Hindutva: An identity that unites entire India and South Asia

I am a devout Jain and grew up as such. As a child the society had me believe I am a Jain, not a Hindu while my other non-muslim/non-christian/non-sikh friends were Hindus. I celebrated the same festivals as my Hindu friends did such as Diwali, Dashehra, Rakhi, Holi on the same day and time of the year in much the same way as my Hindu friends did. All of the festivals I mentioned have a strong basis rooted in Jain Puranas and scriptures so I was not celebrating them just because my friends celebrated them, there was a proper Jain religious basis for them which in many cases largely matched what I heard from my Hindu friends. We broke a coconut before starting anything auspicious, so did my Hindu friends, we drew the letter Om and a Swastik (sathiya, please do not confuse this with the Nazi symbol) on every religious ceremony so did my Hindu friends. Moreover, whenever a discussion or debate occurred on issues of contention between Hindus and Muslims, I found elder Jain folks siding with the Hindu viewpoint. A particular case being Ayodhya dispute over the Babri mosque structure that I remember being a national poll issue when I was in high school. In fact Ayodhya is considered a holy city by Jains as many Jain tirthankars (Gods) were born there. Despite all these and many other broad commonalities in customs and traditions I was not a Hindu but my friends were. I somehow convinced myself that may be the basic difference between Hindus and Jains was that Hindus did not believe in the concept of moksha (emancipation of soul from the cycle of re-births), alas I was proved wrong one day when I met a priest at local Shiva temple in my hometown and he explained to me how Hindus believed in the soul being immortal and the concept of "aham brahmasmi" (I am God i.e. I can attain the state of being a God freeing my soul from the cycle of birth and death). By the time I graduated from high school I convinced myself that I am a Jain and I am a Hindu too. However, whenever someone said this country belongs to Hindus, I rebelled against that idea because it excluded my Muslim and Christian friends who I believed belonged here as much as I did. During college days I met some Hindu leaders that helped clarify my thought process around why Hindu identity is important but I still had doubts in my mind about how to include Muslim and Christian friends in the concept of Hindu identity. Finally I met Dr. Subramanian Swamy in Chicago until recently the president of Janata Party and now a leader in BJP and his lectures cleared the last iota of doubt in my mind about the all inclusive nature of Hindu identity for Indians. I have since been meaning to write on this subject, more for the sake of organizing my own thoughts than anything else. So here I go:

Hindutva is an identity most misunderstood or not even understood by the world. The most unfortunate and shocking part is that it is not even well understood by Hindus themselves. Hindus have forgotten their identity in much the same way as Lord Hanuman in Ramayana had forgotten his ability to fly long distances until reminded by his friend Jamvantha while looking to cross the ocean and reach Lanka in pursuit of mother Sita. Once reminded Lord Hanuman flew across the ocean to reach Lanka fighting many obstructions along the way. I am not claiming or trying to play Jamvantha to the Hindu community as many have tried and been branded "communal", "fascist" etc. by the so called "secular" Hindus themselves. Therefore, I am simply giving an exit to my thoughts and clearing up early childhood confusion around mine and my countrymen's identity.

Lets start by understanding the origin of the word "Hindu". The word Hindu is not found in any vedic literature, or any religious Sanskrit text for that matter. I took Sanskrit as part of my syllabus from sixth grade to high school and do not recall reading any rendition of the word "Hindu" in any shloka or vyakaran (grammar) that I read. Stephen Knapp does a very good job of capturing the history of the word in 19 th chapter of his book "Crimes Against India: And The Need To Protect Its Ancient Vedic Tradition.”, so I put a brief summary of that chapter here to quickly bring this into context. Alexander in 325 BC removed the letter "S" from the river "Sindu" and started calling it "Indu" and greeks conveniently made it "Indus", hence the region developed around it or east of it became India for them. Indians by the way have traditionally called their country Aryavart or Bharat. Muslim invaders however pronounced the Sanskrit sound "S" as "H" so Sindu became Hindu and people living in this region were called Hindus and the region itself was called Hindustan. To subjugate the people of this region and be-rate their civilization they added derogatory meanings to this word Hindu in Persian dictionaries such as persian dictionary Lughet-e-Kishwari, published in Lucknow in 1964, gives the meaning of the word Hindu as “chore [thief], dakoo [dacoit], raahzan [waylayer], and ghulam [slave]. Any of my Indian muslim friends that read this please note this term was by definition applied to your ancestors as well as mine by the foreign invaders. Everything that the people of India had developed and mastered over centuries became part of the "Hindu" culture going way beyond religious practices such as the medical science of Ayurveda, great advancements in the field of astronomy, algebra, trigonometry, economics, social sciences etc. of course the invaders mocked all of these practices including the religious and spiritual practices followed in Bharat (India) which they called Hindustan, and they brutally destroyed not only the temples but the centers of education including world renowned universities of Takshila (Taxila), and Nalanda. 

The origin and definition of the word "Hindu" as I have (actually Stephen Knapp) summarized above once understood and agreed to should leave no doubt in anybody's minds that every person whose ancestors lived in the region of the world that is to the east of Sindhu river and practiced the (highly sophisticated) customs and traditions developed indigenously in this part of the world is Hindu.

While the Muslim invaders tried to malign the entire civilization by giving derogatory meaning to the word Hindu, and coerced a large section to convert to Islam under the fear of death and persecution, the British imperialists that arrived on the scene first in 17th century narrowed the scope of the word Hindu to mean practitioners of a religion, which British started calling "Hinduism". The tenets of this so called religion Hinduism were not defined as it was impossible to do so, so many Gods, so many languages, such diverse customs and habits, makes it impossible to ascribe finite religious practices to this religion that it was not worth the effort for what they wanted to accomplish. They however, used this narrow definition of Hinduism to pull out sections of the Indian society and assigned them a religious identity that could now stand parallel to Hinduism. According to their definition of Hinduism, you could not be a Hindu if you practice Sikhism, or Jainism, or Budhdhism. These became separate and parallel religious identities like a Hindu "religious" identity. This not only proved to be a very effective tactic to execute a divide and rule strategy on the sub-continent but later it also gave legitimacy to the idea of an all encompassing "secular", Indian identity separate from a Hindu identity which Muslims, Christians, Jains, Sikhs, Budhdhists, Parsis, and Hindus all could claim. On the surface nothing seems wrong with this all unifying Indian identity that is religion agnostic, but to understand the real implications of separating the Indian identity from Hindu identity we need to understand an egregious falsehood started by the British historian Macaulay. He very astutely propounded the myth of an Aryan invasion that destroyed the Indus valley civilization and brought the Hindu religion "Hinduism" to India, forcing the natives of the Indus valley to move to southern India (this further divides Hindus of South India from Hindus of North India). I will save arguments that dispel this myth of Aryan invasion for another blog but for now it is important to understand that if you accept this myth of Aryan invasion along with the narrowed scope of the word Hindu to mean practitioners of a religion, invasion and subjugation by foreign cultures becomes the basis of the existence of Indian civilization leaving no identity that the people of the region can claim to have developed on their own in this part of the world. All of a sudden Hindus cannot even claim that Muslims invaded their country, as they themselves did the same 2000 years earlier. Therefore, now this new Indian identity separated from the Hindu identity derives its basis from Indian independence act of 1937 that British parliament enacted. As a consequence India becomes a country that is merely 66 years old and I have no common ancestry with my Indian Muslim friends other than the Passport issued by Government of India. I am supposed to accept Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Hindus, Budhdhists etc. as my brothers and sisters just because the British government told me to.

While, it made logical sense for the foreign invaders or imperialists to do what they did in order to achieve their objectives of plundering a land they won, it makes no logical sense for the the people of free and independent India to keep subscribing to the narrow definition of the word "Hindu". The very liberal nature of the Hindu society has been exploited by parochial selfish interests of the politicians that were handed the reigns of the country after independence to perpetuate this dangerous myth about Hindu identity. The term "Hindutva" was first coined by the great freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Savarkar popularly known as Vir (brave) Savarkar for such an identity. This identity unites every Indian on the basis of thousands of years of shared culture and glorious history. The most wonderful thing about this identity is that it even unites Christians, and Muslims of India (two most widely practiced foreign religions in the country) with rest of the Indians on the basis of same shared ancestry. Dr. Subramanian Swamy actually proved this in a very scientific manner by conducting a DNA match between a Muslim auto rickshaw driver and a Hindu leader, and found that DNA to match pointing towards a common ancestry. Almost all the present day Muslims of India converted to Islam from what is today called Hinduism, and if they are taught the correct history, they should have no problem in proudly admitting their Hindu past, which should become the basis of brotherhood between all people of Indian origin.

Lets take the Hindutva identity to other countries neighboring India. Starting with the obvious ones to relate to, Nepal till today is the country with largest proportion of Hindus with shared culture and history with India. Many Nepalese princess were married in royal families of India and vice versa. If Indian government had been prudent and intervened on the basis of Hindutva to prevent the bloodshed by Maoists in the country and prevented the fall of the monarchy, the country would have continued to be a constitutionally Hindu country even now and not been such an easy entry point for terrorists into India or potentially become an ally to China. Bhutan is the last friendly country left for India and their again the shared basis is Hindutva, Bhutan being officially Buddhist derives its cultural and religious identity from what developed in India. Srilanka to the south of India finds a mention in the Hindu epic Ramayana as the place developed by Ravana and later conquered by Lord Rama. Ravana was born in Northern India and found an abode down south in Lanka. Even today the country is "Hindu" per the definition I explained earlier; the Sinhalese majority practices buddhism as King Asoka of India propagated Buddhism there. Many sinhalese inhabitants there migrated from from the north east region of India (the state of Odisha/Bihar), while Tamils have migrated from South India. India had the opportunity to use these shared cultural and ethnic (Hindu) roots to have friendly relationship with the country, on the contrary the Indian government turned a blind eye to national interests and chose to covertly support the Tamil terrorist organization LTTE in the 1980s for the sake of winning some Tamil extremist support in the Indian state of Tamilnadu and later back tracked into publicly opposing LTTE. Now China is finding in roads into the Indian ocean via Sri Lanka on the name of building infrastructure. While there are genuine human rights problems that Tamil minority faced in Sri Lanka, if Indian government had recognized the national interests and taken into account the Hindu identity of Sri Lanka which includes the Sinhalese as well as Tamils the diplomatic policy would not have been so lax.

Lets get to the slightly harder ones. China though today comes across as an adversary and the loss in the war of 1962 against China looms large on the psyche of all Indians, has a 2500+ years of shared history with India and not a single instance of military conflict comes up until 1962. China got the gift of Buddhism from India, and the form of Buddhism practiced more predominantly in China (Mahayana Buddhism) is closer to what the seculars call "Hinduism". Many Chinese travellers came to India in early centuries and wrote very highly about Indian society and culture including Fexien in 399 AD and Xuanzang in 630 AD. The Kung Fu marshall arts that the world attributes to China was invented by an Indian Buddhist monk who was the third son of a Pallava King, later named as Bodhidharma. Even today the students at Shaolin temple which is the best school of Marshall arts in China worship Bodhidharma as God. Even after the 1962 war after which China has been occupying the Aksaichin region of India, when the first non Congress government came to power in 1977, China opened the route to Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage on the grounds of Hindu beliefs associated with the holy land. China today faces the threat of Islamic terror in it's Xinjiang province and despite visible cooperation with Pakistan looks at them with suspicion. Shared Hindu past and current cultural ties gives a solid ground for friendly relations with China without compromising our position on the border dispute with China, which by the way I do believe is a genuine dispute and needs to be sorted out by talks between two former and likely super powers of the world. I am not advocating minimizing guard on the border, to the contrary I think we need to demonstrate our military might to China and then reach out with a friendly hand on the basis of common history and culture.

Lets apply this concept to what is today called Pakistan. The founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah was grandson of Punjabhai Thakkar, a Hindu. His father Jenabhai was youngest of the three sons of Poonjabhai, other two being Valjibhai, and Nathubhai. Jinnah's mother was Mithibai. These are all Hindu names. While Jinnah's grandfather was born Hindu, his father was a Muslim yet lived among Hindus and retained a Hindu name like his uncles. Jinnah himself had the last name Jenabhai until he went to London and discovered for himself a new "modern" identity and chose to change the last name to "Jinnah". I dwell upon the family tree of the founder only to indicate that most Pakistani muslims are converted from what is called "Hinduism" to islam and even till today retain the same language, eating habits, and music tastes as Hindus. Of course the Talibanisation is occurring in the country but Taliban has a lot of work to do to kill the Hindu culture among Pakistanis such as change the spoken language to Arabic from Urdu /Punjabi (Urdu is nothing but Hindi with an arabic script and arabic words mixed in). The Pakistanis need an identity beyond jingoism against India. In their efforts to find an identity, they are misled to believe their ancestors were Muslim invaders such as Ghori and Ghazni, while the fact is these barbarian plundered their ancestors, raped, and murdered them, forced them to choose Islam under the threat of death. The shared Hindutva identity should be the basis of engaging the common people of Pakistan and war should be the way to silence their Talibanized military, the government of Pakistan today really does not matter, talking to them has no value other then headlines in media. In the interest of not making this blog any longer than it already is, I am skipping Bangladesh which is nothing but a carve out from what was removed from India as Pakistan in 1947 and I am skipping Burma (Brahmdesh in Sanskrit) but both of these countries have strong Hindu roots.

It does not take a genius to figure out why Hindutva should be the basis of uniting the people of India and building lasting relationships with the neighbors. One question remains, why should we use a term that was coined by Muslim invaders to insult and malign our civilization? While that is true, this term has stuck since then and is the only popular term despite incessant efforts of the "secular" government of India to narrow down it's scope, that gives a simple noun to describe the identity and continuity of Indian civilization from time immemorial. One of the names that Lord Krishna is worshipped by is "Ranchod" which essentially means someone who runs away from a war and has a connotation of cowardice. He got this name because he chose to leave his capital city of Mathura and created his capital in a new city called Dwarika which was surrounded by the ocean to avoid military conflict with King Jarasandh. When his courtiers warned him that he will earn the title of coward for such an action, he gladly accepted it in the larger interest of his people. Today the negative connotation of "Ranchod" is forgotten and people worship him by that name, not only that people proudly name their kids "Ranchod" in India. So it goes for the term "Hindu", if Hindus rise up together with pride in their centuries old heritage, the world will treat Hindus, Hindutva, and Hindustan with the respect they deserve.