Presenting the Past Anxious History and Ancient Future in Hindutva India

38 "Presenting" the Past

try) to learn their duties (race, caste) "at the holy feet of the 'Eldest born'

Brahmans of this land."^96 It is this "want of National Consciousness"

that has been the cause of all our ills. People who are opposed to Hindus

"make much of the caste system," religious superstitions, illiteracy, status

of women, and "all sorts of true or untrue flaws in the Hindu Cultural

Organisation," and contend that the weakness of the Hindus lies entirely

in these.^97

Golwalkar contends that "there is hope" and advises his disciples, "Wait

and work and the race spirit which all along has been protecting us from

certain destruction, shall do so once again."^98 The prediction of Golwalkar

has definitely come true now. The "race spirit," or Brahminism, which is

not fixed but a highly adaptable dogma, engages both in backlash against

the newly emerging forces and in cooperating with other segments of

the society such as middle and lower castes.^99 Having been clothed more

sophisticatedly as a nationalist ideology, it creates a highly polarized soci-

ety with mass hysteria marked by hallucinatory pride, virility, and con-

tempt for legality and civility by showing an inside enemy, namely the

Muslims. Then, it utilizes the manipulated solidarity among the allegedly

homogenous Hindus to nurture the traditional divisions and revive the

prominence of the Brahminical orthodoxy.

Thus Hindutva nationalism is a crudely plagiarized derivative dis-

course of nationalism stuffed with the schemes of the Brahminical social

order and coated with traditional Hindu vision of community organiza-

tion. This cunningly appropriative scheme projects the modern values

onto their "old glory" and tries to sell their status-quoist program in a

neonationalist package. What V. D. Savarkar wrote to his brother from the

Andamans reveals the foundational thinking of Hindutva:

The Americans need Vedanta philosophy and so does England, for they have

developed their life to that fullness, richness and manliness—to Kshatriyahood

and so stand on the threshold of that Brahminhood, wherein alone the capacity to

read and realize such philosophy can co-exist. But India is not. We are at present

all Shudras and can't claim access to the Vedas and Vedanta We, as a nation, are

unfit for these sublime thoughts, ... Let us study history, political science, science,

economy; live worthily in this world, fulfill the householders' duties and then the

philosophic dawn might come.^100

Echoing his master, Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gan-
dhi, claimed: "I felt that Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would
surely be practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with the armed
forces ... the nation would be free to follow the course founded on reason
which I consider to be necessary for sound nation-building" (italics mine).^101
The Hindutva communal nationalism wants to establish a Western-type
nation through Western instruments (militancy, reason, materialism, and
so forth) and with the Western concept of a unified religion. They would