Essentials of Hindutva

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Essentials of Hindutva, also titled Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? or simply Hindutva, is a 1923 political pamphlet by Indian politician and ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. It was published pseudonymously while Savarkar was in prison. Savarkar's pamphlet formulated Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist ideology.

Background

Socio-political context

Following World War I, South Asian Muslims launched the Khilafat Movement across British India in opposition to the planned dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. Its alliance with the Indian National Congress, however, collapsed after Mahatma Gandhi's withdrawal of the non-cooperation movement in 1922, heightening communal tensions and polarisation between Hindus and Muslims.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Among sections of the Hindu intelligentsia, there emerged a majoritarian inferiority complex, partly rooted in a loss of self-esteem fostered by a 19th century colonial stereotype that portrayed Hindus as a "puny race".Template:Sfn The same period witnessed B. R. Ambedkar's first organisation of Dalits as an anti-Brahmin movement in the Bombay Presidency;Template:Sfn on the other hand, caste and sectarian divisions within Hinduism came to be obsessively viewed in Hindu nationalist discourse as weaknesses.Template:Sfn Meanwhile, the proportion of Hindus in British India, as recorded in the decennial census, fell from 74% in 1881 to 68% in 1931, prompting some Hindu nationalist ideologues to describe Hindus as a "dying race",Template:SfnTemplate:Efn a notion that was exploited by the British in their colonial policy of "divide and conquer".Template:Sfn It was in this socio-political context that Essentials of Hindutva was written.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Savarkar and publication

In 1910, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was arrested in London on multiple criminal charges, including the procurement and distribution of arms, abetment of murder, "waging war against the King Emperor of India", and sedition; extradited to Bombay to stand trial, he was convicted and sentenced to serve two life terms in Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn After submitting a series of clemency petitions, he was transferred to a prison in Ratnagiri, where he remained until his conditional release in 1924.Template:Sfn During his imprisonment, he wrote Essentials of Hindutva.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The pamphlet was smuggled out of his cell and published in Nagpur in May 1923Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn under the pseudonym 'A Maratha',Template:Efn by a lawyer named Vishwanathrao Kelkar.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn The pamphlet was written and published in English,Template:Sfn comprising just eighty-eight pages.Template:Sfn Much of what he wrote reflected views he had already held.Template:Sfn

Titles and editions

There is little agreement on the title of the pamphlet. The original 1923 publication simply states "Hindutva by 'A Maratha', May 1923" on the title page, while the first page is entitled Essentials of Hindutva; this was not a chapter title, as this edition had none. A 1938 edition retains the 1923 title but now names Savarkar as the author and includes a portrait of him. In that edition, however, the opening pages feature a Sanskrit epigraph with an English translation, entitled Who is a Hindu?.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn The sixth edition in 1989 retains Hindutva on the dust jacket and Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? on the title page, yet the first page reverts to Essentials of Hindutva; this edition also includes chapter titles and subheadings. The running heads add further inconsistency, with Hindutva appearing on the verso and Essentials of Hindutva on the recto.Template:Sfn The 2007 edition is simply entitled Essentials of Hindutva. The Marathi and Hindi translations follow a similar pattern, with both dust jackets entitled Hindutva, while the first page of each carries a translation of Essentials of Hindutva as a subtitle.Template:Efn All three titles have been used in scholarly analysis.Template:Sfn

Themes

Racial and ethnic Hindu identity

In Essentials of Hindutva, Savarkar racialises and ethnicises an imagined Hindu identity.Template:Efn He contrasts Hinduism, which he describes as merely a "spiritual or religious dogma or system",Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Efn with the term "Hindutva" (Template:Translation),Template:Sfn which, he writes, "embraces all the departments of thought and activity of the whole being of our Hindu race".Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn His criteria for being considered a Hindu is inclusive across caste, creed, and faith;Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn any person for whom India is both pitrabhumi (Template:Translation) and punyabhumi (Template:Translation) qualifies as a natural and national inhabitant.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Savarkar also forms clear boundaries between those deemed Hindus and non-Hindus,Template:Sfn advocating for the purification of the nation from those deemed outsiders, such as Muslims and Christians, who, according to Savarkar, have their sacred lands outside of India, in "Arabia or Palestine".Template:Sfn However, he does not strictly argue for racial purity;Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn he contends that Hindus who had converted to Islam or Christianity may be readmitted if they convert back to HinduismTemplate:Sfn as well as marry and have children with Hindus,Template:Sfn thereby being welcomed back to the "Hindu fold".Template:Sfn

Articulating a militantly chauvinistic and nativist form of genomic and geocentric nationalism,Template:Sfn Savarkar argues that Hindus constitute a distinct and primordial civilisationTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn and stresses Hindu devotion to common ethnic ties, rooted in the ideals of sacred blood and sacred soil.Template:Sfn He blends Hindu ethnic nationalismTemplate:Efn with Brahminical authority in the caste system;Template:Efn his emphasis on race was an attempt to downplay caste divisions that he, as a Brahmin, sought to preserve.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Appealing to the imagined racial unity, racial oneness, and racial superiority of the Hindus,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Savarkar attacks the British conception of the castes being racially differentiated, yet argues for the defence of a caste system which was barely distinguishable, founded on a hierarchically conceived nobility and purity of "upper" caste "blood".Template:Sfn His over-integrated conception of an imagined Hindu race was both formed against, and mirrored, the racial supremacism of British colonialism;Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn he repeatedly asserts that racial inheritance of Hindu blood is the defining characteristic of Hindutva.Template:Sfn

Savarkar's conception of Hindu ethnic nationalism drew heavily on British and German orientalist thought as well as on contemporary currents of ethnic nationalism in Europe.Template:Efn He was well acquainted with the works of Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Ernst Haeckel, and Thomas Henry Huxley, and supported the application of ethnicity to the scientific and political fields.Template:Sfn He was particularly influenced by Johann Kaspar Bluntschli's concept of German ethnic and racial nationalism.Template:Sfn While imprisoned, he read and taught Bluntschli's works.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Efn Philosopher Martha Nussbaum has described the pamphlet as a "European product".Template:Sfn

Hindu global colonialism

Savarkar argues that Hindus who had reached distant parts of the world as merchants and traders were colonisers, with the potential to "own a whole country" and "form a separate state". He contends that the process of Hindu colonisation would improve lives on a global scale or, as he puts it, "from Pole to Pole". In his view, Hindus needed not only to unify territorially, a notion that later evolved into the concept of Akhand Bharat, but to colonise parts of the planet in order to establish a Hindu world empire. Throughout the pamphlet, he uses the terms "Hindu nation" and "Hindu empire" interchangeably.Template:Sfn

Conflict of life and death

Savarkar wrote that a "conflict of life and death" had ensued ever since Mahmud of Ghazni of the Ghaznavid Empire crossed the Indus River into the Indian subcontinent in 11th century CE, and that this prolonged conflict made Hindus "intensely conscious of ourselves as Hindus and were welded into a nation". According to journalist Dhirendra K. Jha, Savarkar's pamphlet sought to channel the dominant anti-British sentiment of Hindus into anti-Muslim action by portraying Hindus chiefly in opposition to Muslims, drawing on the British Raj's colonial policy of 'divide and conquer'.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

References

Bibliography

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External links

• 1923 edition at the Internet Archive
• 1969 edition at the Internet Archive