Was Hindu nationalism founded by an atheist?

India’s identity as a secular state is under threat.

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pro-Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government, the targeting of the 20 crore Muslim minority is accelerating. Over the past few years, so-called cow protection groups have attacked Muslims for eating beef.

According to him, Muslims deliberately insult their religious sentiments by ‘killing the cow’ as the cow is a sacred animal for Hindus.

The ruling party has also severely blocked the avenues of freedom of expression.

Concerned about these measures, 53 American universities, including Howard, Stanford, Princeton and Columbia, jointly organized a three-day conference ‘Dismantling Hindutva’ in September 2021 in which experts discussed the growing trend of Hindu nationalism. What did you think?

India is the largest democracy in the world. But many experts believe that democracy is in danger there.

As a South Asian researcher I think it is important to understand that the growing phenomenon of Hindu identity actually has its roots in the early twentieth century, when India was part of the British colonial empire.

Vinayak Savarkar, an anti-colonial revolutionary, first coined the term Hindutva in 1923, which can be loosely translated as ‘Hinduity’ or ‘Hindu-ness’. This ideology asserted that a native of India, even if he was not a Hindu, could easily embrace the geography, languages ​​and religions of ‘Mother India’.

A religious movement inspired by an atheist

Savarkar was an atheist who had little interest in religion other than its use to achieve political ends. In 1910, he was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in a plot to assassinate British Assistant Secretary of State Curzon Wylie.

While in prison, Savarkar wrote his first essay ‘Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?’

Christophe Gefferlot, one of the most famous researchers on the subject of Hindu nationalism, says that Savarkar’s work was ‘the first manifesto of Hindu nationalism’. Savarkar tried to unite India’s indigenous religions against Christians and Muslims who were considered outside invaders.

At that time, Savarkar wanted to call the subcontinent Maha Hindu Rashtra or a nation with a common geography, religion and culture. Followers of other religions such as Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism would simply have to pay homage to Hindu culture and accept a national identity within the broader Hinduism mainstream. The same would be the case for ‘foreigners’ like Muslims and Christians provided they did not try to impose their rule.

Earlier, the concept of Hindu identity did not include the color of religious faith. Instead, it based identity on notions of race and nationalism.

Savarkar was radicalized by the Pan-Islamic movement of 1919, Tehreek Khilafat, which swept the entire Islamic world and played a very important role in uniting the Muslim community in India.

According to Savarkar, the unity of Indian Muslims was a threat to the caste-based Hindu community of this period, and in view of this threat, a political party, the Hindu Mahasabha, was formed in 1921, in which Savarkar was a leading figure.

After his release from prison, the scope of Savarkar’s rhetoric was limited to Muslims and thus his anti-Muslim sentiment intensified.

In his book ‘Six Glorious Epochs’ written shortly before his death, Savarkar says that Muslims and Christians want to unite Hinduism. He also expressed his view that India should establish an authoritarian regime similar to the totalitarian regimes that existed in Germany, Japan and Italy during World War II.

Savarkar also believed that Muslims in law enforcement agencies and the military could potentially turn out to be traitors and their numbers needed to be kept in check.

Savarkar’s ideas became the foundation of contemporary Hindu nationalism.

The new shade of nationalism

In 1925, another leader, KB Hedgewar, emerged from the suburbs of Bombay and gave birth to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS. Today’s ruling party, the BJP, is a part of the organizational structure of the RSS.

By the 1940s, the number of basic volunteer members of the RSS reached six lakh. Today its number is more than 5 million. Under Modi’s leadership, Hindu nationalism was brought into the mainstream of politics and Hindu nationalists now occupy important positions in government cabinets and ministries.

As a political party, RSS was banned twice. The first time was when Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 by former RSS member Nathuram Godse. The second time was in the recent past after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, a holy site in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya in 1992.

As a result of the demolition of the mosque, riots broke out across the country where a thousand people, mostly Muslims, died. Hindu nationalists claim that this place is the birthplace of Lord Rama. In 2019, the Supreme Court of India gave permission to build a Ram temple at the disputed site.

After the first ban, the RSS and the Mahasabha founded their own political party in 1951 called the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the existing BJP. The Jana Sangh carried the slogan of integrating all minorities into a united Hindu nation or ‘making them Indian’.

For centuries the majority of Hindus viewed Muslims as another ethnic group or sub-caste of South Asia and not as an outside threat to be avoided. But Savarkar did not believe so. He wanted to create internal harmony among the various Hindu groups to defend themselves against any external attack.

Savarkar’s writings were the basis of the BJP’s 2014 manifesto, which stated the party’s aim to promote the ‘obsolete concept’ of the Hindu nation in one battle.

The Indian constitution speaks of secularism, but the BJP’s re-victory in 2019 signals that India may be undergoing a radical transformation and embrace a Hindu identity.

The construction of the Ram temple is expected to be completed before the next parliamentary elections in 2024. I think demolishing a Muslim place of worship and building a temple over it and celebrating it is an expression of change in India.

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Note: This article is taken from The Conversation and is being reprinted here with their permission. Its author, Saba Sattar, is a PhD student at The Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC.