What’s Hindu nationalism and who’re the RSS? | Hinduism

Hindu nationalism is a political ideology that dates again to the nineteenth century. It encompassed a broad vary of teams however at its core is a perception that Indian nationwide identification and tradition are inseparable from the Hindu faith.

It started to realize prominence within the early twentieth century as a part of the independence motion in India, which sought to separate itself from the identification of British colonial rule and the Islamic Mughal dynasty, which had beforehand ruled India from the sixteenth century.

Hindutva – a time period coined within the Twenties within the writings of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar that means “Hindu-ness” – is the predominant type of Hindu nationalism in India. Hindutva is the assumption within the hegemony of Hinduism in India and the institution of the nation as a Hindu, relatively than secular, state. Hindus are considered extra as an ethnic, relatively than non secular, group.

The Hindutva ideology has been related to rightwing extremism and fascism as a result of purist racial components of the motion and its affiliation with intolerance of minorities, particularly anti-Muslim sentiment and violence in India, which is 80% Hindu and 14% Muslim.

On the coronary heart of the Hindu nationalist motion in India is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an all-male Hindu nationalist volunteer group, typically described as a paramilitary organisation, fashioned within the Twenties.

It was fashioned to supply unity and self-discipline to the Hindu group with a purpose to construct the Hindu Rastra (the Hindu state). It continues to work at present to unfold the ideology of Hindutva, with upwards of 5 million members.

The RSS is the chief of the “Sangh Parivar’’, an umbrella group of Hindu nationalist organisations who’ve arrange faculties, charities and golf equipment however which have additionally been related to communal violence. The RSS has been banned 3 times because it was established, together with after Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a former RSS member in 1948.

It was out of the RSS that India’s ruling political celebration, the Bharatiya Janata Celebration (BJP), emerged they usually stay intently linked.

Who’s the BJP and what’s its affiliation with Hindu nationalism?

Hindu nationalism has been a part of Indian politics for many years and, at varied factors, has been deployed as a populist political device by each of India’s main political events, Congress and the BJP, as a method to win the vote of the nation’s Hindu majority.

Nevertheless, for the reason that BJP got here to energy in 2014, led by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, Hindu nationalism has come to completely dominate the Indian political panorama. The BJP is extensively seen because the political wing of the RSS – Modi was an RSS youth member – and rightwing Hindu nationalism is on the centre of their political agenda. The BJP brazenly prescribes to Hindutva however has downplayed its associations with violence, as an alternative proclaiming it’s a cultural agenda that promotes India’s heritage and historical past.

India’s structure, drawn up in 1950 after independence, enshrines India as a secular democracy. Nevertheless, the BJP has been accused of passing insurance policies and pursuing a religiously divisive agenda, which seeks to make India a Hindu state and has led to a rising tide of intolerance and communal violence in India and the focusing on of Muslim activists, journalists and civil society.

The mainstreaming of Hindutva politics has led to a widespread but unfounded narrative that Hindus in India are underneath risk from Muslims, be it by inhabitants shifts, interfaith marriage (referred to as “love jihad”) and unlawful Muslim immigrants. It has led to new legal guidelines being handed underneath the BJP round citizenship and marriage which have been described as discriminatory to minorities.

How has Hindutva unfold exterior India?

Since Modi and the BJP got here to energy in 2014, there have been extremely profitable efforts to mobilise the huge Indian diaspora in assist of the BJP, notably within the UK, US and Australia, primarily by using social media.

Whereas abroad Indians can’t vote, they’re recognized to retain sturdy connections to their communities nonetheless in India and infrequently wield loads of wealth and affect. In 2019, when Modi visited the US, a “howdy Modi” occasion was organised by his supporters in Texas, which was attended by then-US president, Donald Trump, and 50,000 supporters.

The rise in world assist for the BJP has additionally coincided with an increase in prominence of Hindutva teams and charities within the US. A few of these teams have been accused of making an attempt to undermine educational freedom on college campuses by focusing on lecturers whose work has targeted on India’s Islamic historical past. In September 2021, organisers of an educational convention on Hindutva held within the US have been bombarded with hundreds of threats of rape, violence and demise, allegedly by such teams.

In August, the Indian Enterprise Affiliation (IBA) got here underneath fireplace for bringing bulldozers, adorned with the faces of Modi and the hardline Hindutva BJP minister Yogi Adityanath, to 2 India Day parades within the state of New Jersey. Bulldozers have turn into a logo of anti-Muslim oppression in India after they have been used repeatedly to demolish the houses of Muslim activists and residents underneath the guise of the buildings being unlawful. Hindutva hardliners have celebrated Adiyanath as “bulldozer baba” for the demolitions.

The Hindu nationalist ideology has additionally lately begun to rear its head within the UK. In November 2019, British Hindus have been focused with WhatsApp messages, which included movies by far-right anti-Muslim activists.

Over the weekend, violence erupted in Leicester between Hindu and Muslim communities, which started after a bunch of Hindu males marched by the streets of the town shouting “jai shri Ram”, a Hindu greeting that has turn into a clarion name for Hindutva mobs and perpetrators of anti-Muslim violence in India. The state of affairs shortly escalated, with a Hindu flag burned and one other torn down from exterior a temple.