Hindus have a problem with reality.  As independent Hindu writer Siva Prasad Ray (Turning of the Wheel, A. Ghosh, Houston/Calcutta 1985) has observed, Hindu polemicists, especially Gandhians, are expert at interacting with a partner without the latter knowing about it.  They merely impute feelings and opinions to the partner without checking what these are in reality.  With that self-deception, it is easy to maintain fictions like the Gandhian mantra of "Hindu-Muslim unity", or likewise, the RSS characterization of Indian Muslims as "Mohammedi Hindus".

Savarkar, Hinduness and the Aryan Homeland

Dr. Koenraad Elst

1. The Hindu monologue

Hindus have a problem with reality.  As independent Hindu writer Siva Prasad Ray (Turning of the Wheel, A. Ghosh, Houston/Calcutta 1985) has observed, Hindu polemicists, especially Gandhians, are expert at interacting with a partner without the latter knowing about it.  They merely impute feelings and opinions to the partner without checking what these are in reality.  With that self-deception, it is easy to maintain fictions like the Gandhian mantra of "Hindu-Muslim unity", or likewise, the RSS characterization of Indian Muslims as "Mohammedi Hindus".

This tendency extends beyond the field of Hindu-Muslim conflict and beyond the Gandhian movement, affecting seemingly hard-nosed Left-secularists and Hindutvawadis as well.  Thus, in the early days of debate on the Aryan invasion theory (AIT), and even now though to a lesser extent, many Hindu AIT critics claim that "Western scholarship has discarded the fantasy of an Aryan invasion long ago",-- a case of pure wishful thinking, for most Western scholars still stand by the AIT and many haven't even heard yet that it is being challenged.  Or likewise in the demography debate, Hindus who could easily have made their point about Muslim demographic aggression using the true figures and trends, nonetheless resort to imaginative false claims involving third parties, e.g. "the WHO has predicted that Muslims will be a majority in India by 2010" or so.

This tendency is equally in evidence in secularist discourse.  The secularists may be lacking in the virtues of Hinduism, but they certainly share in its vices.  In their case, true to type, this tendency to deal with merely imagined attitudes of the Other is mostly in an adversarial mode: falsely attributing positions to the Hindus all the better to demolish them.  However, contrary to the ordinary "straw man" technique of debate distortion, the point here is that most secularists really believe their own misconstruction of the Hindu position.  The main reason for this is that from their comfortable power position they disdain to take the trouble of actually acquainting themselves with their opponents' views.  They merely start from a very general summary of "the" Hindutva viewpoint, mostly already a caricature, and then "deduce" all the supposed Hindutva positions on specific topics.

A case in point is the secularist understanding of Veer Savarkar's views of Hinduism and of the AIT.  According to Parsha Venkateshvara Rao jr. (April 6, 2003, "Lord Parekh, Savarkar and the idea of India", http://www.newindpress.com/sunday/sundayitems): "[Lord Bhikhu] Parekh has identified three clusters of people and their idea of India.  In the first, which he has called the 'Hindu' or 'Hindutva' school, he has included Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Sri Aurobindo and Veer Savarkar.  He admits that there are many differences among the individual thinkers, but he groups them together under a general rubric because of the dominant idea of each cluster.  The 'Hindutva' cluster emphasises the pre-eminence of Hindu culture as a defining feature of India. (*) But there are problems with Parekh's thesis because of the 'clusters' he has established. (*) For example, his inclusion of Savarkar along with Tilak and Sri Aurobindo poses acute problems.  The idea of Hinduness as expounded by Tilak and Sri Aurobindo is philosophical and spiritual.  Secondly, Tilak is one of the distinguished proponents of the original home of the Aryans being outside India, which is to be found in his two books, Orion and The Arctic Home of the Vedas.  The Hindutva school, as we know it today, argues that the Aryans were the natives of the country."

We shall see that this version of the facts stems from an eagerly cultivated secularist caricature of Hindutva, not of a genuine acquaintance with Hindutva doctrine as propounded by Savarkar and his successors.  We will first take up the second point, viz. about the Aryan invasion theory (AIT), and then consider the general point about the "spiritual" definition of "Hinduness".