#Hindutva ideology

[tellingittash]

Religious Studies Term Of The Day: Hindutva

Hey everyone. Today I wanted to talk about a movement within the Hindu traditions: Hindutva. Literally translated, it means “Hinduness.” This idea of Hinduness is important politically and religiously in modern India because they are the terms used by fundamentalists to bring about a call to return to tradition.

Let’s think about fundamentalists for a second. In the West, we are more familiar with fundamentalists movements in Abrahamic traditions. Haredi Jews, Wahhabi Muslims, and Fundamentalist Christians come to mind as movements within the faith calling for strict readings of their texts and shunning of modern interpretations and acceptances of modern progress in many different forms, even in opposition against other pretty conservative versions of their own faiths, and especially against the corrupting influences of other forms of religious worldviews.

This is not fully helpful when talking about Hindu nationalism.

The similarities are, in fact, that they do seem to be reactionary in so far as to religious and political influences and seek to reclaim a Hinduness that is pure. This means that they reject forms of western thought and faith that would destroy their Hindu traditions, such as religious ideology that their ways of worship are idolatry and that they should only worship one true god, or political ideology that says that since women and equal to men, then it must follow that they should be allowed to do the exact same things me do in their roles. They want to go back to a Hindu tradition that has women and men equal, but in separate roles, (which is how the movement tends to put it) and gets rid of the powerful religious traditions that undermine their faith’s legitimacy.

What makes them different from fundamentalist movements in Abrahamic faiths is that they are pretty inclusive. They don’t care what kind of god you serve, or even if you worship a god, or what path of liberation you follow or what you even what texts you read or your interpretations of them. As long as you are a Hindu, and they can easily recognize how you express your Hinduness, they don’t really seem to care about much else. Some would even argue that they don’t even care if you aren’t a Hindu, just as long as you adhere to the idea that India should be a Hindu nation you will be fine. You can worship Jesus all you want, just as long as I can worship Shiva next door and you don’t tell me I have to stop doing that and worship Jesus instead.

However, it would be ignorant for me to ignore the critics of Hindutva who point out that while some women are happy to live their life as mothers and wives, others are not, and want to do more and they should still be considered Hindu regardless, and yet the women’s movement in India is seen by many fundamentalists as selfish and contrary to Hinduism. Likewise, while it would be wrong to delegitimize the movement by just saying it is bigoted against other faiths, that inclusiveness it proclaims has had some limits. We cannot ignore criticism of the Hindu nationalists who seek to strip away citizenship from those who are not Hindus, and that Muslims and Sikhs have especially seen intense persecution within India, violently and fatally so, despite these people being as Indian as their fellow Hindus. It’s a lot to take in, and we need to think about this stuff.

But again, I’m an outsider. I’m always happy to be educated by either side of this movement. But for now, I hope that you are all having a great day and they you’re staying safe out there.

[veerasposts]

Do the Hindu religious bloggers who keep complaining about anti hindutva people criticising Hindutva/Hinduism in the hindublr tag think they own the hindublr tag or something? Like bestie the block button is right there, why are you crying about hindublr being "politicised"? The rampant Islamophobia that some hindublr blogs have here showing up on the desiblr tag is also very inconvenient but I deal with it because it is an online space and no one's father runs Tumblr

[artcinemas]

it’s sad how india who once recognised palestine as it’s own nation is now assisting israel in it’s genocide it’s awful it’s sick. as a country who was colonized and invaded for centuries, are ignoring the value and parallel of the palestinian resistance. especially those specialists in history. rot.

[gaystcr]

oh and while i’m chatting about hindutva let’s talk about how these jokers will try and appropriate the genocide and struggle of eezham tamils (predominately hindu) in order to prop up their twisted worldview that there is somehow institutional discrimination against hindus in india. that is if they even acknowledge the tamil genocide at all. they mostly ignore it in fact! because the thing is that the people practicing genocide on the tamil people in sri lanka aren’t muslim and that doesn’t fit into their belief (that muslim ppl are the scum of the earth). you don’t actually care about hindus you just hate muslims 👍🏾

[aeolianblues]

hey man if converting to a new religion means you need to suddenly turn ultra-conservative and become okay with transgressions that you wouldn't have accepted outside of religious contexts and you constantly are walking on eggshells for them to accept you then WHAT is the fucking point. What's the point. 'Point of religion is peace and love and keeping a conscience and society in check' but the entry point is trial by murder. Sure. This is 100% a good, peaceful, stable and non-violent idea. 100% not a cult and brainwashing.

[indizombie]

Anti-Hindutva groups like HfHR, Sadhana, and Students Against Hindutva Ideology are experimenting with reclaiming Hinduism itself from the Hindu right. HfHR hosts events that reinterpret Hindu tradition through a liberationist lens, such as “Holi against Hindutva,” a gathering that transformed the Hindu “festival of colors” into a day of political education. The group has also retrieved an expansive pantheon of Hindu deities traditionally patronized by queer communities, Dalits, women, and others excluded by the Hindutva project. HfHR has even reinterpreted the idea of Ram rajya, or Ram’s kingdom—a mythological time of divine justice, which the Hindu right has long used to denote the coming of a purely Hindu India—to symbolize something similar to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “beloved community,” a vision of a just, anti-racist society. Hindutva organizations may have positioned themselves as the representatives of the US Hindu diaspora, but Mandalaparthy said that groups like HfHR are contesting for space: “We have intentionally tried to go wherever the Hindu right groups are, so that there’s not just one Hindu voice.”

Aparna Gopalan, ‘The Hindu nationalists using the pro-Israel playbook’, Jewish Currents

[schoolhater]

i hate wikipedia sometimes

[daisyachain]

another bit of odd reporting in an otherwise average article, the CBC explicitly frames the most outspoken pro-war pro-occupation MP in the current neutral government as a ‘spokesperson for his [the Jewish] community’ while neglecting to frame the most outspoken pro-ceasefire MP as just that, an MP.

Less obvious than the usual lopsided reporting, the implication is that Housefather’s continuous, vocal, unhinged support for the found-by-the-international-court-to-be-in-violation-of-genocide-prevention actions of the Occupation Forces a) is an intrinsic part of his ethnic background, b) is a universal belief among Jewish people in Canada, c) is somehow different from the solidarity shown between Muslim/Arab Canadians like Zahid and majority Muslim/Arab Palestine. Why is she not The Voice of the Arab Community while he is The Voice of the Jewish Community? Obviously it’s stupid to dumb down a diverse group of people spread across the country into one singular opinion. Which begs the question. Why do it. ‘Emerged as a voice’ my ass. This means that he pretty much has no significance until Canada’s studiously milquetoast Liberals took the same tack they’ve taken as for every other issue that’s ever crossed their place and he decided he was going to become the Mr Ethnic Cleansing of his caucus

Sure, use that phrasing when talking about the government’s response to antisemitic threats/attacks in Montreal and Toronto. Those are things that are happening in Canada to people who live here. Putting that frame on this story in this place paints Housefather as pro-genocide by reason of inherent ethnocultural disposition, not by reason of dumb fucking pea brain. It’s a dissonant choice and whatever the reason it comes off as Bad to say that advocating against genocide prevention is somehowwwwww tied to your ethnicity

[mahoutoons]

i'm feeling controversial today so here's another hot take. and before you type away at your keyboards, know that this is all coming from a south asian.

white leftists have got to stop acting like christianity is the only religion that deserves to be criticized and you cannot touch any other religion because that'd be racist and bigoted. because as an indian who's watching my country progress towards hindu nationalism, this attitude doesn't help at all.

white people see hinduism as this exotic brown religion that's so much more progressive but don't know the violence of the caste system, how it others a large portion of the population on the basis of caste, literally branding them as "untouchables". they teach us in school that this problem is a thing of the past but the caste system is still alive and shows itself in violent ways. and that's not even covering how non hindus are treated in the country. muslims especially are being killed, have their houses bulldozed, businesses destroyed, and are being denied housing, our fucking prime minister called them infiltrators and there's this fear among hindu extremists that they'll outnumber the hindus in the country. portraying hinduism as this exotic religion does a disservice to all those oppressed by the hindutva ideology

similarly, white people see buddhism as this hippie religion that's all about peace but have no idea how extremist buddhists in myanmar have been persecuting the rohingya muslims for years and drive them out of the country.

if anything portraying these religions as exotic hippie brown religions is a type of orientalism itself.

and also y'all have got to realize that just because christianity has institutional power in america doesn't mean there aren't parts of the world where they are persecuted on the basis of religion. yes karen from florida who cries christophobia because she sees rainbow sprinkles on a cake is stupid but christian oppression DOES exist in non western countries where they're a minority. pakistani christians get lynched almost on a daily basis over blasphemy accusations. just look up the case of asia bibi, a pakistani christian woman who was sentenced to death on blasphemy charges because of something she said when she was being denied water because it was "forbidden" for a christian and a muslim to drink from the same utensil and she'd made it unclean just by touching it (which is ALSO rooted in casteism and part of pakistani christians' oppression also comes from the fact that a lot of them are dalit but that's a whole other discussion). and that's just one christian group, this isn't even going into what copts, assyrians, armenians etc have faced and continue to face. saying that christians everywhere are privileged because of american christianity actually harms christian minorites in non western countries.

and one last thing because this post is getting too long: someone being anti america doesn't automatically mean they're the good guys. too many times i've been seeing westerners on twitter dot com praise the fucking taliban just because they hate america. yes, the same taliban who banned education for women, thinks women should be imprisomed at home, and consistently oppresses religious and ethnic minorities in afghanistan. yes, america's war on afghanistan was bad and they SHOULD be called out for their war crimes there. no, the taliban are still not the good guys. BOTH of them are bad. you cannot pretend to care about muslims and brown people if you praise the taliban. because guess what? most of their victims are BROWN MUSLIM WOMEN. but of course white libs who praise them don't rub their two braincells together to make that conclusion.

this post has gotten too long and i've just been rambling so the point of this post is: white "leftists" whose politics are primarily america centric should stop acting like criticism of ideologies like hindutva, buddhist extremism, and islamic extremism BY people affected by these ideologies is the same as racism or religious intolerance because that helps literally no one except the extremist bigots. also america is not the centre of the world, just because something isn't happening in america doesn't mean it isn't happening elsewhere

[metamatar]

This is maybe a stupid question but do you think there's any ties between like orientalist trends in western countries that glorify dharmic religions and Hindutva? Like I've heard 'Hinduism is the oldest religion on Earth' and 'Hinduism/Buddhism are just so much more enlightened than savage Abrahamic religions' and 'how could there be war and oppression in India? Hindus don't believe in violence' from white liberals and it certainly seems *convenient* for Hindutva propaganda, at least.

Not stupid at all! Historically, orientalism precedes modern Hindutva. The notion of a unified Hinduism is actually constructed in the echo of oriental constructions of India, with Savarkar clearly modelling One Nation, One Race, One Language on westphalian nationhood. He will often draw on Max Mueller type of indology orientalists in his writing in constructing the Hindu claim to a golden past and thus an ethnostate.

In terms of modern connections you can see the use and abuse of orientalism in South Asian postcolonial studies depts in the west that end up peddling Hindutva ideology –

The geographer Sanjoy Chakravorty recently promised that, in his new book, he would “show how the social categories of religion and caste as they are perceived in modern-day India were developed during the British colonial rule…” The air of originality amused me. This notion has been in vogue in South Asian postcolonial studies for at least two decades. The highest expression of the genre, Nicholas Dirks’s Castes of Mind, was published in 2001. I take no issue with claiming originality for warmed-over ideas: following the neoliberal mantra of “publish or perish,” we academics do it all the time. But reading Chakravorty’s essay, I was shocked at the longevity of this particular idea, that caste as we know it is an artefact of British colonialism. For any historian of pre-colonial India, the idea is absurd. Therefore, its persistence has less to do with empirical merit, than with the peculiar dynamics of the global South Asian academy.

[...] No wonder that Hindutvadis in both countries are now quoting their works to claim that caste was never a Hindu phenomenon. As Dalits are lynched across India and upper-caste South Asian-Americans lobby to erase the history of their lower-caste compatriots from US textbooks, to traffic in this self-serving theory is unconscionable.

You can see writer sociologists beloved of western academia like Ashish Nandy argue for the "inherent difference of indian civilization makes secularism impossible" and posit that the caste ridden gandhian hinduism is the answer as though the congress wasn't full of hindutva-lites and that the capture of dalit radicalism by electoralism and grift is actually a form of redistribution. Sorry if thats not necessarily relevant I like to hate on him.

Then most importantly is the deployment of "Islamic Colonization" that Hindu India must be rescued from, which is merely cover for the rebrahmanization of the country. This periodization and perspective of Indian history is obviously riven up in British colonial orientalism, see Romila Thapar's work on precolonial India. Good piece on what the former means if you've not engaged with it, fundamentally it posits an eternal Hindu innocence.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Where does this curious Hindutva-Zionist solidarity spring from? One origin is from the earliest Hindu nationalists who modelled their Hindu state on Zionism. Hindutva’s founder, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, supported majoritarian nationalism and the rooting out of all disintegrating forces. These included Muslims who supported electoral quotas for their community and left-wing internationalists. As a result, he even condoned the Nazis’ antisemitic legislation in two speeches in 1938 because, as he saw it: “a nation is formed by a majority living therein”. Yet Savarkar was not antisemitic himself. He often spoke favourably of the tiny Jewish-Indian minority because he considered it too insignificant to threaten Hindu cohesion. In fact, Savarkar praised Zionism as the perfection of ethno-nationalist thinking. The way Zionism seamlessly blended ethnic attachment to a motherland and religious attachment to a holy land was precisely what Savarkar wanted for the Hindus. This double attachment was far more powerful to his mind than the European model of “blood and soil” nationalism without sacred space. Today, Hindu nationalists perpetuate this legacy and still look to Zionism as a uniquely attractive political ideology. To Hindu nationalists, some Zionists were engaged in a project to reclaim their holy land from a Muslim population whose religious roots in the region were not as ancient as their own.

[...]

In 2018, Israel passed a law that rebranded the country as “the nation-state of the Jewish people” and delegitimised its non-Jewish citizens. Similarly, India’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019 eased paths to citizenship for immigrants from several religious groups, but not Muslims. Coupled with rhetoric associating millions of Indian Muslims with illegal immigration, human rights groups argue that this law could be used to strip many Muslims of their Indian citizenship. Hindu nationalists have also stoked a culture war to consolidate “Hindu civilisation” and sweep away symbols of Islam. This is very much in keeping with the wish of Israel’s far right to rebuild Solomon’s Temple on the site of the holy Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where al-Aqsa mosque compound currently sits. In 1969, a Zionist extremist burned the south wing of al-Aqsa. And in 1980, the fundamentalist group Jewish Underground plotted to blow up the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine at the centre of the compound. A similar project of demolishing mosques and building temples in their place was suggested by Savarkar and Golwalkar. Hindu nationalist organisations focused their attention on Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodha, since this was the mythical birthplace of the Hindu god, Ram.

[applesauce42069]

You are very bad at thinking, but I suppose that is to be expected from a zionist.

Indigeneity being a relation to colonialization implies neither that indigeneity has some set expiry date nor a conception of indigenous peoples as "noble savages", which seems to be the the trope you're invoking, nor is it a boon to white nationalist movements. Quite the opposite, in fact.

It implies that indigeneity will exist as long as long as colonialism exists (and I do hope that you acknowledge that colonialization is not a relic of the past, but that colonial efforts are still ongoing in the americas, oceania, and select parts of the rest of the world too), that indigenous people are simply people subject to an additional axis of oppression, and runs directly counter to white identitarian "blood and soil" ideology which posits an inherent, special, and priviledged claim of white people to europe and any other lands white identitarians may lay claim to (and similarly runs counter to claims of other ethnonationalist ideologies such as indian hindutva).

You are also full of shit. I am indigenous to the levant because Im a jew. my sister is indigenous to the levant because she's a jew. my friend is indigenous to the levant because they're a jew. die mad. die mad. die mad.

[scltbvrns]

hindutva is hinduism how dare you insult savarkar like that? he literally freed our country liberals like you are ruining this country.

A) Open my intro page and then, read the dni section.

B) Hindutva is a political ideology based on Hindu ethnonationalism. Get your information right you insipid right winger.

C) Heroes like Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekar Azad, Bagha Jatin, Ashfaqullah Khan, Roshan Singh and many more did not sacrifice their lives so that one day a moron like you could wash away their sacrifice like that over a coward and a snitch who recieved pensions from the British crown even after independance.

D) I am NOT a liberal. I am a leftist. Learn the difference.

E) Happy Ambedkar Jayanti. Jai Bhim 🙏

[thisgingerhasnosoul]

Since that Hindutva post has been circulating, I think this is a good time to remind people not to give your opinion on the politics of a country you know nothing about in order to give your two cents.

I am not educated on the history of India or its current political climate. I am aware that Modi and his party, the BJP, are far right-wing nationalists—something I obviously do not support—but I simply do not know enough about the actual policies he put in place, nor how it affects day-to-day life in India, and I am not going to give my two cents on a topic I know nothing about. I care about my friends who experience Hinduphobia, and I care about my friends who experience Islamophobia; I will always listen to and validate their lived experiences. But I cannot and will not side with anyone on specific policies or political ideologies that I’m not educated on—especially about a country I’ve never been to. I don’t know enough, and I think we’d all be a lot better off if we just let people admit when that’s the case.

[slicedblackolives]

the author describes my dread v accurately um

[incorrectmahabharatquotes]

Genuinely curious, because you seem to hate the Ram Mandir... or how you think one party/ruling government is using it for political gain/votes or how it's wasting money etc.

What do you have to say about the Waqf board act? Or the infamous Shah Bano case and the way the Rajiv Gandhi government went against the decision of the Supreme Court to favour Muslim patriarchy. Or the fact that the Congress government banned books like the Satanic Verses to please a certain community. Is this not politics of appeasement?

You say that the ruling party is playing politics over religion, but hasn't every party done it? It's not like BJP was even hiding it, they've been campaigning for the Ram Mandir rebuilding for decades. It doesn't make it automatically a bad move.

Besides, Ram Mandir is built through devotee donations, so why so much vitriol against it? If Hindus are giving money to construct a temple, it's solely their own decision. I genuinely don't understand why there's so much hatred for it. If a community is reclaiming their holy land, which had been forcibly ruined and rebuilt into another type of building, it's not a bad thing. Plus, a big chunk of land was given to the Sunny Waqf board to build a beautiful mosque in Ayodhya itself, which has begun construction this year (iirc). Both communities will have their interests restored.

Why can't we move on and celebrate the Ram Mandir rebuilding and inauguration? Is decolonization and reclaiming of a place of cultural significance not important?

(I know that some people are being too aggressive about it, but the majority isn't. They're simply celebrating and praying. And some of them actually got attacked for it.)

Okay. Since you're genuinely curious, I'll answer this.

"Why am I criticising the current ruling party for playing politics of appeasement and not any of the other parties?" I'm criticizing them BECAUSE they're the ruling party. They have been in power for close to 10 years now. That's more than 1/3rd of my whole life. This is a hilarious question because I would've been criticizing the same action if it would've been taken by any other political party. I don't have a problem with the party, I have a problem with what they're doing. All citizens are SUPPOSED to do this, my friend. Criticizing your government on what they're doing wrong is a fundamental part of a democracy.

"Politics of appeasement." I hope you understand the difference between appeasement and religious nationalism. The ruling party isn't appeasing anyone. Their acts are guided by their political ideology of Hindutva. I fundamentally disagree with their ideology. I do not agree with them when they say being Hindu is integral to being an Indian. I do not believe in maintaining a Hindu hegemony in India. I simply refuse to accept an ideology that was LITERALLY INSPIRED BY FASCISM AND THE IDEAS OF RACIAL SUPERIORITY.

"What do you have to say about so-and-so?" You know, I would've criticised things I believe are harming our country and power when the governments you speak of were in power. Unfortunately, in certain cases I was not alive then to criticize them and in a few cases, I was a child and I did not know how to form complex sentences. I do not believe in essentialism, you understand? I do not believe that any religion or political party is essentially good or bad. I believe in judging them for what they do.

"They've been campaigning for the Ram Mandir for decades. It doesn't make it automatically a bad move." It's imperative for you to understand this, it is politically a good move and in all other ways a HORRIBLE move. They get the support of all the Hindus who make up the majority of the population? Decent political move. Who could begrudge them for using DIVIDE AND CONQUER as a strategy? But in doing so, what kind of monster have they created? Have they created a billion people who think religious-nationalism is an okay direction for the country's future? Is that a good move, I ask you.

"Ram mandir is built through devotee donations so it's okay." That's close to ₹1,800 crores. (Estimated amount because of course, there's no transparency in the donation system so that we know who donated what amount.) Do you seriously believe all that money came out of the pockets of average working class Indians? Or did the ultra wealthy businessmen fund this religious project and get massive tax breaks in the process? But yes, I'm sure there's no fuckery going on with the money because it's out of DEVOTION. That makes it okay, I guess.

Now we come to the part that is the worst part of this anon message, according to me.

"Reclamation and decolonization." You use these words so lightly and I find that offensive. These words are HIGHLY tied to power structures. Who has the power right now? Is it the mythic evil Islamic conquerors of 400 years ago? Or is it a political party that believes in hindu nationalism and is funded by the ultra wealthy billionaires because said party helps them get even richer? Who is reclaiming what here? I want you to ask yourself this. Can a powerful majority claim reclamation when they tear down a building to build another building there?

"They tore down the temple and built a mosque there" And now you've torn down the mosque and built a temple there. Congratulations, you've won the game. Where do we go from here? Will everyone be happy now? Has peace been restored? A great evil destroyed? What story are we telling ourselves here? Will the religious fanaticism go away now? Will the hatred that has been cultivated in the hearts of Hindus against Muslims be sated? Or will it find more avenues to spread itself?

Decolonizing the mind, right? I wonder why we're only focused on decolonizing against the islamic past and not anything else. But it's okay that India is currently colonising Kashmir. We don't believe in decolonisation when it comes to Kashmir. We don't believe in decolonizing from the system of capitalism that is choking the lives out of us. HELL, WE DON'T EVEN BELIEVE IN RECLAMATION SEEING HOW WE HAVE A PROBLEM WITH GIVING THE BARE MINIMUM RESERVATION TO CERTAIN COMMUNITIES AS A REPARATION FOR THE HARM THEY'VE HISTORICALLY AND CURRENTLY SUFFERED AND ARE STILL SUFFERING.

I don't want people to talk to me about reclamation, reparation and decolonisation before they accept their own hypocrisy.

Anon, you say have so much vitriol and hate towards a mandir. I should let people celebrate. Did I stop you personally from celebrating? Did I beat up somebody for trying to shove their religious agenda on me? All I did was talk about how sad I am that this is what we've decided to do with our country's resources. Why is one voice of dissent such a big deal to you? Do you want me to shut up and fall in line? Will that be acceptable?

- Mod S