Why Rahul Gandhi’s Recent Attacks on Hindutva are Ill-Advised and Problematic

Every time Congress dynast Rahul Gandhi stabs his metaphorical knife at Hindutva, he drives it into the very concept of Hindu. Because Hindu and Hindutva are one and the same. Hindutva is the state or quality of being a Hindu. It is basic Sanskrit grammar. What ‘asti’ (Sanskrit for ‘to be’) is to ‘astitva’ (existence), great is to greatness, the word Hindu is to Hindutva.

Hindutva is merely the state or quality of being a Hindu.

The term was first used by Chandranath Basu, a forerunner of economic nationalism in Bengal, in his 1892 book, Hindutva: Hindur Prakrito Itihaash (Hindutva: The Real History of Hindus). Its origin is widely and wrongly attributed by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a truly liberal and progressive icon of the Indian freedom movement whom today’s ‘liberals’ hate.

There are several reasons why Rahul Gandhi’s recent attacks on Hindutva are ill-advised and problematic.

One, it deeply insults Hindus. Hindutva has the word Hindu semantically and intrinsically built into it. It is not a separate extremist ideology, as Rahul is trying to paint it.

His party colleagues like Salman Khurshid have gone on to compare Hindutva with the ideology of the world’s most depraved terrorist organisations like the Islamic State and Boko Haram. Public memory is not too short to forget that the same Congress had coined the term ‘Hindu terror’ as a false equivalence with Islamist terror without being able to prove any of the charges in court.

Also, when Rahul portrays Mohandas Gandhi’s killer Nathuram Godse as the icon of Hindutva, he kills two very useful birds with one stone. He stands to alienate those who lead the Hindu way of life and relate to the term Hindutva. He also stands to legitimise Godse in a warped, oblique way.

Second, while Rahul keeps punching Hindutva, he never condemns any act of violence as Islamic or Islamist. It just confirms that the Congress’ secularism remains hollow, dangerous minority-ism.

Third, the Congress has moved so far from the central faith of this land that Rahul has to feebly reinforce at every rally these days that he is a Hindu. The Indian voter is intelligent. Such things get registered in the collective psyche.

Fourth, the timing of Rahul’s attack on Hindutva could not have been more wrong. On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided over a spectacular show of Hindu civilisational pride by inaugurating the Kashi Vishwanath temple corridor, calling out the genocidal Islamist terror of Emperor Aurangzeb who had demolished Kashi’s Vishweshwar temple in 1669 to build the Gyanvapi mosque. Rahul’s targeting of Hindutva stands in greater contrast now.

Fifth and last, even if Hindutva has a political aspect, what is wrong with it? Which religion doesn’t?

Islam is acutely political and often violently so, and runs a strict decree over more than 50 countries. Twenty-one nations including England, Greece and Iceland have Christianity as their state religion, many more like the US run on Christian ethos despite being a secular state. Jews have their homeland and protect it fiercely against enemies. Why can’t Hindus be political, fight for their rights, ensure the sanctity of their culture, geography and demography? And what is sacrilegious about Hindus asking for a Hindu nation?

Rahul Gandhi’s grip on India’s spiritual and cultural ethos is tenuous. His understanding of the resurgent Hinduness seems even more so.

The author is a senior journalist. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.

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