Hindutva

Published on 7th January, 2022, in Times of India. Sanatan means something that is timeless. Dharma in colloquial parlance is religion. It can also mean culture and civilisation. So, sanatan dharma can mean “timeless civilisation”. In the Gita, Krishna describes the knowledge he shares as sanatana, timeless. Hindutva — a word that was invented in the late 19th century by Chandranath Basu — insists it is sanatan dharma, and so does not need reform. Chandranath Basu, like many Bengali intellectuals, opposed the social reforms spearheaded by the likes of Raja Rammohan Roy, who invented the term Hinduism in the early 19th century. In other words, ..

Published on 1st January, 2022, in The Hindu. Ever since erstwhile champions of secular values have begun differentiating between Hindu and Hindutvawadi, a whole lot of intellectuals are bristling. They are arguing how these nuanced metaphysical differentiations hold no relevance on the street. Mostly from the Hindu elite, these are the same scholars who will argue that Islam should be separated from Islamism, and clarify that invaders of India should be described as Persianised Turks and not Muslim warlords. Religion as a word found favour in the 19th century. It referred to monotheistic mythology, which deemed god as a fact, despite the growing influence of ..

Published on 4th December, 2021, in Times of India. The subject that we know as history emerged only in the 19th century. Before that, memory, legends and evidence-based history were all combined as a single unit. They were stories from the past, communicated by bards to make communities feel good about the past or to remember past injustices. The king’s bard told good things about the king’s lineage, and bad things about neighbours. In the 19th Century, evidence became very important to prove the occurrence of an event in the past. Thus history emerged. Since then, historians have challenged common assumptions about the past, based ..

Published on 24th November, 2021, in India Today. Hindus are at odds with the world in terms of its underlying mythic structure. By contrast, Hindutva is very much aligned to the dominant global discourse. We realise this if we meditate on two myths: the myth of equality and the myth of the wound. Myth here does not mean fantasy, a 19th Century misunderstanding that continues among those who prefer binary thought and cannot handle nuance. It means the subjective truth of a community shaped by inherited stories, symbols and rituals. Myth of Equality In nature, there is diversity. There is also equality in the sense ..

Published on 30th May, 2021, in Mid-day. The word Hindutva was invented by Chandranath Basu in Bengal in 1892. He was against the 19th Century reform movement popularly known as Hindu Renaissance led by Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who had coined the word ‘Hinduism’ in 1816. This period saw Dayanand Saraswati who said, ‘Back to Vedas’ and rejected temples, as well as Swami Vivekananda who popularised the idea of a nation-state united by Vedic philosophy such as ‘Advaita’. Savarkar in his 1923 book “Essentials of Hindutva” saw Hindutva as Hinduness—a political ideology different from Hinduism aimed at establishing a Hindu Rashtra, a nation-state of people ..

Published on 17th May, 2021, in Scroll.in . Hindutva is a 19th-century political ideology that proclaims itself to be the defender of Hinduism. Yet it is terrified of truth. The truth of death – of hundreds of bodies floating down the Ganga and thousands being cremated in funeral pyres across India, which reveals not the virulence of a virus, but the incompetence of an extremely powerful government that was too pompous to take the warning signs seriously. Many of these deaths could have been prevented, if we focused on science, on oxygen, and vaccines. Instead, Hindutva supporters are now claiming that the foreign media is ..

Published on 6th December, 2020, in Mumbai Mirror. The design of the Parliament building in Delhi was based on yogini shrines of North India that were built over 1,000 years ago. They are circular without a central roof, very different from later temples dedicated to Shiva and Vishnu, where the deity is in an inner chamber with a pyramidal roof, a pillared hall in front and surrounded by subsidiary shrines of junior deities, usually family members — Lakshmi shrines in Vishnu temples; Ganesha shrines in Shiva temples. In the yogini shrine, all yoginis are equal. But in the later temples, one deity takes central role. ..

Who Is a Hindu? The Geography of Gods. Published on 8th November, 2020, in Mumbai Mirror. Hinduism is typically taught through a historical lens. We are told that there was a Harappan period 4,000 years ago, followed by Vedic Period 3,000 years ago, followed by the Puranic Age, which began 2,000 years ago, which was then followed by the Bhakti Age 1,000 years ago. This was followed by the Reform Movement in colonial times, which happened 200 years ago. However, none of these happened uniformly across India. India is a very large subcontinent. Hinduism did not appear fully formed across the subcontinent, one fine day, ..

Who is a Hindu? How Hindutva threatens the history of Hindus Published on 5th July, 2020, in Mumbai Mirror. Hindutva history makes the history of Hindus fragile — people whose temples were destroyed by Muslims and who need Hindutva politicians to help them recover. It gives power to Hindutva politicians but strips Hindus of power — makes them weak, gullible victims. It ignores Hindu resilience — how Hinduism thrived, despite different kinds of attacks over centuries. This Hindu resilience has its source in the doctrine of rebirth, but Hindutva sidesteps it. The ‘fragile Hindu discourse’ is more politically lucrative than the ‘resilient Hindu discourse’. A ..