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Aryans and Dravidians - A controversial issue

The most basic division of the Indian society is of Aryans and Dravidians. According to this division, nearly 72% of Indians are Aryans and 28% are Dravidians. The north Indians are the descendants of Aryans and the south Indians are Dravidians. The languages spoken in five states of south India are considered Dravidian languages and most of the languages spoken in the north are considered Aryan languages. The general script of the Aryan languages is different from the general script of Dravidian languages. The Indians also distinguish themselves by the general north Indian accent and general south Indian accent. According to general Indian legend, the Aryans arrived in north India somewhere from Iran and southern Russia at around 1500 BC. Before the Aryans, the Dravidian people resided in India. The Aryans disregarded the local cultures. They began conquering and taking control over regions in north India and at the same time pushed the local people southwards or towards the jungles and mountains in north India. According to this historical fact the general division of Indian society is made. North Indians are Aryans and south Indians are Dravidians. But this division isn’t proper because of many reasons. Many Indians immigrated from one part of India to other parts of India and not all local people of north India were pushed southwards by the Aryans. Some stayed and served the Aryans and others moved to live in the forests and the jungles of north India. Before the arrival of the Aryans there were also other communities in India like Sino-Mongoloids and Austroloids. There were also other foreign immigrations and invaders who arrived in India, from time to time. There are many that completely doubt that there was ever any Aryan invasion in India. This skepticism is based on the dating of the Aryan invasion of India and the fact that Hinduism and the caste system are believed to have been established as the result of the meetings between the intruding Aryans and original residents of India, the Dravidians. The caste system is believed to have been established by the Aryans. The fair skinned Aryans who occupied parts of India established the caste system, which allowed only them to be the priests (Brahman), aristocracy (Kshatria) and the businessmen (Vaisia) of the society. Below them in hierarchy were the Sudras who consisted of two communities. One community was of the locals who were subdued by the Aryans and the other were the descendants of Aryans with locals. In Hindu religious stories there are many wars between the good Aryans and the dark skinned demons and devils. The different Gods also have dark skinned slaves. There are stories of demon women trying to seduce good Aryan men in deceptive ways. There were also marriages between Aryan heroes and demon women. Many believe that these incidences really occurred in which, the gods and the positive heroes were people of Aryan origin. And the demons, the devils and the dark skinned slaves were in fact the original residence of India whom the Aryans coined as monsters, devil, demons and slaves. Normally the date given to Aryan invasion is around 1500 BC. But according to Hinduism experts some of the events in Hinduism occurred much earlier. Some of the events like the great war in the Mahabharta epic is believed to have occurred (based on astronomical research) 7000 years ago. According to this Hindu experts the word Aryan is a misinterpretation of the original Sanskrit word, Arya. Arya means pure or good in Sanskrit. In the holy Vedas the good people were called Arya. Some of the European scholars of Indian culture in the 19th century were Germans. These German scholars who found that Swastika was also a holy symbol among the Hindus distorted, the word Arya to Aryan.

RAMAYANAM

Ramayana was originally written by a sage Valmiki in the Sanskrit language and later on it was translated into other languages in different versions. The main story of the Ramayana is about Lord Rama. In short the Ramayana is about Rama who was born in a royal family and was supposed to be the king, but because of his step- mother, he was forced to exile from his kingdom for fourteen years. During this period his consort Sita was kidnapped by a demon called Ravan, who was the king of Lanka. Rama with the help of his brother, Lakshman, and an army of monkeys under the leadership of Hanuman, rescued Sita. But the Ramayana isn't only about Lord Rama and his attempt to rescue his consort Sita. Ramayana is also about devotion, loyalty, family roles and respect to elders. The Ramayana does not begin with the life of Rama, but actually with the people on earth who suffer from the demon named Ravan. Ravan is a cruel king who terrorizes the people of earth, especially the religious people and prevents them from performing religious rituals. But Ravan is also a great devotee of the three Gods who rule the universe, Brahma; the creator, Vishnu; the preserver and Shiva; the destroyer and therefore has their blessings and assurance that they as Gods will not hurt him. But the people of the earth, who suffer from Ravan, go up to heaven to visit the Gods and ask for their help. The Gods decide that Lord Vishnu will incarnate as a human being on earth and destroy Ravan. They find out that king of Kosala named Dasrath who has three wives is childless and longing for heir. So Lord Vishnu incarnates as his older son. The king's first wife Kausalya gives birth to Rama. His second wife gives birth to Lakshman and Shatrugan and his third wife Kaykeyi gives birth to Bharat. The four brothers are sent for education in an ashram. They four brothers were very close to each other even though they were stepbrothers. They return to their kingdom after completing education. Rama gets married to Sita. Sita is an adopted daughter of another king. In order to win her hand, the contestant had to bend a bow, which belonged to Lord Shiva. Many could not even lift this bow. When Rama arrived he did not only bend this bow but also broke it and so got Sita's hand. King Dasrath intended to inherit his kingdom to his eldest son, Rama. But Bharat's nanny gets jealous and goes to Bharat's mother and begins to incite her about what might happen of her if Rama becomes the king. Incited, Bharat's mother goes to the king and demands from him the two boons he had promised her sometime earlier in life. She demands to send Rama to exile in the forest for fourteen years and make her son Bharat the heir of the kingdom. King Dasrath who is in great dilemma and pain, eventually bows to her demands. Rama accepts his father's decision without any argument, but the other brothers including Bharat get furious. Lakshman decides to join his brother in exile and so giving an example of brotherly loyalty. Bharat inherits the throne but after his father's death goes to Rama and tries to convince him to return. Bharat tell Rama that because he is the eldest son of the king he is the rightful heir of the throne but Rama refuses and claims that father boons should be respected. Bharat agrees to remain the ruler of the kingdom until Rama's return from exile and as a symbol to prove that the throne belongs to Rama he takes Rama's slippers and puts them on the throne. The forest in which Rama arrived with his wife Sita and his brother was full of demons. A female demon, Surpanakha fall in love with Rama and she tries to seduce him. Rama being a loyal husband refuses to her flirts, so she tries to kill Sita. At this point Lakshman takes his sword and cuts the demon's nose. She goes to her brother, Ravan, and tells him of the disgrace that happened to her. Ravan decides to avenge this humiliation by kidnapping Rama's wife Sita. He even notices that she is very beautiful and desires her. Ravan plans ways to far away Rama and Lakshman from Sita so that he can kidnap her. One day Sita sees a very beautiful deer and desires it. She urges Rama to get it so Rama goes deep into the forest to get it. As time passes and Rama does not return, Sita starts to get worried. After some time she hears a cry which she thinks is Rama's cry so she begs Lakshman to find Rama. Lakshman aware of the fact that something bad might happen to Sita, refuses to leave Sita alone. But Sita compels Lakshman to find Rama. Lakshman agrees but draws a line in front of their hut and begs his sister- in- law not to pass this line because it might be dangerous and sets off to search Rama. When it is quiet dark a sage comes to the hut begging for food. Sita hears the begging of the sage and brings some food for the sage and so passes the line Lakshman had marked. When she gets closer to the sage she finds out that the sage is actually Ravan in disguise. Ravan kidnaps Sita and takes her to his kingdom Lanka. And so this basic plot of the Gods to have Rama to fight with Ravan takes place. On his way to Lanka, Sita struggles with him a lot, A vulture, who resides near Rama's hut, hears her cries and fights with Ravan. Ravan injures that vulture seriously. When Rama and Lakshman return, the vulture who is dying tells them that Ravan kidnapped Sita. Rama and Lakshman decide to find out Sita. Rama and Lakshman need an army to find and fight Ravan and they get this help from the monkeys. The king of monkeys who was exiled by his brother gets Rama's help to fight and slain his brother. After regaining his throne the monkey king assigns one of his commanders, Hanuman to serve Rama in his assignment to find Sita. After some time the monkeys come across another vulture who tells them that Ravan has kidnapped Sita and taken her to his island kingdom, Lanka. Hanuman who is capable of flying gets to Lanka after fighting some dangers in the way. He finds Sita in the garden guarded by female demons, in a depressed mood. He proves to her that he is Rama's messenger and offers to carry her back. But to vindicate her honor she prefers that Rama himself should rescue her. Hanuman promises that Rama will come and rescue her. Hanuman decides to check the capability of Ravan's security forces. He begins to destroy the garden, provoking the security guard and hurting them. Eventually he is captured and brought to Ravan. Hanuman tells Ravan that he is Rama's messenger and demands from him to free Sita or else he will die. Ravan gets furious and at first intended to kill Hanuman, but because Hanuman is a messenger he decides only to punish him by burning his tail. Hanuman flies back to Rama not before setting fire to Ravan's city with his burning tail and extinguishes his tail in the sea. After Hanuman's return, Rama plans his way to reach Ravan's island. Rama and his advisers plan a land bridge to Lanka. The monkeys bring tree and rocks from the forests and build the land bridge to Lanka. After arriving in Lanka they send a peaceful messenger to Ravan, but Ravan refuses. So a war begins in which both sides lose many forces. Even Rama and Lakshman get hurt. The monkeys also began to get weak because Ravan's forces use biological weapons, which weaken their senses. So a medical expert in Rama's forces claims that to neutralize this a special herb is required which exists in a far away mountain, named Mahodaya. Hanuman flies to that mountain and finds out that the mountain is full of different herbs, so he brings the whole mountain to Lanka. Slowly the forces get back to their senses. Eventually after many battles Ravan faces Rama and after two continuos days of battles Rama kills Ravan and visits Sita. But the Ramayana does not end here. The fact that Sita lived in another man's palace causes some rumors about her chastity. She is obliged to take a fire test in which she sits in a fire but comes out unharmed and therefore is purified from charges. In the original version of the Ramayana, after Rama and Sita return to Ayodhya, the capital of Kosala the rumors about Sita's adultery in Ravan's captivity continue and therefore the people disrespect her. So Rama, who is now the king, decides to banish Sita from his kingdom. In the forests she meets a sage named Valmiki, who later on wrote the Ramayana. In Valmiki's ashram Sita gives birth to two twins of Rama, Lav and Kush. These two children learn from Valmiki to sing the Ramayana as a poem and they go everywhere and start telling everyone the Ramayana, meaning Rama's story. They even arrive into Rama's court and tell him his story and so Rama recognizes his sons. He brings back his wife Sita who decides to prove her loyalty to Rama by asking Mother Earth to swallow her if she was loyal to Rama and so Mother Earth to testify her loyalty, opens up and swallows her and Sita disappears into earth. Later on Rama himself jumped in the river to end his life, followed by many.

Hinduism

Hinduism is a religion with various gods and goddesses. According to Hinduism, three Lords rule the world. Brahma: the creator; Vishnu: the preserver and Shiva: the destroyer. Lord Vishnu did his job of preserving the world by incarnating himself in different forms at times of crisis. The three Lords that rule the world have consorts and they are goddesses. Consort of Brahma is Sarasvati; goddess of learning. Vishnu's consort is Lakshmi; goddess of wealth and prosperity. Shiva's consort is Parvati who is worshipped as Kali or Durga. Along them there are a number of other gods and goddesses. To name a few of them, there is Ganesh, who has an elephant's head and he is also a son of Shiva and Parvati. Hanuman, who is an ape. Surya, Lord of sun. Ganga Ma, goddess of river Ganges. Samundra, Lord of the sea. Indra, king of the gods ( but he isn't an important god). Prithvi, goddess of earth. Shakti, goddess of power. The Hindus call their goddesses 'Ma' meaning mother. Some gods have more than one name. Shiva is also known as Shankar, Mahadev, Natraj, Mahesh and many other names. Ganesh is also called Ganpati. God Vishnu incarnated 9 times to do his job and in his every appearance he had a different form which are also worshipped as gods. Among his appearances, he appeared as Rama, Krishna, Narsimha, Parsuram and Buddha. Krishna also has different names, Gopal; Kishan; Shyam and other names. He also has other titles with meanings like 'Basuri Wala' which means the flute musician and 'Makhan Chor' which means the butter stealer. There are also gods who can change their forms, for example: Parvati can change into Kali or Durga. Not all of these gods are worshiped by all Hindus. Some Hindus worship only Vishnu. Others worship only Shiva. Others worship only the goddesses and call these goddesses collectively as Shakti meaning power. Many of these goddess worshipers worship Parvati in her images as Kali or Durga. People who worship Shiva or Vishnu also worship characters and images connected with these gods. Vishnu worshipers (Vaishnaites) also worship his appearances. Shiva's worshipers (Shaivites) also worship images of bull called Nandi, who was Shiva's carrier and a unique stone design connected to Shiva. There are also Hindus who worship all the gods. There are some gods who are worshiped all over India like Rama and Krishna and other gods who are worshiped more in one region than the other like Ganesh who is worshiped mainly in west India. Hindus also worship gods according to their personal needs. People who engage in wrestling, body building and other physical sports worship Hanuman, who in Hindu legends was an ape with lot of physical strength. Businessmen worship Lakshmi, goddess of wealth. Though Hindus worship different idols, many Hindus believe in one God and perceive in these different gods and goddesses as different faces of the same one God. Others believe that idolatry is the wrong interpretation of Hinduism. Hindus believe in reincarnation. The basic belief is that a person's fate is determined according to his deeds. These deeds in Hinduism are called 'Karma'. A soul who does good Karma in this life will be awarded with a better life in the next incarnation. Souls who do bad Karma will be punished for their sins, if not in this incarnation then in the next incarnation and will continue to be born in this world again and again. The good souls will be liberated from the circle of rebirth and get redemption which is called 'Moksha' meaning freedom. Hindus normally cremate their dead ones, so that the soul of the dead would go to heaven, except in a few cases of Hindu saints, who are believed to have attained 'Moksha'. The main Hindu books are the four Vedas. They are Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda. The concluding portions of the Vedas are called Upanisads. There are also other holy books like Puranas, Ramayana, Mahabharta etc. The different gods and goddesses in the Hindu mythology are derived from these books. Ramayana and Mahabharta are the most popular Hindu books. The main story of Ramayana is the story of Lord Rama. Rama was born in a royal family and was suppose to be the king, but because of his step- mother, he was forced to exile from his kingdom for fourteen years. During this period his consort Sita was kidnapped by a demon called Ravan, who was king of Lanka. Rama with the help of his brother, Lakshman, and an army of monkeys under the leadership of Hanuman, rescued Sita. Many Indians believe that the present day Sri Lanka was then the kingdom of Lanka. Mahabharta is a family epic. In this epic the Pandva family and the Kaurav family who are cousins fight with each other for the control over a kingdom. Kaurav family, which consisted of 100 brothers rule an empire. The five Pandva brothers ask for a small kingdom which belongs to them. The Kauravs refuse to give the Pandvas the kingdom so there is a war between the Pandvas and the Kauravs in which it is believed that all the kingdoms of that period in India took part. In this war the Pandvas, with the help of Lord Krishna win the war. Before the commencement of the war, while the two armies are facing each other, one of the Pandva brothers Arjun gets depressed. Arjun is depressed because he has to fight against people whom he knows, loves and respects. At this point Krishna, (who was also a king of a kingdom, and participated in this war only as the chariot driver for Arjun) convinces Arjun to fight. Krishna lectures Arjun about life, human beings and their religious duties. He explains to Arjun that he belongs to a warrior caste and he has to fight for that's his destination in this incarnation. Those chapters in the Mahabharta which are Krishna's discourses on religious philosophy are called Bhagvad Gita. Because of it's importance the Bhagvad Gita is considered as a separate holy book. Another Hindu holy book that deals with religious duties is 'Law of Manu' or the 'Dharma Shastra'. In the wars that occur in the holy books, as in Mahabharta, the different sides had different war weapons which had characters similar to modern day war weapons. In some stories the traveling vehicles were normally birds and animals. But these animals and birds had features similar to modern day aircrafts. There were even aircrafts with over velocity of light. The main war weapons were bows and arrows. But these arrows were more like modern missiles than simple arrows. These arrows were capable of carrying bombs with destructive power similar to modern day chemical, biological or even atom bombs. Other arrows could be targeted on specific human beings. There were even arrows capable of neutralizing other arrows, similar to modern day anti- missiles. Hindus have many holy places. Badrinath, Puri, Dwarkha and Rameshwaram are four holiest places for the Hindus. Other holy places are Varanasi, Rishikesh, Nasik, Pushkar, Ujjain and other places. Some rivers are also holy to them. Among them are Godavri, Yamuna and above all Ganges which the Indians call Ganga. Another holy river is Sarasvati and it is invisible. Hindus also worship and respect some animals and birds like cobra, apes, peacocks and cow. Hindus also respect some trees and bush trees. The famous and the most respected bush tree is Tulsi. Some of the Hindu customs, which exist or existed, do not have their bearing in Hindu scriptures but became part of Hinduism in different ways and fashion. For example, the Hindus see in cow a sacred animal. Religiously there is no reason to see cow as sacred and it is believed that cows were made 'sacred' to prevent their slaughter during periods of droughts and hunger. Cobra worship also is not found in Hindu scripts. This custom became part of Hinduism when some Indian tribes who use to worship cobra adopted Hinduism. Burning of the widow on the dead husband's pyre also has no religious justification. This custom, outlawed in 1829, was probably brought to India by the Scythians invaders of India. Among the Scythians it was a custom to bury the dead king with his mistresses or wives, servants and other things so that they could continue to serve him in the next world. When these Scythians arrived in India, they adopted the Indian system of funeral, which was cremating the dead. And so instead of burying their kings and his servers they started cremating their dead with his surviving lovers. The Scythians were warrior tribes and they were given a status of warrior castes in Hindu religious hierarchy. The different castes who claimed warrior status or higher also adopted this custom. There are four castes in Hindu religion arranged in a hierarchy. The highest caste is Brahman, and they are the priest caste of Hinduism. After them are the Kshatria, who are the warrior castes. After them are the Vaishya caste , who are business people. And after them are the Sudra, who are the common peasants and workers. Below these four castes there are casteless, the untouchables. The four castes were not allowed to have any physical contact with the untouchables. Each caste is divided into many sub-castes. The religious word for caste is Varna and for sub-caste Jat or Jati. But sometimes in English the term caste is used in both cases. Religiously, people are born in a caste and it cannot be changed. Each caste has some compulsory duties, which its members must do. Each caste has professional limits which decides what profession each caste can follow. Each caste members can have social relations only with its caste members. Religiously this includes marraige and even eating only with caste members. Please note that socially the caste system is different from the religious form of caste system. How did Hinduism originated is a difficult question. The accepted theory is that Hinduism was evolved after the historical meeting between the Aryans and Dravidians. Some claim that Hinduism is mainly an Aryan culture whereas the others claim that it is mainly a Dravidian culture. Religiously the Vedas were given by Brahma. Before Hinduism there existed another religion in India called Brahmanism and its followers were called Brahmans. The Brahmans were the spiritual and moral guides of the Indian society. The members of this religion were a close sect and others could not join it. 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Hindu Blog: Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu

Hindu Blog: Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu: Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu - May all beings in this universe be happy. Om  Ekadantaya Vidimahe Vakratundaya Dhimahi Tanno Dantih Pra...

Hindutva The word 'Hindutva' is derived from the two words 'Hindu' and 'tattva'. 'Tattva' literally means 'truth' and philosophically 'true principle'. Thus, 'Hindutva' means 'Hindu truth' or 'Hindu true principle'. What is this Hindu truth or true principle? What is its discourse? What does it signify? Who advocate the Hindutva? The word Hindutva was first used by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966) in his work Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1923). Its discourse has firm roots in Hindu nationalism which emerged to encounter the challenges of European colonialism, including the anglicisation of Indian history and culture. Colonialism played a significant role in codifying and reifying religious and social divisions. Generalised ideas about 'Hinduism', Hindu law, Muhammadan law, caste and religious minorities were part of the conceptual and political vocabulary during colonialism. Hindu nationalism aimed at strengthening Hindu solidarity, and sought to identify an Indian nation according to ethnic criteria. Advocates of Hindu nationalism argued that the national identity of India could be regained by seeking the fundamental religious and cultural truths again. They idealised an imagined past and demanded a return to the pristine forms of Hindu culture that had degenerated under foreign rule. They also preferred an antagonistic world view. Works by 'Orientalists', such as William Jones (1746-94) and Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765-1837), and theories about the essentialist attributes of India were used to confirm the unique achievements of Hindu civilisation. The Orientalist idea of 'Western rationalism' and 'Eastern spirituality' was reformulated by Hindu intellectuals. Thus, for Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), the greatness of India is manifested in its spiritual superiority. He says, 'Up, India, and conquer the world with your spirituality... Spirituality must conquer the West... We must go out, we must conquer the world through our spirituality and philosophy'. The discourse of Hindutva was also affected by a communal memory, an imaginary sense of belonging. Christian and Muslim proselytising movements and by the (monotheistic) concept of a unifying religious scripture. Thus, the Hindu scholar Swami Dayadananada Saraswati (1824-83) believed in the infallible authority and eternality of the Vedas. In Light of Truth, Saraswati speaks of the 'source of false religions' and criticises the Bible, Christianity, Islam, the Quran and rituals that corrupted the unadulterated faith of 'Hinduism'. In 1875, He founded the Arya Samaj ('Society of Nobles') which played an important role in evoking Hindu traditionalism and reinforcing divisions between Muslims, Hindus and Christians in India. The other influential Indian thinker is Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) who says that 'all great awakening in India, all her mightiest and most vigour have drawn their vitality from the fountainhead of some deep religious awakening'. This 'religious awakening' is based on the Vedas which, according to Aurobindo, have an esoteric meaning. For him, Hindu 'nationalism is not politics but a religion, a creed, a faith'. This nationalism is not secular but 'a religion that has come from God'. Thus, 'Hinduism' is 'the most tolerant and receptive of religious systems' and 'is not sharply exclusive like the religious spirits of Christianity and Islam'. This 'Hinduism' is 'a non-dogmatic inclusive religion and would have taken even Islam and Christianity into itself, if they had tolerated the process'. The true path is based on the Bhagavat Gita which is 'the greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race'. India is the ancient Mother and had the greatest civilisation. It is great in religion, philosophy, science, literature, art, commerce, poetry and craft. In The Future of India, Vivekananda speaks of the religion of patriotism and identifies 'Mother India' with the supreme God. He says, 'So give up being a slave. For the next fifty years this alone shall be our keynote - this our great Mother India. Let all other vain gods disappear for the time from our minds. This is the only God that is awake, our own race. ..All other Gods are sleeping'. This 'God' of Vivekananda' s 'race' has destined India to be the teacher of humanity in the spiritual realm because 'Hinduism' is 'the mother of religions'. Not only that, but 'only Vedanta could triumphantly stand against the faith-killing, heartless rationalism of modern science; only Vedanta could lead men to salvation'... In India religious life forms the centre, the keynote of the whole music of national life'. Thus, Vivekananda 'sought to place Hinduism within the context of resurgent nationalism' and emerged 'as a proponent of a strong, virile and militant ideal of the Hindu nation'. It was, however, the radical thinker Savarkar who invented and elaborated the idea of Hindutva. Savarkar was a nationalist campaigner and Hindu political leader. He is considered by many Hindu nationalists as the inspirational symbol of Hindu politics. He articulated a chauvinistic idealism of Hindus and perceived India as a Hindu nation or Hindu Rashtra. He opposed the 'Quit India Movement' which commenced in 1942 as a civil disobedient movement in response to Gandhi's call to 'do or die' for the independence of India. He then criticised the Indian National Congress for its policy toward the partition of India. In Hindutva, Savarkar says that 'Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva'. 'Hindutva embraces all the departments of thought and activity of the whole Being of our Hindu race'. Hindu is 'the name that this land and the people that inhabited it bore from time so immemorial that even the Vedic name Sindhu is but a later and secondary form of it'. This means that the 'Hindu' is the patriotic inhabitant of India, presuming transcendence beyond religious identity. Savarkar emphasises the need for patriotic and social unity of all Hindu communities. He describes Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism as belonging to one big 'Hindu' family. For him, the Hindu nation stretches across the entire Indian subcontinent from Afghanistan to Burma. The Hindu nation suffered because of Muslims and Christians who invaded India and who still do not consider India as their holy land. In January 1924, Savarkar founded the Ratnagiri Hindu Sabha aiming to work for the social and cultural preservation of Hindu heritage and civilisation. This organisation merged into the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha which was founded in 1915 to counter the Muslim Leaque and the secular Indian National Congress. Savarkar advocated the use of Hindi as a common national language and against caste discrimination and untouchability. He then wrote Hindu Padpadashashi to eulogise the Maratha Empire, a 'Hindu' state that existed from 1674 to 1818. In 1925, the vice president of the Mahasabha, Keshava Baliram Hedgewar (1889-1940) founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or the 'National Volunteers' Union'. This organisation adopted the ideology of Hindutva and claimed to safeguard the spiritual and moral traditions of India. The RSS thinks that 'Hinduism' is not a religion but a way of life and that India is the primordial source of human civilisation from where its knowledge spread to the rest of the world. This involves changing what is perceived to be distortions in the history of India as taught in Indian learning institutions. The assumption here is that many works on 'Indian studies' are biased or spurious because the primary sources were produced by colonial scholars. The ideological discourse of Hindutva was enhanced by the foundation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1980. The BJP depicts itself as a champion of the religious, social and cultural values of India's Hindu majority. It advocates conventional social practices and strong national defence. The BJP's ideology was further manipulated in 1986 when the Rajiv Gandhi's government used its parliamentary majority to overturn a Supreme Court's verdict in the Shah Bano case. Shah Bano was a 62 years old Muslim mother of five children. She was divorced by her husband and had no means to support herself and her children. The Supreme Court ruled that Shah Bano be given maintenance money. Orthodox Muslims protested and claimed that the Court had intervened in their Muslim Personal Law. Thus, the Indian government passed an act that nullified the Supreme Court's judgement. This led many Hindu nationalists to assert that Muslims do not consider India as their country and do not respect the laws of the country. This also provoked the advocates of Hindutva to criticise the Indian legal system that they see to be favourable toward the minorities. They mention different standards for Hindus, Muslims and Christians. Therefore, a 'Uniform Civil Code' would abolish religious provisions for different communities. The other major case, which Hindu nationalists manipulated to augment the ideology of Hindutva, was the clash over the 16* century Mughal Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. The Mosque was built by the Mughal emperor Babur (1483-1530) allegedly by destroying a Hindu temple that marked the birthplace of the Hindu God-Emperor Rama. Eventually, the mosque was destroyed by a Hindu mob in 1992 and then atrocities were committed against Muslims and Hindus. Hindutva has come to be identified with the ideology of the RSS and the BJP. Hindutva, as Prakash Karat says, perceives the Indian nation 'as an ancient entity which has survived through the ages'. It 'sees the nation not in terms of language, territory, economy, culture and classes but on the basis of religion and its cultural attributes'. This means that Hindutva is a syncretic discourse that constructs a nationalist identity based on the traditions and cultural heritage of the Indian subcontinent. It, however, relies on Hindu philosophy and reinterprets Hindu scriptures. The ideology of Hindutva is mainly concerned with the strength and unity of Hindus as a political community not with their religious observance. It does not impose a view of Hindu religion on religious practitioners or punish Hindus who violate the 'doctrines' of 'Hinduism'. Rather, it wants to develop and strengthen the power of the Hindu community. Religion and homeland are unified in the Hindutva discourse. Hindutva supposes that the Indian subcontinent is the homeland of the Hindus. The Hindus are those who consider India to be their holy homeland. The Hindus are those whose religion is indigenous to India. This includes Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs and those who are usually called Hindus. Hindutva constructs its own model of Indian history. 'Hinduism', for instance, is an Indian entity that has no historical beginning. Vedic religion and Indo-Arian languages, such as Sanskrit and Prakrits, did not come from Central Asia along with the Arians. The Indus Valley civilisation was Aryan. Aryan culture was transferred from India to Iran. Indo-European languages had originated in India. The ancient past witnessed material prosperity, social peace, political justice, scientific progress, religious toleration and spiritual enlightenment. Madhav Sadashiv Golwalker says, 'We were the good, the enlightened people. We were the people who knew about the laws of nature and the laws of the spirit. We built a great civilisation, a great culture and a unique social order. We had brought into actual life almost everything was beneficial to mankind'. Hindutva represents a Utopian attempt to unify the majority of the Indian citizens under a homogenised category called 'the Hindus'. It symbolises 'a sense of grievance against alleged injustices' done to the 'homogenous' Hindus 'in the past by an excluded homogenous minority'. This means that the 'Hindus' have been oppressed in their homeland by invading forces like the Muslims and the Christians. Golwalker says, 'But the invaders who came during the last ten or twelve centuries could not be driven out. They could not be absorbed either. They remained a separate entity and ruled as foreigners in this land'. For the Hindutva ideology, the 'Muslim era meant death and destruction as well as cruelty, forced conversations, religious repression and economic collapse'. Therefore, the influence of the 'foreigners' has to be reversed. Reversing 'foreign' influence includes demands to convert disputed monuments into temples. The Hindutva movement portrays its organisations as the unrivalled forefront of a new age of national revival and reawakening. Recent historical wrongdoings will be corrected and the Hindu society will be reinstated to its earlier supremacy. The idea of an imminent reconstruction of Hindu glory and power forms the ideological essence of Hindutva. Golwalker says, 'Our one supreme goal is to bring to life the all-round glory and greatness of our Hindu Rashtra' . He, then, says, 'The ultimate vision of our work, which has been a living inspiration for all our organisational efforts, is a perfectly organised state of our society wherein each individual has been moulded into a model of ideal Hindu manhood and made into a living limb of the corporate personality of society' . Thus a communal memory is constructed, idealised and imagined as part of Hindu identity to boost political interests. The rise of Hindu nationalistic movements happened mainly because of their ability to capitalise on idealistic paradigms and material and social misfortunes among marginalised segments of Indian society. The Hindutva discourse strives to assemble, homogenise and reify the diverse identities of social communities. It is a means to prevail over the religious, social, linguistic and regional diversity of India by affirming a shared cultural heritage. It is a political aggregation of ideas related to state power and the rearrangement of power relations. It manufactures a primordial version of Indian history, conceptualises a national 'golden age', affirms contemporary backwardness and disunity and envisions a moral and social revitalisation. This means that the 'Hindus' became powerless over time because of the 'foreigners' and that a 'Hindu nation' must be created to safeguard the rights of the Hindus in 'Hindustan' and regenerate Hindu culture. Hindutva is an ideology that has deep historical roots in Indian response to European colonialism. It is an exclusivistic doctrine concerned with promoting integration and a sense of nationhood among Hindus. It claims to speak for the Hindu majority in India. This has been largely motivated by demonising minorities especially Muslims. The Hindutva ideology provides a cultural paradigm of history. It claims that India is a Hindu homeland, traceable to an exceptionally primordial and advanced Hindu civilisation. This majestic Hindu civilisation ended in a series of foreign interventions, initially by Muslim invasions, followed by British colonialism and through the humiliating policy of the pseudo-secular Indian National Congress. This means that the glory of ancient Hindu society had been eclipsed by a lack of national unity and self-confidence. Thus, national revitalisation can be carried out by unifying, strengthening and reawakening the Hindu nation. Hindutva provides its adherents with explanations for events and developments in Indian history. It aims at constructing an identity by defining and situating the categories of Hindu self and non-Hindu other. It is political and preoccupied with organising, mobilising and empowering Hindus. William Al-Sharif - Published in 2005

The word 'Hindutva' is derived from the two words 'Hindu' and 'tattva'. 'Tattva' literally means 'truth' and philosophically 'true principle'. Thus, 'Hindutva' means 'Hindu truth' or 'Hindu true principle'. What is this Hindu truth or true principle? What is its discourse? What does it signify? Who advocate the Hindutva? The word Hindutva was first used by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966) in his work Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1923). Its discourse has firm roots in Hindu nationalism which emerged to encounter the challenges of European colonialism, including the anglicisation of Indian history and culture. Colonialism played a significant role in codifying and reifying religious and social divisions. Generalised ideas about 'Hinduism', Hindu law, Muhammadan law, caste and religious minorities were part of the conceptual and political vocabulary during colonialism. Hindu nationalism aimed at strengthening Hindu solidarity, and sought to identify an Indian nation according to ethnic criteria. Advocates of Hindu nationalism argued that the national identity of India could be regained by seeking the fundamental religious and cultural truths again. They idealised an imagined past and demanded a return to the pristine forms of Hindu culture that had degenerated under foreign rule. They also preferred an antagonistic world view. Works by 'Orientalists', such as William Jones (1746-94) and Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765-1837), and theories about the essentialist attributes of India were used to confirm the unique achievements of Hindu civilisation. The Orientalist idea of 'Western rationalism' and 'Eastern spirituality' was reformulated by Hindu intellectuals. Thus, for Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), the greatness of India is manifested in its spiritual superiority. He says, 'Up, India, and conquer the world with your spirituality... Spirituality must conquer the West... We must go out, we must conquer the world through our spirituality and philosophy'. The discourse of Hindutva was also affected by a communal memory, an imaginary sense of belonging. Christian and Muslim proselytising movements and by the (monotheistic) concept of a unifying religious scripture. Thus, the Hindu scholar Swami Dayadananada Saraswati (1824-83) believed in the infallible authority and eternality of the Vedas. In Light of Truth, Saraswati speaks of the 'source of false religions' and criticises the Bible, Christianity, Islam, the Quran and rituals that corrupted the unadulterated faith of 'Hinduism'. In 1875, He founded the Arya Samaj ('Society of Nobles') which played an important role in evoking Hindu traditionalism and reinforcing divisions between Muslims, Hindus and Christians in India. The other influential Indian thinker is Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) who says that 'all great awakening in India, all her mightiest and most vigour have drawn their vitality from the fountainhead of some deep religious awakening'. This 'religious awakening' is based on the Vedas which, according to Aurobindo, have an esoteric meaning. For him, Hindu 'nationalism is not politics but a religion, a creed, a faith'. This nationalism is not secular but 'a religion that has come from God'. Thus, 'Hinduism' is 'the most tolerant and receptive of religious systems' and 'is not sharply exclusive like the religious spirits of Christianity and Islam'. This 'Hinduism' is 'a non-dogmatic inclusive religion and would have taken even Islam and Christianity into itself, if they had tolerated the process'. The true path is based on the Bhagavat Gita which is 'the greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race'. India is the ancient Mother and had the greatest civilisation. It is great in religion, philosophy, science, literature, art, commerce, poetry and craft. In The Future of India, Vivekananda speaks of the religion of patriotism and identifies 'Mother India' with the supreme God. He says, 'So give up being a slave. For the next fifty years this alone shall be our keynote - this our great Mother India. Let all other vain gods disappear for the time from our minds. This is the only God that is awake, our own race. ..All other Gods are sleeping'. This 'God' of Vivekananda' s 'race' has destined India to be the teacher of humanity in the spiritual realm because 'Hinduism' is 'the mother of religions'. Not only that, but 'only Vedanta could triumphantly stand against the faith-killing, heartless rationalism of modern science; only Vedanta could lead men to salvation'... In India religious life forms the centre, the keynote of the whole music of national life'. Thus, Vivekananda 'sought to place Hinduism within the context of resurgent nationalism' and emerged 'as a proponent of a strong, virile and militant ideal of the Hindu nation'. It was, however, the radical thinker Savarkar who invented and elaborated the idea of Hindutva. Savarkar was a nationalist campaigner and Hindu political leader. He is considered by many Hindu nationalists as the inspirational symbol of Hindu politics. He articulated a chauvinistic idealism of Hindus and perceived India as a Hindu nation or Hindu Rashtra. He opposed the 'Quit India Movement' which commenced in 1942 as a civil disobedient movement in response to Gandhi's call to 'do or die' for the independence of India. He then criticised the Indian National Congress for its policy toward the partition of India. In Hindutva, Savarkar says that 'Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva'. 'Hindutva embraces all the departments of thought and activity of the whole Being of our Hindu race'. Hindu is 'the name that this land and the people that inhabited it bore from time so immemorial that even the Vedic name Sindhu is but a later and secondary form of it'. This means that the 'Hindu' is the patriotic inhabitant of India, presuming transcendence beyond religious identity. Savarkar emphasises the need for patriotic and social unity of all Hindu communities. He describes Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism as belonging to one big 'Hindu' family. For him, the Hindu nation stretches across the entire Indian subcontinent from Afghanistan to Burma. The Hindu nation suffered because of Muslims and Christians who invaded India and who still do not consider India as their holy land. In January 1924, Savarkar founded the Ratnagiri Hindu Sabha aiming to work for the social and cultural preservation of Hindu heritage and civilisation. This organisation merged into the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha which was founded in 1915 to counter the Muslim Leaque and the secular Indian National Congress. Savarkar advocated the use of Hindi as a common national language and against caste discrimination and untouchability. He then wrote Hindu Padpadashashi to eulogise the Maratha Empire, a 'Hindu' state that existed from 1674 to 1818. In 1925, the vice president of the Mahasabha, Keshava Baliram Hedgewar (1889-1940) founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or the 'National Volunteers' Union'. This organisation adopted the ideology of Hindutva and claimed to safeguard the spiritual and moral traditions of India. The RSS thinks that 'Hinduism' is not a religion but a way of life and that India is the primordial source of human civilisation from where its knowledge spread to the rest of the world. This involves changing what is perceived to be distortions in the history of India as taught in Indian learning institutions. The assumption here is that many works on 'Indian studies' are biased or spurious because the primary sources were produced by colonial scholars. The ideological discourse of Hindutva was enhanced by the foundation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1980. The BJP depicts itself as a champion of the religious, social and cultural values of India's Hindu majority. It advocates conventional social practices and strong national defence. The BJP's ideology was further manipulated in 1986 when the Rajiv Gandhi's government used its parliamentary majority to overturn a Supreme Court's verdict in the Shah Bano case. Shah Bano was a 62 years old Muslim mother of five children. She was divorced by her husband and had no means to support herself and her children. The Supreme Court ruled that Shah Bano be given maintenance money. Orthodox Muslims protested and claimed that the Court had intervened in their Muslim Personal Law. Thus, the Indian government passed an act that nullified the Supreme Court's judgement. This led many Hindu nationalists to assert that Muslims do not consider India as their country and do not respect the laws of the country. This also provoked the advocates of Hindutva to criticise the Indian legal system that they see to be favourable toward the minorities. They mention different standards for Hindus, Muslims and Christians. Therefore, a 'Uniform Civil Code' would abolish religious provisions for different communities. The other major case, which Hindu nationalists manipulated to augment the ideology of Hindutva, was the clash over the 16* century Mughal Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. The Mosque was built by the Mughal emperor Babur (1483-1530) allegedly by destroying a Hindu temple that marked the birthplace of the Hindu God-Emperor Rama. Eventually, the mosque was destroyed by a Hindu mob in 1992 and then atrocities were committed against Muslims and Hindus. Hindutva has come to be identified with the ideology of the RSS and the BJP. Hindutva, as Prakash Karat says, perceives the Indian nation 'as an ancient entity which has survived through the ages'. It 'sees the nation not in terms of language, territory, economy, culture and classes but on the basis of religion and its cultural attributes'. This means that Hindutva is a syncretic discourse that constructs a nationalist identity based on the traditions and cultural heritage of the Indian subcontinent. It, however, relies on Hindu philosophy and reinterprets Hindu scriptures. The ideology of Hindutva is mainly concerned with the strength and unity of Hindus as a political community not with their religious observance. It does not impose a view of Hindu religion on religious practitioners or punish Hindus who violate the 'doctrines' of 'Hinduism'. Rather, it wants to develop and strengthen the power of the Hindu community. Religion and homeland are unified in the Hindutva discourse. Hindutva supposes that the Indian subcontinent is the homeland of the Hindus. The Hindus are those who consider India to be their holy homeland. The Hindus are those whose religion is indigenous to India. This includes Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs and those who are usually called Hindus. Hindutva constructs its own model of Indian history. 'Hinduism', for instance, is an Indian entity that has no historical beginning. Vedic religion and Indo-Arian languages, such as Sanskrit and Prakrits, did not come from Central Asia along with the Arians. The Indus Valley civilisation was Aryan. Aryan culture was transferred from India to Iran. Indo-European languages had originated in India. The ancient past witnessed material prosperity, social peace, political justice, scientific progress, religious toleration and spiritual enlightenment. Madhav Sadashiv Golwalker says, 'We were the good, the enlightened people. We were the people who knew about the laws of nature and the laws of the spirit. We built a great civilisation, a great culture and a unique social order. We had brought into actual life almost everything was beneficial to mankind'. Hindutva represents a Utopian attempt to unify the majority of the Indian citizens under a homogenised category called 'the Hindus'. It symbolises 'a sense of grievance against alleged injustices' done to the 'homogenous' Hindus 'in the past by an excluded homogenous minority'. This means that the 'Hindus' have been oppressed in their homeland by invading forces like the Muslims and the Christians. Golwalker says, 'But the invaders who came during the last ten or twelve centuries could not be driven out. They could not be absorbed either. They remained a separate entity and ruled as foreigners in this land'. For the Hindutva ideology, the 'Muslim era meant death and destruction as well as cruelty, forced conversations, religious repression and economic collapse'. Therefore, the influence of the 'foreigners' has to be reversed. Reversing 'foreign' influence includes demands to convert disputed monuments into temples. The Hindutva movement portrays its organisations as the unrivalled forefront of a new age of national revival and reawakening. Recent historical wrongdoings will be corrected and the Hindu society will be reinstated to its earlier supremacy. The idea of an imminent reconstruction of Hindu glory and power forms the ideological essence of Hindutva. Golwalker says, 'Our one supreme goal is to bring to life the all-round glory and greatness of our Hindu Rashtra' . He, then, says, 'The ultimate vision of our work, which has been a living inspiration for all our organisational efforts, is a perfectly organised state of our society wherein each individual has been moulded into a model of ideal Hindu manhood and made into a living limb of the corporate personality of society' . Thus a communal memory is constructed, idealised and imagined as part of Hindu identity to boost political interests. The rise of Hindu nationalistic movements happened mainly because of their ability to capitalise on idealistic paradigms and material and social misfortunes among marginalised segments of Indian society. The Hindutva discourse strives to assemble, homogenise and reify the diverse identities of social communities. It is a means to prevail over the religious, social, linguistic and regional diversity of India by affirming a shared cultural heritage. It is a political aggregation of ideas related to state power and the rearrangement of power relations. It manufactures a primordial version of Indian history, conceptualises a national 'golden age', affirms contemporary backwardness and disunity and envisions a moral and social revitalisation. This means that the 'Hindus' became powerless over time because of the 'foreigners' and that a 'Hindu nation' must be created to safeguard the rights of the Hindus in 'Hindustan' and regenerate Hindu culture. Hindutva is an ideology that has deep historical roots in Indian response to European colonialism. It is an exclusivistic doctrine concerned with promoting integration and a sense of nationhood among Hindus. It claims to speak for the Hindu majority in India. This has been largely motivated by demonising minorities especially Muslims. The Hindutva ideology provides a cultural paradigm of history. It claims that India is a Hindu homeland, traceable to an exceptionally primordial and advanced Hindu civilisation. This majestic Hindu civilisation ended in a series of foreign interventions, initially by Muslim invasions, followed by British colonialism and through the humiliating policy of the pseudo-secular Indian National Congress. This means that the glory of ancient Hindu society had been eclipsed by a lack of national unity and self-confidence. Thus, national revitalisation can be carried out by unifying, strengthening and reawakening the Hindu nation. Hindutva provides its adherents with explanations for events and developments in Indian history. It aims at constructing an identity by defining and situating the categories of Hindu self and non-Hindu other. It is political and preoccupied with organising, mobilising and empowering Hindus. William Al-Sharif - Published in 2005