Political controversies surrounding the idea of Hindu Nationalism have always created tremors in India. Internationally, a political ideology that emerged from the backyard of Hindu religion caught attention in 2014. It was Narendra Modi’s ideology, long political journey and organizational acumen that led him to 7 Lok Kalyan Marg. Domestically, in his state, Narendra Modi had a huge deal of firefighting to come up clean on an issue that his critics in India and abroad held him blameworthy. The global media’s undiluted conspiracy theory held him responsible for the Godhra riots and their media prosecution ran for years. Both the train carnage and the riots that followed had revived a social urgency ultimately uniting the Hindus politically in the state of Gujarat. They had executed their liberty by assembling behind Modi, turning the election results after the riots astounding and unprecedented. Since then, the voting pattern in the state remained one-sided, continuously decimating the opposition parties. Modi’s winning an exceptional mandate after the riots was a wakeup call for the political class in India. More than political consolidation it was an ideological battle won. In the past, the perception that remained in the air was that the Hindus, an unstructured crowd of people could be pampered and if necessary, scattered into divergent caste groups. Modi’s rise into prominence in national politics witnessed the electoral revival of this ideology which his opponents believed was the implantation of Hindu Nationalism. Principally, the Gujarat tragedy 2002 had successfully blown life into this thought movement and it emerged into its colossal form nationally in 2014. Modi is still slandered for using it as his political plank.
In order to understand Hindu Nationalism, we need to first examine the definition that Veer Savarkar had given to the term Hindu. His precise meaning of the term Hindu is a divine attribute to the land. For Savarkar, “Hindu is someone to whom India is both Fatherland and Holy land.” This conception directly exposes the civilizational significance of India and the people who recognize its spiritual ancestry. Savarkar’s definition principally contradicts the religious intelligence of the Abrahamic religions. India has, for centuries, remained a fertile landscape for many religions. Their existence was unquestioned and their pattern of survival was the resonance of the rhythm of India’s religious inclusiveness. In fact, the Hindus continued to nurture this perception and their acceptance of the external faiths remained noncontroversial. Providing shelter to religions and seekers from across the globe was a cherished tradition. They certainly believed that there could be multiple paths leading to the supreme truth. Unlike Mohan Bhagwat the RSS Chief, Savarkar did not consider every Indian to be a Hindu. He gives conditional access to the term Hindu. Hindus are those who consider India their fatherland and holy land, he insists. Mohan Bhagwat had taken a contrasting outlook. For him, each person, who is born and brought up here, is a Hindu. He indirectly dismantles this geographical attribute drawn by Savarkar. Bhagwat decided to include Abrahamic religions into the Hindu fold though he was aware of the cognitive danger lurking behind. He did it to patch up the communal division. Bhagwat is aware that Islam and Christianity can’t consider India to be their fatherland or even holy land. For them, their ancestral roots are directly linked to the places where their religions originated.
In his book “Essentials of Hindutva”, Savarkar still goes deeper into the subject. We find him systematically defining the term Hindu from its geographical angle further. He calls it a great mission, which, by the triumphant entry made by Lord Ram the Prince of Ayodhya from the north of the landscape into Ceylon deep in the south made this geographical unity possible. Ram, according to Savarkar, succeeded in stitching this politically scattered landmass into one spiritual entity, especially bringing the whole landscape from the Himalayas to the seas under one sovereign sway. Referring to Lord Ram’s Ashwa Medha, Savarkar writes, “….the day when the Horse of Victory returned to Ayodhya unchallenged and unchallengeable, the great white Umbrella of Sovereignty was unfurled over that imperial throne of Ramchandra the brave, Ramchandra the good, and a loving allegiance to him was sworn, not only by the Princes of the North but Hanuman, Sugriva, Vibhishana from the south-that day was the real birth-day of our Hindu people”. Here, in this context of Lord Ram’s legacy and spiritual eminence, Mohan Bhagwat is seen accepting the Savarkar stance. He has been reported as saying that the consecration of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya on January 22, 2024, should be remembered as the “true independence” of India, a nation that has faced external attacks for centuries. The Ram Mandir movement, he said, was launched to awaken the “swa” (self) of Bharat so that the country could stand on its own feet and the Ram Temple the symbol of independence from centuries of slavery. The controversy was sure to erupt in alarming magnitude.
Leading the Pran Pratishtha at the Ram Temple as its Mukhya Yajman, Prime Minister Modi had invoked this perception of Savarkar; literally translating the latter’s view into practice, uniting the spiritual force of the country with Ramlalla’s return to his birthplace. A clear depiction of the Hindu spiritual ethos amid a wide range of criticism being fired at him, Modi had 11 day anushthan before he did the puja at the Mandir. The world watched it with apparent astonishment while the global media once again showed its intellectual monstrosity calling him the disrupter of India’s secular framework. Lord Ram’s legacy and a temple dedicated to his glory once again became pervasive with India’s geographical link being spiritually revamped. Yet, this is an oversight if we devour this prominent anti-sanatan narrative, which purposefully calls India an outlandishly majoritarian land. This narrative is a deliberate misconstruction, framed to escalate the complexity. Hindu Dharma or Sanatana Dharma is an “eternal value system” because it has not broken with the most primitive stages of human culture, it is a continuous flow. Its polytheistic features ensure its ability to include diversity. Essentially, Hinduism holds all forms as the expressions of the divine. With its heavy philosophical backing, its spiritual practices help people to keep India’s traditional values alive. Gandhi defined the term Hindu from an emotional dimension. “Every good man is a Hindu” was his notion. This failed to strike an impact. India and its division based on religious lines proved that all religions do not hold an inclusive approach. The polytheistic magnanimity of Hinduism was alien to other religions, especially Islam, and this ideological division was where the brutal conflict began.
Modi’s entry into the national political scenario has churned this emotion of being a Hindu among the masses; a systematic transition of the majority from being the underdog to a political change-maker was the result. How did Modi do it? Expressing his religious makeover openly, from his frequent temple visits to his presence in the Pran Pratishta to the holy dip at the Maha Kumbh at Prayagraj, he valued his traditions irrespective of a barrage of condemnations. His principal opposition, the Congress failed to register its allegiance to the majority. It stayed away from these significant events of the Hindu Astha, which undoubtedly diminished its electoral prospects. Modi’s audacious spiritual engagement dismantled the narrative war his opponents unleashed against him. Deliberately trying to erase the imprints of colonialism and suppression one by one, Narendra Modi’s aim was to reinstate the “swa” (self) among Indians which is neither majoritarian nor oppressive but an ample beginning to draw a link between India’s civilizational past and its transcendent future.