been beef eaters at times in their history (Jha 2002). Hinduism is part of the cul-
tural politics of India and the term “Hindu” is now highly politicized as a sign
around which to gather the hopes and aspirations of major sections of Indian
society (see Ram Prasad in this volume) as are particular religious symbols such
as the personification of the Tamil language (see Ramaswamy in this volume).
V. D. Savarkar, a president of the Hindu Mahasabha (1937–42), a party that set
itself against Congress and the Muslim League in the days before independence,
in his highly influential book Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1923) distinguishes
between “Hindu Dharma,” the various traditions subsumed under the term
“Hinduism,” and “Hindutva” or “Hinduness,” a sociopolitical force to unite all
Hindus against “threatening Others” (Jaffrelot 1996: 25–33). It is hindutvathat
must take precedence as the force to form an exclusivist, national unity. Savarkar
defined a Hindu as a person who sees India “as his Fatherland as well as his
Holyland, that is, the cradle land of his religion” (quoted in Pandey 1993: 247),
and Hinduism as an ideal that rests on the three pillars of geographical unity,
common race, and a common culture. In this formulation, Hindus are united by
bonds of love for the motherland and bonds of common blood, tracing their
descent from the original inhabitants of the land, the vedic Aryans (Pandey
1993: 238; Jaffrelot 1996: 28).
We might call this view “political essentialism” insofar as it sees Hinduism as
part of the nation’s ideology which is no construct of Western scholarship, but
a vibrant, living entity with roots stretching back into an ancient past. On this
view, at various times in their long history Hindus have been oppressed by
“threatening Others” but can now take a legitimate place in the field of cultural
politics and stand for a Hindu nationhood against the secular ideology of Con-
gress. Such sentiments are symbolized, for example, in the martial figure of the
god Ra ̄ma who comes to express Hindu nationalist aspirations (Kapur 1993:
74–107) and we have seen how forcefully these aspirations were focused in the
destruction of the Babri mosque and the further ensuing communal violence in
1992 (Larson 1995). Any ideology to be effective must addresses people’s real
concerns (Eagleton 1991: 45) and clearly the hindutvaideal, looking back to
a glorious Hindu past, articulates a Hindu identity that has emerged partly
because of its previous occlusion from the political realm (Jaffrelot 1996: 82–3;
Larson 1995). The political party, the BJP, expressed nationalist Hindu senti-
ments and came to power with a complex of alliances in 1996 (see Ram Prasad
in this volume). The claim to ideological unity among Hindus is, of course, prob-
lematic and dissonant voices such as the Dalit movement and some sections of
the women’s movement do not recognize themselves in Sanskritic Hinduism let
alone in hindutvarhetoric (Omvedt 1995; Narayanan in this volume). The ide-
ology ofhindutvatends to be exclusive, with homogenizing tendencies that move
against pluralism and diversity within the Hindu sphere. Some scholars, such as
Julius Lipner, would wish to claim back “hinduness” as hinduta ̄for a pluralist
vision (Lipner 1996: 109–26). On Lipner’s account it is perfectly feasible to be
both Hindu and Christian, but this kind of hybridity would tend to be excluded
by hindutva claims.
introduction: establishing the boundaries 9