The rise of Hindutva

What is Hindutva? What explains its popularity today?

In Mahatma Gandhiji’s riverside ashram in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, there is a poster that recalls his stand against majoritarianism. In it, he says, “I do not believe in the doctrine of the greatest good of the greatest number. It means in its nakedness that to achieve the supposed good of fifty-one percent, the interest of forty-nine percent, may be, or rather should be sacrificed. It is a heartless doctrine and has done harm to humanity.”

To Gandhiji, political life was inconceivable without an unconditional equality in moral and social relations. India’s commitment to religious equality and pluralism took on geopolitical significance after Independence with the creation of the Islamic theocratic state of Pakistan. It became doubly important for Gandhiji and Pandit Nehru to demonstrate that Muslims who stayed behind in secular India instead of heading to Islamic Pakistan upon partition had made the right decision.

However, the secular anti-colonial nationalism of Congress did not go unchallenged. The Muslim separatism that created Pakistan continued to thrive in Kashmir. And there was Hindu nationalism. The same Gujarat that produced India’s greatest son would also produce Narendra Modi.

The rise of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was formed in 1980, but its roots go back to the late 19th century. The party is the political wing of a network of groups referred to collectively as the Sangh Parivar (“a family of organizations” in Hindi). The movement’s main driver is the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), an all-male Hindu organization founded in 1925. At its most benign, the RSS is a disciplined force of volunteers dedicated to social service, usually among the first to offer help in natural disasters. At its worst, RSS is a militant organization whose members are also at the forefront of extreme intolerance, leading the charge in violence against minorities, organizing forced conversions, and attacking writers and artists.

The Sangh Parivar’s ideology is called “Hindutva” or Hindu-ness, to distinguish it from Hinduism, the religion of 80% of India’s 1.5 billion citizens. The term “Hindutva” was first coined in the 1920s by VD Savarkar, widely considered the ideological father of the movement. His text ‘The Essentials of Hindutva’ argued that being a Hindu was not only about a shared history and cultural symbolism, but that India territorially belonged to Hindus. Since Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism also have their origins in India, they were simply variations of Hinduism. However, Islam and Christianity (monotheistic, Abrahamic faiths) were to be rejected because their origins lay outside India, a point of context that is important for understanding today’s ongoing religious tensions in India.

Through the 1920s, Hindutva groups in India drew inspiration from Mussolini’s Italy and the Third Reich’s Germany. The movement originally arose in part as a form of resistance to British colonialism and embraced National Socialism from 1930s Germany to counter the British ideals of capitalism and individualism. Today, Hindutva comes in two distinct forms: Hindu nationalism as dogma that asserts that Indian national identity and culture are inseparable from the religion of Hinduism, and as a political movement advocating Hindu nationalism as the means to achieve a wholly Hindu state in India. Despite its protestations to the contrary, the Sangh Parivar is unmistakably religious in its character. At no time was its militant religiosity more on display than in December 1992, when an organized mob razed a 700 year old mosque to the ground. The Sangh’s main grievance over the years has been that India’s Congress-designed secularism has been too accommodating to Muslims and other minorities. One major sticking point is the state’s recognition of Muslim personal law for marriage and inheritance, while other Indians are subject to a uniform civil code.

BJP-led coalitions held power for brief periods in the 1990s, followed by a full five year term starting in 1998. While it grew in popularity in some pockets of large states, BJP could never match the steady vote gathering abilities of Congress due to the fact that Hindus never voted as a unified voting bloc. Prior to 2014, the Sangh had three structural problems. First was the incompatibility between religious traditionalism and economic socialism of the Sangh and the aspirations of a fast-growing middle class of Hindus who yearned for modern and higher standards of living. Second, caste divisions among Hindus made it impossible to unify them as a voting bloc. Third was the ever-present tensions between the ideologically dogmatic RSS and the politically pragmatic BJP, which often resulted in public spats.

Narendra Modi offered, in many ways, the perfect solution to all three problems. With pogroms in Gujarat, he established his credentials as an unflinching defender of Hindus, beyond reproach in matters of faith. Next, Modi, rather cleverly, severed the link between the Sangh and its socialist roots, instead steering it towards neoliberalism, and advocating free market capitalism and business friendly policies, even as he pursued largely symbolic religious causes such as banning cow slaughter. Modi designed a two-in-one package of rabid Hindutva coupled with pro-reform smartness to rebuild the Sangh’s image with the aspirational middle class. Second, Modi flaunted his own “backward caste” origins to win over warring caste factions and solidified the Hindu voting bloc by pointing to Muslims as their common enemy. By presenting an ever-present specter of imagined threats from Pakistan coupled with portrayal of Muslims as part of a global terrorist group, Modi cemented his position as the only leader who could build an alliance among Hindus. Third, as a member of RSS since the age of eight, his pedigree was unquestioned, and his authority was readily accepted by the RSS. In 2014, Modi offered the Sangh Parivar the best opportunity in its history of gaining power for a sustained period.

In the persona of Modi, who projected a masculine Hindu pride while seeming to embrace a pragmatic economic philosophy and sporting designer clothing, a Movado watch, Bulgari sunglasses, and Montblanc pens, the Sangh Parivar found a way to resolve, or at least greatly mitigate, the tensions between its ethos and the exigencies of contemporary political life.

Faced with the realities of governing, candidates who campaign as extremists often tend to become moderates when in power. But years after Modi’s arrival in Delhi, there are few signs of moderation in its Hindutva spin. The transition from “campaign Modi to governance Modi” has not been a smooth one yet.

Thanks to decades of Hindutva propaganda and an ongoing campaign to rewrite Indian history, Modi’s adulatory audience can today fill in any blanks he leaves with readily accessible mental flashcards. In one of his first parliamentary speeches as prime minister, Modi referred to the need to shed “1,200 years of slave mentality.” His audience required no further elaboration. They knew that negating 12 centuries of history meant transcending not just British colonialism but also India’s Muslim heritage.

There it was, Modi’s vision of India’s tryst with destiny: a glorious Hindu civilization brought down by invaders, minorities who demand more and more, and a strong leader prepared to teach the infiltrators a lesson.

Very often, we emulate the worst of that thing we compete with, out of fear we will lose to it. So it is with Hindutva which seeks to counter the worst of Islamism by emulating it. Telling people what to eat, squashing differences in opinion through social penalties, guilting non-conformists by shaming them, describing others as infidels or infiltrators, evangelical zeal and propaganda, and so on are the worst of Judeo-Christian-Islamic practices, now emulated by Hindutva. In contrast, Hinduism of yore competed with its rivals by ingesting the best of their ideas.

Ironically, a certain section of Hindus appears to greatly envy the Muslims. “They are people of steadfast faith. They have their own rules. They stand united and grow their numbers. They put their religion above all else…” may sound like accusations of Hindutva acolytes but they are really expressions of Islam envy. The result of this envy? Hindutva.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves,” says Cassius to Brutus, in one of the bard’s most famous plays, as they watch a crowd applauding Julius Caesar. The line is usually interpreted to mean that we the people are responsible for our actions and will get the leaders we deserve.

In his latest book (which I highly recommend), Fareed Zakaria, one of the world’s most astute socio-political commentators, offers an explanation for the rise of right wing nationalism in America, which culminated in the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Zakaria offers that as people become more affluent, they tend to seek and build tribal identities, seeking upward progress on Maslow’s pyramid. As the wallets get fatter and economic concerns fade, people exercise their new-found power in building social affinity groups and tribal bravado. As America became prosperous in the 1950s (its per capita GDP shot up to $15,000 per person), identity politics began to emerge in its politics. As a case in point, Joe Biden today presides over an economy that is arguably one of the best ever in the history of the United States. Yet his approval ratings among Republicans remain abysmally low. We have stopped caring about the economy. We have formed teams and taken sides. Politics has now become a muscular, combat sport.

One could argue that we are seeing the rise of such tribalism in India as well. In the new millennium, the fortunes of Indians have improved vastly even though major structural problems remain. The average Indian works harder now but also takes more money home. There is a section of Indians, especially the middle and upper middle-class Hindus in major metropolitan areas, which has grown more affluent over the last few decades and now seeks to flex its muscle politically. They have been in search of a Hindu champion. Modi and Hindutva are what the doctor has ordered for them.

The rise of Hindutva must give one room for pause. Hinduism, once renowned for its astonishing flexibility in accepting vastly diverse opinions, has been reduced to a caricature of itself. The growing affluence of Indians has not led to a secure confidence. Rather, it has fueled paranoia and insecurity among its citizens.

In its long and storied history, Hinduism has encountered many challenges. None was more formidable than the Buddha. The Hindus debated the Buddhists for a good part of a thousand years after the birth of the Sakya Muni. At one point, Hinduism was nearly extinguished from the land. Then came the Muslim invaders around 800 AD. And then came the British, even more formidable than the Mongols. In each of these challenges, Hinduism not only found a way to gracefully debate its way out of existentially tricky situations, but gave birth to new ideas, songs and art in the process. The secret of Hinduism’s longevity has always been its ability to ingest the best of ideas from its rivals and effectively rendering them irrelevant. A muscular Hinduism is an oxymoron.

Today, its challenge comes from its own. The Sangh Parivar, which seeks to restore Hinduism to its original greatness, may be sowing the seeds of the religion’s demise. An ordinary apprentice cannot restore a Picasso to its original pristine condition. It is only another Picasso who can. Until that Picasso arrives, those who are genuine practitioners of the faith must find a way to keep it without being led astray by opportunistic demagoguery.

This too shall pass. The truths of the great religions are indestructible. That is the very nature of truth itself: to be immortal, indestructible, and timeless.

Hope you found this informative. Have a great day. May the Force be with us.