The Rise of the Hindu Religious Factor in Indian Politics and State Theory

We are living in an age of reaffirmation and revival of religious/national and cultural identities as a reaction to the sweeping onslaught of socio-economic, cultural and technological globalization. In India the demand for a definition of national identity based on Hinduism or on Hindutva (Hinduness) predates the achievement of independence in 1947 and it was gradually reinforced by successive political crises, such as the partition between India and Pakistan, successive wars with Pakistan, the continuing separatist agitation in the Kashmir Valley and the rise of large-scale Islamist terrorism since the 11th of September 2001 if not before. Historically a distinction has been made between Hinduism, as the religion and way of life of more than a billion people in India and in other countries and Hindutva, a cultural ideology and a sociopolitical doctrine which defines a modernized version of Hindu or in broader sense Indic civilisation (encompassing Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and other indigenous minority religions). Many Hindus do not accept the premises or least the political theory of Hindutva whereas Hindutva proponents may not be ‘believers’ in the ritual and theological aspects of Hindu Dharma and may define themselves as sceptics, materialists or atheists. However they conceive of the common Hindu national civilisation and millenary historical heritage as the cement that can bind the country’s diverse people together and they usually reject the ‘secular’ view that India is the home of a composite culture forged out of many domestic and foreign elements and consisting of diverse ethnic groups which were brought together as a nation by British colonization. This paper succinctly retraces the evolution and expansion of Hindu nationalism in the politics of the country and distinguishes between the various nuances of the ideology which is now the source of inspiration for the National Democratic Alliance led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It strives to answer the often asked question: Is India becoming a Hindu State?