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Hindutva (lit. "Hindu-ness") is a political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism. The political ideology was formulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923. It is used by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other organisations, collectively called the Sangh Parivar.

Quotes

  • To conclude..., it deserves mention that most original Western publications dealing with the Hindu Mahasabha, RSS, Jan Sangh or BJP, just don't seem to be aware of the notion that these could be fascist movements, or they reject the allegation explicitly after closer consideration. Objective outsiders are not struck by any traces of fascism in the Hindutva movements, let alone in the general thought current of anti-imperialist Hindu awakening. While one should always be vigilant for traces of totalitarianism in any ideology or movement, the obsession with fascism in the anti-Hindu rhetoric of the secularists is not the product of an analysis of the data, but of their own political compulsions.
    • Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (1991). Ayodhya and after: Issues before Hindu society.
  • The current tendency to accuse the Hindu movement for cultural decolonization of India of “fascism” is nothing but a replay of an old colonial tactic against the freedom movement. More generally, we can say that every propaganda trick tried against the Hindutva movement by the secularists was once tried against the freedom movement either by the colonialists or by their Muslim communalist allies... Their programme of a non-communal democracy in an independent and united India was countered with scare stories of majoritarian Hindu oppression including the ultimate calumny of "fascism".
    • Was Veer Savarkar a Nazi? by Elst, K., 1999 [1] and in Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". I.503.
  • [The term Hindutva] was coined by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923, and though some contemporary RSS middle cadres try to push it as a synonym and replacement of "Hinduism", Savarkar himself had explicitly written that the two are not synonyms; in practical terms, "Hindutva" is a synonym of "Hindu nationalism", an ideology and behind that also a national sentiment, but not a religion in any usual sense of the word. "Hindutva" was the banner of the Hindu Mahasabha and was subsequently adopted by the RSS, organizations of which the said independent authors were never members nor camp-followers. ... It is very common in secularist polemic to start from a general assumption about what they label the "Hindutva" movement, and then apply this assumption to each author whom they choose to include in that category, without bothering to check his own writings. I am rather used to this sloppy reasoning by secularists, attributing viewpoints to me which are not mine or which I have explicitly criticized, on no other grounds than that they are deemed to be "Hindutva" viewpoints. Given the secularists' unchallenged hegemony, it is unlikely that they will soon feel any need to correct this ugly habit.
    • Elst, Koenraad. Return of the Swastika: Hate and Hysteria versus Hindu Sanity (2007)
  • Not all Hindu activists would accept the label Hindutva, a coinage by V.D. Savarkar ca. 1923 embraced by the Hindu Mahasabha and later the RSS. Conversely, the insistence on labelling all Hindu activism or all Hindu discourse critical of Islam and "secularism" as Hindutva is an undisguised attempt to distort the picture by blurring the distinctions within the broad Hindu spectrum of opinion. ... Hindutva is a fairly crude ideology, borrowing heavily from European nationalisms with their emphasis on homogeneity. Under the conditions of British colonialism, it was inevitable that some such form of Hindu nationalism would arise, but I believe better alternatives have seen the light, more attuned to the genius of Hindu civilization.
    • Elst, Koenraad. The Problem with Secularism (2007)
  • "Such is the grip of the misrepresentation of Hindutva in anti-Muslim terms that (even) its proponents, including some leaders of the Bhartiya Janata Party, themselves, speak of it defensively".
  • "Question: I believe you are acquainted with the ideology of the Sangh Parivar.
    Answer: Yes, indeed, since 30 years. Of course, I have also come across some critical views regarding these organizations. But, at the same time, I find that the Parivar is very much concerned about the preservation of India's national identity and culture. This aspect has impressed me greatly. Frankly, there are in this country people who are infatuated with the western way of life. I have always told my Indian friends that there is no point in neglecting their own rich cultural heritage. As such, any organization working for the preservation of India's traditional values and norms certainly deserves the support of all well-meaning people."
    • Dalai Lama, [Interview conducted by S. Suresh in the ABVP conference in Kanpur which appeared in Organiser, November 22, 1992.]
  • It is not that Hindutva supporters equate vastly different phenomena with vastly different consequences, but they also willfully gloss over facts like 80%-90% of VIP (ministers, MPs, MLAs) hate speech has been perpetrated by the BJP, or that the head of the BJP’s IT Cell is the greatest disseminator of the most dangerous and fake communal propaganda. There is simply no comparison between the ruling party and other parties.
  • People ask me about the forces of Hindutva in India. I got into trouble a couple of years ago when I said that with this new kind of self-awareness in India, the Hindu idea is almost a necessary early, stage. It contains the beginnings of larger, new ideas: the idea of history, the idea of the human family, of India. I hope this self-awareness doesn't stay there, and I don't think it will, but it's necessary. We are dealing with a country that has started from a very low point, a very low intellectual point, a low economic point. When people start moving, the first loyalty, the first identity, is always a rather small one. They can't immediately become other things. I think that within every kind of disorder now in India there is a larger positive movement. But the future will be fairly chaotic. Politics will have to be at the level of the people now. People like Nehru were colonial-style politicians. They were to a large extent created and protected by the colonial order. They did not begin with the people.
    • V.S. Naipaul, A Million Mutinies, V.S. Naipaul, India Today Date: August 18, 1997 [2]
  • Hindutva ranked their enemies in order – Muslims, Christians and Communists. It applauded Hitler’s “national” pride and invoked the Nazi model of dealing with minorities. Like Hitler, Hindutva believed in race superiority and dreamt of world dominance. Yesterday it collaborated with the British. Today it flaunts the tricolor it had openly denigrated, pretends to uphold a Constitution it wanted replaced with the Laws of Manu, a misogynist, Brahminical text, and is busy selling every available public asset to the nearest foreign or Indian crony. Without stating it in words, their murder of Gandhi in 1948 added a new enemy to the list – Hindus who stood against the project of Hindutva.
  • In expounding the ideology of the Hindu movement, it is absolutely necessary to have a correct grasp of the meaning attached to these three terms. From the word " Hindu" has been coined the word "Hinduism " in English. It means the schools or system of Religion the Hindus follow. The second word " Hindutva " is far more comprehensive and refers not only to the religious aspects of the Hindu people as the word " Hinduism " does but comprehend even their cultural, linguistic, social and political aspects as well. It is more or less akin to " Hindu Polity " and its nearly exact translation would be " Hinduness ". The third word " Hindudom " means the Hindu people spoken of collectively. It is a collective name for the Hindu World, just as Islam denotes the Moslem World.
    • V.D. Savarkar quoted from B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)
  • A Hindu marrying a Hindu may lose his caste, but not his Hindutva.
    • VD Savarkar, Hindutva, p 90
  • “the word Hindutva is being used as a term of abuse […] it is used mostly in pejorative terms […] the debate appears no longer confined to the cloistered world of priests, or even the self-serving one of politics, it has expanded into a challenge to Hindu civilisation […] the wider attack on Indian civilisation that this pejorative use of the word Hindu represents. It bothers me that I went to school and college in this country without any idea of the enormous contribution of Hindu civilisation to the history of the world. It bothers me that even today our children, whether they go to state schools or expensive private ones, come out without any knowledge of their own culture or civilisation […] You cannot be proud of a heritage you know nothing about, and in the name of secularism, we have spent 50 years in total denial of the Hindu roots of this civilisation. We have done nothing to change a colonial system of mass education founded on the principle that Indian civilisation had nothing to offer […] our contempt for our culture and civilisation […] evidence of a country that continues to be colonised to the core? Our contempt for who we are gets picked up these days by the Western press […] racism [is] equated with Hindu Nationalism. For countries that gave us slavery and apartheid that really is rich, but who can blame them when we think so badly of ourselves. As for me I would like to state clearly that I believe that the Indic religions have made much less trouble for the world than the Semitic ones and that Hindu civilisation is something I am very proud of. If that is evidence of my being ‘communal’, then, so my inner voice tells me, so be it.”
    • Tavleen Singh in : Indian Express (Sunday 13/6/2004) by Tavleen Singh, quoted in article by Talageri in Goel, S. R., & Elst, K. (2005). India's only communalist: In commemoration of Sita Ram Goel.
  • On the Indian front, [the Hindutva movement] should spearhead the revival, rejuvenation and resurgence of Hinduism, which includes not only religious, spiritual and cultural practices springing from Vedic or Sanskritic sources, but from all other Indian sources independently of these: the practices of the Andaman islanders and the (pre-Christian) Nagas are as Hindu in the territorial sense, and Sanâtana in the spiritual sense, as classical Sanskritic Hinduism. (…) A true Hindutvavadi should feel a pang of pain, and a desire to take positive action, not only when he hears that the percentage of Hindus in the Indian population is falling due to a coordination of various factors, or that Hindus are being discriminated against in almost every respect, but also when he hears that the Andamanese races and languages are becoming extinct; that vast tracts of forests, millions of years old, are being wiped out forever; that ancient and mediaeval Hindu architectural monuments are being vandalised, looted or fatally neglected; that priceless ancient documents are being destroyed or left to rot and decay; that innumerable forms of arts and handicrafts, architectural styles, plant and animal species, musical forms and musical instruments, etc. are becoming extinct; that our sacred rivers and environment are being irreversibly polluted and destroyed…
    • Talageri in S.R. Goel (ed.): Time for Stock-Taking, p.227-228.

See also

Encyclopedic article on Hindutva on Wikipedia

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