I say no longer that nationalism is a creed, a religion, a faith; I say that it is the Sanatan Dharma which for us is nationalism. ThisHindu nation was born with the Sanatan Dharma, with it it moves and with it it grows. When the Sanatan Dharma declines, then the nation declines, and if the Sanatan Dharma were capable of perishing, with the Sanatan Dharma it would perish. The Sanatan Dharma, that is nationalism. - Sri Aurobindo
Hindu nationalism has been collectively referred to as the expression of social and political thought, based on the native spiritual and cultural traditions of theIndian subcontinent.
I spoke once before with this force in me and I said then this movement is not a political movement and thatnationalism is notpolitics but areligion, a creed, a faith. I say it again today, but I put it in another way.I say no longer that nationalism is a creed, a religion, a faith; I say that it is theSanatan Dharma which for us is nationalism. ThisHindu nation was born with the Sanatan Dharma, with it it moves and with it it grows. When the Sanatan Dharma declines, then the nation declines, and if the Sanatan Dharma were capable of perishing, with the Sanatan Dharma it would perish. The Sanatan Dharma, that is nationalism. This is the message that I have to speak to you.
“It is the subtle scheme of politicalpropaganda to describe theHindu as pro-Fascist. It is a cruel calumny which has been spread in America and other countries. The Hindu Mahasabha stood for Savarkar’s policy ofmilitarization and industrialization. We recognized that Fascism was a supreme menace to what is good and noble in our civilization. Due toVeer Savarkar’s call thousands of young men joined theArmy and Navy and Air Force and shed their blood forresisting Nazi tyranny and for realfriendship with China andRussia. But as the Hindus had the temerity to ask for National Independence and took the lead in rejecting the Cripps offer, they were maligned and the subtle forces of organized British propaganda were let loose to blackmail the Hindus.”
Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee. (Hindu Politics, p.103) . Quoted from Elst, K. : Was Veer Savarkar a Nazi? , 1999[1] also in Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism".
The idea of the ‘Hindu right’ is largely a ploy to discredit theHindu movement as backward and prevent people from really examining it.
The causes taken up by theHindu movement are more at home in theNew Left than inright wingparties of the West. Some of these resemble the concerns of the Green Party. TheHindu movement offers a long-standing tradition of environmental protection, economic simplicity, and protection of religious and cultural diversity. There is little in the so-calledHindu right that is shared by the religious or political right-wing in western countries, which reflect military, corporate and missionary concerns. TheHindu movement has much in common with the New Age movement in the West and its seeking of occult and spiritual knowledge, not with the right wing in the West, which rejects these things. Clearly, the western right would never embrace theHindu movement as its ally.
But some media outlets have chosen to craft a false narrative of intrigue by profiling and targeting all of my donors who have names of Hindu origin and accusing them of being “Hindu nationalists.” Today it’s the profiling and targeting ofHindu Americans and ascribing to them motives without any basis. Tomorrow will it beMuslim orJewish Americans?Japanese,Hispanic orAfrican Americans? I too have been accused of being a “Hindu nationalist.” ... To question my commitment to my country, while not questioning non-Hindu leaders, creates a double standard that can be rooted in only one thing:religious bigotry. I am Hindu and they are not. ... Religious bigotry and attempts to foment fear of Hindus and other minority religions persist. During my 2012 and 2014 elections, myRepublican opponent stated publicly that a Hindu should not be allowed to serve in theU.S. Congress and that Hinduism is incompatible with theU.S. Constitution. In the 2016 race for Congress, my Republican opponent said repeatedly that a vote for me was a vote for the devil because of my religion. ... Those who are trying to foment anti-Hindu sentiment expose the dark underbelly of religious bigotry in politics and must be called out. To advocate voting for or against someone based on religion, race or gender is simply un-American.
Bombay also used to be considered a pearl of the Orient, with its necklace of lights along the corniche and its magnificentBritish Raj architecture. It was one of India's most diverse and plural cities, and its many layers of texture have been cleverly explored bySalman Rushdie—especially inThe Moor's Last Sigh—and in the films ofMira Nair. It is true that there had beenintercommunal fighting there, duringthe time in 1947-48 when the grand historicmovement for Indian self-government was being ruined byMuslim demands fora separate state and by the fact that theCongress Party was led by a piousHindu. But probably as many people took refuge in Bombay during that moment of religious bloodlust as were driven or fled from it. A form of cultural coexistence resumed, as often happens when cities are exposed to the sea and to influences from outside.Parsis—formerZoroastrians whohad been persecuted inPersia—were a prominentminority, and the city was also host to a historically significantcommunity of Jews. But this was not enough to content Mr.Bal Thackeray and hisShiv SenaHindu nationalist movement, who in the 1990s decided that Bombay should be run by and for his coreligionists, and who looseda tide of goons and thugs on the streets. Just to show he could do it, he ordered the city renamed as "Mumbai," which is partly why I include it in this list under its traditional title.
"It is sheer dishonesty or naivete to suggest, as is being widely suggested these days, that Hinduism can admit of theocracy. That is a Muslim privilege which no one else can appropriate."
The examples of systematic institutional minorityism cited most often [by Hindu nationalists] are the separate personal law based on theShariat, the special status of the Muslim-majority stateJammu and Kashmir, the immunity of minority schools and places of worship from government interference or take-over. Examples of occasional political minorityism are the numerous unequal treaties before independence between Congress and the Muslim league, the creation of a Muslim-majority district inKerala by redrawing of district borders, the overruling of the Shah Bano verdict with legislation, the creation of a minorities commission (under the Janata government of which someBJP leaders were Cabinet ministers). These do not add up toa full oppression of Hindu society by theMuslim minority, but they do constitute real discriminations... But Hindus point out that they are really discriminated against in the laws of the land, and that minorities do get privileges which are unthinkable in most genuinely secular states.
Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (1991). Ayodhya and after: Issues before Hindu society.
For all their focusing on the all-purpose bogey of Hindu nationalism (or worse isms), it is remarkable that Indian Marxists and their Western disciples have completely failed to study this ideology. During my Ph.D. research on this very topic, I found that practically all secondary publications in the field, including some influential ones, dispensed almost completely with the reading of primary sources. Typically, a few embarrassing quotations, selected by Indian critics of Hindutva from some old pamphlets (mostly Golwalkar 1939), are repeated endlessly and in unabashedly polemical fashion.
Elst K. Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate (2007)
An authentic Hindu perception of history and of the present scene would use the secular concept of 'nation' more sparsely, and certainly not make it the cornerstone ofHindu politics. It is increasingly clear that 'Hindu nationalism', the attempt... to formulate the defence of Hindu interests in terms of secular nationalism, will turn out to be only a passing phase in the Hindu revival.
Elst K. The Saffron Swastika (2001), Volume I
Finally, we should add that the concept of civilization-state has the merit of being more true to India’s real status than the concept of “nationalism”. In the days of theFreedom Movement, it made sense to be a nationalist for it meant not being loyal to foreign rulers. Heirs of that period, such as the Congress Party and theRSS “family”, still go on swearing by this concept. But now it is time for a more nuanced and precise understanding of what India is. Nationalism with its connotation of homogenization cannot do justice to India’s profound pluralism and respect for differences. Depending on how you define “nation”, India has known several divisions into what would be rated as “nation” elsewhere. Of course we can fuss over definitions and maintain that even complex and pluriform India is still a nation-state somehow. But it is more economical and more credible to dispense with this terminology altogether and call India a civilization-state.
Koenraad Elst, On Modi Time : Merits And Flaws of Hindu Activism In Its Day Of Incumbency – 2015 Ch 18
That same thing which they call fascism when they wrongly attribute it to Hindu Rashtra, is effectively accepted in the case of a Muslim Rashtra, such as Pakistan. I at least have never heard any of them refer to Pakistan as fascist.
Elst, Koenraad (1991). Ayodhya and after: Issues before Hindu society.
For the difference between "Hindu nationalism" and the broader term "Hindu revivalism", consider ...Swami Shraddhananda and ....VD Savarkar. They overlap, but it is necessary to distinguish them, and the term "Hindu revivalism" fits Shraddhananda's work perfectly; whereas "Hindu nationalism" obviously applies to Savarkar's and later RSS founder KB Hedgewar's line.
We have to agree that it [Hindu nationalism] is a type of nationalism, though as such it really is only the most conspicuous tendency within a broader movement vaguely known as Hindu revivalism... Hindu nationalism entirely falls outside the category vaguely designated as "authoritarian nationalism".
Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism".
In fact,India is by no means aHindu state; it was not based on the refusal to co-exist with others, as Pakistan was; and it is not squeezing out itsminorities, as Pakistan is. The best refutation is provided by the highly anti-symmetrical migration stream: the constant trickle ofHindu refugees from Pakistan andBangladesh is not matched by a similar trickle ofMuslim refugees from India, but by a vast movement ofMuslim migrants from Bangladeshillegally settling in India. [...] InLeftist writings, it is not uncommon to see Hindu revivalism, particularly its political section, described as “the Hindu Right”. Though there is nothing pejorative in the term “right” in itself....The term Hindu Right only applies if an extreme-Leftist viewpoint is assumed (as is effectively the case for numerous IndianHindutva critics): only from that angle is Hindu nationalism consistently found to one’s Right... But the decisive objection against the term Hindu Right is that the people concerned will not accept it. In fact, the BJS explicitly described itself as “centrist”...One workable measure ofobjectivity andneutrality in newsreading and scholarship is whether people and groups are classified with terms in which they recognize themselves. When we apply this simple yardstick of objectivity to the available literature on Hindu revivalism, we find most of it wanting.
Decolonizing the Hindu Mind (2001) by K.Elst
Today in the West, nationalism has gone out of fashion; but in India, nothing ever dies, and so nationalism keeps on working its distortive influence on the movement for Hindu self-defence.
Elst K. Hindu Dharma and the Culture Wars (2019) Guhas Golwalkar, chapter 15
One of the cornerstones of the cultural foundation of the ancient mansion of Hindu rashtra is 'unity in diversity'.
K.S. Sudarshan, in HV Sheshadri et al, Why Hindu Rashtra, p. 13, and in Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". p 662
Nationalism, far from being reversed, made further headway. The biggest and most frightening setback came in India, where a democratically electedNarendra Modi is creating a Hindu nationalist state, imposing punitive measures onKashmir – a semi-autonomous Muslim region, andthreatening to deprive millions of Muslims of their citizenship.
George Soros, At the World Economic Forum at Davos 2020, quoted fromMalhotra R. & Viswanathan V. (2022).Snakes in the Ganga : Breaking India 2.0.
In much of the Hindu nationalist writing, Muslims are treated as the evil other against which Hindus define their own identity: to borrow from Jyortimaya Sharma (2007) "they are incomplete, uncultured and demonic" while "we are immortality's children". Such poisonous representations have had terrible consequences.
That Hindus — alongside countlessChristians,Muslims,Jews,Buddhists,agnostics andatheists — support me should not be newsworthy. But some media outlets have chosen to craft a false narrative of intrigue by profiling and targeting all of my donors who have names of Hindu origin and accusing them of being “Hindu nationalists.” Today it’s the profiling and targeting of Hindu Americans and ascribing to them motives without any basis. Tomorrow will it be Muslim or Jewish Americans? Japanese, Hispanic or African Americans? I too have been accused of being a “Hindu nationalist.” My meetings with Prime MinisterNarendra Modi, India’s democratically elected leader, have been highlighted as “proof” of this and portrayed as somehow being out of the ordinary or somehow suspect, even thoughPresident Obama,Secretary Clinton,President Trump and many of my colleagues in Congress have met with and worked with him. India is one of America’s closest allies inAsia and is a country of growing importance in a critical region of the world.
The notion of a singleHindu culture, incommensurable withIslamic or western epistemes and forms of organization, is the real fiction at work here, imposed byorientalism and painstakingly promulgated, organized, and reformulated by generation of Hindu nationalists and otherIndian nationalists for more than a century. [...] In order to understand Hindu nationalism we need to analyze carefully theofficial secularism it opposed. Textbook versions ofsecularism as the absence of religion from the public sphere, or a more fashionable understanding of secularism as a metonym ofscientificrationalism, will not suffice. We need to take a closer and more informed look at the practices and meanings of secularism in the public culture of independent India. The dominant interpretation ofsecularism in India did not entail theremoval of religion from the political sphere, but rather the belief thatreligion andculture were elevated to an ostensibly apolitical level, above the profanities of the political. This institutionalized notion of culture and religion as apolitical, and the derived notion of selfless "social work" as ennobling and purifying by virtue of its elevation above politics and money, provided an unassailable moral high ground to a certain genre of "antipolitical activism," conspicuous among social and cultural organization but also often invoked in agitations and in electoral politics in India. I submit that it was from this discursive field of "antipolitics" and "religious activism" that the Hindu nationalist movement, with great ingenuity, built its campaigns and organizational networks for decades. Like other forms of cultural nationalism, the Hindu nationalist movement always entertained a complex ambivalence vis-à-vis democracy and apprehension toward the "political vocation." The evolution of the movement, its organization, and its political strategies must be understood in the context of a constant negotiation and oscillation across the deep bifurcation in modern Indian political culture between a realm of "sublime" culture and realm of "profane" competitive politics.
Singh and I had developed a warm and productive relationship. While he could be cautious inforeign policy, unwilling to get out too far ahead of an Indian bureaucracy that was historically suspicious ofU.S. intentions, our time together confirmed my initial impression of him as a man of uncommon wisdom and decency…. What I couldn’t tell was whether Singh’s rise to power represented the future of India’sdemocracy or merely an aberration.... In fact, he owed his position toSonia Gandhi…more than one political observer believed that she’d chosen Singh precisely because as an elderly Sikh with no national political base, he posed no threat to her forty-year-old son,Rahul, whom she was grooming to take over theCongress Party... He feared that risinganti-Muslim sentiment had strengthened the influence of India’s main opposition party, the Hindu nationalistBharatiya Janata Party (BJP)... In the dim light, he (Singh) looked frail, older than his seventy-eight years, and as we drove off I wondered what would happen when he left office. Would the baton be successfully passed to Rahul, fulfilling the destiny laid out by his mother and preserving the Congress Party’s dominance over the ‘divisive nationalism’ touted by the BJP?
After theoutbreak of Covid-19, one was hoping that the globalcalamity will be combated on top priority without any consideration ofrace,ethnicity andreligion. [...] Overall, during the last couple of months, the hate-filled atmosphere has taken a sharp upturn and the popular talk is veering towards shun Muslims and boycotting their trades. This does remind some of theboycott of Jew traders before the "final solution" was put into action inGermany. Already the myths, stereotypes and biases againstMuslims in particular and partly againstChristians abound in the society. A hate-creation mechanism is already in place. This mechanism has become robust during last few years. The roots of this mechanism are fairly deep and it has been actively nurtured bycommunal elements. That a human tragedy likeCovid-19 could have boosted divisive processes was unthinkable a few years ago. To create a negative image, to manufacture stereotypes and biases against the minorities, a large network of trained people, owing allegiance to Hindu nationalism have spread far and wide, deep into the vitals of society.
In the interests of 'secularism', most Indian schools and colleges provide only limited courses for the study of ancient India,Vedic Hinduism and Sanskrit literature. So the vast majority of Indian children grow up with a sense of being Indian that is restricted to a religious identity. When this gets infused with a toxic sort of nationalism, as happens inRSS educational institutions, the result isbigotry of a lethal kind.
Hindu nationalism has nothing to do with any childish, petty and ridiculous idea of dividing Indians into "outsiders" and "insiders" on the basis of whether or not their ancestors, actually or supposedly, came from outside. Hindu Nationalism believes only in identifying the de-Indianising elements, as opposed to the Indianising ones. , . . Even if it is assumed that a group of people, called "Aryans," invaded, or immigrated into, India, . . . they have left no trace, if ever there was any, of any link, much less the consciousness of any link, much less any loyalties associated with such a link, to any place outside India.
S. Talageri in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 13
