Being Hindu (Unleashing the multiple dynamics Of Hinduism(Hindu, Hidustan, Hidutva))

By Baisali Mohanty

“After the egging, the pulping. In London in 2003, a protester threw an egg at University of Chicago at the Sanskrit scholar Wendy  Doniger, who was lecturing on the popular ‘Hindu’ epic the Ramayana. The egg missed its mark, but during the Q&A other protesters continued the assault, insisting that “non-Hindus” like Doniger have no right to tell them what ‘Hinduism’ is all about.” reports the US today. I quote this with an attempt to move on the lines of the popular discourse of present days, the debate on being a ‘Hindu’.

Who is a ‘Hindu’, What is ‘Hinduism’, quite simple as the answer sounds, the more complex it gets when one attempts to move underneath to secure a firm understanding. This month, as the Penguin  Books India agreed to withdraw Doniger’s ‘The ‘Hindu’s: An Alternative History from Indian bookstores and pulp any remaining copies. The settlement came in response to a complaint filed by Dinanath Batra, head of Shiksha Bachao Andolan, a ‘Hindu’ fundamentalist group that opposes sex education in Indian schools and textbooks that deviate from its ‘Hindutva (“Hinduness”) interpretation of Indian history.

It thus brings us to confront with a culture war, while on the same stand allowing us to grapple with a perplexing issue of  how would one define the “Hindu culture”, who’s culture is it, what does it encompass? As adequately highlighted by A.K Ramanujan”Is there an Indian  way of thinking?Moving on these lines  Doniger questions the so called, “Indian culture”, does this culture encompass the ideas and views of the pariahs (untouchable), women, dalits and other oppressed communities of the society. This Piece comes as  an  attempt to move beyond the ivory tower definition and secure a better structured understanding of what is Hinduism and who is a Hindu?

Hinduism has come to represent, all too simplistically, hosts of phenomena in contexts, which often seem either incomprehensible or contradictory. It has been used to refer to structural features, which, over the past few centuries have characterized various cultural, social, political and religious systems. Yet ,all of the elements in that loose and undefined complex of ideologies and institutions ,which have been brought together under his name,  together with all of the aggregate collage of what  has also been ‘organized’ and ‘syndicated’ under its banner, did not just gradually evolve. Nor did Hinduism simply spring, full blown, into being. Rather,it was constructed, piece by piece.[1]

According to Hindu nationalists, there is one unchanging and eternal Hinduism, which just so happens to be their own. While Doniger’s alternative history, pays heed to the voices of women and Dalits (“untouchables”), and observes changes in the tradition over time, while it also portrays that there are nearly as many Hinduisms as there are ‘Hindu’s ,as also highlighted by Romila Thapar who talks about Folk Hinduism, Indigenous Hinduism as opposed to Modern Hinduism.[2] For Doniger, Hinduism is a polyphonic symphony.[3] To Batra, it is one note, played over and over again.

Thus these conflicting ideas pushes us deep into the debates of defining these highly contentious terms, How then could we get through the ultimate truth, does Doniger’s multiple definitions prevails or the fundamentalists view point of one synchronized definition stands out or shedding off both these theories an alternative picture makes its headway .

 While we continue to emerge in the debates involved regarding the definition of Hinduism, Richard H Davis provides us with two central view points on Hinduism.[4]

The centrists view  identify a single, pan-Indian more or less hegemonic, orthodox tradition, transmitted primarily in Sanskrit language, chiefly by members of the brahmanic class. The tradition centers around a vedic lineage of texts, in which are included not only the Vedas themselves, but also the Mimamsa, Dharmasastra, and Vedanta corpuses of texts and teachings. [5]

On the other hand, the pluralist account, by contrast, envision a de-centered profusion of ideas and practices all tolerated and incorporated under the big tent of Hinduism. [6]According to  H.H.Wilson -The ‘Hindu’ religion is a term, that has been hitherto employed in collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almost endlessly diversified description, to trace some of its varieties is the object of the present enquiry. He accepts some sort of overall ‘Hindu’ unity, but the emphasis is clearly on internal division and differences.[7] Hindu came to be the concept by people who have tried to give greater unity to the extreme cultural diversities which are native to the continent. Such efforts, have almost invariably been part of some institutional, ideological, or political agenda.

In the same line,Raymond Williams  in his phenomenal work ‘Culture and Society’ argues that there is no such thing as masses; it is only a way of looking at people, The ‘majority community’ syndrome is also a way of looking at people. There are ‘Hindu’s in the sense that there has developed in this country a way of looking at people or the so called” majority-community” as the ‘Hindus’. Nonetheless, the word Hindu has come to possess a unique valence in the context of India, otherwise denied to such words as India, Bharat, Aryadesa or Madhyadesa.

The usage of ‘Hindu’ since its very existence has encompassed two ambiguities 1)whether it refers to a religion or a region and 2) whether, as religion, it is to be understood in a centralist or pluralist manner.[8] Etymologically, the word ‘Hindu’ refers to a native of India, a negro, a black Arabian, Indian or Ethiopian or a Gentoo, a slave, a thief or a black. The word Hindu derives, by common consent, from the word Sindhu.[9] At the very best the distinction needs to be made between Hindu as a geographical concept designating anything and everything native to India, and Hindu as a category of ideas and phenomena more specifically cultural, social and religious.

For many scholars, the definition of this concept, anything native to the entire region of South Asia-can be characterized as comprehensively describing and encompassing phenomena of extreme complexity, multiplicity, and variety. This usage, begun by the ancient Persian and Greeks, if not earlier, ascribed no necessarily to a particular cultural, social, political, or other unity to the geographical area whereas, at the same time and in seeming contradiction to this perspective, it ascribed certain common peculiarities to all who lived within the geographical regions beyond the Indus.[10] It is this paradoxically “nativistic ” sense of the term which the muslims acquired and then applied to peoples whom they found within the continent.[11]

They used this term to distinguish between themselves as believers and native unbelievers. This term, both in Arabic and in Persian, was also called to distinguish Muslims from India-those who were called ‘Hindavi’ –from Muslims who came from other parts of the Islamic world.

Still later, native non Muslims of India used a similar term, Hindutva, to distinguish between themselves and muslim people or overlords. [12]However it was uncommon for references to be made to “Hindoo Christian” and “Hindoo Muslims” as distinct from those who were not native-born or culturally indigenous to the subcontinent.[13]

According to Frykenberg, Hinduism was constructed in three major ways in different phases of history, so to say Hinduism is not ahistorical  as several other argue,1)the logic of brahmanical ,or bio-social(purity/pollution) separation.2)the logic of Regal/Imperial or Contractual Integration and 3)the logic of constitutional or Indo-European Synthesis. The logic of each structural system can also be seen as a process, sometimes congruent or partially overlapping the others.

The first structure was brahmanical in orgin ,it lumped all mankind into a single category and then sub-divided this category into a color-coded system of separate species and sub-species, it was moreover the centrist view as earlier highlighted by Richard Davis.[14]

The second structure i.e political logic, drew upon political theory, from misty antiquity and from Indo-Islamic or Indo-Mughal, and finally from Indo-British precedents. Due to their limited numbers, when compared to the vast domains which they conquered, Muslims, like all of their predecessors, turned to locally indigenous elites for support[15].

Being Hindu, in this period ,did not refer to any particular religion, certainly not to a single Hindu religion. Hindu as part of a political logic required a supporting ideology which attempted to provide an overarching and legitimizing authority for an imperial structure within which all communities and religions could coexist. Thus, a devout Muslim could be reasonably good Hindu(Native ,that is, Indian)without ever being obliged to set foot inside a temple or to worship the gods of kafirs.[16]

The third structure that is indicative of what is now meant by the term Hindu is Indo-European. More precisely, it is Orientalist. In its origin, it also is truly Indian in the sense of being an  amalgam of Indo-British, Anglo –Brahman, and Anglo-Islamic elements.

This construction, resting directly upon the foundations of the earlier two structures, saw the erection of a new kind of Hinduism and Hindu self-consciousness as strategies for the careful and deliberate integration of all of India into a single entity. As with all previous regimes, indigenous resources-natural, cultural and intellectual-provided the means. The earlier epistemic, ontological and ritual traditions of varnashramadharma ,the color-coded and segmented system constructed by Brahmans, and the earlier structural features of mahachhakra  as epitomized in various durbars, provided the cultural and Imperial foundations for the Raj. Therefore, has even been plausibly argued , that “the Company’s Raj was actually, for most intents and purposes, a de facto ‘Hindu Raj’”. This development arose from two parallel and intermingling processes of further construction. Both, the official developments-one institutional and the other ideological –brought into being elements that produced, in the words of Romila Thapar, ’Syndicated Hinduism’. [17]

To further connect to this hitherto historical discussion of the terms Hindu (and Hindustan) with first modem and then contemporary developments in India,  one crucial question needs to be asked in order to make this transition; when did the ‘Hindus’ themselves begin to use the word self-referentially (granting that the word Hindu is not a Hindu word)?  Such usage begins to emerge at least by the sixteenth century, as pointed out by Joseph T. O’Connell.

 However,in the view of most contemporary scholars, it was only after the concept of Hinduism was constructed by these Europeans that the Hindus themselves adopted the idea that they all belonged to a single religious community. Although this argument about the construction or invention of Hinduism has a strong postmodern flavor, it was first developed by W.C. Smith in his 1962 book, ‘The Meaning and End of Religion’. Smith  strongly opposes any attempt by outside observers to impose their own categories and explanations on religious phenomena. In the case of Hinduism, he argues that the naming of this religion by Europeans was a mistake: there is no Hinduism either in the minds of the Hindus or in empirical reality itself.[18]

In religio-cultural terms itself, the presence of another religio- cultural complex now also characterized the land, namely, the Islamic. The British presence in India introduced another religio-cultural complex on top of it, namely, Western/Christian. Up to a point, the British presence in India could almost be considered benignly neutral, if not actually pro-Hindu, from a Hindu perspective.

What needs to be clearly recognized in this context is the role of politics in positing these communities in an oppositional, rather than an appositional, framework in relation to the Hindu. The existence of the Jews and Parsis testifies to the fact that minorities are not unknown to the Hindus but they did not pose a problem for Hindu polity because their presence was not vitiated by the ruler- ruled (i.e. political) factor. Until that factor emerged, even Islamic presence was not perceived as a problem.

 This fluid situation, however, began to solidify in the post-Mutiny period, once the rule of the East India Company was taken over by the British Crown. This consolidation of British rule was accompanied  by the consolidation of ‘Hinduism.’ The British presence in India had put another word into play- Hinduism, which further led to the arousal of several other ambiguities.[19]

 First being represented by the word Hindustan, the second by the word Hinduism, the third by the expression Hindu culture and the fourth by the term Hindutva abode of ‘Indians’ (Frykenberg 1989:31), or the abode of the Hindus (Monier-Williams 1960:1298). The word Hindustan may well serve as a metaphor of the first ambiguity. The word literally means ‘the land of the Hindus’ and had become a common word for India, specially north India, by the thirteenth century. It raises the natural query: how is the word Hindu to be taken here: as a resident of a geographical region or as the follower of a particular faith; or as the resident of a particular region who is also the follower of a particular faith? All these senses are possible because of the tremendous demographic overlap between the two categories. Ultimately the meaning remains unclear.

Thus the last quarter of the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of both Indian nationalism and a pan-Indian Hinduism, thereby raising the question of the relationship between the two. This issue, which remains unresolved to this day, goes back to the ambiguity inherent in the word Hindu-does it stand for a country or a religion? The fact that both the words: India as well as Hindu, etymologically go back to the same word (Sindhu) dramatises this issue of ambiguity, which now reincarnated itself in the question: will Indian nationalism (or nationalisms) be territorial or religious in nature? The semantic ambiguity in the word Hindu itself also found expression in the question whether this ‘new’ Hinduism itself will be parochial or universal in character.

Thus, the divergence in Indian and Hindu nationalisms  after the collapse of the Khilafat movement.[20] The founding of the RSS in 1925 symbolized this breach . In the meantime neo-Hinduism was being revived along essentially universalistic lines, although it became somewhat revivalistic with the rise of the Arya Samaj. Nevertheless the Indian National Congress was able to contain this. It was in the 1920s that neo-Hinduism began to display a distinctly ethnic streak and evolved a word to go with it- Hindutva.  The word Hindutva gained currency after it appeared as the title of a book written by V.D. Savarkar, first published in 1923. V.D. Savarkar and Mahatma Gandhi may be regarded as the patron saints of the two distinct forms of Hinduism the ambiguity of the word Hindu gave rise to. Paradoxical as it might appear, both these trends arose out of the same problem-that of defining who is a Hindu. And both were in a sense a response to the attempted definitions of Hinduism under Western aegis.[21]

It is not often realised that one of the major concerns of V.D. Savarkar in evolving the concept of Hindutva was to avoid the political fall-out of an excessively narrow definition of Hinduism (in his view), which had the unhappy consequence of excluding the Buddhists, the Sikhs, and the Jains from the Hindu community.[22] By comparison, Gandhi did not have much trouble with their inclusion within or exclusion from Hinduism because from the point of view of the spiritual interpretation of Hinduism, which he espoused, this was immaterial. All religions shared in this spirituality in common with Hinduism, irrespective of whether they could formally be labelled Hindu or not.

In V.D. Savarkar’s tract: Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? ,religion does not figure in this ensemble and the “actual essentials of Hindutva are also the ideal essentials of nationality”.[23] The net effect of this exercise is to confer a Hindu nationality on all the followers of the four religions of Indian origin-Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. An important point to distinguish here is between the two expressions: “Indian religions” and “religions practised in India.” If the latter category is used to denote Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and so on, then the former category could be used to include only the adherents of the first four: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism.

According to the concept of Hindutva as elaborated by Savarkar, Hindu nationality would be restricted to “Indian religions,” in contrast presumably with Indian nationality which would be shared by the followers of all religions. This is one salient feature of Hindutva. The other, as noted already, consists of the fact that it posits an implicit distinction between religion and  culture, in order to bracket the four “Indian religions” together. Savarkar’s vision lay moribund for a long time, to the extent of being considered dead. [24]

In reality the  context, text and subtext has changed over time, depending on the period involved (whether it is the period extending from 1923-1947, or 1947-1975, or 1975-1991 or post-1991) and the person expounding it (whether it is V.D. Savarkar, M.S. Golwalkar or Balraj Madhok, for instance).[25]During the period when the Jan Sangh functioned as a party, the concept of Hindutva underwent an ideological shift. It took the form of identifying India with Hindutva, rather than Hindutva with India. As a result there was much talk of the need for Indianizing the Christian and Muslim minorities in India, rather than Hinduizing them.

 It should be noted that the Indian government, both in the language of the Indian Constitution adopted in 1950, and subsequent legislation, has virtually adopted the Hindutva definition of a Hindu-as one who belongs to any religion of Indian origin. Hence the need, in the modem study of Hinduism, to distinguish one who is Hindu under Indian law from one who is Hindu “by religion”[26].

Post-Independence conceptual developments in Hindutva basically turn on two differential axes–of religion (and/or) culture and nation (and/or) state. Hindutva thought in general has tried to align itself with the culture axis in terms of the first set of terms and with the nation axis in the second set of terms. Out of the religion/culture division, culture would be viewed as a broader category, just as the nation would be viewed as a broader category in relation to state. Hindutva thought then has tried to connect itself with the more encompassing of the paired categories, even occasionally at the expense of the other. Its agenda has been to thereby solve the problem of the presence of non-Hindu elements in Indian society and polity-primarily of the Muslims and Christians, and secondarily of such Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs as do not respond to the general interpretation of the term ‘Hindu’ it offers. By inviting them to partake only of Hindu culture and not religion, it makes it socially easier for these communities to become parts of the larger whole. It seeks to accomplish the same end politically by identifying itself with the aspiration of nationhood, as opposed to the machinery of a state, so that all could then belong to the Hindu nation in this reconstituted society and the state could then be effectively secular.[27] It is significant that the Hindutva rhetoric to this day has largely and centrally been that of a nation (Hindu Rashtra) rather than of a state (Hindu Raj) (even Shivaji spoke of ‘Hindu svaraj,’ not Hindu Raj)[28]. The key category is not Hindu statism but Hindu nationalism [29]. The internal contradictions of the word Hindu, however, imperil these exercises, whether one turns to religion or culture.

 One crucial move Savarkar initiated was the tendency to associate Hinduism with culture rather than religion. His motive in doing so was to create a conceptual category for “Indian religions” (as distinguished from “religions practised in India”). But with this end constitutionally achieved (although still in contention) it soon evolved the locution of Hindu culture, from within the space inside “Indian religions,” to embrace all the “religions practised in India,” in a manner analogous to the way it was employed by Savarkar to embrace all “Indian religions” while situated within Hinduism, through the concept of Hindutva. This curiously corresponds to that usage in the eighteenth century in the light of which designations such as ‘Hindu–Muslim’ and ‘Hindu- Christian’ were not oxymorons, with this difference that at that time an explicit pan-Indian identity in terms of Hinduism was not in the picture[30]. This shift in the terms of discourse also carries with it the same bivalence which has characterized the word in its earlier appearance as Hindu, Hindustan and Hinduism. Philip H. Ashby writes perceptively : Modern interpretations of Indian culture have generally fallen into two broad classifications. The first has identified Hindu culture with Indian culture, suggesting that the operating norm for the latter has been the great tradition of the Hindu religion and the social strictures and customs that have accompanied that tradition.[31]

The other interpretation, namely, that India’s culture is a composite not to be identified with the term “Hindu,” has been more realistic in recognizing that contemporary Indian culture, like all widespread and long enduring cultures, has been the product of many influences, from the early Dravidian of thirty-five or more hundred years down to the British and Western of the last hundred or two hundred years. This approach recognizes the variables and imponderables that at any given time work together to constitute a culture.[32]This view reflects something of both the position of the nineteenth century reform movements and the social-cultural ambivalence of the liberal intellectual and political elite of the twentieth century. Two conceptions of Indian culture now vie with each other for acceptance.

With the word Hindu, the two referents in terms of region or religion were  in contention; with the word Hindustan, this bivalence took the form of nature of the region itself; in the realm of religion it surfaced in the ethnic and in the universalistic orientations of Hinduism and now it manifests itself in the realm of culture. These developments reflect a difference in emphasis in terms of the evolving worldview (or at least India-view) . But along with them a more potentially significant conceptual divide now surfaces,  the question of whether the Hindutva movement is directed towards the formation of a Hindu nation or a Hindu state.[33] The concept of a nation-state merges the two and obscures the point, but it needs to be addressed squarely in the context of a country like India. Actually, a similar problem can be identified in the context of the nation itself. Here the crux of the issue lies in the distinction between a multi-nation state and a nation-state. Given its pluralism, India has in effect usually functioned as a multi-nation state, whether under Asoka, or Akbar or the British.

The attempt to unify India with the cultural nationalism of the “white umbrella,” when it has always been polychrome, revives the old ambiguity of whether Hindu means land/people or religion/culture.[34] The ambiguity now begins to manifest itself within the category of the state itself-national or multinational? This in addition to the question whether one has in mind an Indian state or a Hindu state. The last piece of the puzzle reincarnates the original conundrum.  Hindutva thus comes full circle.In its attempt to solve the problem of Hindu identity with that of Hindutva identity, it ends up becoming part of the problem once again. This however, should not be taken to mean, that our exercise has been in vain.

 Such an exercise does allow us to posit a bivalent ‘Hindu’ reality capable of multiple formulations in several ways: local/global; geographical/civilizational; ethnic/universal, and so on. It also enables one to identify four attempts to engage this ambivalent Hindu historical/empirical reality: in terms of the categories of (1) region; (2) religion; (3) culture and (4) nation. The first attempt is represented by the word Hindustan, the second by the word Hinduism, the third by the expression Hindu culture and the fourth by the term Hindutva.  Because of the complex nature of the Indian reality each approach runs into its own limitations; each generates its own dilemma.

The regional approach generates the dilemma: does India belong to the Hindus or do Hindus belong to India? The religious approach generates the dilemma: Is Hinduism a religion like any other religion or does it itself include other religions, denominationally or universalistically? The cultural approach generates the dilemma: Is Hindu culture constitutive of Indian culture or expressive of it? And finally, the national approach generates the dilemma: Should India opt for the secularism of Hinduism or the Hinduism of secularism? At the heart of each lies the question central to all issues of identity: does the other belong to me or do I belong to it?

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