Munde and
Murli Manohar Joshi, have also followed this path. Key leaders in the VHP, such
as the international secretary, Ashok Singhal, are also swayamsevaks, as are
other key Sangh figures such as the leader of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM,
an affiliate of the RSS set up in 1992 to oppose economic liberalization),
Dattopant Thengadi.
Joshi and Singhal
demonstrate the route taken by ambitious swayamsevaks. Joshi joined the RSS, at
the age of 10, in 1944. While pursuing academic studies, which culminated in a
PhD in Spectroscopy from Allahabad University, he became increasingly involved
in the Sangh's student organization, the ABVP, achieving the status of General
Secretary of this organization in the early 1950s. In 1957, he joined the
Bharatiya Jana Sangh and enjoyed increasing prominence in the Uttar Pradesh
hierarchy of this organization; before becoming General Secretary of the BJP in
the 1980s, President in the early 1990s, and a key cabinet minister in
Vajpayee's administration, first as Home Minister, then taking charge of three
ministries: Human Resources Development (including education), Science and
Technology and Ocean Development. It is in the HRD ministry where he has really
made his mark, instigating policy initiatives in the education sector, which
demonstrate the Sangh's desire to shape national consciousness.
Singhal also hails
from Uttar Pradesh, having been born in Allahabad in 1927. He also pursued a
technical education, achieving a BSc from Benares Hindu University in
Metallurgical Engineering. He joined the RSS as a swayamsevak, before becoming
a pracharak (full-time worker), and eventually being assigned to the VHP in
1980. At this dynamic period of the organization's history, Singhal rose
quickly to become its general secretary in 1986. Singhal later indicated the
role the RSS had to play in the development of different areas of social life
by calling them `ascetics in the real sense'. He identified `service' as `the
key word of our culture, and Sangh's swayamsevaks are symbols of service. Today
in all spheres of activity such workers are needed' (cited in Katju Vishwa
Hindu Parishad and Indian Politics, Hyderabad: Orient Longman. 2003: 68).
The complexity of the
Sangh network has increased over time, as new institutional layers are created.
For example, the VHP established the Bajrang Dal, initially as a sort of youth
wing. Over time, the Bajrang Dal has developed into a kind of confrontational
front for the VHP, providing foot soldiers in key campaigns such as that over
the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The Bajrang Dal also operates as a continuous
activist presence in local situations, providing its own version of
'socio-religious policing' to guard the honor of local Hindu girls, protect
local cattle and local temples, and so on (Katju Vishwa Hindu Parishad and
Indian Politics, Hyderabad: Orient Longman. 2003: 52). Likewise, the SJM is
another organization which has gone on to develop more focused organizations,
such as the Centre for Bharatiya Marketing and Development and the Swadeshi
Vichar Kendra.'
Given these
developing, dynamic networks, it is not surprising that the Sangh has developed
a diversity of approaches to the idea of `finding solutions to problems' using
'Hindutva ideology'. Nothing has brought this diversity into focus more than
the period of NDA rule. The BJP's perceived inability to find the kind of
solutions demanded by different Sangh organizations has induced sharp criticism.
Ashok Singhal, for example, commented in 2003 that 'Atal and Advani have
backstabbed the VHP' because of the government's
reticence over temple construction in Ayodhya.
The arguments
presented here, however, suggest that any assessment of the influence of Hindu
nationalism in political terms needs to recognize that this is a set of ideas
that is located in a much broader space than that represented by the BJP.
Because they overlap and blend with other key discourses on Indian society,
culture, and identity, these are ideas that are manifested in a wide range of
political actions and articulations. In addition, the focus identified here on
social relations and social development demands a broader understanding of
what constitutes politics. For example, in tribal areas of states such as
Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, the Sangh affiliate Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad has been
increasingly active, reshaping tribal religious practices within a Hindu
framework. In the arena of education, the Sangh has a network of schools, many
run by the Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan.
Thus the political
impact of Hindu nationalism really needs to be measured in terms of its continuing
activism in such areas, where politics is manifested not in terms of formal
state institutions, but as a contest for power in a network of localized
institutions and practices (Zavos et al. `Deconstructing the nation: politics
and cultural mobilization in India', in J. Zavos, A. Wyatt and V. Hewitt (eds)
Politics of Cultural Mobilization in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press:
1-16. 2004: 3).
An approach that
focuses on the political impact of organizations such as Vidya Bharati can also
help us to locate Hindu nationalism in the context of government. It is no
coincidence that one of the most significant areas of policy development during
the NDA's tenure has been in the area of education. From the National Council
for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to the Indian Council for
Historical Research, Hindu nationalist approaches have been vigorously
promoted; further reshaping ideas about Indian history and society in a wide
range of schools, colleges and universities.9 In order to recognize Hindu
nationalism as a feature of the NDA Government, then, we need to look
particularly at those policy areas, such as education, which impact on the
structure and development of social relations.
Hindu nationalism
continues to be an influential force in the development of worldviews in India,
through the interaction and overlap of ideas as highlighted above, and the
vigorous, diversifying development of Sangh activities through its affiliate
organizations. In the final analysis, the shapes of Hindu nationalism cannot
really be contained in the arena of formal politics. Recognizing the impact of
Hindu nationalism means looking beyond this arena, beyond the state and the
immediate problems posed by coalition politics, to the ways in which its key
ideas resonate in the broad spaces of Indian social and cultural life.
1 See, for example,
The Hindu 'BJP preparing to return to Hindutva agenda?', The Hindu, 24 June
2002.
2 In more recent
years, the ideas extant in these texts have been developed by ideologues such
as Sita Ram Goel, Ram Swarup, H.V. Seshadri, and P. Parameswaran, in a
succession of cheaply produced pamphlets and larger works distributed through
the network of the Sangh Parivar.
3 This is largely the
case, even though there have been successive disputes between the BJP and its
opponents over Savarkar's status as a national figure and a freedom fighter.
4 See VC Jaffrelot
From Indian territory to Hindu Bhoomi: the ethnicisation of nation-state
mapping in India', in J. Zavos, A. Wyatt and V. Hewitt (eds) Politics of
Cultural Mobilization in India, New Delhi, Oxford University Press. 2004:
197-215.
5 Trans. Order of
society in accordance with the duties of the four classes and the four stages
of life.
6 See
www.bjp.org/philo.htm.
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