{{Short description|Form of right-wing Hindu nationalism}}{{Pp|small=yes}}{{EngvarB|date=June 2020}}{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2021}}{{Nationalism sidebar|types}}{{Conservatism sidebar|religious}}Hindutva ({{IPA-hi|hÉªnËˆdÊŠtvÉ™}} {{lit|Hindu-ness}}) is a political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and the belief in establishing Hindu hegemony within India.BOOK, Haokip, Jangkholam, Can God Save My Village?: A Theological Study of Identity among the Tribal People of North-East India with a Special Reference to the Kukis of Manipur, Langham Monographs, 2014, 978-1-78368-981-1,books.google.com/books?id=Y4MuDgAAQBAJ, 2023-05-03, 35, Hindutva is a political ideology that does not necessarily represent the view of the majority of Hindus in India., The political ideology was formulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1922.BOOK, Ross, M.H., Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies: Contestation and Symbolic Landscapes, University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated, Book collections on Project MUSE, 2012, 978-0-8122-0350-9,books.google.com/books?id=osHNwPkLh30C&pg=PA34, 34, BOOK, Sweetman, W., Malik, A., Hinduism in India: Modern and Contemporary Movements, SAGE Publishing, 2016, 978-93-5150-231-9,books.google.com/books?id=XW02DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA109, 109, It is used by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)WEB, 4 December 2004, The Hindutva road,frontline.thehindu.com/politics/article30225920.ece, Frontline (magazine), Frontline, en, {{sfn|Krishna|2011|p=324}} and other organisations, collectively called the Sangh Parivar.Inspired by European fascism,BOOK, Patricia M. Sant, Indigeneity: Construction and Re/presentation, Nova Science Publishers, 1999, 978-1-56072-674-6, Hindutva , especially in their early stages , exemplify a process of ideological borrowing from both European fascism and a fabrication of ” Vedic Hinduism ” that defies the binarism of local/global., 85,books.google.com/books?id=3JmAAAAAMAAJ, BOOK, Chaitanya Krishna, A. G. Noorani, Fascism in India: Faces, Fangs, and Facts, Manak Publications, 2003, 978-81-7827-067-8,books.google.com/books?id=LnEMAQAAMAAJ, the archival evidence presented by Marzia Casolari conclusively shows how much the proponents of Hindutva admired European fascism ; liberally borrowed from it and this influence continues even today., 4, the Hindutva movement has been described as a variant of right-wing extremism,JOURNAL, Leidig, Eviane, 17 July 2020, Hindutva as a variant of right-wing extremism, Patterns of Prejudice, 54, 3, 215â€“237, 10.1080/0031322X.2020.1759861, 0031-322X, free, 10852/84144, free, and as “almost fascist in the classical sense”, adhering to a concept of homogenised majority and cultural hegemony.{{harvnb|Frykenberg|2008|pages=178â€“220}}: “This essay attempts to show how â€” from an analytical or from an historical perspective â€” Hindutva is a melding of Hindu fascism and Hindu fundamentalism.” Some have also described Hindutva as a separatist ideology.BOOK, Anthony Parel, Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-rule, Lexington Books, 2000, 978-0-7391-0137-7,books.google.com/books?id=sErf-DzVI9EC, The agendas of Hindutva though strong on the issues of self - identity and self - definition, have tended to be separatist., 133, BOOK, Siddharth Varadarajan, Gujarat, the Making of a Tragedy, Penguin Books, 2002, 978-0-14-302901-4,books.google.com/books?id=1kc9GmFWePUC, 20, Some analysts dispute the identification of Hindutva with fascism, and suggest Hindutva is an extreme form of conservatism or ethno-nationalism.

Definitions

Tertiary sources

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Hindutva is “Originally: the state or quality of being Hindu; ‘Hinduness’. Now: an ideology advocating, or movement seeking to establish, the hegemony of Hindus and Hinduism within India; Hindu nationalism.“{{citation|chapter=Hindutva, n.|title=Oxford English Dictionary Online|publisher=Oxford University Press|chapter-url=http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/291968?redirectedFrom=Hindutva#eid|year=2011|chapter-url-access=subscription|access-date=17 November 2021}} Its etymology, according to the OED, is: “from modern Sanskrit hindutva (Hindu qualities, Hindu identity) from hindu (from Hindi hindÅ« : see Hindu n.) + classical Sanskrit -tva , suffix forming abstract nouns, after Hindi hindupan, in the same sense.” The etymology and meaning of hindu, according to the OED is: “Partly a borrowing from Hindi and Urdu. Partly a borrowing from Persian. Etymons: Urdu hindÅ«, Persian hindÅ«. from (i) Hindi hindÅ« and Urdu hindÅ«, originally denoting a person from India, now specifically a follower of Hinduism, and its etymon (ii) Persian hindÅ«, in the same senses (Middle Persian hindÅ«g, denoting a person from India), apparently formed already in Old Persian ... hindu, denoting an eastern province of the Achaemenid empire.“{{citation|title=Oxford English Dictionary Online|chapter-url=https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/87084?redirectedFrom=Hindu#eid|year=2011|chapter=Hindu, n.|publisher=Oxford University Press|access-date=17 November 2021|chapter-url-access=subscription}}According to Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions, Hindutva is a concept of “Indian cultural, national, and religious identity”. The term “conflates a geographically based religious, cultural, and national identity: a true ‘Indian’ is one who partakes of this {{’-}}Hindu-ness{{’}}. Some Indians insist, however, that Hindutva is primarily a cultural term to refer to the traditional and indigenous heritage of the Indian nation-state, and they compare the relationship between Hindutva and India to that of Zionism and Israel.” This view, as summarised by Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions, holds that “even those who are not religiously Hindu but whose religions originated in India â€“ Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, and others â€“ share in this historical, cultural, and national essence. Those whose religions were imported to India, meaning primarily the country’s Muslim and Christian communities, may fall within the boundaries of Hindutva only if they subsume themselves into the majority culture”.BOOK, Merriam-Webster, Inc, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions,books.google.com/books?id=ZP_f9icf2roC, 1999, Merriam-Webster, 978-0-87779-044-0, 464, According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations, “Hindutva, translated as ‘Hinduness,’ refers to the ideology of Hindu nationalists, stressing the common culture of the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent. ... Modern politicians have attempted to play down the racial and anti-Muslim aspects of Hindutva, stressing the inclusiveness of the Indian identity; but the term has Fascist undertones.” According to The Dictionary of Human Geography, “Hindutva encapsulates the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism, a ‘Hinduness’ allegedly shared by all Hindus.“{{citation|last1=Gregory|first1=Derek|last2=Johnston|first2=Ron|last3=Pratt|first3=Geraldine|last4=Watts|first4=Michael|last5=Whatmore|first5=Sarah|title=The Dictionary of Human Geography|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5gCHckKszz0C&pg=RA1-PT467|year=2011|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=978-1-4443-5995-4|pages=1â€“}} According to A Political and Economic Dictionary of South Asia, “One of the main purposes behind the concept of Hindutva was to construct a collective identity to support the cause of ‘Hindu-unity’ (Hindu Sanghatan) and to avoid too narrow a definition of Hinduism, which had the consequence of excluding Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains from the Hindu community. Later, Hindu-nationalist ideologues transformed the concept into a strategy to include non-Hindus, in order to widen their social base, and for political mobilization.{{citation|last1=Schottli|first1=Jivanta|last2=Mitra|first2=Subrata K.|last3=Wolf|first3=Siegried|title=A Political and Economic Dictionary of South Asia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yOIjCQAAQBAJ&pg=PT215|year=2015|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-35575-3|pages=215â€“}}According to EncyclopÃ¦dia Britannica{{’s}} article on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a Hindu and Indian nationalist, ”Hindutva (“Hinduness“) ... sought to define Indian culture as a manifestation of Hindu values; this concept grew to become a major tenet of Hindu nationalist ideology.“ENCYCLOPEDIA,www.britannica.com/biography/Vinayak-Damodar-Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar: Hindu and Indian Nationalist, EncyclopÃ¦dia Britannica, 9 May 2019, According to the Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Hindutva as defined in the classic statement of its ideology, is the “culture of the Hindu race” where Hinduism is but an element and “Hindu dharma is a religion practiced by Hindus as well as Sikhs and Buddhists”. The article further states, “proponents of Hindutva have sought to promote the identification of national identity with the religious and broader cultural heritage of Hindus. Measures taken to achieve this end have included attempts to ‘reclaim’ individuals judged to have taken up ‘alien’ religions, the pursuit of social, cultural and philanthropic activities designed to strengthen awareness of Hindu belonging, and direct political action through various organisations, including recognized political parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).“{{citation|last1=Cush|first1=Denise|last2=Robinson|first2=Catherine|last3=York|first3=Michael|title=Encyclopedia of Hinduism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3N4mGlbutbgC&pg=PA351|year=2012|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-18978-5|pages=351â€“352}}

Savarkar

For Savarkar, in (Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?), Hindutva is an inclusive term of everything Indic. The three essentials of Hindutva in Savarkar’s definition were the common nation (rashtra), common race (jati), and common culture or civilisation (sanskriti).JOURNAL, Sharma, Arvind, On Hindu, Hindustan, Hinduism and Hindutva, Numen, 49, 1, 22â€“23, 1â€“36, 2002, 3270470, 10.1163/15685270252772759, Savarkar used the words “Hindu” and “Sindhu” interchangeably.BOOK, Christophe Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism: A Reader,books.google.com/books?id=mOXWgr53A5kC, 2009, Princeton University Press, 978-1-4008-2803-6, 14â€“15, 86â€“93, Those terms were at the foundation of his Hindutva, as geographic, cultural and ethnic concepts, and “religion did not figure in his ensemble”, states Sharma. His elaboration of Hindutva included all Indic religions, i.e. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Savarkar restricted “Hindu nationality” to “Indian religions” in the sense that they shared a common culture and fondness for the land of their origin. Savarkar had made clear distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva, that they are not same things as Hindutva does not concern religion or rituals but the basis of India’s national character.WEB, Purandare, Vaibhav, Hindutva is not the same as Hinduism said Savarkar, Telegraph India, 2019-08-22,www.telegraphindia.com/india/hindutva-is-not-the-same-as-hinduism-said-savarkar/cid/1699550, 2023-03-30, BOOK, A G Noorani, The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour, LeftWord Books, Green School Series, 2000, 978-81-87496-13-7,books.google.com/books?id=6PnBFW7cdtsC&pg=PT106, 106, According to Christophe Jaffrelot, a political scientist specialising in South Asia, Savarkar â€“ declaring himself as an atheist â€“ “minimizes the importance of religion in his definition of Hindu”, and instead emphasises an ethnic group with a shared culture and cherished geography.BOOK, Martha Nussbaum, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future,books.google.com/books?id=JLMQh4oc38gC, 2009, Harvard University Press, 978-0-674-04156-1, 58â€“59, , Quote: “Savarkar had long lived abroad, and his Hindutva is a European product from its opening words on. [...] Savarkar was not a religious man; for him, traditional religious belief and practice did not lie at the heart of Hindutva. He did, however, consider the religion’s cultural traditions to be key markers of Hindutva, along with geographical attachment to the motherland and a sense of oneself as a part of a “race determined by a common origin, possessing a common blood”. To Savarkar, states Jaffrelot, a Hindu is “first and foremost someone who lives in the area beyond the Indus river, between the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean”. Savarkar composed his ideology in reaction to the “pan-Islamic mobilization of the Khilafat movement”, where Indian Muslims were pledging support to the Istanbul-based Caliph of the Ottoman Empire and to Islamic symbols, his thoughts predominantly reflect deep hostility to Islam and its followers. To Savarkar, states Jaffrelot, “Muslims were the real enemies, not the British”, because their Islamic ideology posed “a threat to the real nation, namely Hindu Rashtra” in his vision. All those who reject this historic “common culture” were excluded by Savarkar. He included those who had converted to Christianity or Islam but accepted and cherished the shared Indic culture, considering them as those who can be re-integrated.According to Chetan Bhatt, a sociologist specialising in Human Rights and Indian nationalism, Savarkar “distances the idea of Hindu and of Hindutva from Hinduism”.{{efn|According to sociologist Aparna Devare, Savarkar distinguishes between Hindutva and Hinduism, but includes it in his definition. Savarkar wrote, “Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva”.BOOK, Aparna Devare, History and the Making of a Modern Hindu Self,books.google.com/books?id=1drfCgAAQBAJ, 2013, Routledge, 978-1-136-19708-6, 195â€“196, }} He describes Hindutva, states Bhatt, as “one of the most comprehensive and bewildering synthetic concepts known to the human tongue” and “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”.BOOK, Chetan Bhatt, Liberation and Purity: Race, New Religious Movements and the Ethics of Postmodernity,books.google.com/books?id=aap0HaCzrFwC, 1997, Taylor & Francis, 978-1-85728-423-2, 186, Savarkar’s notion of Hindutva formed the foundation for his Hindu nationalism. It was a form of ethnic nationalism per the criteria set by Clifford Geertz, Lloyd Fallers and Anthony D. Smith.{{sfn|Jaffrelot|1996|pp=12-13}}

Supreme Court of India

The definition and the use of Hindutva and its relationship with Hinduism has been a part of several court cases in India. In 1966, the Chief Justice Gajendragadkar wrote for the Supreme Court of India in Yagnapurushdasji (AIR 1966 SC 1127), that “Hinduism is impossible to define”.{{efn|Sen writes, “Drawing primarily from English language sources, the Court put forward the view that Hinduism was “impossible” to define [quoting from the case file Yagnapurushdasji at 1121â€“1128]: “When we think of the Hindu religion, we find it difficult, if not impossible, to define Hindu religion or even adequately describe it. Unlike other religions in the world, the Hindu religion does not claim any one God; it does not subscribe to any one dogma; it does not believe in one philosophic concept; it does not follow any one set of religious rites.” Confronted with this amorphous entity, the Court concluded, “[I]t [Hinduism] does not appear to satisfy the narrow traditional features of any religion or creed. It may broadly be described as a way of life and nothing more.BOOK, Defining Religion: The Indian Supreme Court and Hinduism, Ronojoy Sen, 2006, South Asia Institute, Department of Political Science, University of Heidelberg,archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/6936/1/Ronojoy_Sen_Defining_Religion_final_version.pdf,archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/6936/1/Ronojoy_Sen_Defining_Religion_final_version.pdf," title="web.archive.org/web/20151224035515archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/6936/1/Ronojoy_Sen_Defining_Religion_final_version.pdf,">web.archive.org/web/20151224035515archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/6936/1/Ronojoy_Sen_Defining_Religion_final_version.pdf, 2015-12-24, live, 15â€“16, }} The court adopted Radhakrishnan’s submission that Hinduism is complex and “the theist and atheist, the sceptic and agnostic, may all be Hindus if they accept the Hindu system of culture and life”. The Court judged that Hinduism historically has had an “inclusive nature” and it may “broadly be described as a way of life and nothing more”.BOOK, Legalizing Religion: The Indian Supreme Court and Secularism, Ronojoy Sen, 2007, East-West Center, Washington, 978-1-932728-57-6, 29â€“31, The 1966 decision has influenced how the term Hindutva has been understood in later cases, in particular the seven decisions of the Supreme Court in the 1990s that are now called the “Hindutva judgments”.BOOK, Bidyut Chakrabarty, Constitutional Democracy in India,books.google.com/books?id=p-1GDwAAQBAJ, 2018, Taylor & Francis, 978-1-351-37530-6, 178â€“180, According to Ram Jethmalani, an Indian lawyer and a former president of its Supreme Court Bar Association, the Supreme Court of India in 1995 ruled that “Ordinarily, Hindutva is understood as a way of life or a state of mind and is not to be equated with or understood as religious Hindu fundamentalism ... it is a fallacy and an error of law to proceed on the assumption ... that the use of words Hindutva or Hinduism per se depicts an attitude hostile to all persons practising any religion other than the Hindu religion ... It may well be that these words are used in a speech to promote secularism or to emphasise the way of life of the Indian people and the Indian culture or ethos, or to criticise the policy of any political party as discriminatory or intolerant.“Hindutva is a secular way of life {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150217121448www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/hindutva-is-a-secular-way-of-life |date=17 February 2015 }}, Ram Jethmalani, The Sunday Guardian, 5 March 2015 According to Jethmalani, the Supreme Court has properly explained the “true meaning” of the term, and “Hindutva is not hostility to any organised religion nor does it proclaim its superiority of any religion to another”. According to him, it is unfortunate that “the communal propaganda machinery relentlessly disseminates “Hindutva” as a communal word, something that has also become embedded in the minds and language of opinion leaders, including politicians, media, civil society and the intelligentsia”. The Indian lawyer Abdul Noorani disagrees, and states that the Supreme Court in its 1995 ruling gave “Hindutva a benign meaning, calling Hindutva the same as Indianization, etc.” and these were unnecessary digressions from the facts of the case, and in doing so, the court may have brought down the wall separating religion and politics”.BOOK, Noorani, A.G., The Supreme Court on Hindutva, The Supreme Court on Hindutva1, Oxford University Press, 2006, 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195678291.003.0076, 978-0-19-567829-1, 76â€“83,

History

Ideology

{{Discrimination sidebar}} The word Hindutva was already in use by the late 1890s by Chandranath Basu,WEB, Bhattacharya, Snigdhendu, 30 September 2020, Hindutva and idea that ‘Hindus are in danger’ were born in Bengal,theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/hindutva-and-idea-that-hindus-in-danger-born-in-bengal/513174/, 23 December 2020, ThePrint, en-US, Chadra Nath Basu’s book Hindutva was published in 1892 by Gurudas Chatterjee. The first recorded use of the word Hindutva, at least in print, is believed to have been made in this book., WEB, NP, Ullekh, 28 March 2019, Will its Hindu revivalist past haunt West Bengal’s future?,openthemagazine.com/features/politics-features/general-election-2019/will-its-hindu-revivalist-past-haunt-west-bengals-future/, 29 October 2019, Open The Magazine, JOURNAL, Gopal, Sangita, 1 July 2003, Hindu Buying/Hindu Being: Hindutva Online and the Commodity Logic of Cultural Nationalism, South Asian Review, 24, 1, 161â€“179, 10.1080/02759527.2003.11978304, 158146106, 0275-9527, BOOK, Chetan Bhatt, Hindu nationalism: origins, ideologies and modern myths,books.google.com/books?id=W2PXAAAAMAAJ, 2001, Berg, 978-1-85973-343-1, 77 (context: Chapter 4), Basu’s usage of the word was to merely portray a traditional Hindu cultural view in contrary to the formation of the political ideology by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.BOOK, Sen, Amiya P.,www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198098966.001.0001/acprof-9780198098966-chapter-2, Discourses, Public Addresses, and Informal Talks, 22 May 2014, Oxford University Press, 9780199083015, en-US, 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198098966.001.0001, BOOK, Bhatt, Chetan,www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203563397, Rethinking Ethnicity : Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities, Routledge, 2004, 9780203563397, Kaufmann, Eric P., London, ‘Majority ethnic’ claims and authoritarian nationalism: the case of Hindutva, 10.4324/9780203563397,www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203563397/chapters/10.4324/9780203563397-20, Savarkar, a right-wing nationalist and Indian freedom activist, wrote a book titled Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?” in 1922, in which he outlined his ideology and “the idea of a universal and essential Hindu identity”. The term “Hindu identity” is broadly interpreted and distinguished from “ways of life and values of others”.BOOK, W. J. Johnson, A Dictionary of Hinduism,books.google.com/books?id=MztqQgAACAAJ, 2010, Oxford University Press, 978-0-19-861026-7, 142, , Quote: “A term that first surfaces in literary form in the mid 1870s in Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s serialization of his novel Ä€nandamaá¹h in the journal, Bangadarshan. It was subsequently employed by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in his book Hindutva: Who is a Hindu (1923) to convey the idea of a universal and essential Hindu identity. As used by its author, and other right-wing nationalist ideologues, it is predicated on an assumed consensus about what constitutes Hindu identity and distinguishes it from the ways of life and values of other (implicitly ‘foreign’) people and traditions, especially Indian Muslims.” The contemporary meaning and usage of Hindutva largely derives from Savarkar’s ideas, as does the post-1980s nationalism and mass political activity in India. According to Jaffrelot, Hindutva as outlined in Savarkar’s writings “perfectly illustrates” an effort at identity-building through the “stigmatisation and emulation of threatening others”. In particular, it was pan-Islamism and similar “Pan-isms” that he assumed made the Hindus vulnerable, as he wrote:{{blockquote|O Hindus, consolidate and strengthen Hindu nationality; not to give wanton offence to any of our non-Hindu compatriots, in fact to any one in the world but in just and urgent defence of our race and land; to render it impossible for others to betray her or to subject her to unprovoked attack by any of those “Pan-isms” that are struggling forth from continent to continent.|Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, quoted by Christophe JaffrelotBOOK, Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s : Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation (with Special Reference to Central India),books.google.com/books?id=iVsfVOTUnYEC, 1999, Penguin, 978-0-14-024602-5, 25â€“26, |title=|source=}}The Hindutva ideology borrowed from European fascism. Parallels between Hindutva and European fascism are observed in the concepts such as repeated mobilisations, appeals to a mythic past, anti-socialism and other concepts.BOOK, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 34, 1999,books.google.com/books?id=o_ywAAAAIAAJ, 712, Since Savarkar’s time, the “Hindu identity” and the associated Hindutva ideology has been built upon the perceived vulnerability of Indian religions, culture and heritage from those who through “orientalist construction” have vilified them as inferior to a non-Indian religion, culture and heritage.BOOK, Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India,books.google.com/books?id=SAqn3OIGE54C, 1999, Princeton University Press, 1-4008-2305-6, 60â€“65, 69â€“70, 77â€“79, In its nationalistic response, Hindutva has been conceived “primarily as an ethnic community” concept, states Jaffrelot, then presented as cultural nationalism, where Hinduism along with other Indian religions are but a part.BOOK, Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation (with Special Reference to Central India),books.google.com/books?id=iVsfVOTUnYEC, 1999, Penguin, 978-0-14-024602-5, 25â€“30, {{efn|According to Gavin Flood, a scholar of Hinduism, the term “Hindutva” differs from “Hindu dharma”. The latter term means Hinduism and its various sub-traditions, while the term Hindutva in Savarkar’s ideology meant the “socio-political force to unite all Hindus against foreign influences,” states Flood.BOOK, Gavin D. Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism,books.google.com/books?id=KpIWhKnYmF0C&pg=PA262, 1996, Cambridge University Press, 978-0-521-43878-0, 262, The party’s most vociferous leader was Vinayak Damodar Savarkar who made a distinction between ‘Hindu Dharma’, the religion of the various traditions, and ‘Hindutva’, the socio-political force to unite all Hindus against foreign influences, According to Klaus Klostermaier, a scholar of Hinduism, Hindutva has become more than the original search for Hinduness during the Indian freedom movement, and has morphed into “Hindutva movement” in the post-Independent India. This movement â€“ though reviled by Western and West-oriented Indian scholars â€“ has been ongoing, according to Klostermaier, as a political ideology which “takes elements of Hindu tradition and reshapes them in the light of their own time so as to provide answers to the needs of their contemporaries.“JOURNAL, Bauman, Chad, Indian Religions: Renaissance and Renewal, Numen, Brill, 55, 2, 2008, 343â€“347, 10.1163/156852708X284022, 142656106, In this historical and sociological context, Hindutva is an assertion of values and a non-aberrant response to the Indic experiences and memories of Islamic conquests, Christian imperialism, and the abuses of colonialism, according to Klostermaier.BOOK, Indian Religions: Renaissance and Renewal - The Spalding Papers on Indic Studies, Klaus Klostermaier, Anna King, 2006, Equinox, 978-1-845-53169-0, 16â€“18, 3â€“27, also see comments of Anna King at p. xii, }}{{efn|According to Julius Lipner, also a scholar of Hinduism, Hindutva is a Sanskrit word, which connotes “Hinduness”, and the term first gained usage among the Bengali Indian intellectuals during the British colonial era. The term took roots in light of the description of Indic religions and the “western preconceptions about the nature of religion”, which the Indian intellectuals disagreed with. This attempt to articulate what Hinduism is, coupled with emerging political and cultural beliefs, has evolved and contributed to the various meanings of the term, states Lipner.BOOK, Julius Lipner, Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices,books.google.com/books?id=oH1FIareczEC, 2012, Routledge, 978-1-135-24060-8, 11â€“12, }}According to Arvind Sharma, a scholar of Hinduism, Hindutva has not been a “static and monolithic concept”, rather its meaning and “context, text and subtext has changed over time”. The struggles of the colonial era and the formulation of neo-Hinduism by the early 20th century added a sense of “ethnicity” to the original “Hinduness” meaning of Hindutva.JOURNAL, Sharma, Arvind, On Hindu, Hindustan, Hinduism and Hindutva, Numen, 49, 1, 20â€“24, 26â€“29, 2002, 3270470, 10.1163/15685270252772759, Its early formulation incorporated the racism and nationalism concepts prevalent in Europe during the first half of the 20th century, and culture was in part rationalised as a result of “shared blood and race”. Savarkar and his Hindutva colleagues adopted the social Darwinism theories prevalent by the 1930s.BOOK, Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India,books.google.com/books?id=SAqn3OIGE54C, 1999, Princeton University Press, 1-4008-2305-6, 77â€“79, In the post-independence period, states Sharma, the concept has suffered from ambiguity and its understanding aligned on “two different axes” â€“ one of religion versus culture, another of nation versus state. In general, the Hindutva thought among many Indians has “tried to align itself with the culture and nation” axes.JOURNAL, Sharma, Arvind, On Hindu, Hindustan, Hinduism and Hindutva, Numen, 49, 1, 26â€“27, 2002, 3270470, 10.1163/15685270252772759, According to Prabhu Bapu, a historian and scholar of Oriental Studies, the term and the contextual meaning of Hindutva emerged from the Indian experience in the colonial era, memories of its religious wars as the Mughal Empire decayed, an era of Muslim and Christian proselytisation, a feeling that their traditions and cultures were being insulted, whereby the Hindu intellectuals formulated Hindutva as a “Hindu identity” as a prelude to a national resurgence and a unified Indian nation against the “foreign invaders”.BOOK, Prabhu Bapu, Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915-1930: Constructing Nation and History,books.google.com/books?id=bNzfCgAAQBAJ, 2012, Routledge, 978-1-136-25500-7, 62â€“67, 70â€“71, The development of “religious nationalism” and the demand by the Muslim leaders on the Indian subcontinent for the partition of British India into Muslim and non-Muslim nations (Pakistan and Bangladesh being Muslim-majority, and India being Hindu-majority) during the middle of the 20th century, confirmed its narrative of geographical and cultural nationalism based on Indian culture and religions.{{efn|Savarkar’s early writings and speeches on cultural nationalism contained an embryonic form of a two-nation theory. This embryo took a more detailed form with the Lahore Resolution of 1940 of the Muslim League, which declared, “India’s Muslims were a ‘separate nation’.” Mohammed Ali Jinnah explained the Indian Muslims demand by asserting a cultural distinctiveness of Islam and this “constituted the rationale for a separate nation-state of ‘Pakistan’.” Jinnah’s speech and rationale confirmed Savarkar’s beliefs and his early Hindutva’s narrative. The historian Prabhu Bapu quotes and summarises the ideas of the Muslim leaders in British India around 1940: “there were two nations in India, Hindu and Muslim”, said Jinnah, British India should be partitioned into “Pakistan and Hindustan”. According to Jinnah, “the differences between Hindus and Muslims in India were not merely religious, but entirely different ways of life and thought. [...] The two communities were distinct peoples, with different religious philosophies, social customs, literatures, and histories. [...] For more than a thousand years, the bulk of Muslims in India had lived in a different world, in a different society, in a different philosophy and a different faith. [...] Muslims must have a state of their own in which they would establish their own constitution and make their own laws.“BOOK, Prabhu Bapu, Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915-1930: Constructing Nation and History,books.google.com/books?id=iUFalxUFFWkC, 2013, Routledge, 978-0-415-67165-1, 77, ; For additional context on the two-nation theory history based on Hindu-Muslim cultural conflicts and the partition: BOOK, Venkat Dhulipala, Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India,books.google.com/books?id=PrqLBgAAQBAJ, 2015, Cambridge University Press, 978-1-316-25838-5, 1â€“24, 25â€“28, 360â€“367, Ch. Introduction; Nationalists, Communalists and the 1937 Provincial Elections, According to Prabhu, such ideas and rationale fuelled the Hindutva narrative for a radical exclusivist Hindu nation, and became “the apologia for the two-nation theory of the 1940s”.BOOK, Prabhu Bapu, Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915-1930: Constructing Nation and History,books.google.com/books?id=iUFalxUFFWkC, 2013, Routledge, 978-0-415-67165-1, 77â€“78, }}{{efn|According to the Political Scientist Christophe Jaffrelot, in the pre-1947 period, the two nationalism and separatist movements in South Asia influenced each other. This history is an example of the Ernest Gellner theory of nationalism, states Jaffrelot. The Gellner theory states that nationalistic movements arise when there exist two groups, one privileged and other under-privileged. When the privilege-power equation is threatened by the social forces of history, “culture, skin pigmentation” and such ethnic markers become a basis to presume inferiority of the other and a pretext to manipulate the situation. Using a language of nationalism, one group tries to maintain the status quo, while the other seeks to overthrow it. In British India, states Jaffrelot, Muslim nationalism and separatism “certainly did not develop” from feelings of having been discriminated against, but their mobilisation came from “the fear of decline and marginalization” of their historic privilege among the Muslim elites in British India. They deployed Islamic cultural symbols and pressed for Perso-Arabic script-based Urdu language for their separatist and nationalist rationale, while Hindu nationalists deployed Hindu cultural symbols and pressed for the use of Indic script-based (Hindi) language â€“ both languages nearly similar when spoken. The mutual use of identity symbols helped crystallise the other’s convictions and fuel each other’s fears.BOOK, Christophe Jaffrelot, Pakistan: Nationalism Without A Nation,books.google.com/books?id=I2avL3aZzSEC, 2002, Zed Books, 978-1-84277-117-4, 10â€“11, context: 10â€“16, These identity symbols and the continued mutual use of such ideological statements fuel the nationalistic discourse in contemporary India and Pakistan. They have been and remain central to organisations such as the BJP and the Sangh Parivar associated with the Hindutva ideology, according to Jean-Luc Racine, a scholar of nationalisms and separatisms with a focus on South Asia.BOOK, Jean-Luc Racine, Christophe Jaffrelot, Pakistan: Nationalism Without A Nation,books.google.com/books?id=I2avL3aZzSEC, 2002, Zed Books, 978-1-84277-117-4, 205â€“211, }} Professor Muqtedar Khan has argued that Hindu nationalism further grew because of the religious divisions between Hindus and Muslims that were fomented by post-1947 Pakistani terrorist attacks in and military conflicts with India.WEB, Muqtedar Khan on Why Religious Nationalism Is Poisoning South Asia,thediplomat.com/2023/08/muqtedar-khan-on-why-religious-nationalism-is-poisoning-south-asia/, 2023-08-27, thediplomat.com, en-US, According to Chetan Bhatt, the various forms of Hindu nationalism including the recent “cultural nationalist” form of Hindutva, have roots in the second half of the 19th century.BOOK, Chetan Bhatt, Hindu nationalism: origins, ideologies and modern myths,books.google.com/books?id=W2PXAAAAMAAJ, 2001, Berg, 978-1-85973-343-1, 3â€“5, 8â€“14, 77â€“86, These are a “dense cluster of ideologies” of primordialism,{{efn|Primordialism is the belief that the deep historical and cultural roots of nations is a quasiâ€objective phenomenon, by which outsiders identify individuals of an ethnic group and what contributes to how an individual forms a self-identity.JOURNAL, Coakley, John, ‘Primordialism’ in nationalism studies: theory or ideology?, Nations and Nationalism, Wiley, 24, 2, 2017, 10.1111/nana.12349, 327, context: 328â€“347, 149288553,pure.qub.ac.uk/en/publications/primordialism-in-nationalism-studies-theory-or-ideology(28e99592-2d86-421f-9fd3-2c4517aa7278).html, ENCYCLOPEDIA, Ethnic Conflict, Encyclopaedia Britannica,www.britannica.com/topic/ethnic-conflict, 2012, Tina Reuter, }} and they emerged from the colonial experiences of the Indian people in conjunction with ideas borrowed from European thinkers but thereafter debated, adapted and negotiated. These ideas included those of a nation, nationalism, race, Aryanism, Orientalism, Romanticism and others.JOURNAL, Deepa Reddy, Review: Hindu Nationalism by Chetan Bhatt, American Ethnologist, 30, 1, 2003, 170, {{efn|For example, the “writings of Giuseppe Mazzini made a profound impression on Savarkar”, states Thomas Hansen.}} Decades before he wrote his treatise on Hindutva, Savarkar was already famous in colonial India for his version of 1857 “Mutiny” history. He studied in London between 1906 and 1910. There he discussed and evolved his ideas of “what constituted a Hindu identity”, made friends with Indian student groups as well as non-Indian groups such as the Sinn FÃ©in. He was a part of the underground home rule and liberation movement of Indians, before getting arrested for anti-British activities. His political activities and intellectual journeys through the European publications, according to Bhatt, influenced him, his future writings and the 20th-century Hindutva ideology that emerged from his writings.BOOK, Chetan Bhatt, Liberation and Purity: Race, New Religious Movements and the Ethics of Postmodernity,books.google.com/books?id=aap0HaCzrFwC, 1997, Taylor & Francis, 978-1-85728-423-2, 185â€“186,

Adoption

Savarkar’s Hindutva ideology reached Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in Nagpur (Maharashtra) in 1925, and he found Savarkar’s Hindutva inspirational.{{sfn|Andersen|Damle|1987|p=34}}BOOK, Christophe Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism: A Reader,books.google.com/books?id=mOXWgr53A5kC, 2009, Princeton University Press, 978-1-4008-2803-6, 15â€“17, 96â€“97, 179â€“183, He visited Savarkar in Ratnagiri shortly after and discussed with him methods for organising the ‘Hindu nation’.{{harvnb|Keer|1988|p=170}} cited in {{harvnb|Jaffrelot|1996|p=33}}JOURNAL, Kelkar, D. V., The R.S.S., Economic Weekly, 4 February 1950,www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/1950_2/4/the_rss.pdf,www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/1950_2/4/the_rss.pdf," title="web.archive.org/web/20141108154837www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/1950_2/4/the_rss.pdf,">web.archive.org/web/20141108154837www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/1950_2/4/the_rss.pdf, 2014-11-08, live, 26 October 2014, Savarkar and Hedgewar discussions led in September that year to Hedgewar starting Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, lit. “National Volunteer Society“) with this mission. This organisation rapidly grew to become the largest Hindu nationalist movement. However, the term Hindutva was not used to describe the ideology of the new organisation; it was Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation), with one RSS publication stating, “it became evident that Hindus were the nation in Bharat and that Hindutva was Rashtriyatva [nationalism].“{{harvnb|Bharat Prakashan|1955|pp=24â€“25}} quoted in {{harvnb|Goyal|1979|p=58}}Hedgewar’s RSS not only propagated Hindutva ideology, it developed a grassroots organizational structure (shakhas) to reform the Hindu society. Village level groups met for morning and evening physical training sessions, martial training and Hindutva ideology lessons. Hedgewar kept RSS an ideologically active but an “apolitical” organisation. This practice of keeping out of national and international politics was retained by his successor M. S. Golwalkar through the 1940s. Philosopher Jason Stanley states “the RSS was explicitly influenced by European fascist movements, its leading politicians regularly praised Hitler and Mussolini in the late 1930s and 1940s.“Stanley, Jason (2018). How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. New York: Random House. pp. 14â€“15. {{Isbn|978-0-52551183-0}} In 1931, B. S. Moonje met with Mussolini and expressed a desire to replicate the fascist youth movement in India.BOOK, Hindutva and Dalits, Anand, Teltumbde, 2019, 38, SAGE, According to Sali Augustine, the core institution of Hindutva has been the RSS. While the RSS states that Hindutva is different from Hinduism, it has been linked to religion. Therefore “cultural nationalism” is a euphemism, states Augustine, and it is meant to mask the creation of a state with a “Hindu religious identity”.{{sfn|Augustine|2009|pp=69-70}} According to Jaffrelot, the regional heads of the RSS have included Indians who are Hindus as well as those who belong to other Indian religions such as Jainism.BOOK, Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation (with Special Reference to Central India),books.google.com/books?id=iVsfVOTUnYEC, 1999, Penguin, 978-0-14-024602-5, 140â€“145, In parallel to the RSS, Savarkar, after his release from the colonial prison, joined and became the president of Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha in 1937. There, he used the terms Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra liberally, according to Graham.{{sfn|Graham|1968|pp=350-352}} Syama Prasad Mukherjee, who served as its president in 1944 and joined the Jawaharlal Nehru Cabinet after independence, was a Hindu traditionalist politician who wanted to uphold Hindu values but not necessarily to the exclusion of other communities. He asked for the membership of Hindu Mahasabha to be thrown open to all communities. When this was not accepted, he resigned from the party and founded a new political party in collaboration with the RSS. He understood Hinduism as a nationality rather than a community but, realising that this is not the common understanding of the term Hindu, he chose “Bharatiya” instead of “Hindu” to name the new party, which came to be called the Bharatiya Jana Sangh.{{sfn|Graham|1968|pp=350-352}}

Growth

The cabinet of the first prime minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru banned the RSS and arrested more than 200,000 RSS volunteers, after Nathuram Godse, a former volunteer of RSS, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi.{{sfn|Frykenberg|2008|pp=193â€“196}} Nehru also appointed government commissions to investigate the assassination and related circumstances. The series of investigations by these commissions, states the political science scholar Nandini Deo, later found the RSS leadership and “the RSS innocent of a role in the assassination”.BOOK, Nandini Deo, Mobilizing Religion and Gender in India: The Role of Activism,books.google.com/books?id=GjzgCgAAQBAJ, 2015, Routledge, 978-1-317-53067-1, 54â€“55, The mass arrested RSS volunteers were released by the Indian courts, and the RSS has ever since used this as evidence of “being falsely accused and condemned”.According to the historian Robert Frykenberg specialising in South Asian Studies, the RSS membership enormously expanded in independent India. In this period, while RSS remained “discretely out of politics”, Jan Sangh, another Hindutva-ideology-based organisation, entered the political arena. The Jan Sangh had limited success in the Indian general elections between 1952 and 1971.{{harvnb|Frykenberg|2008|pp=193â€“196}}: “After Independence in 1947, the RSS saw an enormous expansion in numbers of new swayamsevaks and a proliferation of disciplined and drilled shakhas. This occurred despite Gandhi’s assassination (January 30, 1948) by Nathuram Vinayak Godse, a former sevak and despite being outlawed. (p. 193) [...] Thus, even as the RSS discretely stayed out of open politics, and continued its campaign to convert more and more people to the cause of Hindutva, its new party [Jan Sangh] engaged in political combat. (p. 194) [...] For the next two decades, the Jan Sangh followed a narrowly focused agenda. [...] In 1971, despite softening its Hindutva voice and joining a grand alliance, it was not successful. (p. 195)“BOOK, Bruce Desmond Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh,books.google.com/books?id=KxMgPAAACAAJ, 2007, Cambridge University Press, 978-0-521-05374-7, 196â€“198, context: Chapter 7, The Jana Sangh in electoral politics, 1951 to 1967, ; Quote: “We have now considered the main factors which worked against the Jana Sangh’s attempt to become a major party in Indian politics [between 1951 and 1967]. It was seriously handicapped in electoral competition by the limitations of its organization and leadership, by its inability to gather support through appeals to Hindu nationalist sentiment, and by its failure to establish a broad base of social and economic interests.” This was, in part, because of its poor organisation and leadership; its focus on the Hindutva sentiment did not appeal to the voters, and its campaign lacked adequate social and economic themes. This was also, in part, because Congress party leaders such Indira Gandhi had co-opted some of the key Hindutva ideology themes and fused it with socialist policies and her father’s Jawaharlal Nehru Soviet-style centrally controlled economic model.{{sfn|Frykenberg|2008|pp=193â€“196}}BOOK, Vernon Hewitt, Political Mobilisation and Democracy in India: States of Emergency,books.google.com/books?id=sh6yVyWM4pwC, 2007, Routledge, 978-1-134-09762-3, 2â€“4, , Quote: “The use of socialism, of garibi hatao (Indira Gandhi’s populist slogan translated as ‘out with poverty’) and of Hindutva are in the first instance conceptualized as differing state strategies of co-optation, deployed by elites ...”; From Taylor & Francis summary: “[Vernon Hewitt’s book] demonstrates how the Internal Emergency of 1975 led to increased support of groups such as the BJS and the RSS, accounting for the rise of political movements advocating Hindu nationalism â€“ Hindutva â€“ as a response to rapid political mobilization triggered by the Emergency, and an attempt by political elites to control this to their advantage.”.BOOK, Sumit Sarkar, Radhika Desai, Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms,books.google.com/books?id=fTSPAQAAQBAJ, 2013, Routledge, 978-1-317-96821-4, 41â€“45, The RSS continued its grassroots operations between 1947 and early 1970s, and its volunteers provided humanitarian assistance to Hindu and Sikh refugees from the partition of British India, victims of war and violence, and helped disaster victims to resettle economically.{{sfn|Frykenberg|2008|pp=193â€“196}}BOOK, Subrata Kumar Mitra, Mike Enskat, Clemens Spiess, Political Parties in South Asia,books.google.com/books?id=dObxI9xahSYC, 2004, Greenwood, 978-0-275-96832-8, 57â€“58, Between 1975 and 1977, Indira Gandhi declared and enforced Emergency with press censorship, the arrests of opposition leaders, and the suspension of many fundamental human rights of Indian citizens. The abuses of Emergency triggered a mass resistance and the rapid growth of volunteers and political support to the Hindutva ideology.{{sfn|Frykenberg|2008|pp=193â€“196}}[a] BOOK, Christophe Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism: A Reader,books.google.com/books?id=mOXWgr53A5kC, 2009, Princeton University Press, 978-1-4008-2803-6, 329â€“330, ;[b] For various sides in the Judiciary versus the Executive authority on Indira Gandhi’s government and Hindutva politicians during this period, see BOOK, Gary J. Jacobsohn, The Wheel of Law: India’s Secularism in Comparative Constitutional Context,books.google.com/books?id=6Ceoc1i1KF8C, 2003, Princeton University Press, 0-691-09245-1, 189â€“197 with footnotes; context: Chapter 7, Indira Gandhi and her party were voted out of power in 1977. The Hindutva ideology-based Jan Sangh members such as Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Brij Lal Varma and Lal Krishna Advani gained national prominence, and the Hindutva ideology sympathiser Morarji Desai became the prime minister of a coalition non-Congress government.{{sfn|Frykenberg|2008|pp=193â€“196}} This coalition did not last past 1980, and from the consequent break-up of coalition parties was founding of the Bharatiya Janata Party in April 1980. This new national political party relied on the Hindutva ideology-based rural and urban grassroots organisations that had rapidly grown across India from the mid-1970s.{{sfn|Frykenberg|2008|pp=193â€“196}}

Hindutva under Modi (2014â€“present)

{{Further|Narendra Modi#Narendra Modi}}Since the 2014 Indian general election with the BJP winning, the premiership of Narendra Modi and state based BJP governments have pushed parts of the Hindutva agenda.

Abrogation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir

On 5 August 2019, the Modi administration revoked the special status, or (Article 370 of the Constitution of India#Autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir: Structure and limitations|limited autonomy), granted under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution to Jammu and Kashmir.WEB,pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=192505,, Parliament approves Resolution to repeal Article 370; paves way to truly integrate J&K with Indian Union, pib.gov.in, Article 370 rendered toothless, Article 35A ceases to exist, The Economic Times, 5 August 2019.

Ayodhya dispute

On 9 November 2019, the Supreme Court of India passed resolution on creation of Ram Mandir on the disputed land of Ayodhya.WEB,www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/09/ayodhya-verdict-hindus-win-possession-of-site-disputed-by-muslims, Ayodhya: India’s top court gives Hindus site claimed by Muslims, TheGuardian.com, 9 November 2019, WEB,www.dw.com/en/india-court-rules-in-favor-of-hindus-over-ayodhya-temple-mosque-dispute/a-51177838, India: Court rules in favor of Hindus over Ayodhya temple-mosque dispute | DW | 09.11.2019, Deutsche Welle, NEWS,www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50355775, Ayodhya verdict: Indian top court gives holy site to Hindus, BBC News, 9 November 2019, WEB, Supreme Court hearing ends in Ayodhya dispute; orders reserved,www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/supreme-court-hearing-ends-in-ayodhya-dispute-orders-reserved/article29710840.ece, 2019-10-16, 2021-04-23, The Hindu Business Line, Press Trust of India, en, The verdict also stated to provide {{Convert|5|acre|m2}} for creation of a mosque on another part of the land. The land was given to the Sunni Waqf Board.WEB, Ram Mandir verdict: Supreme Court verdict on Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case: Highlights,timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/ayodhya-babri-masjid-ram-mandir-case-verdict-highlights-supreme-court-declared-verdict-on-ram-janmabhoomi-case/articleshow/71978918.cms, 2019-11-09, 2021-04-23, The Times of India, en, On 5 August 2019, Narendra Modi held the Bhoomipujan at the Ayodhya. He became the first prime minister to visit Ram Janmabhoomi and Hanuman Garhi.WEB, 2020-08-05, Modi becomes first PM to visit Ram Janmabhoomi, Hanumangarhi temple in Ayodhya,www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/travel-tourism/modi-becomes-first-pm-to-visit-ram-janmabhoomi-hanumangarhi-temple-in-ayodhya/2046074/, 2021-04-23, The Financial Express (India), The Financial Express, en-US, On 22 January 2024, the Ram Mandir was completed and inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi.WEB, Babri mosque to Ram temple: A timeline from 1528 to 2024,www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/22/babri-mosque-to-ram-temple-a-timeline-from-1528-to-2024, 2024-01-24, Al Jazeera, en, In a speech he said, “Ram is the faith of India, Ram is the foundation of India, Ram is the idea of India, Ram is the law of India. Ram is the prestige of India, Ram is the glory of India...Ram is the leader and Ram is the policy.“WEB, 2024-01-22, Ram Temple inauguration: Advent of a new era, says PM Modi,www.hindustantimes.com/cities/others/advent-of-a-new-era-says-pm-101705947809336.html, 2024-01-24, Hindustan Times, en,

Forced conversion bans

Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bharatiya Janata Party

{{See also|Vishva Hindu Parishad|Bharatiya Janata Party}}The RSS established a number of affiliate organisations after Indian Independence to carry its ideology to various parts of the society. Prominent among them is the Vishva Hindu Parishad, which was set up in 1964 with the objective of protecting and promoting the Hindu religion. It subscribed to Hindutva ideology, which came to mean in its hands political Hinduism and Hindu militancy.{{sfn|Katju|2013|pp=3-4}}A number of political developments in the 1980s caused a sense of vulnerability among the Hindus in India. This was much discussed and leveraged by the Hindutva ideology organisations. These developments include the mass killing of the Hindus by the militant Khalistan movement, the influx of undocumented Bangladeshi immigration into Assam coupled with the expulsion of Hindus from Bangladesh, the Congress-led government’s pro-Muslim bias in the Shah Bano case as well as the Rushdie affair.{{sfn|Jaffrelot|1996|pp=343â€“345 with footnotes}} The VHP and the BJP utilised these developments to push forward a militant Hindutva nationalist agenda leading to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The BJP officially adopted Hindutva as its ideology in its 1989 Palampur resolution.{{sfn|Krishna|2011|p=324}}The BJP claims that Hindutva represents “cultural nationalism” and its conception of “Indian nationhood”, but not a religious or theocratic concept.{{citation |title=BJP PHILOSOPHY: HINDUTVA (CULTURAL NATIONALISM) |publisher=Bharatiya Janata Party |url=http://www.bjp.org/about-the-party/philosophy/?u=hindutva |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140831081149www.bjp.org/about-the-party/philosophy/?u=hindutva |archive-date=31 August 2014}} It is “India’s identity”, according to the RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat.NEWS, 2013-07-21, Hindutva is India’s identity: RSS chief, en-IN, The Hindu,www.thehindu.com/news/national/hindutva-is-indias-identity-rss-chief/article4937750.ece, 0971-751X, According to the anthropologist and South Asia Politics scholar Thomas Hansen, Hindutva in the post-Independence era has emerged as a political ideology and a populist form of Hindu nationalism. For Indian nationalists, it has subsumed “religious sentiments and public rituals into a larger discourse of national culture (Bharatiya culture) and the Hindu nation, Hindu rashtra”, states Hansen. This notion has appealed to the masses in part because it “connects meaningfully with everyday anxieties of security, a sense of disorder” in modern Indian life. The BJP has deployed the Hindutva theme in its election campaign since early 1991, as well as nominated candidates who are affiliated with organisations that support the Hindutva ideology.BOOK, Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India,books.google.com/books?id=SAqn3OIGE54C, 1999, Princeton University Press, 1-4008-2305-6, 10â€“11, 18â€“20, 165â€“166, The campaign language of the Congress Party leader Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s mirrored those of Hindutva proponents. The political speeches and publications by Indian Muslim leaders have declared their “Islamic religious identity” being greater than any “political ideology or national identity”. These developments, states Hansen, have helped Hindu nationalists spread essentialist constructions per contemporary Hindutva ideology.BOOK, Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India,books.google.com/books?id=SAqn3OIGE54C, 1999, Princeton University Press, 1-4008-2305-6, 148â€“152,

Concepts and issues

Hindutva ideology has focused on the following issues:

Political representation of Hindu nationalists, and in some cases exclusivist interests of the HindusBOOK, Hindu Nationalism, Christopher Jaffrelot, The RSS and Politics, Princeton University Press, 2009, 978-1-4008-2803-6, 10.2307/j.ctt7s415.15, 175â€“192, JOURNAL, Jaffrelot, Christophe, Refining the moderation thesis. Two religious parties and Indian democracy: the Jana Sangh and the BJP between Hindutva radicalism and coalition politics, Democratization, 20, 5, 2013, 10.1080/13510347.2013.801256, 876â€“894, 144174913,
Jammu and Kashmir as an integral, inseparable part of IndiaBOOK, Hindu Nationalism, Jammu & Kashmir, Princeton University Press, 2009, Christopher Jaffrelot, 978-1-4008-2803-6, 10.2307/j.ctt7s415.16, 193â€“217, 248925346,
Address Christian and Islamic proselytisation, religious conversion practices and the arithmetic of religious communities in India;BOOK, Hindu Nationalism, Conversion and the Arithmetic of Religious Communities, Christopher Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press, 2009, 978-1-4008-2803-6, 10.2307/j.ctt7s415.18, 233â€“254, JOURNAL, Longkumer, Arkotong, The power of persuasion: Hindutva, Christianity, and the discourse of religion and culture in Northeast India, Religion, Informa UK Limited, 47, 2, 2016, 10.1080/0048721x.2016.1256845, 203â€“227, 151354081,www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/28487092/Hindutva_Paper_Final_2_2016.pdf,web.archive.org/web/20180724030304/https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/28487092/Hindutva_Paper_Final_2_2016.pdf, 2018-07-24, live, 20.500.11820/dd23cf50-aaa1-4120-b362-eee7028c3c8f, free, insist that Muslims and Christians accept its doctrine of equality of religionsBOOK, Jacob De Roover, Sarah Clarehout, Rosalind I. J. Hackett, Proselytization Revisited: Rights Talk, Free Markets and Culture Wars,books.google.com/books?id=y5TCBQAAQBAJ, 2014, Routledge, 978-1-317-49109-5, 71â€“72,
Textbook revision and educating Indian youth in the Hindutva version of Indian historyBOOK, Education, Princeton University Press, 2009, Christophe Jaffrelot, 978-1-4008-2803-6, 269â€“278, JOURNAL, West Bengal History Textbooks and the Indian Textbook Controversy, Basabi Khan Banerjee, Internationale Schulbuchforschung (Textbook Controversies in India and Pakistan / Schulbuchkontroversen in Indien und Pakistan), 29, 4, 2007, 355â€“374, 43056795,
Ayodhya and other sites of historic religious disputesBOOK, Hindu Nationalism, Ayodhya, the Babri Masjid, and the Ramjanmabhumi Dispute, Princeton University Press, 2009, Christophe Jaffrelot, 978-1-4008-2803-6, 279â€“281, 289â€“294, context: 279â€“298,
Strengthen the defence forces of IndiaBOOK, Hindu Nationalism, Defence, Princeton University Press, 2009, Christophe Jaffrelot, 978-1-4008-2803-6, 299â€“302, context: 299â€“312,
Replace “pseudo-secularism” with “true Hindu culture”, the latter being the Western style separation of religion and stateBOOK, Hindu Nationalism, Secularism, Princeton University Press, 2009, Christophe Jaffrelot, 978-1-4008-2803-6, 313â€“317, context: 313â€“340,
Decentralize and reform the Indian economy, end the social-justice based, centrally-planned, state-owned economic modelBOOK, Hindu Nationalism, The Economy, Princeton University Press, 2009, Christophe Jaffrelot, 978-1-4008-2803-6, 342â€“344, context: 342â€“359, [a] JOURNAL, The paradox of the BJP’s stance towards external economic liberalisation: why a Hindu nationalist party furthered globalisation in India, 2004, David Arulanantham,www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/Asia/wpdec04.pdf, Chatham House Asia Programme Working Paper, ;[b] JOURNAL, Marketizing Hindutva: The state, society, and markets in Hindu nationalism, Priya Chacko, 10.1017/S0026749X17000051, Modern Asian Studies, 2019, 53, 2, 377â€“379, context: 377â€“410, 2440/117274, 149588748, free,
Represent the diaspora and its Hindu cultural interests in the international forumsBOOK, Hindu Nationalism, The Diaspora and Hindu Nationalism, Princeton University Press, 2009, Christophe Jaffrelot, 978-1-4008-2803-6, 10.2307/j.ctt7s415.25, 361â€“369, JOURNAL, Bhatt, Chetan, Dharmo rakshati rakshitah : Hindutva movements in the UK, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 23, 3, 2000, 10.1080/014198700328999, 559â€“593, 144085595,

Uniform Civil Code

The Hindutva leaders have sought a Uniform Civil Code for all the citizens of India, where the same law applies to all its citizens irrespective of the individual’s religion.BOOK, Partha S. Ghosh, The Politics of Personal Law in South Asia: Identity, Nationalism and the Uniform Civil Code,books.google.com/books?id=YwvaaHI8sjEC, 2012, Routledge, 978-1-136-70511-3, 103â€“111, They state that differential laws based on religion violate the Indian Constitution and have sowed the seeds of divisiveness between different religious communities.WEB,www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=66122, BJP calls for Uniform Civil Code, expressindia.com, Press Trust of India, 15 April 2006, 25 February 2009, 13 January 2012,www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=66122," title="web.archive.org/web/20120113064037www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=66122,">web.archive.org/web/20120113064037www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=66122, dead, Under the current laws that were enacted in 1955â€“56, state John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, the constitutionally directive principle of a Uniform Civil Code covers only non-Muslims. The Uniform Civil Code is opposed by the Muslim leaders.BOOK, John Hutchinson, Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism: Critical Concepts in Political Science,books.google.com/books?id=NN0m_c8p6fgC, 2000, Taylor & Francis, 978-0-415-20112-4, 888â€“890,

Protection of Hindu interests

{{See also|Muscular Hinduism}}The followers of Hindutva are known for their criticism of the Indian government as too passive with regard to the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus by Kashmiri Muslim separatists and the 1998 Wandhama massacre, and advocates of Hindutva wish a harder stance in Jammu and Kashmir.NEWS, Shiv Sena attacks Narendra Modi government on Kashmir, Hindutva issues,www.dnaindia.com/india/report-shiv-sena-attacks-narendra-modi-government-on-kashmir-hindutva-issues-2069428, 18 February 2017, DNA India, Press Trust of India, 16 March 2015, NEWS, Government should deport Kashmiri separatists to Pakistan: RSS,indianexpress.com/article/india/government-should-deport-kashmiri-separatists-to-pakistan-rss/, 18 February 2017, The Indian Express, Press Trust of India, 24 April 2015, The supporters of Hindutva sought to protect the native Hindu culture and traditions especially those that symbolised the Hindu culture. They believe that Indian culture is identical with the Hindu culture.BOOK, Smith Eugene, Donald, India as a secular state, Princeton University Press, 1963, These include animals, language, holy structures rivers and medicine.BOOK, Jaffrelot, Christopher, Religion, Caste & Politics in India, Primus Boks, 978-93-80607-04-7, 2010, 5, They opposed the continuation of Urdu being used as a vernacular language as they associated it with Muslims. They felt that Urdu symbolised a foreign culture. For them, Hindi alone was the unifying factor for all the diverse forces in the country. They even wanted to make Hindi as the official language of India and felt that it should be promoted at the expense of English and the other regional languages, with some Hindutva followers describing this with the slogan “Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan”.NEWS, 2010-02-03, A new kind of discordance, en-IN, The Hindu,www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/A-new-kind-of-discordance/article16812293.ece, 2023-10-29, 0971-751X, NEWS, 2015-02-12, A yen for Sanskritised Hindi, en-IN, The Hindu,www.thehindu.com/news/national/A-yen-for-Sanskritised-Hindi/article60435857.ece, 2023-10-29, 0971-751X, However, this caused a state of tension and alarm in the non-Hindi regions. The non-Hindi regions saw it as an attempt by the north to dominate the rest of the country. Eventually, this demand was put down in order to protect the cultural diversity of the country.BOOK, Graham, Bruce, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics, Cambridge University Press, 1990, 978-0-521-05952-7, {{Full citation needed|date=March 2021}}Hindutva activists have boycotted several Bollywood movies in recent years, claiming that they use too much Urdu and are anti-Hindu;WEB, Is the Hindu Nationalist ‘Boycott Bollywood’ Campaign Impacting the Box Office?,thediplomat.com/2022/09/is-hindu-nationalists-boycott-bollywood-campaign-impacting-the-box-office/, 2023-10-27, thediplomat.com, en-US, NEWS, The siege of Bollywood, The Economist,www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2021/02/25/the-siege-of-bollywood, 2023-10-27, 0013-0613, some activists have called for South Indian cinema to be patronised instead, claiming that it is more culturally rooted.NEWS, Raj, Kaushik, Gurmat, Sabah, 2022-09-30, Bollywood under siege as rightwing social media boycotts start to bite, en-GB, The Guardian,www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/30/bollywood-under-siege-as-rightwing-social-media-boycotts-start-to-bite, 2023-10-27, 0261-3077, WEB, 2022-08-27, Explained: The #BoycottBollywood trend, and its impact on the industry,indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-culture/boycott-bollywood-trend-impact-on-industry-explained-8115054/, 2023-10-27, The Indian Express, en, Hindutva opposition to Urdu coincides with a desire to spread a Sanskritised Hindi across India.McCartney, Patrick. “The Sanitising Power of Spoken Sanskrit”. HimÄl South Asian (2014).WEB, 2021-10-26, Why does India’s Hindu right-wing hate the Urdu language so much?,qz.com/india/2079526/explaining-indian-hindu-right-wings-hate-for-the-urdu-language, 2023-10-29, Quartz, en,

Organisations

Hindutva is the guiding ideology of the RSS and its affiliated family of organisations, the Sangh Parivar.BOOK, Christophe, Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism: A Reader,books.google.com/books?id=mOXWgr53A5kC&pg=PA23, 10 January 2009, Princeton University Press, 978-1-4008-2803-6, 2â€“24, In general, Hindutvavadis (followers of Hindutva) believe that they represent the well-being of Dharmic religions: Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism.{{Citation needed|date=June 2023}}Most nationalists are organised into political, cultural and social organisations using the concept of Hindutva as a political tool. The first Hindutva organisation formed was the RSS, founded in 1925. A prominent Indian political party, the BJP, is closely associated with a group of organisations that advocate Hindutva. They collectively refer to themselves as the “Sangh Parivar” or family of associations, and include the RSS, Bajrang Dal and the VHP.{{Citation needed|date=June 2023}} Other organisations include:

Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, the overseas branch of the RSS
Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a workers’ union
Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a students’ union
Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, a farmers’ organisation

Political parties that are independent from the Sangh Parivar’s influence but that also espouse the Hindutva ideology include the Hindu Mahasabha, Prafull Goradia’s Akhil Bharatiya Jana Sangh,WEB,in.news.yahoo.com/041021/43/2hfvw.html, Jana Sangh promises to make India Hindu nation, 21 October 2004, Yahoo News India, dead,in.news.yahoo.com/041021/43/2hfvw.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20041105060336in.news.yahoo.com/041021/43/2hfvw.html,">web.archive.org/web/20041105060336in.news.yahoo.com/041021/43/2hfvw.html, 5 November 2004, and the Marathi nationalist Shiv Sena,NEWS,www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/Shiv-Sena-for-PM-with-Hindutva-view/Article1-1051070.aspx, Shiv Sena for PM with Hindutva view, Hindustan Times, 27 April 2013, dead,www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/Shiv-Sena-for-PM-with-Hindutva-view/Article1-1051070.aspx," title="web.archive.org/web/20130428045316www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/Shiv-Sena-for-PM-with-Hindutva-view/Article1-1051070.aspx,">web.archive.org/web/20130428045316www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/Shiv-Sena-for-PM-with-Hindutva-view/Article1-1051070.aspx, 28 April 2013, Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) is a Sikh religious party that maintained ties with Hindutva organisations and political parties, as they also represent Sikhism.SAD-BJP Alliance helped bridge Hindu Sikh gap Indian Express, 19 January 1999 {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070929121142www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/ie/daily/19990119/01951725.html |date=29 September 2007 }} By September 2020, SAD left the NDA over the farms bill.WEB, Punjab’s Akali Dal Quits BJP-Led Alliance Over Controversial Farm Bills,www.ndtv.com/india-news/akali-dal-quits-bjp-led-national-democratic-alliance-over-controversial-farm-bills-2301550, 26 September 2020, NDTV.com, {{Anchor|Criticism and support}}

Hindutva violence

Since the mid-2010s, there has been a notable increase in violence motivated by Hindutva ideology, particularly towards Muslims,JOURNAL, Ramachandran, S., 2020, Hindutva Violence in India: Trends and Implications, Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses, 12, 4, 15â€“20, 26918077,www.jstor.org/stable/26918077, and includes acts of extremist terroristic violence.JOURNAL, Gatade, S., 2014, Pawns In, Patrons Still Out: Understanding the Phenomenon of Hindutva Terror, Economic and Political Weekly, 49, 13, 36â€“43,www.jstor.org/stable/24479356, 24479356, JOURNAL, Bidwai, P., 2008, Confronting the Reality of Hindutva Terrorism, Economic and Political Weekly, 43, 47, 10â€“13,www.jstor.org/stable/40278200, 40278200, JOURNAL, Runa, Das, 2006, Encountering Hindutva, interrogating religious nationalism and (En)gendering a Hindu patriarchy in India’s nuclear policies, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 8, 3, 370â€“393, 10.1080/14616740600792988, 142800345,www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14616740600792988, This has principally been perpetrated by or has implicated members, or alleged members, of Hindu nationalist organizations such as the RSS or Abhinav Bharat.WEB,scroll.in/article/759508/hindutva-terror-cases-nia-on-the-backfoot-as-apex-court-questions-complicity-charges, Hindutva terror cases: NIA on the backfoot as apex court questions complicity charges, Vipin, Pubby, Scroll.in, 4 October 2015, NEWS, Christophe Jaffrelot, A running thread of deep saffron, The Indian Express, 29 January 2009,archive.indianexpress.com/news/a-running-thread-of-deep-saffron/416409/, 2014-11-17, NEWS, Subhash Gatade, Saffron terror, Himal, October 2007,old.himalmag.com/component/content/article/1340-saffron-terror.html, 16 December 2014, 26 May 2019,old.himalmag.com/component/content/article/1340-saffron-terror.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20190526191105old.himalmag.com/component/content/article/1340-saffron-terror.html,">web.archive.org/web/20190526191105old.himalmag.com/component/content/article/1340-saffron-terror.html, dead, The violence has also been condoned by the BJP politicians and used as an electoral strategy to garner support from the far-right Hindu population.WEB, Why the BJP Won’t â€“ and Can’t â€“ Give Up on Hindutva as an Electoral Strategy,thewire.in/communalism/bjp-hindutva-karnataka-election, 2023-07-27, The Wire, WEB, The politics of Hindutva in India,www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-comments/2020/hindutva-politics-india, 2023-07-27, IISS, en, The veneration of cows as deities and restrictions on meat consumption have also been used by to justify violence against Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and lower-caste Hindus.JOURNAL, Shakuntala, Banaji, 2018, Vigilante Publics: Orientalism, Modernity and Hindutva Fascism in India, Javnost - the Public: Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture, 25, 4, 333â€“350, 10.1080/13183222.2018.1463349, 149962714, free,

Cow vigilantism

{{Further|Cow vigilante violence in India}}(File:India cow slaughter map.svg|thumb|Cow slaughter laws in various states in India)There has been a rise in the number of incidents of cow vigilantism since the election of a BJP majority in the Parliament of India in 2014. The frequency and severity of cow vigilante violence has been described as “unprecedented”.JOURNAL, Sacred Slaughter: An Analysis of Historical, Communal, and Constitutional Aspects of Beef Bans in India, Politics, Religion & Ideology, 17, 4, Radha Sarkar, Human Rights Watch has reported that there has been a surge in such violence since 2015.WEB, India: ‘Cow Protection’ Spurs Vigilante Violence,www.hrw.org/news/2017/04/27/india-cow-protection-spurs-vigilante-violence, 27 April 2017, The surge is attributed to the recent rise in Hindu nationalism in India.NEWS,www.reuters.com/article/india-modi-politics-meat-idUSKBN18P129, Cattle trade ban to halt beef exports, lead to job losses, 29 May 2017, 6 July 2019, www.reuters.com, Reuters, Many vigilante groups say they feel “empowered” by the victory of the Hindu nationalist BJP in the 2014 election.NEWS, Soutik, Biswas, BBC News, Why the humble cow is India’s most polarising animal,www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34513185, NEWS, Ian Marlow and Bibhudatta Pradhan, Cow-Saving Vigilantes Are a Sign of Rising Political Risk in India,www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-19/shuttered-abattoir-a-sign-of-rising-political-risk-in-india, According to a Reuters report, there were 63 attacks in India between 2010 and mid 2017 resulting in 28 deaths, 24 of them Muslim, and 124 injuries. Most attacks occurred after Narendra Modi took office in 2014.NEWS,in.reuters.com/article/india-protests-muslims-beef-idINKBN19J2BV, Protests held across India after attacks against Muslims, Reuters, 28 June 2017, 29 June 2017, Many BJP states have passed laws against cattle slaughter such as (2017),{{Sentence fragment|date=June 2023}} Gujarat,NEWS,timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/gujarat-to-punish-cow-slaughter-with-14-year-jail/articleshow/57952691.cms, Gujarat to punish cow slaughter with 14-year jail â€“ Times of India, The Times of India, 2 April 2017, NEWS,www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-39454607, Gujarat: India state approves life term for killing cows, 31 March 2017, BBC News, 2 April 2017, NEWS,www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/gujarat-to-tighten-cow-slaughter-law/article17754329.ece, Gujarat to tighten cow slaughter law, Langa, Mahesh, The Hindu, 2 April 2017, NEWS,indianexpress.com/article/india/life-term-for-killing-cows-cm-vijay-rupani-says-want-vegetarian-gujarat-slaughterhouses-cow-protection-4594523/, Life term for killing cows, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani says want ‘vegetarian’ Gujarat, 1 April 2017, The Indian Express, 2 April 2017, 6 June 2017, Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath directed the state police to take action against cow slaughter and cattle smuggling under the National Security Act and the Gangster Act,NEWS,www.hindustantimes.com/lucknow/cattle-smuggling-slaughter-to-be-punishable-under-nsa-gangsters-act-in-up/story-y7yzwXPWtMvu8aj0UzPArJ.html, Cattle smuggling, slaughter in UP now punishable under National Security Act, 6 June 2017, Hindustan Times, 8 June 2017, and in (2021) Assam Assembly passed a bill that prohibits the slaughter or sale of beef within a {{Convert|5|km|adj=on}} radius of any temple. The legislation seeks to ensure that permission for slaughter is not granted to areas that are predominantly inhabited by Hindu, Jain, Sikh and other non-beef eating communities or places that fall within a {{Convert|5|km|adj=on}} radius of a temple, satra and any other institution as may be prescribed by the authorities. Exemptions, however, might be granted for certain religious occasions.WEB, 2021-08-14, Assam bans sale of beef within 5 km radius of any temple, passes Cattle Preservation Bill,zeenews.india.com/india/assam-bans-sale-of-beef-within-5-km-radius-of-any-temple-passes-cattle-preservation-bill-2384702.html, 2021-08-14, Zee News, en, NEWS, 2021-08-14, Assam Assembly passes cow protection Bill, en-IN, The Hindu,www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/assam-assembly-passes-cow-protection-bill/article35905184.ece, 2021-08-14, 0971-751X,

Criticism and apologetics

Similarities with fascism and Nazism

{{Fascism sidebar |expanded=variants}}{{See also|Hindu nationalism}}The Hindutva ideology of organisations such as RSS have long been compared to fascism or Nazism. An editorial published on 4 February 1948, for example, in the National Herald, the mouthpiece of the Indian National Congress party, stated that “it [RSS] seems to embody Hinduism in a Nazi form” with the recommendation that it must be ended.BOOK, Bruce Desmond Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh,books.google.com/books?id=KxMgPAAACAAJ, 2007, Cambridge University Press, 978-0-521-05374-7, 11â€“12, Similarly, in 1956, another Congress party leader compared Jana Sangh to the Nazis in Germany.BOOK, Bruce Desmond Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh,books.google.com/books?id=KxMgPAAACAAJ, 2007, Cambridge University Press, 978-0-521-05374-7, 66 with footnotes, {{efn|The Hindutva organisations were not exclusively criticised in the 1940s by the Indian political leaders. The Muslim League was also criticised for “its creed of Islamic exclusiveness, its cult of communal hatred” and called a replica of the German Nazis.BOOK, Bruce Desmond Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh,books.google.com/books?id=KxMgPAAACAAJ, 2007, Cambridge University Press, 978-0-521-05374-7, 1â€“2, }} After the 1940s and 1950s, a number of scholars have labelled or compared Hindutva to fascism.[a] JOURNAL, Sarkar, Sumit, 1 January 1993, The Fascism of the Sangh Parivar, 4399339, Economic and Political Weekly, 28, 5, 163â€“167, [b] JOURNAL, Ahmad, Aijaz, Fascism and National Culture: Reading Gramsci in the Days of Hindutva, Social Scientist, 21, 3/4, 1993, 32â€“68, 10.2307/3517630, 3517630, [a] JOURNAL, Desai, Radhika, 5 June 2015, Hindutva and Fascism,www.epw.in/journal/2016/53/review-article/hindutva-and-fascism.html, Economic and Political Weekly, Research in Political Economy, 51, 53, 10.1108/S0161-7230201530A, 978-1-78560-295-5, [b] JOURNAL, Reddy, Deepa S., Hindutva: Formative Assertions, Religion Compass, Wiley, 5, 8, 2011, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00290.x, 439â€“451, JOURNAL, Sen, Satadru, Fascism Without Fascists? A Comparative Look at Hindutva and Zionism, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 38, 4, 2 October 2015, 10.1080/00856401.2015.1077924, 690â€“711, 147386523, Marzia Casolari has linked the association and the borrowing of pre-World War II European nationalist ideas by early leaders of Hindutva ideology.JOURNAL, Casolari, Marzia, 2000, Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-Up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence, 4408848, Economic and Political Weekly, 35, 4, 218â€“228, According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations, the term Hindutva has “fascist undertones”.{{citation|last1=Brown|first1=Garrett W|last2=McLean|first2=Iain|last3=McMillan|first3=Alistair|title=The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q3FGDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT381|date= 2018|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-254584-8|pages=381â€“}} Many scholars have pointed out that early Hindutva ideologues were inspired by fascist movements in early 20th-century Italy and Germany.WEB, South Asia Scholar Activist Collective, What is Hindutva?,www.hindutvaharassmentfieldmanual.org/defininghindutva, 11 July 2021, Hindutva Harassment Field Manual, en-US, JOURNAL, Leidig, Eviane, 26 May 2020, Hindutva as a variant of right-wing extremism,doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2020.1759861, Patterns of Prejudice, 54, 3, 215â€“237, 10.1080/0031322X.2020.1759861, 0031-322X, 10852/77740, 221839031, free, JOURNAL, Reddy, Deepa, 2011, Capturing Hindutva: Rhetorics and Strategies,onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00289.x, Religion Compass, en, 5, 8, 427â€“438, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00289.x, 1749-8171, BOOK, Jaffrelot, Christophe,books.google.com/books?id=mOXWgr53A5kC, Hindu Nationalism: A Reader, 10 January 2009, Princeton University Press, 978-1-4008-2803-6, en, The Indian Marxist economist and political commentator Prabhat Patnaik calls Hindutva “almost fascist in the classical sense”. He states that the Hindutva movement is based on “class support, methods and programme”.JOURNAL, Fascism of our times, 3517631, Prabhat Patnaik, Social Scientist, 21, 3/4, 69â€“77, 1993, 10.2307/3517631, According to Patnaik, Hindutva has the following fascist ingredients: “an attempt to create a unified homogeneous majority under the concept of “the Hindus”; a sense of grievance against past injustice; a sense of cultural superiority; an interpretation of history according to this grievance and superiority; a rejection of rational arguments against this interpretation; and an appeal to the majority based on race and masculinity”.Due to the institutionalization of anti-Muslim racism, pervasive ethno-nationalism, and hyper-militarism in the movement, Hindutva is often compared to Revisionist ZionismWEB, Thread that binds Hindutva and Zionism,www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/thread-that-binds-hindutva-and-zionism, 2 Dec 2023,archive.today/20231230151607/https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/thread-that-binds-hindutva-and-zionism, 30 Dec 2023, nationalheraldindia.com, Shaarma, Shubham, WEB, Unpacking the Hindutva Embrace of Israel,thewire.in/world/hindutva-israel-tweets-palestine-conflict, 12 Oct 2023,archive.today/20231229211317/https://thewire.in/world/hindutva-israel-tweets-palestine-conflict, 29 Dec 2023, wire.in, Choudhury, Angshuman, WEB, Why India’s Hindu nationalists worship Israel’s nation-state model,theconversation.com/why-indias-hindu-nationalists-worship-israels-nation-state-model-111450, 14 Feb 2019,archive.today/20230728063639/https://theconversation.com/why-indias-hindu-nationalists-worship-israels-nation-state-model-111450, 28 Jul 2023, theconversation.com, Bose, Sumantra, and Kahanism.WEB, The violent phobias that bind Hindutva and Zionism,www.972mag.com/india-israel-zionism-hundutva/, 9 Nov 2023,archive.today/20231230151517/https://www.972mag.com/india-israel-zionism-hundutva/, 30 Dec 2023, 972mag, Hilton, Em, AV MEDIA, What Indian Ethnonationalists Learned From Israel Advocates,jewishcurrents.org/what-indian-ethnonationalists-learned-from-israel-advocates,archive.today/20231230170530/https://jewishcurrents.org/what-indian-ethnonationalists-learned-from-israel-advocates, 6 Jul 2023, 30 Dec 2023, jewishcurrents.org, Gopalan, Aparna, According to Jaffrelot, the early Hindutva proponents such as Golwalkar envisioned it as an extreme form of “ethnic nationalism”, but the ideology differed from fascism and Nazism in three respects. First, unlike fascism and Nazism, it did not closely associate Hindutva with its leader. Second, while fascism emphasised the primacy of the state, Hindutva considered the state to be a secondary. Third, while Nazism emphasised primacy of the race, the Hindutva ideology emphasised primacy of the society over race.BOOK, Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India,books.google.com/books?id=Y2buDDwdgIsC, 1996, Columbia University Press, 978-0-231-10335-0, 77, {{efn|For further elaboration on the primacy of state in fascism, see Walter Laqueur.BOOK, Zeev Sternhell, Walter Laqueur, Fascism: A Reader’s Guide : Analyses, Interpretations, Bibliography,books.google.com/books?id=2s8OaLD7y_oC, 1978, University of California Press, 978-0-520-03642-0, 355â€“360, For further elaboration on the primacy of race in Nazism, see Richard Bessel.BOOK, Adrian Lyttelton, Richard Bessel, Richard Bessel, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Comparisons and Contrasts,books.google.com/books?id=aJvzjv12CkcC, 1996, Cambridge University Press, 978-0-521-47711-6, 12â€“14, }} According to Achin Vanaik, several authors have labelled Hindutva as fascist, but such a label requires “establishing a fascist minimum”. Hindu nationalism, states Vanaik, is “a specific Indian manifestation of a generic phenomenon [of nationalism] but not one that belongs to the genus of fascism”.JOURNAL, Situating Threat of Hindu Nationalism: Problems with Fascist Paradigm, Achin Vanaik, Economic and Political Weekly, 29, 28, 1994, 1729â€“1748, 4401457, According to Mark Juergensmeyer, a number of writers in India and outside India have variously described Hindutva as “fundamentalist” and “India’s flirtation with native fascism”, while others disagree. The debate on Hindutva is a matter of perspective. The Indians debate it from the perspective of their own colonial past and their contemporary issues, while the Euro-American view considers it from the global issues, their own experiences with fundamentalism in light of classic liberal and relativist positions, states Juergensmeyer.JOURNAL, Juergensmeyer, Mark, The Debate over Hindutva, Religion, 26, 2, 1996, 10.1006/reli.1996.0010, 129â€“135, Sociologists Chetan Bhatt and Parita Mukta have described difficulties in identifying Hindutva with fascism or Nazism, because of Hindutva’s embrace of cultural rather than racial nationalism, its “distinctively Indian” character, and “the RSS’s disavowal of the seizure of state power in preference for long-term cultural labour in civil society”. They describe Hindutva as a form of “revolutionary conservatism” or “ethnic absolutism”.JOURNAL, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 23, 3, 407â€“441, May 2000, Chetan Bhatt, Parita Mukta, Hindutva in the West: Mapping the Antinomies of Diaspora Nationalism, 10.1080/014198700328935, 143287533, Quote: “It is also argued that the distinctively Indian aspects of Hindu nationalism, and the RSS’s disavowal of the seizure of state power in preference for long-term cultural labour in civil society, suggests a strong distance from both German Nazism and Italian Fascism. Part of the problem in attempting to classify Golwalkar’s or Savarkar’s Hindu nationalism within the typology of ‘generic fascism’, Nazism, racism and ethnic or cultural nationalism is the unavailability of an appropriate theoretical orientation and vocabulary for varieties of revolutionary conservatism and far-right-wing ethnic and religious absolutist movements in ‘Third World’ countries”. According to Thomas Hansen, Hindutva represents a “conservative revolution” in postcolonial India, and its proponents have been combining “paternalistic and xenophobic discourses” with “democratic and universalist discourses on rights and entitlements” based on “desires, anxieties and fractured subjectivities” in India.BOOK, Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India,books.google.com/books?id=SAqn3OIGE54C, 1999, Princeton University Press, 1-4008-2305-6, 4â€“5,

Upper casteism

When Prime Minister V. P. Singh launched the Mandal Commission to broaden reservations in government and public university jobs to a significant portion of the Shudras who were officially branded the Other Backward Classes (OBC), the mouthpiece of the Hindutva organisation RSS, Organiser magazine, wrote of “an urgent need to build up moral and spiritual forces to counter any fallout from an expected Shudra revolution”.WEB, The farm laws are an assault on Shudra power,caravanmagazine.in/politics/farmer-protests-caste-modi-shudra-obc, The Caravan, en, WEB, 10 February 2021, Rise of Hindutva has enabled a counter-revolution against Mandal’s gains,indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/hindu-nationalism-mandal-commission-upper-caste-politics-modi-govt-7181746/, The Indian Express, en, According to social scientist and economist Jean DrÃ¨ze, the Mandal Commission angered the upper castes and threatened to distance the OBCs, but the Babri Masjid’s destruction and ensuing events helped to reduce this challenge and reunified Hindus on an anti-Muslim stance. He further claims “The Hindutva project is a lifeboat for the upper castes in so far as it promises to restore the Brahminical social order” and the potential enemies of this ideology is anybody whose acts or might hinder the process of restoring the Brahminic social order. DrÃ¨ze further claims that although Hindutva is known as a majoritarian movement, it can be best expressed as an oppressive minority movement.JOURNAL, DrÃ¨ze, Jean, 14 February 2020, The Revolt of the Upper Castes,journals.library.brandeis.edu/index.php/caste/article/view/44, Caste: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion, en, Brandeis University, 1, 1, 229â€“236, 10.26812/caste.v1i1.44, 2639-4928, free, According to Jaffrelot, the Sangh Parivar organisations with their Hindutva ideology have strived to impose the belief structure of the upper caste Hindus. According to Dalit rights activist and political theorist Kancha Ilaiah, “Hindutva Is Nothing But Brahminism” and that only “Dalitisation can effectively counter the danger of Brahminical fascism disguised as Hindutva”.WEB, ‘Hindutva Is Nothing But Brahminism’,www.outlookindia.com/website/story/hindutva-is-nothing-but-brahminism/215089, Outlookindia, 3 February 2022, According to sociologist Amritorupa Sen, the privileges of the upper caste and especially Brahmins have become invisible. There has been a cultural norm that Brahmins take care of the lower castes out of a moral responsibility but also out of human kindness.JOURNAL, Sen, Amritorupa, 2022-06-29, The surviving power of Brahmin privilege,journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00113921221105915, Current Sociology, en, 001139212211059, 10.1177/00113921221105915, 250151238, 0011-3921, This creates an intrinsically unequal social structure.{{Citation needed|date=June 2023}}

Ahistorical premises, separatism

According to Jaffrelot, the Hindutva ideology has roots in an era where the fiction in ancient Indian mythology and Vedic antiquity was presumed to be valid. This fiction was used to “give sustenance to Hindu ethnic consciousness”. Its strategy emulated the Muslim identity politics of the Khilafat movement after World War I, and borrowed political concepts from the West â€“ mainly German. Hindutva organizations treat events in Hindu mythology as history.WEB, R. Ramachandran, 1 February 2019, Science circus, Frontline,frontline.thehindu.com/science-and-technology/article26004777.ece, WEB, Ziya Us Salam, Age of unreason, Frontline, 20 June 2018,frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article24200525.ece, WEB, Meera Nanda, 2 January 2004, Frontline,frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/article30220434.ece, Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and ‘Vedic science’, 29 December 2020, 12 August 2020,web.archive.org/web/20200812120255/https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/article30220434.ece, dead, JOURNAL, Truschke, Audrey, 15 December 2020, Hindutva’s Dangerous Rewriting of History,journals.openedition.org/samaj/6636, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, fr, 24/25, 10.4000/samaj.6636, 1960-6060, free, Hindutva organizations have been criticized for their belief in statements or practices that they claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method.{{citation |first=Meera |last=Nanda |title=Hindutva’s science envy |url=https://frontline.thehindu.com/science-and-technology/hindutvas-science-envy/article9049883.ece |newspaper=Frontline |date=16 September 2016 |access-date=14 October 2016}}WEB,scroll.in/article/865872/from-dissing-darwin-to-yogic-farming-a-short-history-of-the-bjps-brush-with-pseudoscience, From dissing Darwin to yogic farming: A short history of the BJP’s brush with pseudoscience, Shoaib, Daniyal, Scroll.in, 21 January 2018, Hindutva ideology is also described to be separatist in its form. Siddharth Varadarajan writes that Hindutva separatism seeks to depart from the “philosophical, cultural and civilization mores of the country, including Hinduism itself”.According to Anthony Parel, a historian and political scientist, Savarkar’s Hindutva, Who is a Hindu? published in 1923 is a fundamental text of Hindutva ideology. It asserts, states Parel, India of the past to be “the creation of a racially superior people, the Aryans. They came to be known to the outside world as Hindus, the people beyond the Indus River. Their identity was created by their race (jati) and their culture (sanskriti). All Hindus claim to have in their veins the blood of the mighty race incorporated with and descended from the Vedic fathers. They created a culture â€“ an ensemble of mythologies, legends, epic stories, philosophy, art and architecture, laws and rites, feasts and festivals. They have a special relationship to India: India is to them both a fatherland and a holy land.” The Savarkar’s text presents the “Hindu culture as a self-sufficient culture, not needing any input from other cultures”, which is “an unhistorical, narcissistic and false account of India’s past”, states Parel.BOOK, Anthony J. Parel, Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony,books.google.com/books?id=MQhz0fW0HZUC, 2006, Cambridge University Press, 978-0-521-86715-3, 42â€“43, The premises of early Hindu nationalist thought, states Chetan Bhatt, reflected the colonial era European scholarship and Orientalism of its times. The idea of “India as the cradle of civilization” (Voltaire, Herder, Kant, Schlegel), or as “humanity’s homeland and primal philosophy” (Herder, Schlegel), or the “humanism in Hindu values” (Herder), or of Hinduism offering redemption for contemporary humanity (Schopenhauer), along with the colonial era scholarship of Frederich Muller, Charles Wilkins, William Jones, Alexander Hamilton and others were the natural intellectual matrix for Savarkar and others to borrow and germinate their Hindu nationalist ideas.BOOK, Chetan Bhatt, Hindu nationalism: origins, ideologies and modern myths,books.google.com/books?id=W2PXAAAAMAAJ, 2001, Berg, 978-1-85973-343-1, 11â€“12, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, a Fellow of the British Academy and a scholar of Politics and Philosophy of Religion, states that Hindutva is a form of nationalism that is expounded differently by its opponents and its proponents. The opponents of Hindutva either consider it as a fundamentalist ideology that “aims to regulate the working of civil society with the imperatives of Hindu religious doctrine”, or alternatively, as another form of fundamentalism while accepting that Hinduism is a diverse collection of doctrines, is complex and is different from other religions. According to Ram-Prasad, the proponents reject these tags, viewing it to be their right and a desirable value to cherish their religious and cultural traditions.JOURNAL, Ram-Prasad, C., Hindutva ideology: Extracting the fundamentals, Contemporary South Asia, 2, 3, 1993, 10.1080/09584939308719718, 285â€“309, The Hindutva ideology according to Savarkar, states Ram-Prasad, is a “geography, race, and culture” based concept. However, the “geography” is not strictly territorial but is an “ancestral homeland of a people”, and the “race” is not biogenetic but described as the historic descendants of the intermarriage of Aryans, native inhabitants and “different peoples” who arrived over time. So, “the ultimate category for Hindutva is culture”, and this culture is “not strictly speaking religious, if by religion is meant a commitment to certain doctrines of transcendence”, he states.BOOK, C. Ram-Prasad, Gavin Flood, The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism,books.google.com/books?id=SKBxa-MNqA8C, 2008, John Wiley & Sons, 978-0-470-99868-7, 527â€“528, The proponents state that in the Hindutva thought, there is a kernel of coherent and justifiable thesis about the Indian culture and history.

Threats to academic freedom

Hindutva ideology has been linked to threats to academics and students, both in India and the United States.WEB, Venugopal, Arun, 21 July 2021, At Rutgers, and Beyond, Scholars Are Under Attack For Their Critique of India’s Far-Right Government,gothamist.com/news/at-rutgers-and-beyond-scholars-are-under-attack-for-their-critique-of-indias-far-right-government, 21 July 2021, Gothamist, en, WEB, Venugopal, Arun, 19 July 2021, American Scholars of India Confront a Rise in Threats,www.wnyc.org/story/american-scholars-india-confront-rise-threats/, 6 September 2021, WNYC, en, For instance, in 2011, Hindutva activists successfully led a charge to remove an essay about the multiple narratives of Ramayanas from Delhi University’s history syllabus.NEWS, N, Vijetha S., 15 October 2011, Historians protest as Delhi University purges Ramayana essay from syllabus, en-IN, The Hindu,www.thehindu.com/news/national/Historians-protest-as-Delhi-University-purges-Ramayana-essay-from-syllabus/article13372074.ece, 11 July 2021, 0971-751X, Romila Thapar, one of India’s most eminent historians, has faced repeated Hindutva-led attacks.NEWS, In the battle over India’s history, Hindu nationalists square off against a respected historian, en-US, Washington Post,www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/india-romila-thapar-dissent/2021/01/02/1a79ca54-4070-11eb-b58b-1623f6267960_story.html, 11 July 2021, 0190-8286, The Hindu right has been responsible for pushback against scholars of South Asia and Hinduism based in North America, including Wendy Doniger and Sheldon Pollock.WEB, Scholars who study Hinduism and India face hostile climate,www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/12/scholars-who-study-hinduism-and-india-face-hostile-climate, 11 July 2021, www.insidehighered.com, en, Under BJP leadership, the Indian state has been accused of monitoring scholars and denying some research access.NEWS, Chaturvedi, Vinayak, The Hindu Right and Attacks on Academic Freedom in the US,www.thenation.com/article/culture/hindu-right-academic-freedom/, The Nation, December 2021, Audrey Truschke is one such example who remains frequent target of their threats.WEB,thehindustangazette.com/crime/for-more-than-five-years-i-have-received-hate-mail-from-hindu-nationalists-almost-every-single-day-dr-audrey-truschke-5373, For more than five years, I have received hate mail from Hindu nationalists almost every single day - Dr. Audrey Truschke, 15 September 2021, NEWS, Historian Audrey Truschke faces threats, Rutgers University extends support to her, Scroll,scroll.in/latest/988994/abhor-vile-messages-and-threats-directed-at-audrey-truschke-says-rutgers-university, In 2021, a group of North American-based scholars of South Asia formed a collective and published the Hindutva Harassment Field Manual to, they argue, answer the Hindutva threat to their academic freedom.WEB, Prakash, Priyali, ‘Targeted by hate’: Audrey Truschke on why she helped write a ‘Hindutva Harassment Field Manual’,scroll.in/article/999710/targeted-by-hate-audrey-truschke-on-why-she-helped-write-a-hindutva-harassment-field-manual, 28 August 2021, Scroll.in, 10 July 2021, en-US, They documented further incidents of Hindutva harassment of academics in North America, dating back to the 1990s.WEB, SASAC, Timeline,www.hindutvaharassmentfieldmanual.org/timeline, Hindutva Harassment Field Manual, The Association for Asian Studies noted that Hindutva, described as a “majoritarian ideological doctrine” different from Hinduism, resorted to “increasing attacks on numerous scholars, artists and journalists who critically analyze its politics”.WEB, 10 September 2021, AAS Statement on the Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference,www.asianstudies.org/aas-statement-on-the-dismantling-global-hindutva-conference/, 11 September 2021, Association for Asian Studies, en-US, A number of scholars and participants withdrew from the conference following the threats they received from ultranationalists and Hindutva supporters.NEWS, Death threats sent to participants of US conference on Hindu nationalism, The Guardian,theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/09/death-threats-sent-to-participants-of-us-conference-on-hindu-nationalism, NEWS, Under fire from Hindu nationalist groups, U.S.-based scholars of South Asia worry about academic freedom, The Washington Post,www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/03/india-us-universities-hindutva/, NEWS, US Conference on Hindu Nationalism marred by death threats to participants, The Siasat Daily,www.siasat.com/us-conference-on-hindu-nationalism-marred-by-death-threats-to-participants-2190297/,

Hindutva pop

Hindutva pop is a subgenre of Indian pop promoting Hindutva ideas. It openly calls for violence against many non-Hindu minorities, especially Muslims.NEWS, Schultz, Kai, 2019-11-10, India’s Soundtrack of Hate, With a Pop Sheen, en-US, The New York Times,www.nytimes.com/2019/11/10/world/asia/india-hindutva-pop-narendra-modi.html, 2023-05-03, 0362-4331, Hindutva pop artists defend their music as neither xenophobic nor Islamophobic, arguing it promotes truth. Popular Hindutva pop artists like Laxmi Dubey and Prem Krishnavanshi mainstream the xenophobic values of the genre.WEB, Rehbar, Quratulain, ‘Hindutva pop’: The singers producing anti-Muslim music in India,www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/2/hindutva-pop-the-singers-producing-anti-muslim-music-in-india, 2023-05-03, www.aljazeera.com, en,

Notes

References

Citations

General sources

BOOK, Walter K., Andersen, Walter K. Andersen, Shridhar D., Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism, Originally published by Westview Press, Vistaar Publications, Delhi, 1987,
BOOK, Augustine, Sali, Religion and Cultural Nationalism: Socio-Political Dynamism of Communal Violence in India, Erich Kolig, Vivienne S. M. Angeles, Sam Wong, Identity in Crossroad Civilisations, Amsterdam University Press, 2009, 978-90-8964-127-4, 65â€“83,
BOOK, Bharat Prakashan, Bharat Prakashan, Shri Guruji: The Man and His Mission, On the Occasion of His 51st Birthday, Bharat Prakashan, Delhi, 1955, 24593952,
BOOK, Elst, Koenraad, Koenraad Elst, Bharatiya Janata Party Vis-a-vis Hindu Resurgence, Voice of India, 1997, 978-8185990477,
BOOK, Robert, Frykenberg, Hindutva as a Political Religion: An Historical Perspective, R. Griffin, R. Mallett and J. Tortorice, The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics: Essays in Honour of Professor Stanley G. Payne,books.google.com/books?id=JGOHDAAAQBAJ, Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2008, 978-0-230-24163-3, 178â€“200,
BOOK, Golwalkar, M. S., M. S. Golwalkar, We, or our Nationhood Defined (Extracts), Hindu Nationalism - A Reader, Christophe Jaffrelot, first published in 1939 by Bharat Prakashan, Princeton University Press, 2007, 978-0-691-13097-2,
BOOK, Des Raj, Goyal, Des Raj Goyal, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Radha Krishna Prakashan, Delhi, 1979, 978-0836405668,
{{citation |last=Graham |first=B. D. |chapter=Syama Prasad Mookerjee and the communalist alternative |editor=D. A. Low |title=Soundings in Modern South Asian History |publisher=University of California Press |year=1968 |asin=B0000CO7K5 }}
BOOK, Jaffrelot, Christophe, Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1996, 978-1850653011,
BOOK, Katju, Manjari, Vishva Hindu Parishad and Indian Politics, Orient Blackswan, 2013, 978-81-250-2476-7,
BOOK, Keer, Dhananjay, Veer Savarkar, 1988, Popular Prakashan, Bombay, 9780861321827, 221231727,
BOOK, Krishna, Ananth V., India since Independence: Making Sense of Indian Politics, Pearson Education India, 2011, 978-8131734650,
BOOK, Pandey, Gyanendra, Gyanendra Pandey, Which of Us are Hindus?, Gyanendra Pandey, Hindus and Others: The Question of Identity in India Today, Viking, New Delhi, 1993, 238â€“272,
JOURNAL, Panikkar, K. N., K. N. Panikkar, Culture and Communalism, Social Scientist, 21, 24â€“31, 3/4, 1993, 3517629, 10.2307/3517629,
NEWS, Panikkar, K. N., K. N. Panikkar, In the Name of Nationalism, Frontline, 13 March 2004,www.frontline.in/static/html/fl2106/stories/20040326005400400.htm, 20 February 2015,
BOOK, Parvathy, A. A., Secularism and Hindutva, A Discursive Study, Codewood Process & Printing, 1994, B0006F4Y1A,

External links

Hindutva Harassment Field Manualâ€”On what to do in cases of Hindutva harassment

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Hindutva

Definitions

Tertiary sources

Savarkar

Supreme Court of India

History

Ideology

Adoption

Growth

Hindutva under Modi (2014â€“present)

Abrogation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir

Ayodhya dispute

Forced conversion bans

Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bharatiya Janata Party

Concepts and issues

Uniform Civil Code

Protection of Hindu interests

Organisations

Hindutva violence

Cow vigilantism

Criticism and apologetics

Similarities with fascism and Nazism

Upper casteism

Ahistorical premises, separatism

Threats to academic freedom

Hindutva pop

See also

Notes

References

Citations

General sources

Further reading

External links