The Formulation of “Hinduness”: Its Political and
Cultural Consequences
While issues of religion and culture are deeply implicated in the sociopolitical
thinking of nineteenth-century India (see Dermot Killingley’s chapter in this
volume), a particular crystallization of Hinduism-based ideology occurred on
the margins of the Indian nationalist struggle. This ideology, in brief, attempted
to provide criteria for membership of a nation-state, India, through appeal to
membership of a historical tradition defined, through certain putatively essen-
tial features, as the religion of “Hinduism.”
The first nationwide move towards injecting a specific “Hindu” dimension
into the political sphere came with the setting up of the Hindu Mahasabha (The
Great Hindu Association) in 1915, which drew on existing Hindu Sabhas (asso-
ciations) in different regions of British India. Initially, it was an organization
within the Indian National Congress. The Congress itself was a nonsectarian,
pan-national political body, and the Mahasabha was founded to press, generally,
for a greater orientation towards concerns identified as important to Hindus, and
specifically, for a Hindu counterweight to Muslim demands for quotas for newly
created administrative and electoral positions. This lobby group later became
more explicitly involved in political activity directed towards the attainment of a
“Hindu nation”; for that, it required a systematic ideology, which was provided
by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
The formulation of Hindutva
It was Savarkar who, in 1923, gave substance to the neologism “Hindutva” or
Hinduness, in his book, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?Unlike what the title by itself
might suggest to a student of religion, the book was not about the doctrinal
essence of a religion called Hinduism; it was not a contribution to that litera-
ture, so standard in later twentieth-century academia, on the definition of a reli-
gious tradition. It was the articulation of a certain form of nationalism. Savarkar
argued that geography, race, and culture reveal a commonality, which he iden-
tified as “Hindutva.” But the geography is not strictly territorial, being instead
the ancestral homeland of a people, historically descended from a “race” called
the “Aryans.” Nor is race a biogenetic category, for Savarkar is willing to accept
both the original intermarriage of the Aryans with older native inhabitants and
the continuing absorption, through marriage and cultural adoption, of differ-
ent peoples into Hinduism. So, the ultimate category for Hindutva is culture. But
this culture is not, strictly speaking, religious, if by “religion” is meant a com-
mitment to certain doctrines of transcendence. Savarkar himself does not
profess religious faith, and takes religion – in the form of “Hinduism” – to be only
a part of the larger “Hindu” culture; a distinction is usually maintained between
Hindu religion and the larger Hindu (or even Indic) culture. In all these matters,
contemporary political hinduism 527