How Hindu nationalists imagine Muslim identity

Do not forget that the Hindu nationalists did not accept the creation of Pakistan!

Can the exchange of gifts of warm shawls and sweet mangoes between the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif end the “coldness” and “bitterness” between the two countries? Not so far because deep down Modi’s policies are guided by the ideology of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is an amalgamation of Hindu nationalist parties, therefore, it is important to find out which these parties are but more important is to know what they stand for.

An ideology is a consciously and carefully constructed set of ideas crafted by ideologues, who exercise a significant amount of influence over their followers. Hinduism is ancient but Hindu nationalism is a relatively new phenomenon rooted in the nineteenth century. A major plank of Hindu nationalist ideology rests on the nature of Hindus’ relations with the minorities particularly the Muslims. The challenge to the Hindu nationalist intellectuals was how to understand and explain the issue of Muslim identity in the Indian subcontinent. They had two options: either to accept the Muslims as an integral part of the Indian society or exclude them as a pariah community. As the Muslims could not be considered as an integral constituent of the society, therefore, they were labelled as “the Other”.

Hinduism is ancient but Hindu nationalism is a relatively new phenomenon rooted in the nineteenth century. A major plank of Hindu nationalist ideology rests on the nature of Hindus’ relations with the minorities particularly the Muslims

The “project” of labelling the Muslims as “the Other” was started by the Hindu nationalists in the nineteenth century and the intellectuals that pioneered this “project” were Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Maithilisharan Gupts and Bhartendu Harishchandra. It is easier to embellish such chauvinistic ideas on the impressionist youthful minds so the medium of textbooks was used as a strategic tool for propagating such ideas. The first such textbook of Indian history was written by Tarinicharan Chattopadhyay in 1858. It treated the period of the Muslim rule from the Hindu rule separately to project the Muslim community as “alien rather than a part of the all-India national identity.” It was a deliberate attempt by the Hindu nationalists to label the Muslims as “the Other”, and this was done much before the Muslim intellectuals like Sayyed Ahmad Khan began to assert Muslim separatism through the “Two Nation Theory”. In addition, those individuals that had resisted the Muslim rulers in India such as Prithvi Raj Chauhan, Rana Pratap Singh, Shivaji and Maharaja Ranjit Singh were purposely promoted as the national heroes.

The crafting of the Muslim community as “the threatening Other” was an intellectual construction. An equally daunting task confronting the Hindu nationalists was what to do with the physical presence of millions of Muslims in the subcontinent. Two Hindu ideologues made significant efforts in tackling this “Muslim problem.” One was Dayanand Saraswati, the founder of the Hindu revivalist movement “Arya Samaj”, who started the Shuddhi campaign with the explicit objective to reconvert to Hinduism those Hindus that had converted to Islam. In Modi’s India, today, the much celebrated “Ghar Wapsi” campaign in which Muslims and Christians are made to reconvert to Hinduism in public ceremonies is exactly what the Hindu nationalists did a century ago during the Shuddhi Movement.

The other prominent Hindu nationalist was another Arya Samajist preacher Bhai Permanand, who looked upon the Muslims as a polluting influence on the Hindus. To purify the Hindus of the polluting Muslims, he proposed that the north-western Muslim majority areas beyond Sindh should be separated from India and joined with Afghanistan to form a Muslim state and desired the Hindus living in those Muslim areas to migrate to the Hindu majority areas. Again, the idea of the division of Hindustan on the religious lines into Muslim and Hindu states came from the Hindu nationalists much before the Muslims adopted partition as a goal through the Lahore Resolution in 1940.

The Hindu Mahasabha, the leading voice of Hindu nationalists not only rejected the Lahore Resolution outright but also took a vow to undo Pakistan by reuniting with “holy” India all those areas that were given to Pakistan. To VD Savarkar, the head of the Hindu Mahasabha, India was a “holy land” and all the Indian Muslims were suspects because their loyalties were not with India as it was their adopted homeland rather they were devoted to Arabia and Palestine where their sacred places of worship were. No matter how much the Muslims praised the land of India and declared the subcontinent as their permanent abode, Bhai Permanand remained adamant in his slogan of “Hindustan of Hindus only.”

Do not forget that the Hindu nationalists did not accept the creation of Pakistan! The Rashtriya Sawayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of which the incumbent Indian Premier Modi remained a committed activist for many years observed the Independence Day of Pakistan as the “Day of Mourning” because the creation of Pakistan destroyed the “sacred indivisibility of Bharatmata.”

No matter how many shawls and mangoes are exchanged and how much sugar and onions are traded and whatever number of people-to-people contact delegations are exchanged, the bigoted and injudicious narrative of the Hindu nationalists about the Muslims is difficult to change

The Indian Muslims have made the subcontinent their home for over a millennium, now, and have contributed in many ways to its society and culture. The sun, sea and air of this land are part and parcel of their lives. The Hindu nationalists dismiss these facts of life; instead they look upon Muslims as “imperialists” who colonised their “sacred land” and subjugated its people. Golwalkar, the second president of the RSS publicly declared that at best the Indian Muslims could be considered as “guests” in India, who must return to the lands of their origin and under no circumstances could they be accommodated in India because they were not the “sons of the soil”. He was willing to consider the Muslims as a part of the Hindu nation if they embraced Hindu culture as their culture; Hindi language as their language (mind you the Hindu nationalists look upon Urdu as a monument of the Hindu slavery and in 1944 on the call of Savarkar went to the extent of observing an “Anti Urdu Week from 15 to 22 June) and accepted Ram and Krishna as their ancestors while at the same time the Muslims were expected to condemn Mahmud of Ghazni, Shahab-ud-Din Ghori and Mughal Emperor Babur as the foreign invaders. LK Advani, the top gun of the BJP is also on the record to have publicly urged the Muslims to own and adopt Hindu symbols and mythology and to accept Ram and not Babur as their hero. Another Hindu nationalist outfit, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), the political wing of the RSS went a step ahead by demanding the Muslims to adopt Hindu names, discard “purdah” (veil) and abandon circumcision.

No matter how many shawls and mangoes are exchanged and how much sugar and onions are traded and whatever number of people-to-people contact delegations are exchanged, the bigoted and injudicious narrative of the Hindu nationalists about the Muslims is difficult to change. Ironically, such anachronistic Hindu nationalism has grown and flourished in a society which boasts to be a secular democracy for over half a century, now. Instead of being rejected for their retrogressive ideas by the society at large, the Hindu nationalists have gained strength with every passing day and are ruling India, today. The paucity of space restricts a detailed discussion; however, those interested in an in-depth analysis of Hindu nationalism may consult the recently published research of Muhammad Mujeeb Afzal entitled “Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian Muslims.”