COVER STORY
The Logic Behind the Kashmir Lockdown Another step toward Hindutva’s longed-for Hindu-only India BY ANUBHAV SINGH
K. B. Hegdewar
V. D. Savarkar
T
M. S. Golwalkar
he erasure of Kashmir’s statehood and the unprecedented information lockdown effected on Aug. 5, 2019 [which continues as this magazine goes to print], the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA), the denial of citizenship rights to almost 2 million people in Assam based on the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) and the Indian Supreme Court’s Nov. 9, 2019 Babri Masjid verdict are only few of an alarming sequence of events that signify democracy’s dimming future in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India, currently ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). More than 50 primarily Muslim individuals died in the March 2020 riots in northeastern New Delhi sparked by BJP leaders Kapil Mishra, Deputy Finance Minister Anurag Thakur, BJP parliamentary member Parvesh Verma and State Assembly member Abhay Verma’s incendiary speeches. The riots are another link in the a chain of events signalling India’s relentless descent into an ethnic state where, theoretically, Muslim Indians continue to enjoy constitutional and legal rights similar to the Hindu majority, but in a state whose structures are ethnically dominated by majorly upper caste (savarna) Hindus with a very specific Hindu worldview. To many outside observers, the erosion of India’s democratic and constitutional values seems surprising. Due to its long-standing status as “the world’s largest democracy,” the country has been considered a beacon of secular and democratic values in a region tormented by communal and sectarian violence. However, almost 70 years after independence, Muslim Indians, having been assured of a “secular” state by its founders, now find themselves fighting a battle for survival in which no political party, whether “secular” or “communal,” has sought to draw them into the national political, social and economic mainstream. Muslims and Dalits (“untouchables”) still exist at the margins of India's democratic institutions, and upper caste Hindus dominate the administration, police and military cadres. After the Hindu vote was consolidated in 2014, Muslims began vanishing from the Lok Sabha (the Upper House) and state assemblies. While the 28 ISLAMIC HORIZONS MAY/JUNE 2020
Narendra Modi
Amit Shah
Indian state’s character has been majoritarian for almost its entire existence, the current regime is now facing a crisis of legitimacy as it actively seeks to socially, politically and economically marginalize its most disempowered citizens. To understand why this is the case, we must understand the driving ideology and the organization behind them — Hindutva and the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological parents. K. B. Hegdewar founded the RSS in 1925 to “organize the entire Hindu society from Kanyakumari [southernmost tip] to the Himalayas [northernmost tip].” He developed the shakha (local branches) model, where uniformed volunteers would be given physical and ideological training. The RSS’s immediate inspiration were Mussolini’s Brown Shirts, and its ideology came from V. D. Savarkar, a Maharashtrian Brahmin who devised the idea of Hindutva (pure Hinduness). Savarkar’s seminal “Hindutva: Who’s a Hindu” [originally “Essentials of Hindutva,” 1923], identified Muslims, not the British colonial rulers, as the Hindus’ main enemy. He viewed Muslims as a close-knit community having a pan-Islamic, instead of a nationalist vision, and thus a danger to what he conceived as the real nation — a Hindu Rashtra. This particular concept was derived from the European Westphalian nation-state system and defined mainly along ethnic lines. For Savarkar, Hinduism was just one attribute of “Hinduness,” where “Hindu” was essentially a national identity comprising territorial, racial, geographical and cultural attributes. According to him, Hindus were the descendants of the Aryans who had settled between the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean at the dawn of history. This was his Hindustan – an all-Hindu land defined by a common culture, rituals, social rules, mores and language. Viewing Sanskrit as “a language par excellence” and a reference point for all Indian languages, he demanded that either it or Hindi, its close cousin, be proclaimed the “national language.” Hindustan’s minorities, namely, Muslims and Christians, were the threatening “Others,” for Hindustan was their Pritubhumi
