Making Sense of Hindutva

Hindutva can easily be seen as an Indian version of a global movement of men, by men, for men. It reclaims their masculinity and combines religion with nationalism. It can be lumped together with the resurging Orthodox Christianity in post-communist Russia or the Evangelical Christianity sweeping neoliberal America. The enemy in all these cases is both external and internal – anyone who challenges an imagined glorious traditional history, where men played the dominant role, where women knew their place, and all things queer (now articulated as LGBTQ+) existed in shadows and footnotes.

But, with Hindutva, there is one additional challenge: an understanding of Hinduism itself. And the problem is structural.

A Structural Problem Finally Acknowledged

Hinduism is structurally very different from the monotheistic religions that inform the global discourse. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are based on ideas such as God, God’s Law, Judgement Day, and the Apocalypse. Hinduism is based on ideas such as infinity, timelessness, rebirth, and caste. As a result, the word “evil” cannot be translated into any Indian language. And the definitive article “the” does not exist in any Indian language either.

There arises a further complication given the fact that even the “modern” concept of the secular nation-state is structurally the same as monotheistic religions. An all-powerful state replaces an all-powerful God. The constitution replaces God’s Law. Traitors replace heretics. Nationalism is submission. Democracy is the ritual to choose the divine messenger who will enforce God’s Law.

Even science follows the structure of monotheistic religions. While it replaces faith with doubt and miracles with measurement, it insists on pursing and presenting “the” truth, like evangelists of yore. So, science and monotheistic religions remain at loggerheads. Only now scientists are being challenged by those who insist feelings are as important as facts. As a result, defining a woman has now become a national crisis in the United States as everyone scrambles for “the” truth. Ontology, not epistemology.

Indians, not just Hindus, have learnt over the centuries that the point of diversity is to work with diverse truths, which make sense to diverse communities. The opposite of equality is not inequality; it is diversity. The opposite of diversity is standardization. Standardization makes things efficient. Diversity, unfortunately, is inefficient.

The frustration of old-school feminists, fearing the erasure of womanhood, and being labeled as TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists), is familiar to Hindus. They can see the logic of the opposition, but realize that logic also misrepresents them. They lack the linguistic wherewithal to negotiate a mutually satisfactory functional agreement. They feel gagged, misunderstood, cornered.

Exhausted, Hindu rage found refuge in the 21st century Hindutva war cry, “Hindus are in danger!” Sadly, like all victim discourses, it ends up taking a step backward, rather than a step forward.

Defining Hinduism, Defiant Hindutva

Hinduism is not a religion in the conventional sense of the term for two reasons. First, you cannot sell Hinduism. You cannot convert to Hinduism. You are born a Hindu. Second, you cannot blame a holy book – as a Muslim or Christian can – for being patriarchal, misogynistic, and queerphobic. There is nothing fixed or universal in Hinduism. Dharma (civilized conduct) exists within samsara (flux). Even good actions can have bad reactions, which is why Krishna says, “To action alone you have right, not reaction.” This unpredictable nature of karma has not made it into the New Age cults, where karma is defined using the Biblical phrase, “as you sow, so shall you reap.”

The word “Hinduism” itself emerged in the early part of the 19th century, under pressure from the British rulers of the time. The British wanted to make sense of – and control – the diverse and dynamic native beliefs in India. Those who chose this word were reformers, from the elite classes, keen to replace popular traditional Hindu practices such as idol, cow, and tree worship with the ideals of liberty, equality, and humanism. They argued they were inspired by the original Sanskrit texts on philosophy, newly translated, and not later corrupt ritualistic practices.

The word “Hindutva” came along in the latter part of the 19th century, in defiance of “Hinduism,” and proclaimed the supremacy of all things traditional. It remained a powerful counter-force during India’s freedom struggle, when it was influenced by racist European ideologies. But it has become India’s zeitgeist only in the past two decades.

When the British Empire was being set up, Europe was itself torn between science and humanism on one hand, and the irrationality of religion and monarchy on the other. The conquered people of South Asia were deemed to be savages: polytheistic, pagan communities, steeped in hedonism, often ruled by heretic Muslim sultans. The White Man carried the burden of civilization, as famously encapsulated in a Rudyard Kipling poem.

In the British Raj, this involved, among other things, establishing Hinduism as a religion through accurate translation and documentation of Hindu texts, beliefs, and customs. For this they looked to a group of people who were assumed to be the spokespersons of the Hindu faith – the Brahmins. Every religion needed to have a church with priests, in the European imagination.

As English became the court language, replacing Persian, the Brahmins were eager to reassert the supremacy of Sanskrit. Sanskrit Hindu texts were used to create the laws to govern India. They were used to distinguish people who, until then, were part of the larger Hindu fold – Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains. The impact of these policies are felt even today, if one studies the separatist Khalistan movements of Punjab, now housed in the United Kingdom and Canada.

Hindu texts were also used, along with the newly-emerging field of archaeology, to create Hindu history that followed a European template of progress. First there was polytheism (Vedic texts), then came monotheism (the Bhagavad Gita of Krishna), then came a Protestant movement (Buddhism), and finally with colonization came science and humanism.

Rich, independent courtesans, the custodians of Indian art and culture, with a history of 3,000 years, were deemed to be prostitutes, like the harlots of Biblical lore. Their presence and contributions were systematically erased, an outcome of European prejudice, Christian puritanism, anxiety of the colonized Hindu elite, and a lack of adequate documentation. Transgender communities – once traditional entertainers integral to rites of passage ceremonies – were deemed “criminal tribes.”

The newly educated Indian elite, large landowners mostly, were divided into two groups and pitted against each other – the Muslim elite and the Hindu elite. This division eventually led to the partition of India along religious lines, and the creation of Pakistan. While the Hindu elite were encouraged to reform Hinduism, the Muslim elite found themselves drawn to the Caliphate movement that was taking shape in Europe, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Today’s radical Islamic movement can be traced to these changes in the 19th century.

Reforming Hinduism was relatively easy. The concepts of God’s Law and God’s messenger do not exist in Hinduism, despite attempts to force this framework upon Hinduism. Hindu texts are clear that laws have to change with time, guided by Vedic wisdom, based on custom, and the realities of history, geography, and the prevailing mindset. This is why it was easy to include women in India’s freedoms struggle and give them the right to vote long before such a right was available in Europe.

But there was one problem that resisted all reform – caste. It continues to be Hinduism’s Achilles’ Heel: a poorly understood social phenomena that institutionalizes inequality and injustice. Every attempt to dismantle this oppressive system seems to only reinforce it.

Caste and Hindu Identity

Equality is a key value of the modern nation state, as well as monotheistic religions. Everyone is equal before the law. All humans are equal before God in Christian and Islamic mythology. But in Hinduism’s holiest book, the Rig Veda, the organism of society is made of four parts: the philosopher-priest (Brahmin) forms the head, the warrior-aristocrat (Kshatriya) forms the arms, the craftsman-merchant (Vaishya) makes up the trunk, and the service-provider (Shudra) forms the feet.

Different laws apply to each group in Hindu law books (dharma-shastra). Diversity is privileged over equality. With diversity comes hierarchy. Caste is as much about diversity (of vocations) as it is about hierarchy (economic, political, purity). Caste draws attention to the tension between diversity and equality.

At one level, caste identity could be compared to tribal identity in various other cultures: You are born into it; you cannot wish it away. Like a tribe, every caste has its own unique customs and beliefs, which it may or may not share with other castes.

However, caste is also very different from tribe. Castes exist within a superstructure. This superstructure has many regional variations. It was relatively dynamic before being fixed by the British bureaucracy. It is important to remember that the word “caste” is a European invention; the traditional Indian word is “jati.” There are over 2,000 jatis in India that are categorized in the four theoretical “varna” buckets of the Rig Veda. The reality is far more complex and volatile.

The caste structure has, within it, economic and political hierarchies, and so can be confused with class systems. But what makes caste unique is the doctrine of purity. For at least 1,500 years, if not longer, what has remained consistent is the existence of the two extreme ends of the superstructure – the existence of pure and impure castes. The Brahmins form the highest cluster, and continue to dominate India’s politics, bureaucracy, judiciary, and even the corporate world.

At the other end of the spectrum are communities deemed impure, compelled by birth to vocations involving crematoriums, meat, leather, and sanitation. They were deemed “untouchable” and thus dehumanized, denied access to common facilities like the village well and the village square. Their sight, their shadow, and their touch was shunned. They lived invisible lives in the periphery of the village, coming in to do their caste-based jobs only when others were indoors.

Hindu social reformers mostly came from elite groups. They did not challenge the caste superstructure head on. They often chose a pragmatic middle path. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, who trained as a lawyer in London, used the term “Harijan” (God’s people) to uplift these communities. This term was abandoned over time, as it was considered to be rather patronizing. The term chosen by the community for self-identification is “Dalit” (downtrodden), a reminder of centuries of oppression.

In recent times, many scholars have drawn parallel to the plight of Dalit in Indian villages and African slaves in American colonies. Many people see casteism through the lens of racism, demanding structural changes to rectify it.

It took a lawyer named Ambedkar, himself a Dalit, to introduce the radical idea of “annihilation of caste” to achieve true equality. Ambedkar headed the committee that drafted India’s Constitution and shaped many policies that have since guided the Republic of India since independence. The Indian government today refers to Dalit communities as Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST), and grants them positive discrimination through the reservation of educational and job opportunities.

But is caste an essential component of Hinduism itself? Yes, say the Dalits. No, say the privileged elite. Is there a Hinduism outside caste? No, say the Dalits. Yes, say the privileged elite. If one accepts the Dalit line, then anti-caste movements become essentially anti-Hindu movements. Hindutva, as defenders of all things Hindu, then come to be seen as defenders of the caste hierarchy – much like feminists who seek to defend “womanhood” can be labeled as transphobic.

Christian evangelists and Muslim missionaries support anti-caste movements. Their argument is religious: Hinduism is a “false faith” based on “false gods” that propagates inequality between human beings; hence it is essentially unjust. While these religions argue that their faith is egalitarian, the ground reality in India is that caste is never eradicated despite conversion. In Goa, for example, you can find proud Brahmin Catholics who will never marry Dalit Christians. In Pakistan, pride is taken in the Muslim Rajput identity and Dalits who convert to Christianity are subject to caste violence that is masked as religious violence. In Northeast India, what seems to be Hindu-Christian clashes turns out to be nothing but old tribal rivalries buried under more modern religious differences. In Kerala, there are hundreds of Christian denominations established along caste lines.

Caste and tribe are primal identities, tough to wipe out. The Hindutva movement simply lumps the religious missionaries with the secular, atheist, caste activist and portrays all of them as the enemies of Hindu dharma. For Hindutva is sensitive to how important caste is to the average Hindu.

Caste is not just about discrimination. It is also about identity. Caste is a support group for many. It transforms into a kinship group and a social support system beyond family and state. It is also a “vote-bank.” Dalits constitute 20 percent of India’s population. The remaining 80 percent of India is very much comfortable with its caste identity, religion notwithstanding. While the elite 20 percent are classified as General Category (GC), the remaining 60 percent form the Other Backward Class (OBC). This is the “muddle in the middle” ignored by many academics and activists.

While the intellectuals and secular forces are distracted by the top “oppressor” 20 percent and the bottom “oppressed” 20 percent, Hindutva’s meteoric rise in the 21st century has to do with its embracing of this middle 60 percent. Hindutva acolytes celebrate their long-ignored caste identities, revel in heroes and histories in the name of cultural pride, and warn them about the dangers to their identity posed by activists and religious missionaries. This plays on the deepest fears held by these people, and it secures their votes.

United by Caste Unites, Divided by Gender and Sexuality

When Christians and Muslims were talking about equality in the eyes of God, they were referring to men – not women or LGBTQ+ people. When European and American intellectuals spoke about equality, liberty, and fraternity in the 18th and 19th centuries, they were really talking about men – not women or LGBTQ+ people.

Women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights became important ideas only in the 20th century, as did anti-caste movements. While secular groups align with monotheistic religions in their anti-caste stance, they diverge in matters related to feminism, gender, and sexuality. Here, Hindutva finds common cause with Christian and Muslim radical groups. They see feminism and same-sex marriage as threatening what they described as traditional family values.

Since its inception, in late 19th century, Hindutva has been a political movement that seeks to restore Hindu pride. It wants to oppose modern secular forces that seek to invalidate and dismantle all things traditional. It sees India as a Hindu nation (Hindu Rashtra). It rejects the ideology of a secular nation state where Hinduism is but one of the many faiths, a private affair, with no say in political and economic matters.

After much resistance, in the late 20th century, Hindutva leaders realized they needed to  reimagine Hinduism. They needed to do this to establish a homogenous vote bank that could harness power through the democratic process. So they began focusing on a single language (Hindi), a single Hindu book (Bhagavad Gita), and one holy man (Adi Shankaracharya) whose philosophy of monism (all diversity is delusion) could serve Hindutva’s political goal.

Hindutva realized that “lower” castes have no problem with the caste system per se; they simply seek respect and pride within it. So Hindutva celebrates caste gods, caste heroes, caste lore, and recruits even the “lowest of the low” in the Hindutva project of defending the Indian way of life from foreign faiths (Islam, Christianity) brought in by invaders. Islamophobia seems to work far better than anti-caste discourse.

Hindutva intellectuals argue that the world is full of proud Christian nations and proud Muslim nations, so why should there not be at least one proud Hindu nation, considering even Nepal has been overwhelmed by Marxists? For them, all local Christians and Muslims are merely converts – and so originally Hindu. They can follow their new faiths, and still be Hindu, provided they privilege India over their foreign holy lands (Rome, Jerusalem, or Mecca).

The constitution can be Hindutva’s holy book provided there is a Uniform Civil Code. Currently, there are separate personal laws for different religions. This is much resented by Brahmins, who were recipients of unique privileges for centuries, but are now deemed equal to Dalits, while Muslims and Christians get special treatment before the law.

The only real god that matters to Hindutva is India itself, visualized as a mother to its people, Bharat Mata, modeled after France’s Marianne, Great Britain’s Britannia, and America’s Columbia. An analysis of Hindutva visuals and narratives makes it evident that Hindutva nationalism is structurally more aligned to monotheistic religion than to dharma.

In Christianity and Islam, God – though formless – has been for centuries visualized as male or expressed using male pronouns. In Hinduism, God has been visualized as both male and female. Temples annually celebrate the marriage of the god and the goddess in grand ceremonies. One cannot be divine without the other. Hindutva, however, privileges the male form. Hindu gods, in Hindutva art, are shown alone – Shiva without Shakti, Krishna without Radha, Ram without Sita. Holding weapons, they are muscular, angry, and aggressive. They are a far cry from the traditional beatific look, even in the midst of battle.

The structure of the Hindutva narrative resonates with Christian myth. It speaks of Eden (the Golden Age when India was purely Hindu), and the Fall (Muslim and Christian invasions), and the Messiah (a Hindutva guru) who will lead angels (the Hindu vote bank) against demons (invaders, anti-nationals), in the great battle, and usher in the Return (of Hindu pride). Like church fathers, and the Knights Templar, Hindutva valorizes celibacy, poverty, and discipline in the service of Our Lady (Mother India), who treats all her children equally, and appreciates acts of valor and martyrdom.

Here there is no room for diversity, dynamism, dilemmas, and doubt. No ambiguous Indian head bob. There is only space for alignment, discipline, and submission. One leader. One language. One way of being.

Such has never been the Indian way. It can be, at best, one of India’s many ways. A giant wave in a vast ocean, it too will eventually pass.