The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right

by Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay

On his part, Savarkar was often self-contradictory, as we have seen earlier. After his argument on who could consider Bharatvarsh as his or her own land, his formal definition of Hindutva was conspicuous for its exclusivity: 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. Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva. Unless it is made clear what is meant by the latter, the first remains unintelligible and vague. Failure to distinguish between these two terms has given rise to much misunderstanding and mutual suspicion between some of those sister communities that have inherited this inestimable and common treasure of our Hindu civilization…Hindutva is not identical with what is vaguely indicated by the term Hinduism…Had not linguistic usage stood in our way then ‘Hinduness’ (elsewhere, he also used the word Hindudom; italics mine) would have certainly been a better word…Hindutva embraces all the departments of thought and activity of the whole Being of our Hindu race. Therefore, to understand the significance of this term Hindutva, we must first understand the essential meaning of the word Hindu… Savarkar elaborated on his basic premise about other religionists, most importantly, the followers of Islam. His postulation clearly indicated that he precluded them, and the other three from his idea of ...