By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Why Hindutva Has Probably Peaked

Hindutva (lit. 'Hindu-ness') is a political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and the belief in establishing Hindu hegemony within India. The political ideology was formulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1922.

The third consecutive Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, Modi 3.0, has now been in power for slightly over a year. Unlike Modi 1.0 and Modi 2.0, the current BJP-led government is a coalition government that faces political constraints and must make compromises to enact its agenda. Recent trends raise the question of whether conservatism, social and political, including Hindu nationalism or Hindutva, has peaked in India.

This question is distinct from whether the BJP has peaked as a political force. In fact, the two questions may be inversely related, particularly if the BJP has little more to gain from promoting an explicitly Hindutva agenda. Hindu nationalism is an amorphous idea that can take on many forms, ranging from advocating for the establishment of a theocracy, to privileging Hindu customs and forcing assimilation, to the establishment of a majoritarian state that would still maintain constitutional rights for all, to the idea of treating Hinduism as a sort of cultural brand for India. The last of these visions seems to have increasingly prevailed: a far cry from what many on the right had previously advocated.

It was 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.

There is also a mutually respectful partnership between Modi and S.Jaishankar.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains highly popular, according to polls, and the right-leaning BJP does not seem to be at electoral risk, having performed well in recent local elections. Nonetheless, there are three reasons why the specific political agenda associated with Hindutva has peaked and may no longer play an important role going forward.

Narendra Modi was sworn in as India’s prime minister for the third consecutive term. He is widely perceived to have less authority this time, as his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s tally in Parliament fell 32 seats short of the majority mark.

As a result, Modi now heads a government heavily dependent on alliance partners. The latter do not agree with several items on the BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda.

For example, his campaign in the recent general election was dominated by his allegation that the opposition INDIA bloc would rob lower caste and tribal Hindus of their reservation entitlements in education and jobs, and give these to Muslims. His party pledged that it would prevent Muslims from enjoying reservation benefits under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category.

To understand the future of Hindu nationalism in India, it is important to understand its nature. Hindu nationalism is a spectrum spanning four schools of thought. The most extreme, and least likely to pass, is the idea that India should become a Hindu theocracy: a state run by religious leaders, like Iran. This, however, may be what many in the West first think when they hear the phrase “Hindu nationalism.” A very small minority of Indians hold this position, and it has “almost no place in the political mainstream.” Indeed, the fact that modern India is a democracy has changed the very nature of Hinduism. A democratic ethos has spurred political and religious leaders to reinterpret the role of caste and gender in ways that differ from orthodox Hinduism, essentially creating a modernist Hinduism.

The next two categories on Chandra’s spectrum – in increasing order of moderation – hold either that “India is a Hindu nation that is the exclusive domain of the Hindu people. Non-Hindus would be forced to assimilate in ways that honored Hindu cultural customs to the detriment and, eventually, the dissolution of their own traditions,” or an approach that would “give Hindus legal superiority, effectively making non-Hindus second-class citizens. While non-Hindus would still have access to all of the guarantees provided under the Indian Constitution, they would have to accept the state’s endorsement of preferential treatment for Hindus.” These two approaches together constitute the political movement known as Hindutva, and what the Hindutva discourse and its activists advocate: not necessarily a religious state, but a majoritarian one. The latter of the two above schools of thought resembles Zionism and the way that Israel conceives of itself primarily as a Jewish state for the Jewish people.

On the most moderate end of the spectrum are “those who believe that Hinduism, by virtue of being the largest and oldest of India’s religious groups, should essentially occupy the role of first among equals. According to this viewpoint, Hinduism in India is akin to Christianity in the United States: it should not necessarily receive official recognition, but it should instead be accorded cultural superiority.”

The most extreme approach – of turning India into a theocracy – is impossible, because nobody has the stomach or desire for it, not even most Hindu nationalists. A traditionalist Hindu theocracy would be incompatible with a modern economy and society, and as many have argued, Hindutva is actually Hindu modernity, a project to remake India as an ethnocentric nation-state similar to that of the Meiji Restoration’s modernization of feudal Japan as a modern nationalist state. In a bid to forge unity among Hindus, Hindutva has stridently opposed divisions of caste, sect, and traditional ritual and purity boundaries. This is another misunderstanding many have of Hindu nationalism: the belief that it is an upper caste project opposed by lower castes whereas many individuals from such castes see Hindutva as a vehicle for uplift and respect within the Hindu umbrella.

The second-most extreme approach, the forced assimilation of non-Hindus into a Hindu mainstream – is also unlikely because Hinduism itself is so diverse and multifaceted that there is no one Hinduism to assimilate into. Moreover, the BJP has, to varying degrees of success, tried to reach out to other communities, such as Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, Christians in the Northeast, and even Shia and Pasmanda (lower caste) Muslims. India’s social structure and democratic system clearly do not lend themselves to an extremely hardline approach, and the BJP’s leadership often has different priorities than their more ideological bedfellows who do not have to win elections.

It is likelier that India will see-saw between the last two approaches. The Hindu nature of India will become more pronounced as modernity inevitably dissolves caste and caste politics. Individuals in a modern state get educated, travel, meet, and eat with people of all backgrounds, and work in a variety of professions. A recent poll registered a drop in the percentage of couples saying their marriages were arranged – almost always within the same caste – from 68 percent in 2020 to 44 percent in 2023. All this lends itself to people identifying less with castes and regions and more with umbrella groups such as “Hindus” or “Indians.” In this sense, Hindu nationalism will not disappear, because the majority of Indians are Hindu, but Indian society and mores are becoming more liberal, so the Hindu identity will be more cultural than religious.

Right-wing parties and groups would likely favor an approach in which the state leans toward preferential treatment for Hindus while guaranteeing the constitutional rights of other groups. For example, a recent draft constitution of a proposed Hindu nation by 30 eminent Hindu seers would guarantee Muslims and Christians all the same rights as other groups, except the right to vote, although it would be difficult to see this becoming an actual mainstream position. More likely, the right would seek to achieve this by playing up of Hindu history and heritage in the education, cultural, and media realms.

Most other parties and groups, on the left and center, whatever they may say about secularism, caste, and other issues, would channel a position that amounts to giving Hinduism, as a cultural identity, the place of first among equals in India. Most countries in the world, in fact, tend to give their dominant cultures such a role, including many democracies, such as France, and Japan, which promote elements of their culture, language, and cuisine through laws, subsidies, and social norms. Very few states are purely neutral arbitrators of the culture of their citizens, for otherwise, countries might as well be formed through drawing arbitrary lines on a map.

Right-wing parties and groups would likely favor an approach in which the state leans toward preferential treatment for Hindus while guaranteeing the constitutional rights of other groups. For example, a recent draft constitution of a proposed Hindu nation by 30 eminent Hindu seers would guarantee Muslims and Christians all the same rights as other groups, except the right to vote, although it would be difficult to see this becoming an actual mainstream position. More likely, the right would seek to achieve this by playing up of Hindu history and heritage in the education, cultural, and media realms.

Most other parties and groups, on the left and center, whatever they may say about secularism, caste, and other issues, would channel a position that amounts to giving Hinduism, as a cultural identity, the place of first among equals in India. Most countries in the world, in fact, tend to give their dominant cultures such a role, including many democracies, such as France, and Japan, which promote elements of their culture, language, and cuisine through laws, subsidies, and social norms. Very few states are purely neutral arbitrators of the culture of their citizens, for otherwise, countries might as well be formed through drawing arbitrary lines on a map.

This most moderate position is This most moderate position is already a fait accompli because the symbolism and phraseology of much of the Indian state and its political life already draw from the Hindu tradition. For example, India’s national motto “Satyameva Jayate” is taken from the Hindu scriptures, the Upanishads. The Supreme Court’s motto “Dharmo Rakshati Rakshitah” likewise presupposes the belief in dharma and draws from the Mahabharata and Manusmriti, works associated with Hinduism. The flag of India contains a chakra, or wheel, a symbol of sovereignty in Hinduism and Buddhism.

Indian independence leader Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi borrowed heavily from Hindu philosophy in his political messaging, and often spoke of his wish for a, the kingdom of Rama, using language often associated today with Hindutva. (Gandhi’s utopian version differs from the Hindutva version, but the conception of both is still rooted in the Hindu Ramayana). Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has recently recast himself as a tapasvi, an ascetic from the Hindu tradition, and framed his recent political march as a yatra, a Hindu pilgrimage.

Even a secular, moderate politics in India will therefore be infused with Hindu elements by way of osmosis from the culture of the population, which is saturated in religious symbolism. Therefore, India will always contain an element of Hindu nationalism. The question is not whether Hindu nationalism will be part of India’s political landscape or not, but whether and to what extent non-Hindus will be able to play a role. The question is whether India will become an ethnoreligious nation-state like Israel or remain a formally neutral state in regards to culture and religion, while also being deeply permeated by the majority group’s customs as is the case in France, Japan, and many other countries.

 

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