Najmuddin A. Farooqi.
Understanding contemporary Hindutva requires an examination of India’s complex history, competing ideas of nationhood and the treatment of religious minorities, while recognising that constitutional citizenship not religious identity must remain the foundation of Indian nationalism.
Was Partition solely the result of Muslim separatism, or did competing ideas of nationhood also contribute to the tragedy?
What does M. S. Aney’s 1939 Foreword to Golwalkar’s We or Our Nationhood Defined actually tell us about Hindu nationalism and religious pluralism?
Can an Indian Muslim’s citizenship ever be subject to a test beyond loyalty to the Constitution and the law?
India is a constitutional nation of equal citizens not the possession of any political party or religious community.
The way forward lies not in Hindu domination but in constitutional citizenship, mutual respect and equal belonging.
How far back should one go to understand Hindu social psychology, Sanatan Dharma, Hindu culture, Hindu nationalism and, eventually, the contemporary politics of Hindutva? Should we go back a few decades, several centuries, or even millennia ? There is no easy answer.
The historical journey of the Indian subcontinent is extraordinarily complex. It is marked by periods of coexistence and conflict, accommodation and resistance, cultural exchange and political confrontation. The trajectory is neither linear nor uniform. It has moved through many twists and turns, with periods of remarkable synthesis as well as periods of intense antagonism.
Yet, if we are genuinely interested in understanding the present, we cannot afford to examine only one side of this history. For decades, an enormous amount has been written and spoken about Islam and Muslims often critically, sometimes abusively and, at times, through outright propaganda. Muslims have variously been portrayed as violent, intolerant, anti-national, inherently communal, excessively conservative, polygamous, unhygienic or even inherently sympathetic to terrorism.
Whatever one’s political or ideological position, a serious student of history must ask a simple question: If one side of the story is constantly examined, why should the other side not be examined with the same degree of honesty? That is not an argument against Hinduism, Hindu culture or Sanatan Dharma. It is an appeal for intellectual symmetry. Was Partition only the product of Muslim separatism ? One of the most consequential questions concerns the creation of Pakistan.
The conventional narrative often places almost the entire responsibility for Partition upon Muslim separatism and the Muslim League. There is certainly substantial historical evidence concerning the separatist politics that ultimately contributed to Partition. But a complete historical inquiry cannot stop there. We must also ask whether a hardening Hindu nationalist consciousness had already emerged which found it increasingly difficult to imagine India as a political nation in which Hindus and Muslims could possess an equal claim to the country.
In other words, was Pakistan merely the consequence of Muslim separatism or did competing and increasingly incompatible conceptions of nationhood contribute to the tragedy ? That question deserves examination without fear or favour.
To understand the ideological evolution of Hindu nationalism, one must examine its foundational literature rather than rely merely upon present-day political statements. One particularly revealing text is M. S. Golwalkar’s We or Our Nationhood Defined, published in 1939. Golwalkar’s own preface makes clear that the book sought to establish that India’s “Nation” was the Hindu Nation. He distinguished between the cultural concept of the Nation and the political concept of the State. (Advocatetanmoy Law Library). The book is therefore not merely a historical curiosity. It provides an important window into an early formulation of Hindu nationalist thought. But there is something else in the book that deserves much greater attention: the Foreword written by M. S. Aney.
What did M. S. Aney actually say?
Madhav Shrihari Aney was no insignificant figure. He was a veteran Congress leader, freedom fighter, scholar and public figure. His Foreword to Golwalkar’s book is therefore historically significant in its own right. Aney begins by discussing the meaning of “Nation”, “Nationality” and “Nationalism”, noting that these terms had frequently been used loosely. He traces the evolution of the concept and discusses the writings of Western thinkers on nationalism. His Foreword is substantially a scholarly discussion of nationhood rather than a simple endorsement of every proposition advanced by Golwalkar. (PDF Host)
Indeed, Golwalkar himself acknowledged in his preface that Aney had “candidly expressed where he does not agree with the author.” At the same time, Golwalkar said that Aney had supported, in his view, the principal proposition concerning the Hindu nationhood of Hindusthan. (Advocatetanmoy Law Library)
That distinction is important. Andy’s Foreword should neither be misrepresented as an unconditional endorsement of everything Golwalkar wrote nor ignored because it complicates the contemporary political narrative.
Nation, State and the idea of India. Aney’s discussion also raises a larger philosophical question: what is a nation ? Is a nation essentially a cultural and historical community? Is it created by the State? Can several religious communities constitute one nation? Or must nationality ultimately be rooted in a single cultural or religious identity ? These questions were not merely academic in pre-Independence India. They went to the heart of the political crisis that eventually culminated in Partition.
Aney invokes the idea that the nation, like the family, can be regarded as one of the pillars of civilisation. He argues that progress does not necessarily require the wholesale destruction of institutions and ideas inherited from the past; rather, progress can involve adapting and building upon them. (PDF Host). But the most striking portion of the Foreword comes towards its conclusion. “Aney writes that religious toleration and freedom of faith are essential tenets of Hindu philosophy”.
He then speaks explicitly of the majority and minorities and identifies Hindus, Muslims and other communities as constituents of the country. Most importantly, he says that the political unity of all should be the objective of sincere nationalists whether they follow Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism or another faith. He appeals for forbearance and fellow feeling among communities. (www.slideshare.net)
This is a historically important passage because it demonstrates that even within the nationalist discourse of the 1930s, there existed an argument for a political unity encompassing India’s different religious communities. The continuing contradiction. And this brings us to the central contradiction that deserves examination today. At different times, sections of Hindu nationalist discourse have appeared to speak in different registers about Indian Muslims. Sometimes Muslims are told that they must demonstrate their nationalism. At other times they are told that they must assimilate culturally. At still other times, particularly during periods of heightened political confrontation, Muslims are told explicitly or implicitly that their natural home lies elsewhere. This shifting vocabulary raises an obvious question:
If an Indian Muslim is born in India, lives in India, obeys the Constitution and laws of India and regards India as his or her motherland, on what additional test of nationality should that citizen be required to prove his or her belonging ? And it is in whose authority to test, how and why ?
The question is not directed against Hindu nationalism alone. It is a question about the very meaning of Indian citizenship. The Muslim question should not become a question of permanent suspicion. There is also a tendency to discuss Muslims as though they constitute a single psychological or political category. They do not.
Like Hindus, Muslims are diverse in language, region, class, education, political outlook, social practice and personal belief. They can be conservative or liberal, traditional or modern, politically active or politically indifferent. They can support one political party or another or none at all. To reduce hundreds of millions of citizens to a single stereotype is as intellectually unsound as it would be to reduce Hindus to one political or social personality.
Loyalty to India, respect for the Constitution, observance of the law, rejection of violence and respect for the rights and faiths of others are not demands peculiar to Muslims. They are obligations of every Indian citizen. India belongs to its citizens not to a political party. This distinction has become particularly important in contemporary India.
The government of the day may be led by the BJP, the Congress or any other political formation. But a political party governs the country; it does not own the country.
India belongs constitutionally to its citizens. An Indian Muslim is not living at the mercy of a political party. Nor is an Indian Hindu. Nor a Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, atheist or citizen belonging to any caste, tribe, linguistic or social group. The Constitution does not create first-class and second-class citizens on the basis of religion. Therefore, Indian Muslims need not live with a permanent psychological sense of insecurity or indebtedness. They have the same constitutional citizenship as every other Indian. Their responsibility is the same as that of every other citizen: to respect the Constitution, obey the law, discharge civic responsibilities and contribute positively to the country.
The way forward: The real challenge before India is not to determine which community has a monopoly over patriotism. It is to construct a conception of Indian nationalism broad enough to accommodate India’s extraordinary civilisational diversity. If Hindu philosophy genuinely upholds tolerance and freedom of faith as Aney himself asserted in his 1939 Foreword then that principle must be applied consistently. Likewise, Muslims must recognise that their future and the future of India are inseparable.
Islam, at its ethical core, teaches tolerance, respect for human dignity and peaceful coexistence. Hindu traditions contain equally powerful traditions of pluralism, accommodation and coexistence. India does not need a contest to establish which religion is superior. It needs citizens who are prepared to say: This country belongs equally to all of us.
That should be the starting point of any honest discussion on nationhood, nationalism, Hindutva, Islam and the place of India’s Muslims. And perhaps the most constructive way of revisiting the past is not to ask which community should be blamed for history, but to ask what lessons history gives us for preventing the repetition of its tragedies. I conclude the above article by dedicating a couplet to the Modi government.
اگر بڑھتا رہا یوں ہی یہ سودائے ستمگاری
تمہی رسوا سرِ بازار ہوگے ہم نہیں ہونگے
(Agar badhta raha yun hi ye Saudae Sitamgari / tum hi Ruswa Sare Bazar hoge, hum nahin honge)
