Hindutva is based on a certain definition of the Hindu identity and is developed through certain premises of historical events. The question of identity is raised in this critique of Savarkar’s thesis.

Savarkar’s Hindutva has become the foundation of a certain form of religious nationalism in India. Dominant forces within the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh would like to mould India by such an ideology. They would like to see policies and laws promulgated and institutions set up that reflect this ideology. For that reason, it is important to read and analyze the basis of this framework and its implications to India in specific and South Asia in general.

The central thesis of his argument is around the question of Hindu and Hindutva. A Hindu, he claims is an individual defined by the land described by Sindhu – Sindhu, the old name for the river Indus and Sindhu, the oceans. But it is not enough to be related to this land. Savarkar argues that you were a Hindu if your forefathers came from this land, if you find yourself connected to this land AND your religious commitment evolved from this land. Hindutva, he argues, is not about the religion of Hinduism but the cultural essence of the Hindu. There is a sleight of hand in that the culture itself is defined by religion.

Thus, he argues, a Sikh is a Hindu as is a Jain or a Buddhist. Their religion evolved from within the subcontinent and they are as much part of the Hindutva consciousness. On the other hand, Muslims and Christians are not part of this Hindu tradition. Their religions evolved in Western Asia. Savarkar argues that even though most Muslims and Christians in India were converts – converted through various processes from Hindu families as he defines them – and even though their forefathers were Hindus, by committing their loyalties to Islam or Christianity, they have lost their connectivity to the Hindu traditions – traditions which describe Hindutva. Having lost their commitment to these traditions, or at the very least, having split commitments to the tradition of Islam or Christianity on one hand and the land they live in, on the other, they embody an intrinsic conflict of loyalties.

Significant implications follow – if a certain community is defined to have an intrinsic conflict of loyalties based on the geography of the source of its belief, it is easily argued that the community cannot be trusted and every action of that community must be questioned. The community becomes defined as a community of second class citizens. While individuals of that community may become first class citizens owing to something special that they contribute – such as sporting superstars, military heroes, etc – they do have an unenviable position. Every individual within that community is intrinsically untrustworthy unless proven otherwise.

Such an understanding destroys the fabric of a society. On one hand it affects policies. Most democracies have a variety of policies designed to empower minority groups to help them access opportunities more equally; now one can question the rights to such opportunities of minorities that are intrinsically semi-loyal. And having questioned these rights, one can begin to promulgate policies that limit the rights of these minorities. This however is a rather obvious problem that can be stymied by watchful citizens groups. The problem that is more heinous relates to the changing perception of this group of minorities in the eyes of the Hindu (as defined above by Savarkar) majority. The larger majority within the Indian society begins to form a worldview that their neighbours, friends and members of their communities who believe in another religion are less loyal to their nation, or their community and cannot always be trusted. This sentiment leads to suspicion against members of another religion. It affects the stability of society. Housing societies in numerous cities have been known to refuse ownership or tenancy to Muslims. Social relationships have become more tenuous. Usual social conflicts that exist in any community – fights between kids, arguments between neighbors – suddenly takes on a different hue, a malicious intent is seen. A people cannot exist this way, a society cannot live at peace.

Annihilating an entire community is neither possible nor desirable. The Nazis, with their immense access to resources and power, could not do it. The Americans with their power have not been able to destroy another less powerful community of Native Americans nor were they able to keep subdued another seemingly powerless community of African Americans. The anger, and hatred that breeds in even envisaging such a process makes a society numb; it arrests all development and growth. We are seeing the effects of such ideas in central Europe, in Kurdistan, among numerous other places. For generations afterwards, fear and revenge guide the ethos of the society and all its energies are caught up this quagmire. Even a powerful nation like the USA recognized this and its domestic policies attempt to reflect this recognition.

Clearly, then, Savarakar’s understanding of Hindutva cannot be the worldview that the Indian people can accept without hurting their own people, their own nation. Hindutva cannot become the basis on which a stable, prosperous Indian nation can be built and any nationalist ideology must come to recognize this especially in times when economic development is the basis of progress and it demands peace. These are implications that some of the nationalists recognized clearly.

While the implications of such a worldview were disastrous, the basis of the worldview also had to be critiqued. Mainly, two kinds of critiques persist. One is based on questioning the correctness of the history that Savarkar cites. Groups have questioned his reading of the events during the wars between the Mughals, other Muslim kingdoms and the Rajputs and Marathas. Yet others have questioned the role of the Marathas themselves, arguing that they were largely interested in their own power and influence – like any other ambitious ruling class – citing various treaties signed and alliances struck up between Muslim rulers and Marathas, sometimes at the expense of other Hindu kingdoms, and the oppression and plunder that they inflicted on various groups in what is now Chattisgarh, and Orissa.

While the historical basis of some of these events is questionable, given the paradigm of modern history, it is not clear that the bravery or patriotic leanings of one ruler can be questioned in any unbiased fashion. Thus, the protagonists of such a critique often get trapped in the similar biases and propaganda that they accuse Savarkar and his followers of disseminating.

Another critique is based on the premise that the central question of Savarkar’s thesis – who is a Hindu – is not really relevant to the modern nation state. We are a secular society where religion is a private matter, and identities derived from religion are irrelevant. Given that we have equal rights with respect to the state and this is a democratic state, this question is of little consequence. In fact, this critique stands on rather shaky grounds. For one, arguments of minority pandering (that in fact has been strategically used by political parties) have been use to shake up the premise of this critique. In addition, the state finds it difficult to resolve injustices within the communities – such as marriage laws or inheritance laws, for example – without engaging with the question of identities that are derived from religion. It becomes even more difficult for it to resolve problems between communities that are perceived to be tied to such identities – the slaughter of cows is one example and the Babri Masjid demolition is another. Most significantly, for most people in India, religious identity and other social identities derived from religious beliefs are important. Thus, any critique based on the irrelevancy of the religious identity is acceptable only to a certain elite; it certainly is not accepted by the larger Indian populace.

Thus, the two dominant critiques of the premises that are the foundation of Savarkar’s Hindutva, fail. Even though the implications of this worldview are frightening, its appeal to a certain kind of tradition, and its easy apportionment of the blame for the problems of the Indian nation also appeal to many. The one critique that had found success in presenting the misinterpretations which form the basis of Hindutva – one that perhaps found much success in the pre-independence era thanks to Gandhi and one that has not found favor with the secular intelligentsia since independence is based on questioning Savarkar’s answers to “Who is a Hindu?”.

It is a critique that shows that Savarkar’s attempt to construct the Hindu identity was based on misrepresentations and might even have been politically motivated like the white supremacist identities in various parts of the world. In addition, by providing a different worldview derived from a religious framework, such a definition of a Hindu in fact provides an identity that is relevant and meaningful to a large population and helps create a stable society that can provide an environment of economic, intellectual and spiritual growth for its citizens.

This quandary is not unique to the Indian society. Various societies around the world – in the Islamic world, in the USA, in Europe – are confronted with this question. In this modern world, with homogenization and mass production of identities that seem irrelevant to people, religious worldviews seem to provide that relevant identity. The secularist claim, that the religious worldview is irrelevant, is unfounded. It has provided a language that is widely understood and used for communities to find their own identities, and understand their relationship to the rest of the world. While there is justifiable focus on the problems with religion, there really is no framework that is not problematic – including the framework of modern science, and that of humanities. The framework of modern science tied by assumptions of objectivity and reductionism do not provide a meaningful identity – and when they do provide an identity it is that of a consumerist or manufacturer, etc, which are in fact even more frightening and as violent. The framework of humanities is for most part inaccessible to the common people, shrouded as it is by jargon and fortified as it is within the ivory towers of academe. Even so, humanities itself had a rather oppressive birth and a violent history.

It is this quandary that various groups around the world are beginning to face today – those working for religious harmony in India, those working on issues of religious identity in Europe, those looking at the religious right and religious supremacist groups in USA as well as those working to counter religious extremism in the North Africa and Middle East. For most part, these groups have attempted to solve religious extremism by arguing that the religious framework is irrelevant – and this method has been of limited effect. As we see people make choices that are driven by this sense of identity and often counter to their own economic or other personal needs, it is clear that this identity is certainly not irrelevant. And that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Any feasible alternative then has to recognize this question of identity and make it central to the evolution of the alternative. In addition, it must be able to express the worldview and the identity in a language that people understand, can talk about and mould for themselves. What such an alternative might be is another issue.

Sanat Mohanty