HINDUTVA : The essence of being Bhārtiye.

Hindutva! We all are familiar with this. But, very few of us know, what it means, truly. Generally, what we taught about Hindutva is that it is the mobilization of masses based on religion, which is not the truth.

 The Hindutva is defamed so far that, today, many people found is just the opposite of what it actually means. They called Hindutva the opposite of Hinduism. And, this is just for political gain.

The  INC, who ruled for decades, continuously propagated against Hindutva. Because they found it opposition ideology. 

 Congress MP Shashi Tharoor tweeted  that “the opposite of Hinduism is Hindutva.” This is part of a political project by the Congress Party, which also is pushed in Tharoor’s book to hype up this imagined difference. 

 Congress has realized that there is a perception of it being anti-Hindu which has, in part, led to its electoral defeats while the BJP has ridden on a perception of being sympathetic to Hindu interests. To counter this perception, Congress seeks to label the BJP as “Hindutva” as distinct from “Hinduism” to allow it to claim a space that is not opposed to “Hinduism” but to “Hindutva”. 

For this reason, they falsely propagate Hindutva. They coined the term like Hindu-terrorism, compared with Radical Islamic terrorism. Which even favored the enemy of India, Pakistan.

Today, whenever someone talks about Hindutva, people blamed them for spreading hate. They called them communal. But, there is nothing problem with these people, they are doing what they taught about it.

The negatives about Hindutva are so deeply rooted in our community that one who knows the truth, hesitate to talk about the same. At the time one talks about it, judged as hate spreader, communal and so. Even their own family and friends stop them from doing so.

People who addressed Hindutva had been erased from history like other freedom fighters who did not agree with INC. One of the prominent is Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.

Let's try to understand Hindutva, truly...

The Supreme Court of India has rightly ruled that Hindutva is not synonymous with Hinduism. In its judgment dated December 11, 1995, it observed: “Hindutva is indicative more of the way of life of the Indian people. It is not to be understood or construed narrowly. It is not Hindu fundamentalism nor is it to be confined only to the strict Hindu religious practices or as unrelated to the culture and ethos of the people of India, depicting the way of life of the Indian people. Considering Hindutva as hostile, inimical, or intolerant of other faiths, or as communal proceeds from an improper appreciation of its true meaning.” (AIR 1996, SC 1113)

The term Hindutva (Devanagari: हिन्दुत्व ) was first coined by Chandranath Basu and popularised by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in his book Essentials of Hindutva which was completed during 1921-22. His 1923 pamphlet (entitled: Hindutva: who is a Hindu?) also refers. In, his book Savarkar says that Hinduism is only a fraction, a part of Hindutva. He said that Hindutva embraced all the departments and thoughts of the whole being of the Hindu race. In practical day-to-day usage, Savarkar’s Hindutva implied Ek dev, Ek Desh, Ek jaati, and Ek Jeev. In other words, Savarkar’s Hindutva aims at transforming Hindu society which is fragmented horizontally and vertically into one by eradication of castes, abolition of untouchability, and emphasizing one culture, one nationality, and one God who is manifested in form of different deities.

In the contemporary world, the carrier of Hindutva is RSS (Rastriya Sevak Sangh). The chief, Mohan Bhagwat said, "Hindutva is the essence of this Rashtras Swa(self-hood). We are plainly acknowledging the self-hood of the country as Hindu because all our socio-cultural practices are directed by its principles with their spirit percolating in the personal, familial, professional, and social life of each one of us. To us, it is the word expressing our identity along with the continuity of its spirituality-based traditions and its entire wealth of value system in the land of Bharat. Therefore, the Sangh believes it is the word applicable to all 1.3 billion people who call themselves the sons and daughters of Bharatvarsh, whose everyday life is striving towards an alignment with its moral and ethical code and who are proud of the heritage of their ancestors who successfully traversed the same spiritual landscape since time immemorial," 

Please, note that the meaning of Hindu is not the same as your narrow understanding of it. Hindu here means, the people of India, owing to it as the motherland.

Hindutva is an ideology that unites all those who owe India as their motherland. Those, who respect India,  accept it as Holyland, have respect for our martyrs, monuments, and so.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee said, "There is no contradiction between Hindutva and Bartiyata (Indianness), the issue is to preserve the ethos and take it forward."

Here it is important to answer the refutation of the farcical allegations against the concept of Hindutva. Some of the false claims are answered here…

1: “The only goal of Hindutva is the mobilization of masses based on a religion.”

I'd quote Savarkar, who himself was an atheist, to further remove the clouds of ignorance that Hindutva is just a particular religion and nothing else. He noted in his seminal work, “Essentials of Hindutva" :

“Hindutva is not a word but a history. Not only the spiritual or religious history of our people as at times it is mistaken to be by being confounded with the other cognate term Hinduism, but a history in full. Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva."

2: “Hindutva is against inclusiveness which is one of the most important principles of Hinduism.”

Savarkar himself wrote : 

“Hindutva encompasses all the departments of thought and activity of the whole Being of our Hindu race.” 

By Hindu race, he meant the people living within the geographical area from Sindhu to the sea; i.e. Indian.

3: “Hindutva believes in pitrabhoomi punyabhumi concept which is another crap doctrine. According to it if a person whose punyabhumi ( holy religious place) is in India can only be called an Indian. By this shitty logic citizens of all Buddhist majority countries of South East Asia are Anti-Nationals.”

V. D. Savarkar recognized Sister Nivedita and Annie Besant, both of whom were westerners, a Hindu as both of them love Indian motherland and culture.

Let me quote Dr. Golwalkar here:

“So, all that is expected of our Muslim and Christian co-citizens is the shedding of the notions of their being 'religious minorities' as also their foreign mental complexion and merging themselves in the common national stream of this soil. As far as the national tradition of this land is concerned, it never considers that with a change in the method of worship, an individual creases to be the son of the soil and should be treated as an alien. Here, in this land, there can be no objection to God being called by any name whatever. Ingrained in this soil is love and respect for all faiths and religious beliefs. He cannot be a son of this soil at all who is intolerant of other faiths."

4: “Hinduism is Liberal, Hindutva is conservative.”

Hinduism, deteriorated by the caste system, could may have never adapt itself to democracy. Modern Hindutva seeks to eradicate the evils. So, while Hinduism has Caste system, Hindutva talks about the annihilation of caste. Savarkar wrote:

“Both chaturvarna and caste divisions are but practices. They are not coterminous with Sanatana Dharma…Sanatana Dharma will not die if the present-day distortion that is caste division is destroyed.”

Is the destruction of the Caste system conservative? No, by a large shot! Thus, saying Hindutva as conservative is parochial in itself."

5: “Hinduism is a thousand-year-old, Hindutva is 200 years old.”

Firstly if we were simply to use the occurrence or creation of the terms, the word “Hinduism” is also not thousands of years old, but first used in the 19th century as part of colonial and missionary tracts. The word “Hindutva” also comes into use as a term, at least as early as the 19th century, when it becomes the title of the book by Chandranath Basu (not Savarkar), called “Hindutva: An Authentic History of Hindus.” So if we go simply by terms neither term is particularly old. 

 What Hindutva represents predates Savarkar. Just as gravity actually predates Isaac Newton.

Hindutva is an Indian word referring to the quality of being a Hindu while Hinduism is a non-Indian term coined to categorize us.

6: “Hinduism promotes science, technology. Hindutva on the other hand is a group of cow-piss drinkers who think it will cure their cancer.”

 I don't know how nonsensical and rhetorical one can get. The progenitor of Hindutva, V. D. Savarkar's views on cow, science, and technology would suffice that Hindutva blends traditions with modernity, and his views were far more comprehensive and thorough liberal than even Mahatma Gandhi. 

7: “Hindutva believes in a national identity that is linked to a common religion. By this de fixation Parsis will be considered as anti-national."

In a historical judgment on what constitutes Hindutva, the supreme court of India observed:

“Hindutva is indicative more of the way of life of the Indian people. It is not to be understood or construed narrowly. It is not Hindu fundamentalism nor is it to be confined only to the strict Hindu religious practices or as unrelated to the culture and ethos of the people of India, depicting the way of life of the Indian people. Considering Hindutva as hostile, inimical, or intolerant of other faiths, or as communal proceeds from an improper appreciation of its true meaning.” 

 8: “ Hindutva has no place for Muslims.”

Bhagwat said:

"Hindu Rashtra doesn’t mean there’s no place for Muslims. The day it is said so, it won’t be Hindutva anymore. Hindutva talks about  Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.”

9: “Hinduvta is just a photocopy of radical Islamism.”

Nothing but again a rhetorical fuzzy-frizzy statement backed by literally no logic. As Hindutva has Indic consciousness at the core, it's thereby inherently pluralistic, inclusive, and tolerant. Whereas Islam is an exclusivist, non- pluralistic faith which fundamentally distinct between believers and non-believers, Hindutva has nothing as such because none of the Indic religions are such. The idea of Hindutva is :

आ नो भद्राः क्रतवो यन्त वि,– ऋग्वेद – 1.89.1

Let noble thoughts come to us from all directions. 

This is how Hindutva is defamed.

So, the Hindutva has nothing to do with religion, but culture. It is not against Muslims and Christians, but to unite them.

Hindutva is not divisive. It never was. It is a unifying factor. The ‘tatva’ in Hindutva always looks for unifying factors in different communities. In fact, Hindus and Muslims have the same ancestors. We may look different and may have different praying styles today, but our ancestors were the same. It also opposed partition. Sangh itself has a Muslim wing.

We all are the same having different beliefs and ways of worship. Have a love for our motherland, Bharat. Rather than being "Unity in Diversity", we are "Diversity of the One".