What is Hindutva ?

The Supreme Court of India in 1995 said,"no precise meaning can be ascribed to the terms 'Hindu' 'Hindutva' and 'Hinduism'; and no meaning in the abstract can confine it to the narrow limits of religion alone, excluding the content of Indian culture and heritage".

It classified Hindutva as a way of life of the people in the sub- continent and dismissed the idea of equating the abstract terms Hindutva or Hinduism with the "narrow fundamentalist Hindu religious bigotry".

Essentially it said that Hindutva is a way of life and not a religion. On 2 January 2017, the Supreme Court of India declined to reconsider its 1995 judgment.

The term 'Hindutva' was coined by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923 while imprisoned in Nagpur Prison for his alleged role in the murder of Sir William Hutt Curzon Wyllie. (The assassin was a friend and follower of Savarkar)

The year is important. It is 24 years before Indian Independence, 5 years after the end of WWI and 1 year since the end of the Non Co-opertion movement which had been a huge mass and social success but had been called off due to incidents of violence.

Why is this important ? It is important because it tells you the mood of India. The INC and other pro Indian organizations had supported Britain during WWI in the hopes that the British would be lenient and reciprocate this by granting Indians self rule. (A continuation of the moderate policy of the INC which believed that the British were essentially good and wanted to benefit India but due to their lack of knowledge of India were not able to) This was in contrast to the revolutionaries who wanted to exploit British weakness and distraction and free India. However Britain had no intention of giving Indians self rule and severely cracked down on any Indian movements and protests. This led to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The Non Co-operation Movement was launched in response to this and was a massive success. Why was it a success ? The NCM was the first organized mass movement in the history of the Indian Independence movement. The movement united India in a way never seen before. People from all strata of Indian society supported the movement. It was a non violent movement led by Gandhiji and supported by the ordinary people of India. All previous movements had either been geographically limited to specific regions, limited by class- i.e pursued by the elite of Indian society without any participation of the masses, or by the masses without support of the upper class, i.e peasant movements, or had been violent movements and thus could be easily answered through violent suppression. The NCM united India by transcending geographical and social barriers and uniting the People. Thus there was an element of Nationalism to the movement. Nationalism in India had always been limited to either one's own caste or tribe or the region to which one belonged. Indian Nationalism, encompassing the entire Indian subcontinent was a new thing.

Also, by this time, there were many Indians who had travelled to Europe and studied in its Universities. Thus they had experienced European Nationalism and had returned to India with similar ideas of Indian nationalism. The NCM gave a platform to these nationalists to express their ideas.

Thus the mood in 1923 among the leaders of the Indian Nationalist movement was one of hope. It is important to remember that the INC was but one organization, though the largest, representing the voice of Indians. There were many competing voices & ideas. Questions were discussed, the two most prominent being- how will India attain freedom ? and What kind of country- socially, politically and less importantly economically- would India be ?

Savarkar's Hindutva is one answer to the latter question. It is described in Savarkar's book "Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?"

Essentially the view is nationalist, describing who is an Indian or a Hindu. Hindutva says that a Hindu is essentially anyone living in India and who considers India to be their motherland, fatherland and holy land (describing it purely in cultural terms), loving it and owing it his allegiance. It says all Indians have a common blood, irrespective of their religion.

Edit- Sanskiriti means culture/heritage

We Hindus are not only a Rashtra, a Jati, but as a consequence of being both, own a common Sanskriti expressed, preserved chiefly and originally through Sankrit, the real mother tongue of our race. Everyone who is a Hindu inherits this Sanskriti and owes his spiritual being to it as truly as he owes his physical one to the land and the blood of his forefathers.

Pg 99

It says India is bonded together through her ancient culture. Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism are a part of Hinduism and India while Islam, Christianity and others are foreign religions.

A Hindu then is he who feels attachment to the land that extends from Sindhu to Sindhu as the land of his forefathers — as his Fatherland; who inherits the blood of the great race whose first and discernible source could be traced from the Himalayan altitudes of the Vedic Saptasindhus and which assimilating all that was incorporated and ennobling all that was assimilated has grown into and come to be known as the Hindu people; and who, as a consequence of the foregoing attributes, has inherited and claims as his own the Hindu Sanskriti, the Hindu civilization, as represented in a common history, common heroes, a common literature, common art, a common law and a common jurisprudence, common fairs and festivals, rites and rituals, ceremonies and sacraments. Not that every Hindu has all these details of the Hindu Sanskriti down to each syllable common with other Hindus ; but that he has more of it common With his Hindu brothers than with, say, an Arab or an Englishman. Not that a non-Hindu does not hold any of these details in common with a Hindu but that, he differs more from a Hindu than he agrees with him. That is why Christian and Mohammedan communities, who, were but Very recently Hindus and in a majority of cases had been at least in their first generation most unwilling denizens of their new fold, claim though they might have a common Fatherland, and an almost pure Hindu blood and parentage with us, cannot be recognized as Hindus ; as since their adoption of the new cult they had ceased to own Hindu civilization (Sanskriti) as a whole. They belong, or feel that they belong, to a cultural unit altogether different from the Hindu one. Their heroes and their hero-worship, their fairs and their festivals, their ideals and their outlook on life, have now ceased to be common with ours. Thus the presence of this third essential of Hindutva which requires of every Hindu uncommon and loving attachment to his racial Sanskriti enables us most perfectly to determine the nature of Hindutva without any danger of using over lapping or exclusive attributes.

Pg 100

(It is interesting to note that Savarkar considered himself an atheist but a Hindu, though atheism is different in Hinduism than in the west.)

They essentially want to return to the India of old- before the Islamic invasions. They termed the invasions as colonization and grouped the colonization of India by the British as a continuation of Islamic colonization.

However, the history of India is viewed through tint covered eyes. It is considered to be a land of paradise until the Islamic invasions and focuses on the destruction of Hindu temples, forced conversions and other destruction that followed.

This is a very muddy affair. While Savarkar has appealed to Indianess (as a culture) as the basis of the country, he has described it in terms which were popular then, i.e one country, one culture, one people.

An American may become a citizen of India. He would certainly be entitled, if bona fide, to be treated as our Bharatiya or Hindi, a countryman and a fellow citizen of ours. But as long as in addition to our country, he has not adopted our culture and our history, inherited our blood and has come to look upon our land not only as the land of his love but even of his worship, he cannot get himself incorporated into the Hindu fold. For although the first requisite of Hindutva is that he be a citizen of Hindusthan either by himself or through his forefathers, yet it is not the only requisite qualification of it, as the term Hindu has come to mean much more than its geographical significance. The reason that explains why the term Hindu cannot be synonymous with Bharatiya or Hindi and mean an Indian only, naturally introduces us to the second essential implication of that term. The Hindus are not merely the citizens of the Indian state because they are united not only by the bonds of the love they bear to a common motherland but also by the bonds of a common blood. They are not only a Nation but also a race-jati.

The word jati derived from the root Jan to produce, means a brotherhood, a race determined by a common origin,-possessing a common blood. All Hindus claim to have in their veins the blood of the mighty race incorporated with and descended from the Vedic fathers, the Sindhus

Hindutva: Who is a Hindu ? Pg 84-85