Hindu Civilizationism: Make India Great Again

Abstract

Hindu civilizationism is more than a century old phenomenon that has been steadily gaining strength. Its recent amalgam with populism has made it ascendant, popular, and mainstream in India. This paper explores how Hindu civilizationism is not only an essential part of the Hindutva and BJP’s narrative but also the mainstay of several government policies. The “other” of the BJP’s populist civilizationist rhetoric are primarily Muslims and Muslim civilization in India and the aim is to make India “vishwaguru” (world leader) again after 1200 years of colonialism. The evidence of this heady mixture of civilizationism and populism is numerous and ubiquitous. This paper analyzes topics such as Akhand Bharat, the golden age, denigrating Mughals, Hindutva pseudoscience, and Sanskrit promotion to highlight the evidence.

Article

1. Introduction

Civilizationism uses a religio-civilization classification of people to define national identity. Territorial nationalism is deemphasized as the nation is imagined beyond national boundaries. Citizens, who are considered part of the civilization-nation based on religion, are asked to defend or save their civilization which is considered under threat. The state becomes a means to achieve the objective which is civilizational longevity and success.

This civilizational rhetoric has become more common as populist leaders around the world have used it to attract voters who are dissatisfied with the dominant ideologies and established mainstream parties. Numerous authors have pointed out how rightwing populist European parties and leaders defined self and the other not in national but in broader civilizational terms. Christian civilization, Christian heritage, or Judeo-Christian civilization and traditions are considered in crisis and under threat from Islam and Muslims. The “patriots” are told they have only two choices, act or go extinct (Brubaker 2016, 2017; Kaya and Tecmen 2019; Ozzano and Bolzonar 2020; Yilmaz and Morieson 2021; Marchetti et al. 2022).

Populism is generally considered a thin ideology that attaches itself to rightwing or leftwing ideologies to give coherence, strength, and program to its rhetoric. Yilmaz and Morieson (2022a) have identified civilizationism as another thick ideology that populism attached itself to. Civilizationism, for them, is an idea that divides and categorizes people based on “civilizations” that are primarily based on religion. This is different from the usual division of people based on nations and populists’ framing of “the people” as people of a country.

Hindu civilizationism, like in many other countries, is closely associated with rightwing nationalism and populism. Hindutva (literally Hindu-ness) is a popular political ideology that defines Indian values and nationalism primarily in terms of Hinduism and Hindu civilization, lays claim that only Hindus have the right to rule in India, and aims to replace a secular Indian constitution with a Hindu state (Hindu Rashtra). Hindutva political parties, organizations, and social movements raised the flag of civilizationism before Indian independence in 1947, and more than a century later, they are still its torchbearers. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is just the latest and most successful of the political rightwing conservative organizations. In terms of making Hindu civilizationism popular, the BJP plays second fiddle to almost a hundred-year-old Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a militant Hindutva organization.

Hindu civilizationism, therefore, is not a new phenomenon. It started as part of Hindu revivalism in the early 19th century. Hindu revivalists, such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the founder of Brahmo Samaj, wanted to reform Hinduism and Hindu society so that it could rise above the social evils and iniquitous rituals and regain its position as a great civilization. Later, in the last century, civilizationist organizations were formed whose main objectives were political even when they were not working as a political party. For a long time, from the 1940s to the 1970s, these organizations and the political parties they supported remained unpopular. However, civilizationists started winning elections at the state level in the 1980s and won national elections in the late 1990s. They ruled India under Prime Minister Vajpayee (1999–2004) but as they did not have the majority of Lok Sabha seats, they were always dependent on other parties and could not fully implement their agenda. The second decade of the 21st century brought a sea change in their fortunes as, like many rightwing civilizationists in other countries, they discovered an affinity between their ideology and populism. The embrace of populism under Prime Minister Modi made them the supreme political force and, currently, Hindu civilizationism is the dominant ideology in India. PM Narendra Modi has trounced the opposition in the 2014 and 2019 national elections and he is by far the most popular leader in India, most likely to win the 2024 national elections (Pradhan 2022).

Modi riding a chariot reminiscence of ancient Hindu Gods, Avatars, Rajas and Hindu civilization

Source: Narendra Modi Twitter

During the last decade, Hindu civilizationism rhetoric has been rising steadily, with the support of populism. The people-elite divide of populism has been used to discredit the Congress Party and Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Similarly, the people-outsider divide, another regular feature of populist politics, was used to declare Hindus as the only original inhabitants of India and Muslims and Christians as outsiders. Fear, threat, and crisis were used by Modi, like other populists, to force ordinary Hindus to be afraid (Hindu khatray main hai: Hindus are in danger) and act as advised by Modi. Finally, Modi’s image as the only strong, decisive leader in India was carefully crafted, as in the case of many other populist leaders, to sway voters (Modi hai to mumkin hai: If there is Modi, then it is possible) (Sinha 2021; Saleem 2021; Saleem et al. 2022; Yilmaz and Morieson 2022b).

The othering of Muslims and other political forces as anti-nationals and non/fake Hindus is increasing in India. Hinduism has been presented as under threat from Muslims despite Hindus being close to eighty percent of the Indian population. Indians are being made to believe that Muslims and Westerners are again plotting to subjugate Hindus as they did many times during the previous twelve hundred years. The BJP has achieved what was unimaginable a few decades ago (Varshney 2019; Amarasingam et al. 2022).

However, it must be clear that Modi is not more civilizationist than previous civilizationists. The key difference between Modi and Hindu civilizationists of the 1960s and 1970s is the degree of populism, not the degree of civilizationism. Like Modi, Hindu civilizationists of the 20th century were also talking about Akhand Bharat, the golden Vedic age, oppressive Muslim/Mughal invaders, superiority of Hindu civilization, and Sanskrit promotion. Hindutva party manifestos of Hindu Mahasabha and Bharatiya Jana Sangh give ample evidence of civilizationalism (Saleem 2021). Populists are quite successful in the use of transnational solidarity today due to a number of reasons, such as revolution in information and communication technologies, globalization, increase in economic inequality and distrust in democratic institutions in numerous countries, rise in ethnic/religious attachments with the concurrent decline in liberalism, etc. However, they were not the first ones to use transnational solidarity. For instance, between 1987 and 1989, during the Ram Mandir movement, hundreds of thousands of bricks were donated for the eventual construction of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. These bricks were donated in response to a campaign by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindutva organization. The Ram Mandir movement and VHP campaign were pro-Hindutva and Hindu civilizationist. They were also transnational as bricks for the mandir were donated not only by people living in India but also by people of 55 other countries of the world (Udayakumar 1997; Hindustan Times 2021)....

In the following section, the prominence of Hindu civilizationism in present day India and Hindutva leaders’ consistent efforts to prove the grandeur and glorious achievements of Hindu civilization will be shown. The section will also demonstrate how Hindu civilizationism is being promoted by denigrating Muslim civilization and its achievements. Most of the papers on civilizationism focus on Christian-majority and Muslim-majority countries. This paper analyzes civilizationism in India, a Hindu-majority country. The key theoretical contribution of this paper is that it presents the evidence that civilizationism as a concept is as applicable and functional in a Hindu majority country as it is in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim majority countries.

Rest of the article can be read here.

Civilizationist Populism in South Asia: Turning India Saffron

Bajrang Dal Rally

Source: The Hindu

Abstract:

 The 21st century has witnessed a significant shift in how the concept of nationalism is understood. A political marriage between identity politics and populism has resulted in “civilizationism,” a new form of nationalism that entails an emotionally charged division of society into “the people” versus “the Other.” All too often, the divisive discourses and policies associated with civilizationalist populism produce intercommunal conflict and violence. 

This paper draws on a salient case study, India’s Hindutva movement, to analyze how mainstream populist political parties and grassroots organizations can leverage civilizationist populism in campaigns to mobilize political constituencies. In surveying the various groups within the Hindutva movement and conducting a discourse analysis of their leaders’ statements, the paper shows the central role of sacralized nostalgia, history, and culture in Hindutva populist civilizationism. By analyzing the contours and socio-political implications of civilizationist populism through this case study, the paper contributes to the theoretical understanding of the concept more generally.

Read the paper at European Center for Populism Studies website

Role of Hindi journalism in fanning religious hatred during and after Babri Mosque destruction

Krishna Pratap Singh, who is from Faizabad district where Babri Mosque was located, tells the reader how responsible, factual and courageous journalism was thrown out and fake, malicious and communal karsevak journalism was embraced by many reporters and editors in the Hindi belt in the late 1980s. The Babri Mosque affair was especially affected by this fake print and later electronic journalism. Covering the VHP’s rath yatra from Sitamarhi to Ayodhya in December 1992 was Krishna's first assignment and he witnessed not only the destruction of the three domes of the Babri Mosque but also of his positive views about his profession. Following is an excerpt from his article on the role of journalism in fanning hatreds:

Maybe one should put it down to naïveté for thinking that that the job of a journalist, even in such dire times, was to be a ‘watchdog of the people’: to be an advocate of understanding an issue as it really is and presenting it as such; to cultivate a distance from the lure of gains and trickery; and with a habit of upholding moral and progressive values in life. It was painful to think that journalists, instead of giving a factual account of situations and events, could go to the extent of concocting them in the interest of an insular, communal group and be willing to work as their instrument.

To journalists like me, the very attraction of the world of journalism lay in the fact that one could constructively question the distortions abounding in the world – what makes the world such a heartless place; why, despite ceaseless efforts, is it not improving and, moreover, who are the people whose machinations are preventing it from straightening itself. 

One witnessed journalists afflicted by communal and professional vested interests immersing themselves in the manoeuvres of the VHP and BJP, hawking their point of view as a ‘truth’ that was far more dangerous and toxic than any falsehood. Since I had no right over them to subject them to my questions, I would ask myself those very questions: in a pluralistic society such as in India, when some people gather belligerent crowds in the name of religion, use the very provisions of democracy to raze it, give it a bad name; spare neither the constitution nor its values; and are intent on dressing up animosity as consciousness and intolerance as a fundamental principle of life, what is the duty of journalists in such a situation? Should they break all professional limits to be tolerant towards such people, egg them on? If so, wouldn’t they themselves become participants in furthering the cynical game of intolerance?

Source: The Time When Hindi Journalism Turned Into ‘Hindu’ Journalism 

Krishna acknowledges that there were journalists that did not report as karsevaks or to increase circulation but they were few:

It was not as if there were no voices of resistance against the prevailing state of affairs; just that they were confined to being voices in the wilderness.

I vividly recall one incident in 1990 when Vishwanath Pratap Singh was the prime minister and Mulayam Singh the UP chief minister. During a commotion masquerading as ‘kar seva’ on November 2, when as per the reports of Hindu journalism ‘Ayodhya was bathed in blood’, I was working in the editorial section of the daily Janmorcha, published from Faizabad. Several news agencies had set up temporary bureaus in the Janmorcha office located in the heart of the city.

Immediately after the police firing on the kar sevaks, one news agency started putting out inflated figures of casualties. When a correspondent of a rival news agency received a call from a flustered head office anxious not to be ‘left behind in the race’, he sarcastically replied, “I have given you the accurate figure of kar sevaks killed in police firing. As for the rest of the so-called casualties, you also know when and how the news agency in question killed them. But if you insist, I will try to find out once again. Although, if you wish to raise the number of casualties please send some guns. I myself will kill some to arrive at a figure that surpasses the rival news agency. But if an incident results in five casualties, don’t expect me to inflate the number to 15.” The phone conversation swiftly terminated on the other end.

The floodgates of self-control could not be maintained for long. In their rivalry to outdo the competition, the things journalists and newspapers did to sensationalise news by inflating the figure of kar sevaks killed in the firing is well-known. The conventional belief among ordinary people was that journalistic publications always underreported casualty figures, saying five had been killed when in fact the actual number would be 15. The police firing on the kar sevaks put paid to this innocent belief. Journalists busied themselves in cooking up ever more deaths adhering to the motto ‘if not real, fake will do’.

The article The Time When Hindi Journalism Turned Into ‘Hindu’ Journalism was published on the 25th anniversary of Babri Mosque destruction.

BJP's cow cabinets, cow ministries and cow departments to create cow-friendly ecosystem

Cow protection is a controversial but old issue in India. Under the British Raj, some sections of Hindu society pleaded for laws to prevent the slaughter of cows in India. After Independence, there was more pressure and so the rationalist and socialist Nehru agreed to introduce cow-protection in the Directive Principles of State Policy. The Article 48 of the Indian Constitution declares, “The State shall endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and other milch and draught cattle.”

Cow protection has achieved prominence since Prime Minister Modi took control of the national government in 2014. There have been new laws, the extension of quondam bans and public lynchings to protect cows. Hard-line Hindu organizations, like Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, trans. World Hindu Council) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, trans. National Volunteer Organization), have long campaigned for cow protection and cow protection was one of their major demands from the BJP (along with building of Ram Mandir (where once Babri mosque stood) and legislation for a common civil code).  Currently, the BJP's popularity and control of the national government and many state governments have made the once unthinkable, possible.

In January 2014, the state government of Rajasthan, belonging to the BJP, decided to set-up a separate ministry for the protection and preservation of cows. Cow protection was part of the BJP manifesto for the December 2013 state elections and it has been part of the BJP national program and overall Hindutva agenda, so it was not surprising but still a first. Previously, leaders of many Indian states have come up with cow protection laws that impose a fine or prison term for not only the killing of cows/cattle but also for transporting them to the slaughter houses. However, there was no department/ministry for cows (See India’s First Ministry for Cows). It was the Gujarat state that had the distinction of establishing the first Gopalan Department in India. The name Gopalan comes from Hindu religion. Lord Krishna was the eighth avatar of Vishnu (one of the principal deities in Hindu religion) and a supreme Hindu god in his own right. According to the legend, he was a cow herder and one of his names was Gopala which means “the protector of the cows.” 

Source: http://hindutva.info/lord-krishna-and-holy-cows/

The vision-mission of the new Gopalan Department is "To improve State's cow wealth so in near future cow rearing will emerge as a major economic activity offering immense employment opportunities."

The objectives of the department are:

Encourage Research to popularize use of Panchgavya.

Gaushala Development and conservation, up-gradation and improvement of cattle in gaushalas.

Value Addition of Cattle Products through processing.

Regulation of temporary Migration or Export of Cattle.

Fodder Management during Scarcity.

Registration of Gaushalas and their development towards self-sufficiency. (See Directorate of Gopalan)

After the establishment of Gopalan department in Rajasthan, there was a fear that other BJP-ruled states would follow suit but it did not happen, although some states increased sentences for cow slaughter and cow trafficking. For instance, Gujarat made the slaughter of cows punishable with life imprisonment in March 2017.

Now (September 2017), there is a talk of a national ministry of cows. Perhaps this new initiative was the result of the India's Supreme Court's suspention of a newly passed national law that banned the sale of cattle for slaughter nationwide (See India Supreme Court suspends cattle slaughter ban).

The push for a national ministry has come from hard-line Hindu organizations. It was reported that the VHP would petition Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Utter Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath for cow ministries at the center and the states. VHP’s Ayodhya-based spokesman Sharad Sharma said, “The issue of cow protection has always been dear to us. Now, we expect a dedicated ministry to support and boost an entire cow-friendly ecosystem.” Responding to questions about the VHP suggestions, BJP chief Amit Shah said, “Various suggestions have come. Discussions are on” (See VHP to push for separate cow ministry at the Centre and states).

Angshukanta Chakraborty has written a scathing critique of the impending decision (See No, Modi government. Cow ministry is ridiculous)

But a Union cow ministry for the whole of India? Is it really that unthought-of, given the broad tendencies that the Modi government has been displaying with brazen aggression, perfectly in line to promote and deliver by 2019 the dreamed-of goal of turning India into a Hindu Rashtra?

We have seminars on cow urine, dung being organised in hallowed institutions such as the IITs. IIT Delhi, last year, had a three-day seminar on the fabled anti-cancer properties of panchagavya, the concoction comprising cow dung, urine and other bovine derivatives. As we had said on DailyO then, it’s one thing to chance upon the anti-cancer properties, if any. It’s simply quite another to steer the whole course of research at a publicly-funded premier technology institute.

But again, not unexpected. Because we have a bevy of ministers and BJP leaders singing paeans to cow urine, including Nitin Gadkari, who wanted hospital floors to be washed with cow urine, to Devendra Fadnavis, and the latest joinees Shaina NC and Meenakshi Lekhi.

The logic behind cow ministry is all the more shrouded in mystery (beyond the usual political trappings) given we already have a National Institute of Animal Welfare, the Animal Welfare division under the Ministry of Environment and Forests. We have the Animal Welfare Board of India. In addition, we have the department of animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. The rationale behind a cow ministry – not a cattle or livestock ministry – is unavailable, when not viewed through a highly saffronised cow protection-tinted lens.

Then why the sounding out of the BJP-led Centre’s plans of setting up a cow ministry? The historian Mukul Kesavan writes: “The cow is so totemic for the BJP that the murder of human beings in this animal's cause makes responsible leaders resort to silence, deflection, denial, defensiveness or arguments in mitigation that would shame the moral sense of a three-year old.” ...

In the new scheme of things, the gau rakshak is on the same pedestal as the soldier, and is therefore unchallenged in the nationalist pecking order. And even as PM Narendra Modi gently admonishes the fake gau rakshaks in his speech and tweets, after a highly impactful #NotInMyName protest in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar against Junaid’s murder, he nevertheless ensures the fake gau rakshaks are regularly confused for the good gau rakshaks, thereby making justice beyond reach for those at the receiving end of the cow zeitgeist.

Exactly as the foreign press writes disparagingly of the India story, calling Modi a “constant tinkerer”, “not much of a reformer”, ridiculing “Modi’s strongman economics”, repeatedly underlining that foregoing the economics of a secular, tolerant India would be tantamount to an economic downward spiral, such bitter pills are being spat out with the newfound arrogance of this fast becoming bovine theocracy such as ours. Only the cows themselves have little to gain from the politics in their name.

The ministry is still a suggestion and it may remain so for a long time but Hindu nationalism is definitely increasing as a separate ministry for cows is primarily based on Hindu religion. A separate ministry is also justified and considered necessary to:

• Increase milk production;
• Save several Indian cow breeds that are near extinction;
• To save cattle/cows from cruelty;
• To save Gou Mata (mother cow) that is the symbol of life in Indian culture.

But all these reasons camouflage the real reason, which is the rise of the religious right and religious nationalism. The irony is that despite all the laws, bans and lynchings, India is still the largest exporter of beef. Most of the beef is of buffalos but it is still beef:

Despite the various bans, India is the world’s largest exporter of beef, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. India exported 2.4 million tons of beef last year, compared with 2 million tons by Brazil. India alone accounts for nearly 24% of global beef exports. (See Why an Indian Hindu Group Wants a Ministry of Cows?)

Previously, The Haryana state, under a BJP government, established Haryana Gau Seva Aayog ( Haryana Commission for Serving Cows) in 2010 after passing The Haryana Gau Seva Aayog Act, 2010. The main objective was to oversee the strict implementation of laws that prohibit the slaughter and/or cruelty to cows. 

In November 2020, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan established a Cow or Gau Cabinet. It consists of six departments and five ministers, all suppose to work together for the "conservation and welfare of cows".