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Perhaps the most enduring definition of ‘nationalism’ comes from the scholar Benedict Anderson. For him, nationalism requires a ‘deep, horizontal comradeship’ or ‘imagined community’, within territorial limits, and operating under a sovereign state.
‘For at least 2,000 years, pilgrimage to the tirthas (tirthayatra) has been one of the most widespread of the many streams of practice that have come to be called “Hindu”.’
India’s 966 million Hindus constitute 80 per cent of the population. But they are distributed into 3000 castes, 25,000 sub-castes,21 and more than 19,000 languages and dialects.
Hinduism, in contrast, does not provide for a definitive model of a theocracy.
Unlike Islam, Christianity or Judaism.
The Marathas, not the Mughals, were the paramount power when the British came to India.
Elections would provide incentives for groups to harden their own identities and view others with mistrust, all in order to form political vote banks.
Even at the age of twenty-six, Savarkar had identified the weakness of India: the lack of national unity.
Savarkar answered the question by linking the ancient territorial idea of Hinduism to a new imagined community bound by race. Seen this way, all Indians were related by common blood.60 But in contrast to Sikhs, Dalits and Tribals, Savarkar suspected Muslim and Christian Indians, since they looked outside of India’s sacred geography, towards Mecca, Jerusalem and Rome. Savarkar deemed them, not second-class citizens, but traitors to their own race.
What was needed, Hedgewar concluded, was not political agitation but a social organization dedicated to converting India’s disparate Hindus into a unified Hinduism.
69 On the other hand, and unlike traditional Hinduism, the RSS from its very origin thought of low-castes, Dalits and Tribals as part of its family.
Victoria College, originally founded as a Muslim seminary called Lakshar Madrassa in 1846 before changing its name in honour of the British empress.
What is known is that many in the RSS voted for the Congress as the party of Hindus. The Mahasabha was ignored.
Of the thirty seats reserved for them in the central assembly, the League had won every single one.8 Of the roughly 500 Muslim seats in the provincial assemblies, the League had gained 425.9 Since the franchise was limited to those with property, money, or education, over 86 per cent of adult Muslims did not have the right to vote.10 But the Muslim League interpreted the results conveniently. All Muslims, it declared, were behind its demand for Pakistan.
1945 elections - central and provincial assembly
Meanwhile, an estimated 14.5 million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were being forced out of their homes to migrate to a new country.30 More than ten million were rendered homeless.31 As much as 2.7 million hectares of land were abandoned by Hindus and Sikhs in West Punjab, with 1.9 million hectares abandoned by Muslims in East Punjab.32 The other macabre statistic was on sexual violence: 50,000 Muslim women were abducted as they attempted to flee, while for Hindu and Sikh women the number was 33,000.33 The dead alone crossed a million.
The great Indian migration in numbers
Another RSS member points to another lesson learnt. ‘We noticed that the Mahasabha was not banned.’ This was despite Savarkar, Godse and Apte having been more active in the Mahasabha compared to the RSS. The reason for this, the RSS concluded, was that the Hindu Mahasabha had a footprint in parliament and the union cabinet. Political presence had protected the Mahasabha, while political absence had made the RSS vulnerable.
The VHP’s core mission was ‘to bring sadhus, sants and mahatmas of various sects on one platform’,81 thus uniting all those ‘sampradayas [religious denomination and sects] that originated in India’.82 Like with Savarkar’s formulation of Hindutva, this included traditional Hinduism as well as Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism, but excluded Christianity and Islam. The aim was to solve the problem of ‘authority’ in Hinduism by creating, for the first time, a Hindu Vatican.
At the time one of the richest groups in India, the Wadias were Parsis who had made their money during colonial rule. Their flagship Bombay Dyeing textiles was a household name. The scion of the Wadia group, Nusli, wasn’t just uncommonly rich, he was also the grandson of Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
The ease with which Hindu nationalists can spout opposing economics suggests they do not have a principled view on the subject. And that their economics in the 1970s also went against their funders points to the fact that money power alone does not explain their policies. Instead, the deciding factor in choosing to not confront Indira Gandhi was an analysis of what it took to win elections. It was votes, not ideology or money, that shaped Jana Sangh economics.
As a national movement taking on the British, the Congress had brought diverse religious, caste, language and regional groups under one umbrella.1 After independence, the Nehru-led Congress continued to win with ‘nation-building’ appeals at the macro level while pandering to singular castes, religions and regions within the ‘Congress system’ at the micro level.
Hindu nationalists alone could not have transformed the protests of 1974 into a national movement. They still repelled many who were otherwise hostile to Indira Gandhi. What the protests needed was a face that was universally respected.
.’ The Gujarati Muslim told Jinnah that Pakistan was mainly ‘in the interest of the Muslim-majority states. But what happens to the Muslims in the states where they are a small minority?’ ‘They will look after themselves,’ Jinnah replied. ‘I am not interested in their fate.’20
Muhammedali Chagla, legal junior of Muhammed Ali Jinnah (parted ways after two-nation theory) and chief guest at the launch of BJP.
Vajpayee had been attracted to the RSS by his Brahmin background as well as his location in Marathi-speaking Gwalior. Advani had likely been spurred by a wave of Sindhi anxiety produced by the possibility of partition. Modi, poorer than Advani and even Vajpayee, had sought a sense of belonging and social mobility. It was Amit Shah alone who seems to have joined because of ideology.
This was when Dau Dayal Khanna, a former Congress state minister, came up with demands regarding three north Indian mosques that, he claimed, had been built above the vestiges of shattered temples.
V.D. Savarkar, for example, was a ‘hardboiled atheist’104 who declared the cow to be ‘a useless animal with no sacredness in it’.
Pravin Togadia says, ‘It is true that Vajpayee did not participate in [a] single Ayodhya-related movement.’
‘The “Us” and “Them” identification changed overnight from Hindus against Muslims to Indians against Sikhs.’120 In Faizabad (near Ayodhya), Hindus and Muslims jointly attacked Sikh property.121
After the assignation of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.
This anti-upper-caste coalition in Gujarat was sought to be replicated in India’s two most populous states by Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav who, by 1985, had become leaders of the opposition in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Of those inducted into the BJP at that time, it is Narendra Modi whom history will remember. His biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay says that he was chosen mainly because he came from Gujarat, the laboratory of a novel, virulent strain of Hindu politics.42 Both he and Amit Shah had been critical of Vajpayee’s ‘Gandhian socialism’ and were fine-tuning a strategy of uniting high- and low-caste Hindus by using Muslims as scapegoats.
Advani recruiting RSS ideology to the BJP.
He even made actor Arun Govil campaign for his party.
Rajiv Gandhi and the actor who played Ram in Ramayan.
The popularity of these serials was evidence of a vote bank, fully formed and inflated. And, as the 1989 national elections approached, this Hindu vote bank stood waiting to be encashed.
Advani’s chariot was pure opportunism, short-term politicking rather than long-held belief.
From placing the idol inside the mosque in 1949 to arranging a brick-laying ceremony in 1989,21 Paramhans was, in some sense, the Ayodhya movement.
The Internet era was dawning in India—only 0.6611 per cent of Indians used the internet in 2001 compared to 3612 per cent in 2019.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi would tweet on the thirteenth anniversary of the attack: ‘We salute martyrs who lost their lives protecting the temple of our democracy on this day in 2001.’55 It points to a key aspect of Hindu nationalism: in the absence of any authoritative temple in traditional Hinduism, parliamentary democracy would become the temple through which religious identity would be shaped.
The Vajpayee government privatized twelve public-sector companies generating 29,990 crore rupees or 4.6 billion US dollars.23 What halted this juggernaut was the government’s attempts to sell its stake in Bharat and Hindustan Petroleum.
‘All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure.’
Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are more astute in catering to low castes microscopically as well as attacking Muslims macroscopically.
It was modern representative democracy, not the modern colonial state, that created Hindu nationalism.
