Hindutva
By 2017 the rise of majoritarianism fueled by Hindu ultra-nationalism threatened India's pluralistic, rich and diverse traditions. Muslims have become targets in India and their oppressors enjoy impunity and oxygen from the government. In Narendra Modi's India, it seemed as if a new anti-Muslim dog whistle emerged in the political theater every few months. The aims of India’s Hindu extremist agitators were simple: to consolidate the disparate Hindu vote, leveraging animus toward Muslims, and further ostracize the country’s 200 million Muslims, effectively erasing them from the public sphere.
It began in 2014 with “ghar wapsi,” which translates as “homecoming,” but serves as a euphemism for a campaign to convert Muslims “back” to Hinduism. Then there came agitation against “love jihad” — the supposed surreptitious use of romantic relationships by Muslim men to convert Hindu women to Islam. This was then followed by the issue of the slaughter of cows, an animal revered as holy by Hindus, but also an affordable protein source for its minority population.
These issues pop up simultaneously, but it is the anti-cow slaughter campaign that was most persistent and violent, leading to the murder of Muslims in the livestock trade by Hindu extremist mobs. Other issues, such as the Islamic call to prayer and Muslim women’s divorce rights, have taken center stage in India’s frenzied media debate.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) appeals to the lowest denominator in human behavior in inciting violence against “the other.” In doing so it seeks to exploit religious feelings and utilises traditions and beliefs based on social and gender inequalities that still influence a substantial section of the people.
The police under the Samajwadi party ignored the toxic campaign against cow slaughter that had been going on in the area by rightwing communal organisations. The acts of murder of Muslims accused of cow slaughter through a manufactured rumo sent a message to the community. The message resonates through the history of anti-Muslim violence engineered by the RSS. It is a message delivered by the man the present Prime Minister considers his “guruji.” Golwalkar had said, “The foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e. of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizen’s rights".
Farmers, mainly Hindus, sell unproductive cattle to contractors. A blanket ban on slaughter means the farmer will have to pay for their upkeep which, at current prices, would amount to around Rs. 100 a day or Rs. 36,500 a year. According to the cattle census, already there are 53 lakh stray cattle abandoned by their owners. If all these animals were to be “protected,” as demanded by the Hindutva brigade apart from the thousands of hectares of land required, the expense to the Central Government would be around 20,000 crores of rupees a year. This is more than the entire amount spent on the tribal sub-plan, more than the entire amount spent for children under the anganwadis, and more than all the schemes for pensions for senior citizens.
More than Muslims, there are communities among Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs in different States who eat beef. The National Commission on Cattle set up by the Vajpayee Government in 2002 to promote a ban on cow slaughter also reluctantly admitted ( para 167) that “ extreme poverty and customary practices in the coastal areas and among some sections of scheduled tribes, scheduled castes and other backward castes also make them beef eaters.” According to NSSO estimates, over 5.2 crore people in the country, mainly Dalits and tribals and the poor from different communities, eat beef/buffalo meat, Clearly the issue of beef consumption also has a class and caste dimension, which the RSS deliberately conceals.
In India, the Hindutva forces had another agenda. Their argument was that if Pakistan bans pork on religious grounds because it is impermissible according to the Koran to eat pork, then why should not India ban cow slaughter and possession and consumption of beef. In other words the attempt is to turn India into a Hindu Pakistan.
On the streets, the anti-Muslim campaign is led by the network of Hindu extremist (Hindutva) groups, including Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). On the screens, the digital mob is led by major television networks allied with the BJP.
The goal of the Indian right’s anti-Muslim discourse is not merely electoral. Over time, the aim is to create a Hindu “rashtra” (nation)—a New India that is proudly Hindu and nothing more. The idea is to bully Muslims into submission and force their assimilation into the Hindu fold. Subramanian Swamy, a senior official with the BJP, has in the past said that Muslim voting rights should be made contingent upon Muslims “admitting” that they are Hindu by blood. Indianness equals Hinduness, Hindutva activists claim.
The appointment of Yogi Adityanath, the head of a violent Hindutva vigilante group, as chief minister of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, signals that Modi is not distancing himself from Hindutva extremism. He himself is a Hindutva hardliner. And he sees the Hindu nationalist card as critical for reelection in 2019.
Broadly, the Hindutva movement sees itself as a historical corrective. It seeks, in the words of Modi, to redress India's "twelve hundred years of servitude"—painting not only the British as colonial aggressors, but also the Muslim rulers who came as invaders but built a uniquely composite culture and indigenized Islam in South Asia.
For Hindutva extremists, Islam remains an outsider. It is not an "Indic" religion despite having been in the region since the 7th century. This is ultimately a revolt against history. Not just against the Muslim, whose mind and blood is “polluted” with the remnants of invaders past, but also the Nehruvian secular—derided as “sickular” or “Lutyens’ Delhi” liberals—who, in the words of Modi, “appease” the Muslim “vote bank.”
At the end of the nineteenth century, a religious movement arose to reform Hinduism and bring it back to the sources of traditional Hinduism. The person of Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) is frequently referred to as “the father of Indian Nationalism.” Tilak was a Maharastrian Brahman whose Hindu orthodoxy and Sanskrit learning gave him an authoritative religious voice in his dedication to “Swaraj,” or political independence. The Indian National Congress (Congress Party) was founded in 1885. Bal Gangadhar Tilak was a member of the Congress, but his political advocacy of using violent means stood in opposition to the moderate views of other members of the Congress.
“Hindutva – who is a Hindu” (Hindutva means Hinduness) was the name of a book published in 1923 written by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a colleague of Bal Gangadhar Tilak. With his book, the idea of a Hindu-Nation was first promulgated in public. Savakar’s ideas of Hindutva were similar to the Rassenideologie of the Nazis in Germany. “Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”
“Hindutva” is the ideology that espouses politicized inculcation of Hindu religious and cultural norms above other religious norms. “Hindutva,” or “Hindu-ness,” is a political philosophy that seeks to raise awareness of India’s Hindu roots and the fundamentally Hindu nature of the country. “Hindutva” ideas about India’s history portray ancient Indian civilization as indigenous and without discussion of an Indo-Aryan migration. These ideas are unscholarly, are politically and religiously motivated, have already been rejected by India’s national educational authorities.
The legend of Ram and the story of the temple of Ram in Ayodhya were very popular and widespread in India. The BJP began Hindu religious and nationalistic agitation and started the Ayodhya campaign that led to the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992. Observers held elements of the the extremist Hindu nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh responsible for the outbreaks of serious communal violence in which the mosque at Ayodhya was destroyed and some 3,000 people were killed in anti-Muslim rioting in Bombay and elsewhere.
While in power, the BJP worked with limited success to shift its image from that of right-wing Hindu nationalist to conservative and moderate. Hindutva focused on a Hindu society with a traditional structure with caste dominance. Popular among upper caste groups, the party continues to be looked upon with suspicion by lower caste Indians, India’s 140 million Muslims, and non-Hindi-speaking Hindus in southern India, who together comprise a majority of India’s voters. The BJP’s minimizing of “Hindutva” as a campaign slogan angered the RSS, which clung to the concept to unify the Sangh Parivar. There is a sharp distinction between Hinduism the religion and Hindutva the political philosophy of the Sangh parivar. The founder of modern India and its first Prime Minster, Jawaharlal Nehru, identified the Sangh Parivar as communalist and fascist.
The national government, led by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), continued to implement an inclusive and secular platform that included respect for the right to religious freedom. Despite the national government's rejection of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism), a few state and local governments continued to be influenced by Hindutva. The law generally provided remedy for violations of religious freedom, however, due to a lack of sufficient trained police and corruption, the law was not always enforced rigorously or effectively in some cases pertaining to religiously oriented violence. However, "Hindutva"-based policies could not be implemented without passing court review to determine whether they were consistent with the principles enshrined in the country's secular constitution.
Since the BJP came to power in 2014, several state governments have been accused of pushing an RSS-backed ideology in a number of areas, including education. A strong RSS influence seems to be guiding education policies, from the setting up of research chairs in universities to appointments made in the education sector. In some BJP-ruled states, efforts are being made to revamp school curriculum in an attempt to recast Indian history through a Hindu perspective. The education wing of the RSS, the Bharatiya Sikshan Mandal, has long been urging the government to "Indianize" the education system.
In a ceremony watched by millions of Indians on television, 06 August 2020 Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered prayers and laid the foundation stone for a grand Hindu temple to be built in the northern town of Ayodhya on the site of a mosque demolished by Hindu radicals. The ceremony marked a historic triumph for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, whose rise to political prominence was propelled by the three-decade campaign to build a temple to honor the revered Hindu deity Rama. “It is an emotional moment for India. A long wait ends today,” Modi said after the ceremony that was held even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues in India.
The temple is being built on the exact spot Hindus believe is the birthplace of Lord Rama. The demolition of the 16th century mosque that stood there in 1992 sparked deadly Hindu-Muslim riots and became a deeply divisive issue in the Hindu-majority country, where many Hindus want the temple to be built. The Supreme Court approved the temple’s construction last November when it handed the bitterly contested plot of land to a Hindu group after a long legal battle. Modi said the site had been liberated and a "grand house" would be constructed for Lord Rama.
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