TeaThe political project Hindutva has always faced a fundamental paradox: claiming inclusivity while vigorously practicing boycott. The need for moral and cultural legitimacy requires it to have a broad base – so that it can lay claim to India’s entire civilizational heritage. Nevertheless, its political compulsions push it towards parochialism – so as to create only one political community, albeit a majority, religious sect called Hindus.
Is there any way out of this difficulty, except the hypocrisy or moral humiliation that characterizes much of the politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies nowadays? Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s first full-length, nuanced and non-partisan intellectual biography, which came out last month, attempts to convince us that Hindutva is an ideology that we must learn to engage in all seriousness. In doing so, the book reveals doctrinal confusion, historical confusion, political ambivalence over colonialism, and the moral acceptance of the violence inherent in this ideology.
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Original contradiction…
Let us first understand the basic contradiction. Like all nationalisms, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (and earlier, the Hindu Mahasabha) version should claim the civilizational glory of pre-colonial India by tracing the nationality of India to ancient times. This intellectual project faces two obvious difficulties. If you define the Indian nation to include all the cultures and communities that preceded the capture of power by the East India Company, then the Indian nation must include a wide range of cultures, communities and religious sects. Apart from Hindus, it includes not only Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, but also Muslims and Christians who have lived in India for centuries before the advent of colonialism. The second problem concerns the indigenous communities that predate the rise of what we call Hinduism today. Shouldn’t they make a primary claim on the nationality of India?
So the problem is serious: if the cut-off line for ancient nationality is drawn too late, it must include Muslims and Christians. If it is pulled too early, it should be thrown out to the Hindus. Both of them defeat their political project. How can one claim the nationality of India for Hindus without falling into any of these traps? Savarkar’s concept of Hindutva is an innovative response to this challenge. His entire body of work – across genres (poetry, drama, history, controversy), languages (Marathi, English), places (London, Andaman, Maharashtra) and of course in political phases (pre-Gandhi, Gandhian and post-Gandhi) is spread. There is an attempt to write a series of histories: of the Indian nation, of the Marathas and of itself. His one-point agenda in all this is to defend the political claims of Hindutva.
this is the thread that crosses Hindutva and Violence: VD Savarkar and the Politics of History By Vinayak Chaturvedi, Did you see a coincidence in the first names of the author and his hero? Yes, he was named after Savarkar (no, he is not from an RSS family) by his paediatrician, Dr. Dattatreya Sadashiv Parchure, one of the nine persons charged with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. was planted, and one of those who succeeded. Get away with fibbing. The author tells a fascinating story of how this connection was discovered as an adult after the death of Dr. Parchure.
This uneasy bond defines the tone of the book. It is certainly not a biography, quite unlike Vikram Sampath’s two-volume offering, which has been in news not for its scholarship but on allegations of plagiarism. At the same time, Vinayak Chaturvedi does not follow the dismissive and blasphemous approach adopted by most secular historians and commentators. They are careful, a little worried, about not judging Savarkar. He doesn’t question his subject enough. He is very attentive to open the apparent contradictions in Savarkar’s views. Yet his impeccable scholarship and thorough examination of Savarkar’s text present many threads that weave into an argument.
Given his focus on ideas, it is understandable that he refused to engage in much of the controversies surrounding Savarkar, which has been in the limelight lately: was he a ‘Veer’ or a ‘Mafiveer’ ? Was he shamelessly self-promoting when writing his biographies under pseudonyms? Was he directly involved in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi? On balance, Chaturvedi takes a sympathetic approach to Savarkar’s circumstances and pleads not to see him through the prism of current politics. Throughout this 480-page book, he has managed to focus firmly on Savarkar’s political theory rather than his political action.
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And the solution that Savarkar found…
So, how does Savarkar resolve the theoretical paradox? In the first phase of his life, he did not have to do this. Savarkar’s first major book, a retelling of the story of the “Revolt of 1857” as India’s first war of independence, lay very much within an inclusive nationalist framework. In fact, he says: “So, now, the original enmity between Hindus and Muslims can be handed over to the past. Their present relation was not that of rulers and ruled, foreigners and natives, but only brothers among whom only There was a difference of religion. They had different names, but they were all children of the same mother; India therefore being the common mother of these two, they were brothers by blood. Savarkar further said that for Hindus against Muslims. Spreading hatred is now “unjust and stupid”. But after being imprisoned in Andaman, Savarkar was a changed person. Usky Book Essentials of HinduismFirst published in 1923, it laid the foundation for a specific ideology of Hindu nationalism with which he remained till the end.
His solution to the problem of defining Hindus was innovatively in line with the political project. Hindus could not be confined to the followers of Hinduism – which would make Hinduism a copy of the Western concept of religion; This would also include the exclusion of Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism from the purview of Hinduism. According to Savarkar, if ‘Hindustan’ is yours, then you are a Hindu. Homeland (Homeland), fatherland (fatherland) and holy land (Holy Land). Motherland is a geographical concept and includes all the people living in the territory of India. But it will include people of all castes, religions and communities. The fatherland helps to mitigate this, as it limits the community to those who share blood ties with each other. But it still won’t exclude people whose ancestors converted to Islam or Christianity. Hence Savarkar’s final condition: only those who consider this land to be their holy land (not Mecca, not Jerusalem) too.
What about the people who have lived in this geographical area before the ‘Hindus’ came here? This was a serious issue with Savarkar, as he accepted the idea that the Aryans had brought Vedic culture and civilization to India and was eager to prove that Hindus are not black in color. He is blunt on the point: yes, the Hindus violently conquered the natives, but they assimilated Hindu culture. There was no rebellion, no enduring resentment. They are all Hindus now. So did people from outside India come under Hindu cultural influence. Savarkar was opposed to British colonialism because it was European, not because it was colonialism. He was very enthusiastic about the expansion of the Hindu Empire.
Does this make for a coherent ideology? not enough. This book shows that Savarkar could never have given a clear definition of Hindutva. Instead, he resorted to history, which he called “complete history”, to show what Hindutva was. Is his grand retelling of the history of India really accurate? No serious historian has found it possible to agree with Savarkar’s puppet and presumptive concoction of Hindu history. Certainly not historians taking the tribal and Dravidian past seriously. Can this ideology claim a moral high ground? Not until it becomes clear why Savarkar’s moral concession for violence to his predecessors by Hindus should not be given to Muslim invaders and the British colonial authority. But then again the raw emotional appeal of Hindutva never rested on these subtleties. There is no intellectually honest way beyond the fundamental challenge of Hindutva politics. You can put a fundamental contradiction down on paper, but you cannot resolve it; You cannot seize the rich civilizational heritage of India for the sake of a section of your people except through deceit or fraud.
Were Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s elaborate stories and theories a thin ideological wrap for a political project of boycott, outrage, hatred, bigotry and violence? Vinayak Chaturvedi does not give any such direct argument. But the material he has presented in this intellectual biography does not leave us at any other conclusion.
Yogendra Yadav is one of the founders of Jai Kisan Andolan and Swaraj India. He tweeted @_YogendraYadav. Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Anurag Choubey)