Faults in Savarkar's Hindutva History

Faults in Savarkar’s Hindutva History

Census reports by Britishers found the Depressed classes eating beef if in Muslim majority areas and avoiding beef if in Hindu majority areas.

Born in 1883, present day Maharashtra, Savarkar studied law in London (1906). Influenced by Giuseppe Mazzini (Italian revolutionary) he wrote "The Indian War of Independence, 1857", portraying the uprising as a nationalist struggle, not a “mutiny.” The British banned the book in India and in 1910, he was arrested in London for revolutionary activities and charged with conspiracy to wage war against the Crown.

While in jail, he wrote multiple clemency petitions (1911, 1913, 1917, etc.) requesting release which promised loyalty to the British government if he were released. Thereafter, he was transferred to Ratnagiri Jail in 1921 and released in 1924 under strict conditions i.e. no political activity, no leaving Ratnagiri district without permission.

Personally, he did not believe in God or ritual religion. Rejected the authority of the Vedas emphasizing scientific temper and reason over faith, was a non-vegetarian and openly criticized vegetarianism as weakness. This distinguished him from many Hindu leaders of his era, including Gandhi, who was vegetarian.

Surprisingly, he opposed the Quit India Movement (1942) and instead, promoted the idea of Hindu Rashtra -- a Hindu nation culturally united under Hindu values. He led the Hindu Mahasabha (1937–1943) –was strongly anti-Pakistan, anti-Congress, and anti-Gandhian. In his final years, he adopted what he called “Atmaarpan” (self-willed death): stopped eating and drinking voluntarily, declaring his life’s mission complete and died on 26 February 1966 in Mumbai.

In his works -- Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? and Essentials of Hindutva (1923); he lays out his definition of Hindutva -- the essence of being a Hindu -- which is cultural, territorial, and racial, not strictly religious.

“A Hindu means a person who regards this land of Bharatvarsha, from the Indus to the Seas, as his Fatherland (Pitrubhumi) as well as his Holyland (Punyabhumi).”

·          Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs all qualify -since their holy lands and fatherland are both India.

·          Muslims and Christians do not because their holy lands (Mecca, Jerusalem) lie outside India, even if India is their fatherland.

This is the heart of Savarkar’s cultural nationalism. You don’t have to believe in any specific gods or scriptures to be Hindu. He explicitly says: “The term Hindu had originally a territorial significance... The word Hindu itself is as ancient as our history. Hindustan is the land of the Hindus.” Thus, being “Hindu” is a matter of geography and ancestry, not strictly religion.

Hence, he envisioned India as a Hindu Rashtra; a nation based on the shared culture of those -whose sacred and ancestral geography overlapped. He emphasized pride in Hindu civilization, valor, and unity against what he saw as historical aggressors (Islamic invasions and British colonialism).

Savarkar also denounced caste discrimination and untouchability, viewing them as disunity that weakens the Hindu race. “Caste shall not divide us. We are one in blood, race, and culture.” He proposed a vision of a casteless, virile, unified Hindu society -though he accepted the idea of cultural hierarchy in practice and this is where hypocrisy sneaks in. However, we will discuss the topic of caste later, now let’s break down his concept of strict religious identities.

If we go through Census reports of British India (1881 to 1941); problem of dividing Indian people on basis of strict religious and caste identities is clearly visible. Also, many modern historians (Harjot Oberoi, Richard Eaton, C.A. Bayly, Romila Thapar, and others) have pointed out that Savarkar’s idea of a single, monolithic Hindu identity was anachronistic, because it projected 20th-century nationalist categories backward onto a far more fluid pre-colonial society. Savarkar’s Hindutva presumes:

• India always possessed a continuous, unified Hindu civilization, stretching from the Vedas to modern times.

• This “Hindu race” shared a single culture, ancestry, and sacred geography.

• Religious boundaries were clear -Hindus vs. Muslims vs. Christians.

This fit his political goal: defining a bounded national identity (Hindu Rashtra) similar to European ethnic nations (like Italy or Germany). But historically, this is highly problematic.

As Harjot Oberoi’s The Construction of Religious Boundaries (1994) shows --religious identities in pre-modern India were not rigidly separated. Villages and regions often had shared shrines visited by Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and local sects. Identities were shaped more by caste, region, language, and local cults than by doctrinal allegiance. People moved across traditions -- Sufi saints, Nath yogis, Bhakti poets, and others blurred boundaries. For e.g. The worship of local deities like Satyanarayan, Gugga Pir, or Vithoba involved participation across “religious” lines. At present, Dera of Baba Murad Shah, Nakoder is an appropriate example of this shared belief system. Most of visitors here and similar Deras do not strictly exclude many practices -calling them foreign to their own religion i.e. rituals in such Deras need not adhere to strict Muslim or Hindu or any other formal religion, but are more fluid and open.

Scholars like Nicholas Dirks and C.A. Bayly show that the colonial state reified “Hindu” and “Muslim” identities to manage populations and politics. The British censuses (1881 onward) forced Indians to choose a single “religion.” These categories created mutually exclusive identities that were previously porous. So, the very rigid categories Savarkar uses were in large part products of colonial modernity, not timeless truths.

Moreover, Savarkar’s dual criterion i.e. India as Pitrubhumi (Fatherland) and Punyabhumi (Holyland) assumes that religious identity depends on geography of sacred origins. But in practice, even within “Hindu” traditions, sacred geographies are regionally plural (Kashi, Rameshwaram, Jagannath, Kamakhya, etc.), not unitary and many “folk Hindus” had no connection to Vedic or Sanskritic holy sites at all.

Also, his logic excludes Indian Muslims or Christians even if their families had lived in India for centuries which ignores the historical indigenization of Islam and Christianity in India. It is important to note here that -Sufism has often been considered as ‘not Islam’ by Scholars e.g. Ibn Taymiyyah and sometimes, a division b/w Ba-Shara and Be-Shara is also pointed out e.g. in ‘Kashf ul Mahjub by Ali Hujwiri. This division is clearly visible in present day Pakistan, where we can find people belonging to one sect or associated with one Dera often labelling -the practices of other fellow Muslims as ‘non-Islamic’.

In other words, Savarkar’s definition essentializes religion and ignores the long history of syncretism and localization. Historians like Richard Eaton and Audrey Truschke emphasize that:

• Indian civilization developed through mutual exchange between Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Islamic traditions.

• Architecture, music (e.g. Hindustani classical), language (Urdu, Hindavi), and cuisine all emerged from blended interactions.

Therefore, the idea of a pure, self-contained “Hindu civilization” is a modern construction. By contrast, Savarkar’s Hindutva treats cultural history as a one-directional inheritance of Hindus alone, denying centuries of syncretic creativity.

Indeed, Savarkar’s notion of Hindutva mirrors European ethnic nationalism (like Herder’s Germany or Mazzini’s Italy). He imports modern Western ideas of race, nation, and culture and overlays them on India’s diverse past. And thus, historians criticize this as ahistorical homogenization as it assumes a single “Hindu race,” when India was a mosaic of castes, tribes, sects, and local identities, conflating cultural unity with religious uniformity, which never existed in India.

As Oberoi showed in the Sikh context, religion became a bounded category only under colonial modernity, not before it. The black-and-white categorization by Savarkar and his followers erases the grey zones of real social life that Indian history is full of --by providing a powerful nationalist myth. Savarkar’s Hindutva collapses the beautiful spectrum of India into a single identity and in doing so, replaces history with ideology.

Notes:

Ø  Ibettson, the commissioner of Census 1881, Punjab noted “yet, with the single exception of the caste, no other one of the details which we have recorded is so difficult to fix with exactness [as religion] or needs so much explanation and limitation before the real value of the figures can be appreciated”. In the same report he further continued saying, “But on the border lands where these great faiths meet, and especially among the ignorant peasantry whose creed, by whatever name it may be known, is seldom more than a superstition and a ritual, the various observances and beliefs which distinguish the followers of the several faiths in their purity are so strangely blended and intermingled, that it is often impossible to say that one prevails rather than other, or to decide in what category the people shall be classed”. [Census of India, 1881. Volume XIX. The Punjab and its Feudatories. Part 1. Report on the Census by Ibettson, Provincial Superintendent of Census operations, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, India, 1882]

Ø  Consequently, Punjab experienced a diversity of religious belief systems which defies all categorization envisaged by its colonial masters. Harjot Oberoi argues that religious boundaries in 19th century Punjab were highly flexible. Shrines dedicated to local Pirs, Goddesses and Saints served as shared sacred sites for people of pre-partitioned Punjab irrespective of their religious ties. Punjab’s popular religious culture was a mixture of “miracle saints, cultic practices, spirit possession, magic – all the elements that once made Max Weber speak of an ‘Enchanted’ universe in which modern rationality had not taken hold” and to ‘disenchant’ which the new Sikh leadership launched an influential campaign for Sikh withdrawal from this popular religion. [Harjot Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in Sikh Tradition, Oxford University Press, New York 1994. p.141]

Ø  Observations recorded by Ibettson - ‘the Punjab can show no vast cities to rival calcuta and Bombay, no great factories, no varied mineral wealth. 1891 Census (Punjab & NWFP) mentions that the man who worships Bhairon will generally worship Vishnu, Garur, Devi or a hundered other as well. He may adore Bhairon in the morning and a Devi or some local or general MohammadanPir in the evening. Indeed, not a few returned themselves as ‘worshippers of all Gods’ and it would often be only after some pressure from the enumerator that one or other divinity was selected at random for entry in the schedule. A man who returned himself as a worshipper of Brahm generally means a little more than that, he worships the Supreme God – ‘Parmeshwar ko manta hai’ or ‘Khuda ko manta hai’ – an assertion in which almost all Hindus would join. Five Pandavas, the heroes of Mahabharat were favorite objects of worship in the East and sometimes also addressed as ‘Panj Pir’. [Census of India, 1891. Volume XIX. The Punjab and its Feudatories. Part 1. Report on the Census by E.D. Maclagan, Provincial Superintendent of Census operations, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, India, 1892]

Ø  Most of the Hindu tribes and not a few Musalmans, claim descent from one or other of divine heroes and saints of early Hinduism. Sada-Shiv (great primeval cause) the God that ever was and ever will be; sometimes called by the worshippers as ‘Baba Adam’ (following Musalman terminology). 38,137 of the men who returned their caste at this Census as ‘Jogi’ were Musalmans. Great Propagator of this sect was Gorakhnath which is divided into nine Naths and eightyfour Sidhas (sub-divided into Kanphattas, Oghars, Das etc.). anybody of any caste, even a Chamar, may call himself a worshipper of Sakhi Sarvar and persons of all religions and all castes, more especially the Jats and Jhinwars, are his followers. The Chajju-panthis or Parnami, who burnt their dead but instead of throwing remains in Ganges, they take these to Parnaji in Budhelkhand and bury these. They believe in divine mission of Mohomed, but have no social intercourse with Mohammadans. One of their sacred place is Malik Hans, in Pakpattan, where their sacred book is kept in a kind of temple and called ‘Kul Jama Barup’ which is written in Bhasha and its doctrines are based on mixture of Hinduism and Islam. [Census of India, 1891. Volume XIX. The Punjab and its Feudatories. Part 1. Report on the Census by E.D. Maclagan, Provincial Superintendent of Census operations, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, India, 1892]

Ø  Arbitrary restrictions of term ‘Sikh’ to Kesdharis which had been adopted in 1901 Census was removed in 1911 Census and every person was allowed to call himself the follower of which ever religion he liked. Religion being a matter of profession, it did not appear to be within the competence of enumerators to put down a person as belonging to a religion different to that which he alleges to profess. This circumstance has led to a considerable expansion of the significance of ‘Sikh’ at the expense of ‘Hindu’. The members of ‘Depressed Classes’ i.e. Churhas, Sansis etc. who did not profess to belong to Islam or Christianity were returned as Hindus at three previous Censuses and similar instructions were issued at this Census. Nevertheless, a number of Sansis and Churhas residing in Mohammadan villages were returned (recorded) as Mohammadans and some Churhas living in Sikh villages were entered as Sikhs. However, with reference to the controversy as regards - Sikhs, Jains being Hindus or not; all the four religions of Indian origin viz. Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist were grouped under the head of Indo-Aryan. [Census of India, 1911. Volume XIV. Punjab. Part 1. Report by Pandit Harikishan Koul, Superintendent of Census Operations, Punjab. Printed at the “Civil and Military Gazette” Press, Lahore, 1912. pp.133-137]