by Hilal Ahmed
In this sense, the motherland in territorial terms may also be read as a warning to Muslims that they must recognize India as their true homeland! The Hindutva adherence to ‘purity of culture’ may be seen as a reminder that Muslims must stick to the five core values of Indian/Hindutva sects. And unquestioned submission to ancestral pride is a strict advice to Muslims, making it clear that they must give priority to their Indian ancestors over their pan-Islamic connections.
Yet, this reformulation of Hindutva’s three core beliefs does not fully explain Bhagwat’s enigmatic comment that Hindutva without Muslims is meaningless. Was it just a passing reference or a jumla? Why does Hindutva need Muslims? This is precisely what this chapter asks. It explores the changing meanings of the term Hindutva, and tries to situate Muslims in it. More specifically, it looks at two related questions: (a) If the three core beliefs of Hindutva are universally applicable to all those who reside in contemporary India, then why is that only Muslims are asked to prove their submission to the motherland? And even if this demand is accepted and (b) What could be the criteria to evaluate their patriotism?
Versions of Hindutva
The BJP’s senior leader and former chief minister of Himachal Pradesh Shanta Kumar made an interesting comment in July 2018. He said:
Hindutva is being misunderstood. And our own people are responsible for this misunderstanding [. . .] I have raised it within the party [. . .] Hindutva is what Vivekananda said [. . .] If somebody fights over it, he is not a Hindu [. . .] some mistakes are made by our own people [. . .] This is not the Hindutva the BJP swears by.7
Shanta Kumar’s observation is not surprising. For a long time, the RSS, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) and even the BJP did not recognize Hindutva as a relevant cultural or political concept. The complicated story of Hindutva actually goes against the popular portrayal of this term as a unified set of cultural political principles. It is marked by a number of contradictions and contestation. Therefore, the changing meanings of Hindutva, especially with regard to Muslims, must be traced historically.
The term ‘Hindutva’ was coined by V.D. Savarkar, the leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, in 1923. In his book Hindutva, Savarkar identifies a few characteristics of the Hind nation—a marked geography, a common language, a common culture and a belief that this land is a holy land. He argues:
A Hindu [. . .] is he who looks upon the land that extends from Sindu to Sindu—from the Indus to the Seas, as the land of his forefathers—his Fatherland (Pitribhu), who inherits the blood of that race whose first discernible source could be traced to the Vedic Saptasindhus [. . .] who has inherited [. . .] the common classical language Sanskrit and is represented by a common history, a common literature, art and architecture, law and jurisprudence, rites and rituals, ceremonies and sacraments, fairs and festivals; and who above all, addresses this land, this Sindhusthan as his Holyland (Punyabhu), as the land of his prophets and seers, of his godmen and gurus, the land of piety and pilgrimage.8
This European nation state–style definition of Hindutva is full of contradictions. Savarkar not only excludes Muslims and Christians from his imagination of Hindu society (as their Holyland is outside India!) but he also disregards the cultures and languages of those communities who do not wish to inherit Sanskrit as a source of identity. In fact, there is no space for cultural distinctiveness, democratic dissent and federal values—the principles, which are defended by the Indian Constitution—in Savarkar’s schema of Hindutva state.
The RSS did not accept Savarakar’s conceptualization of Hindutva (although his ideas continue to inspire their political rhetoric even in the 1940s). In his book Bunch of Thoughts, former RSS chief and one of the main ideologues of the Sangh M.S. Golwalkar rejects this overemphasis on the term Hindutva. Quoting Dr Hedgewar (the founder of the RSS), Golwalkar argues that even the term ‘Hindu’ is not appropriate to describe the mission of Sangh. He notes:
Doctorji used to say that in our land the word ‘Rashtriya’ naturally means ‘Hindu’ and therefore the word ‘Hindu’ need not be used. He would say, ‘If we use the word ‘Hindu’, it will only mean that we consider ourselves only as one of the innumerable communities in this land and that we do not realize our natural status as the nationals of this country.’ (p. 116)9
For Golwalkar and the RSS, at least in the 1960s, the term Hindutva was a communal expression. This was the reason why in all the resolutions passed by the RSS in the period 1950–91, the term ‘Bhartiyakarn’ (Indianization) was used very prominently. In fact, Golwalkar compares the Hindu Mahasabha and Savarkar with the Muslim League! He says:
Veer Savarkarji wrote a beautiful book Hindutva and [the] Hindu Mahasabha based itself on that pure philosophy of Hindu nationalism. But once the Hindu Mahasabha passed a resolution that Congress should not give up its ‘nationalist’ stand by holding talks with [the] Muslim League but should ask [the] Hindu Mahasabha to do that job! It only means that [. . .] Hindu Mahasabha represented the Hindu counterpart of the rabidly communal, anti-national Muslim League!10
It is important to mention that the RSS still upholds this criticism. In a recent article, Rakesh Sinha, an official thinker (vicharak) of Sangh and a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, makes a very similar point. Quoting the above-mentioned passage, Sinha points out: ‘No literature of the RSS advocates discrimination against minorities or the formation of a theocratic state. Critics intentionally impose the Hindu Mahasabha’s perspective on the RSS.’11
Does it mean that the RSS’s Hindutva is different from Savarkar’s Hindutva?
The term Hindutva is wholeheartedly accepted by the RSS as a slogan during the heyday of the Babri Masjid–Ram Mandir debate in the late 1980s. However, it was only in 1996 that Hindutva was eventually recognized as an ideological entity. Two interesting examples are relevant here.
On 18 January 1996, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an organization created by the RSS in 1964, passed a resolution called the Hindu Agenda. The first point of this resolution defines Hindutva thus:
Hindutva is synonymous with nationality and Hindu society is undisputedly the mainstream of Bharat. Hindu interest is the national interest. Hence, the honour of Hindutva and Hindu interests should be protected at all cost[s].12
The enthusiasm to appropriate Hindutva as an ideological phenomenon can also be found in the self-description of the RSS. According to the RSS’s official website:
Not only the context of Bharat, but also the global situation re-confirms the validity of the philosophical foundation of [the] Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. That the coming or twenty-first century will be a century dominated by Hindutva and what it stands for is a prophecy which has been heard from many quarters, including eminent historians.13
It is clear that Hindutva is celebrated by the RSS, but there is no serious effort to define it. This confusion is also very evident in the BJP’s stated political ideology.
The 1998 manifesto of the BJP describes it as a party which is deeply committed to the idea of Hindutva, a political philosophy that is supposed to be a religion-neutral term.14 According to the national website of the BJP:
The BJP is committed to the concept of ‘One Nation, One People and One Culture’ [. . .] The unique cultural and social diversity in India is woven into a larger civilizational fabric by thousands of years of common living and common and shared values, beliefs, customs, struggles, joy and sorrow, as well as symbols of high degree of unity without uniformity [. . .] This cultural heritage which is central to all regions, religions and languages, is a civilizational identity and constitutes the cultural nationalism of India which is the core of Hindutva. This we believe is the identity of our ancient nation ‘Bharatvarsha’. 15
However, this commitment to Hindutva is not part of the official constitution of the party. Article IV of the BJP constitution, published in 2012, says:
The Party shall be committed to nationalism and national integration, democracy, ‘Gandhian approach to socio-economic issues, leading to the est
ablishment of an egalitarian society free from exploitation’, positive secularism, that is ‘sarv dharm sambhav’, and value-based politics.16
Hindutva is not the official philosophy of the BJP either. The BJP website describes ‘Integral Humanism’ as the stated philosophy of the party. Integral humanism is based on the four lectures delivered by Deen Dayal Upadhyaya in the mid-1960s. These lectures offer a critique of national politics by evoking the intrinsic relationship between individual and society.
Interestingly, there are two official versions of the Deen Dayal Upadhyay lectures. The contents of the lectures given on the national website of the BJP are very different from that on the Gujarat BJP official website.
The national website’s version of Lecture 3 (‘Individual of Society’) talks about the specificities of ‘group feelings’ and group identity. It says:
[The] Group has its feelings too. These are not exactly similar to the individual’s feelings. Group feelings cannot be considered a mere arithmetic addition of individual feelings [. . .] A person may be ready to forgive and forget a personal abuse to him, but the same man loses his temper if you abuse his society. It is possible that a person who is of high character in his personal life is unscrupulous as a member of the society. Similarly, an individual can be good in society but not so in his individual life.17
This description is concluded with an explanatory paragraph.
There is a thesis is that when a group of people live together for a long time, by historical tradition and association, by continued intercourse, they begin to think similarly and have similar customs. It is true that some uniformity is brought about by staying together.18
But this is not the case with the BJP’s Gujarat website. Between the above-mentioned two paragraphs, there is an explicatory description, which says:
Let me give you an illustration. Once, during a conversation between Shri Vinobaji and the Sarsanghchalak of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Shri Guruji, a question arose as to where the modes of thinking of Hindus and Muslims differ. Guruji said to Vinobaji that there are good and bad people in every society. There can be found honest and good people in Hindus as well as in Muslims. Similarly, rascals can be seen in both the societies. No particular society has a monopoly of goodness. However, it is observed that Hindus, even if they are rascals in individual life, when they come together in a group, they always think of good things. On the other hand, when two Muslims come together, they propose and approve of things which they themselves in their individual capacity would not even think of. They start thinking in an altogether different way. This is an everyday experience. Vinobaji admitted that there was truth in this observation but had no reasons to explain it. If we analyse this situation, we shall discover that the modes of thinking of an individual and of a society are always different. These two do not bear an arithmetic relation. If a thousand good men gather together, it cannot be said for certain that they will think similarly of good things.19
So the question is which ‘integral humanism’ is authentic? Does the BJP as a registered political party still believe that Muslims as a group cannot think of ‘good things’? What is the relationship between integral humanism and Hindutva?
The RSS and the BJP’s strategy to justify their Hindutva by referring to the 1996 Supreme Court judgement (the famous Bal Thackeray case in which Hindutva was defined as ‘a way of life’) is also problematic. It is true that the court used the expression ‘way of life’ for recognizing Hindutva; yet, it asks all the political parties and other stakeholders to stop using religion for political benefits. The court defines Hindutva as a synonym of Hinduism and makes a clear distinction between Hindutva and political mobilization in the name of religion. The court observes:
The term ‘Hindutva’ is related more to the way of life of the people in the subcontinent. It is difficult to appreciate how [. . .] the term ‘Hindutva’ or ‘Hinduism’ per se [. . .] can be assumed to mean and be equated with narrow fundamentalist Hindu religious bigotry.20
In the concluding part of the judgement, it is forcefully argued that:
Fundamentalism of any colour or kind must be curbed with a heavy hand to preserve and promote the secular creed of the nation. Any misuse of these terms must, therefore, be dealt with strictly [. . .] Our conclusion is that [. . .] three speeches of Bal Thackeray amount to corrupt practice [. . .] Since the appeal made to the voters in these speeches was to vote for Dr Ramesh Prabhoo on the ground[s] of his religion as a Hindu.
Ironically, the BJP as well as the opponents of the BJP completely ignored this concluding part of the Supreme Court judgement. The BJP began to use Hindutva as a political concept, ignoring the legal–ethical warning inherent in the judgement, while the secularists denounced Hindutva ignoring the positive meanings of it offered by the court.
This is exactly what Justice J.S. Verma, who delivered this famous judgement, outlined in an interview in 2003. He said, ‘The politicians who are practising or using Hindutva to their advantage are misconstruing and misusing it. They have not fully appreciated the abstract of the judgement.’21 This observation is absolutely correct. The opponent of the BJP legitimized the BJP/RSS’s ambiguous and selective use of the term Hindutva. They created a binary between Hindutva and secularism as if Hindutva can only be understood as an antithesis of their version of secularism!
Nevertheless, the success of the BJP in 2014 created an intellectual pressure on the RSS to offer a systematic interpretation of Hindutva. Bhagwat’s lectures are the very first attempt by the RSS to define what they mean by it. At the same time, the opponents of the BJP/RSS are also struggling to work out a non-BJP/RSS version of political Hinduism, if not Hindutva. Interestingly, the struggle to define Hindutva always revolves around Muslims!
Hindutva’s Muslims
Opposing the recommendations of the Sachar Committee Report, Mohan Bhagwat argued that Muslims in India must realize that their forefathers were Hindus, who eventually converted to Islam.22 Bhagwat has been making comments of this kind for a long time. There is no doubt that the majority of South Asian Muslims are converted Muslims. (By this logic, except Prophet Muhammad, all Muslims of the world are converted, as their forefathers embraced Islam at different historical moments!) However, the connection Bhagwat establishes between converted Muslims and the Sachar report is highly misleading. Does it mean that Muslims are marginalized because they are converted? Or, does it mean that ‘ghar wapsi’ (the reconversion of the converted Muslims) would be the ultimate way out to deal with the economic, cultural and educational backwardness of Muslims?
Bhagwat’s comment is not entirely new. Savarkar, too, in his 1923 book Hindutva talks of converted Muslims and Christians. In his opinion, even converted Muslims cannot be accommodated into the Hindutva fold. He says:
Some of our Mohammedan or Christian countrymen who had originally been forcibly converted to a non-Hindu religion and who consequently have inherited along with Hindus, a common Fatherland and a greater part of the wealth of a common culture—language, law, customs, folklore and history—are not and cannot be recognized as Hindus. For though Hinduism to them is Fatherland as [it is] to any other Hindu, yet, it is not to them a Holyland [. . .] Their Holyland is far off in Arabia or Palestine.23
There is an inherent contradiction in Savarkar’s argument. In his opinion, the Hindu religion should not be treated as the decisive criterion to determine the Hindutva of any group of people; however, when it comes to converted Muslims and Christians, their belief in holy places of worship is treated as a principle to evaluate their patriotism. Savarkar, interestingly, evades this inconsistency in this small book.
Despite the fact that M.S. Golwalkar was very critical of Savarkar and his conception of Hindutva, he adheres to Savarkar’s framework. In his view, Muslims, Christians and communists are the three main internal threats that India faces. According to him:
Muslims must realize that we are all one people and it is the same blood that courses in our veins [. .
.] they are only Hindu converts [. . .] the problem can and must be solved by Indian Muslims owning the country and its ancient culture as theirs.24
The converted Muslims are seen here as Hindus by blood. But Golwalkar, like Savarkar, does not believe that the ‘pure Hindu blood’ criterion would be able to solve the problem. In his opinion, converted Muslims, like the other ‘racial’ Muslims, must prove their loyalty towards Hindus and India.
This formulation is self-contradictory in two senses: (a) If converted Muslims are actually the ‘poor Hindu victims of forcible conversion’, why should they be subject to any ‘loyalty test’? (b) Is the natural ‘purity of Hindu blood’ not capable of erasing the impact of ideas such as Islam even now?
The BJS, the predecessor of the BJP, however, offered a practical way out to this ‘Muslim question’. The party’s official manifesto of 1951 says:
Jana Sangh considers them (Muslims) flesh of our flesh, the blood of our blood [. . .] It looks forward to their disassociating foreign ways from the tenets of their religion. They are welcome to worship the Islamic way. They are expected to live the Bharatiya way.25
This emphasis on the Bharatiya way eventually led to a full-fledged idea of Indianization. The 1957 manifesto of the BJS, for example, identifies Indianization as one of the main objectives. It says:
For the preservation of national unity [. . .] Jana Sangh will take the following steps: (a) Creating a feeling of equality and oneness of Hindu society by liquidating untouchability and casteism (b) Nationalizing all non-Hindus by inculcating in them the ideal of Bharatiya culture.26