17. Hindutva

India as it looks today on a political map has had distinct natural geographic borders to it. Himalayas to the north, the great 5 rivers, especially the Sindhu (Indus) to the northwest, and seas and oceans flanking its peninsula. Even the north-east part has the extension of the Himalayas with the might Brahmaputra river flowing from Tibet. It is here that the Vedic Aryans built their great civilization that continues till today. These Aryans are the descendants of the great king Bharat and hence the land mass has for the longest time been called Bharat in the scholarship, both ancient and modern.

Rama, as the ruler of Ayodhya, was the first one to have the entire landmass of Bharat under his influence. This was when his white horse (ashwamedha yagya) returned unchallenged and also when Vibhishana, in Lanka, swore allegiance to Rama. A few millenia later, the dharmic/vedic unity of Bharat was evident again under the influence of Krishna. Hence, the epic of Mahabharata. Much later, the Persians to the west of Bharat identified the people of this civilization as Hindus, or the people of the land of Sindhu. From the Persians, the Jews picked up the name Hindu and that is how the Vedic Aryans came to be know in the west. Avestic Persians knew them as Hindus, the Chinese as Hintus, Greeks as Indos, and in further west we became the Indians.

While the Aryans were known as Hindus outside of Bharat, there was no such monicker in prevalence within Bharat. There is no mention of the word Hindu in Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharat, or Bhagavatam. The rise of Buddha Dharma as the most successful movement in Bharat, about 2500 years ago, is probably the first time that Hindu as an identity set foot inside Bharat. For the first time, Buddha Dharma gave the Hindus a distinct identity. It also made the Hindus a psychologically more conscious people of being distinct and being Hindu. Ashoka The Great’s acceptance of Buddha Dharma contributed not only to its prominence but also a wave of ideological flocking of the non-Buddhists towards Buddha Dharma. But soon, Buddha Dharma suffered tremendous blows, almost fatal, at the hands of the Huns and the Shaks.

Bavishya Purana mentions an army of hundreds of thousands of Chinese Buddhists, and the Huns (under the leadership of Nayanapati), and other Buddhist nations such as Japdesh and Shyamadesh attack on Bharat (India), in which both these external attackers lost. This marked a distinct political upswing of pre-Buddhist philosophies and their influence on the ruling class. The reaction was the rise of new non-Buddhist (Hindu) emperors like Vikramaditya. The political necessity of the times brought a slowdown in subscription to the pacifist Vedic Dharma (Buddha Dharma) and propelled the ascension of the school of Vedas (Brahmins). (This is when the system of Varnas came back into prominence with even more vigor in Bharat.)

Later, one of the great grandson of Vikramaditya, Shalivahan, crushed an invasion on Bharat and pushed the enemy beyond the Sindhu (Indus). He then issued a royal decree that, henceforth, the Sindhu (Indus) should constitute the line of demarcation between Bharat (Sindhusthan, the land of the Aryans) and other non-Sindhu nations. This is how Bharat became Sindusthan (or Hindusthan for the Persians and the rest in the west). However, inside of Sindusthan the identify of the people by now had evolved distinctly from just Vedic Aryans to Hindus and Buddhists.

Veer Savarkar identified this idea, in its originality, still in existence in early 1900s, “A Hindu is primarily a citizen either in himself or through his forefathers of Hindusthan and claims the land has his motherland. In America as well as in France the word Hindu is generally understood thus exactly in the sense of an Indian without any religious or cultural implication’. Upon this fundamental identity of a Hindu, he then rebuilt the identity of a Hindu for modern India. For a Hindu to be called a Hindu, as per Savarkar, there are two essential aspects:

• Common culture of the civilization, where ‘civilization’ is the expression of the mind of the man, a collection of thoughts, actions and achievements.
• Common laws and rites, where we remember, honor and celebrate the same.

With the new definition and identity of a Hindu, the Indian Muslims, even though racially the same as Hindus (converted), cannot and do not identify themselves with the basic language (Sanskrit) and the common civilization (Sanskriti). But in case of Sikhs, Jains, Brahmans, etc. the rites, rituals, feasts, and festivals are the same or close to same and that is the case across the sub-continent. Divali, Rakhi, Holi, Vaishakhi are examples where the approach to celebration may differ, but indeed the same is celebrated and honored. “This is why the converts from Hindu to Christianity and Islam are not identified (or even accepted) as Hindus, since even though they may have the blood and the ancestry of India, they have declined its culture in adopting a foreign language, alphabet, dress, customs, heroes, and the mythology. Most importantly, they have abandoned the respect for Hindus and actively proselytize often by sword. And, this is why the Hinduness of a Sikh is the same as the Hinduness of a Brahman or that of a Lingayat. “Hinduness is not determined by a theological test.” Sikhs are Sikhs by customs, practices, interpretations, and dialect, regional cultural variations, etc. but are Hindus culturally (and in most cases racially too). So is the case with an atheist who may not identify with one aspect of a Sikh or a Brahmin, but still holds dear the culture and laws and rites of Hindusthan.

There is no such thing as Hinduism. There are Hindus and a Hindu has his/her Hinduness. As Swamini Svatmavidyananda says, “the one who is intolerant of intolerance is a Hindu.” This Hinduness, which identifies its origins from the land of Bharat and takes utmost pride in its respect for others with a strong sense to not only preserve but propagate this respect, is called Hindutva.