Why Hindus don’t tire of Hindutva

Since Muslims have been projected as those who cannot be truly Indian and, therefore, loyal to India, the majority community feels it is a national duty to mobilise against them

It is always difficult to determine the precise role different factors play behind any party’s victory. Yet the Bharatiya Janata Party’s propensity to deploy Hindutva in every election demonstrates its certitude that a large segment of Hindus will not recoil from the party in revulsion, if not vote for them on this count alone. This is despite Hindutva’s divisive and violent expressions over the last 10 years.

Really, why don’t Hindus tire of Hindutva?

A 2019 Pew Research Centre survey provides a clue. In 30,000 face-to-face interviews, the Pew Centre found that 64 per cent of the Hindus think it is important to be Hindu to be “truly” Indian. Thus, for these Hindus, a non-Hindu cannot be truly Indian.

The implication of this perception was suggested in a survey that the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies conducted for the Indian Muslims Project, an initiative of 50 scholars in India and abroad. Conducted at the polling stations during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the survey found that 26 per cent of the Hindus feel, to varying degrees, that Muslims cannot be as “patriotic as any Indian.” For this significant minority of 26 per cent Hindus, the loyalty of Muslims to India would require repeated affirmation.

Both these views—that only a Hindu can be truly Indian and Muslims cannot be as patriotic as any Indian—date to 1947, as historian Gyanendra Pandey has shown in an article, Can a Muslim be an Indian? Through an analysis of newspapers and speeches of nationalist leaders, Pandey showed that the core of Indian nationalism was assumed to be Hindu. Muslims, in order to belong to India, had to take a loyalty test. They had to because of the assumption that they supported in substantial numbers Jinnah’s demand for Pakistan. The loyalty test, as Pandey showed, involved their readiness to fight, and die, for India in a war against Pakistan.

Yet these tendencies were not normalised, largely because the Nehruvian State articulated ideas and introduced policies reflective of composite nationalism. The Hindu element in Indian nationalism was not given primacy. India belonged equally to all those who wished to be Indian, regardless of their religion.

The State’s slide on composite nationalism began because of Indira Gandhi inventing the Hindu card to fight the 1983 Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir and, subsequently, to counter the militancy in Punjab. The Hindu element in Indian nationalism then acquired prominence, further enhanced because of the Babri Masjid’s locks being opened during the tenure of her successor Rajiv Gandhi.

It was in this context the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was born, culminating in the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya in January. The CSDS poll showed that 59 per cent of the upper caste Hindus and 46.7 per cent of the Hindu Dalits think the Ram Temple “helped in consolidating Hindu identity,” an identity considered necessary by 64 per cent Hindus to be truly Indian, as the Pew survey found. Since Muslims cannot be truly Indian, even eight decades after Independence, they must still take the loyalty test.

But the nature of this test has changed since the post-1947 years. It now involves accepting, without protest, Hindu cultural impositions. These include abstaining from consuming beef, agreeing to Hindutva’s definition of Muslim rulers having been India’s bane, and surrendering medieval mosques to Hindus on the ground that these were built after demolishing temples. This list grows.

Since the Muslim cannot be truly Indian, it becomes legitimate for Hindus to confine him/her to ghettos. Muslims must be expelled from Hindu-dominated villages and urban neighbourhoods for ensuring their security. Muslims must be economically boycotted in order to deprive them of their capacity to plot against India. There must be laws to discourage them from marrying Hindus, for that makes it inordinately difficult to identify those who cannot be truly Indian.

But no less an important aspect is the State’s stoking of Hindu suspicion of Muslims. It is because of the “Practices of the State”, the title of academic Tanweer Fazal’s book, that the Muslim is cast in the mould of one who cannot be truly Indian. S/he is, therefore, the perennial fifth columnist. For instance, the Bangladeshi infiltrator as an ever-present threat to Indians is the State’s creation, present even in Jharkhand, Mumbai and Bengaluru. It is the State that projected Muslim youth leaders as anti-national for protesting against the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act. The culture of vigilantism has flourished in recent years because of the immunity the State is perceived to have granted to vigilantes.

Since those not truly Indian will continue to reside in India, their intent and loyalty will always remain suspect. This requires Hindus to remain on constant vigil, with a quasi-war like mentality, and willingly slip into a state of paranoia, which is perpetuated through the rhetoric and policies of Hindutva leaders. Their paranoia, to them, is a national imperative. Tiring of Hindutva cannot be an option for them. It is symbolically significant that even critics of Hindutva no longer define it as a communal ideology, which it is, but as Hindu nationalism, now considered as a natural state of being by 64 per cent of Hindus.

The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste

Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper

"Exciting news! Mid-day is now on WhatsApp Channels Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!