Savarkar is keenly aware of irreducible diversity, be it in conceptions of sacred
geography, racial intermingling, or religious beliefs and practices. That is why he
attempts to identify an essence, a commonality. Everything, then, comes down
to understanding the essence of Hindu culture. But unfortunately, when identi-
fying what is distinctly Hindu, he goes back to a religious concept: to be Hindu
is to take India as the holy land. This is what distinguishes the Hindu from the
Christian or the Muslim (although, on other counts, the possibility of Christians
and Muslims being “Hindus” is granted). This is difficult to follow through, since
the concept of what is holy is itself a religious one, but the religion involved
derives its identity from a culture – which culture, exactly, Savarkar is attempt-
ing to essentialize in the first place.
Regardless of the intellectual coherence of his position, Savarkar articulated
the idea that the nation could be construed in terms of Hinduness. Since Hindus
did, as a matter of fact, exist, an appeal to their identity as the foundation of
nationalism was possible even if exactly how that identity was determined in the
first place was not clear.
The political consequence of this formulation lay, however, not so much in
what it tried to do for Hindus as in how it used Muslims (and Christians) for its
ideological ends. Arguably, it was a certain perception of Muslims and (in the
form of the British) Christians that motivated the enunciation of Hindutva.
Savarkar’s call to Hindus to regain an ancient glory is explicitly premised on that
glory having been tarnished by an invasion of and the clash with Islam (and,
later, the Christianity of Western imperialism). A renascent Hindu nation (since
Savarkar is convinced that there was such an original nation) must solve the
problem of heterogeneity and diversity. That is to say, in order to create a Hindu
state, the problems brought about by the presence of Islam and Christianity (ren-
dered possible according to Savarkar only by the oppression of Hindus) must
be solved. Such a solution might require the removal of alienness from Hindu
society, but must at least involve Muslim and Christian acceptance of Hindu
public culture in a nation-state. The coherence of any strategy to render India
Hindu, then, requires recognizing the threat of Muslim and Christian otherness
and dealing with it in a variety of uncompromising ways.
Subsequently, Savarkar led the Mahasabha, and his skills in this regard seemed
likely to lead it to greater prominence. But the Congress was moving decisively
into ever-wider constituencies, and by 1937, the Mahasabha was excluded from
it, especially on charges of being “communal,” i.e., pursuing the concerns purely
of a religious community, rather than of all India. Thereafter, it had no real
political role to play in the last decade of the independence movement.
The RSS and Hindu culture
Hindutva, however, gained a very different sort of organized support than the
original involvement within the Indian National Congress might have suggested.
Savarkar deeply influenced Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, who had learned various
528 c. ram-prasad