Hindutva: The Growth of Violent Hindu Nationalism

1. Hindutva, the RSS and the Sangh Parivar
2. The Sangh Parivar: The Institutional Infrastructure of Hindutva
3. The Effects of Hindutva: Violent Pogroms and the Destruction of the National Fabric

The idea of fascism vividly brings out the conception of unity amongst people... India and particularly Hindu Indians need some such institution for the military regeneration of the Hindus: so that the artificial distinction so much emphasised by the British of martial and non–martial classes amongst the Hindus may disappear… Our institution of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of Nagpur under Dr. Hedgewar is of this kind, though quite independently conceived. I will spend the rest of my life in developing and extending this Institution of Dr. Hedgewar all throughout Maharashtra and other provinces. [57]

This training is meant for qualifying and fitting our boys for the game of killing masses of men with the ambition of winning victory with the best possible causalities (sic) of dead and wounded while causing the utmost possible to the adversary. [58]

• RSS –Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: The core fount of Hindutva Ideology.
  
   

  • HSS: The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh is the US equivalent of the RSS. HSS is registered as a tax-exempt charity in the US, and like the RSS in India, is one of the main proponents of Hindutva in the US. According to one of its flyers, “HSS is started in the USA and other parts of the world to continue what RSS is doing in India.”[59] The RSS website states that the primary purpose of the HSS is to protect the children of Hindu parents from the “vicious propaganda and corrupt conversion techniques of Christians and Muslims”[60]. Note the central concern of diasporic life in this definition is the possible “impurity” of Christian or Isamic influence. Much like the RSS branches in India, HSS also holds physical training exercises and camps, where the Hindutva doctrine is expounded. The structure of the RSS is duplicated in the US, with the Sanghchalak being the highest office bearer in the US.
    
     

• BJP: The Bharatiya Janata Party: This is a political party that participates in electoral politics. It is currently in power in the Indian state of Gujarat, which recently witnessed some of the most gruesome violence against Muslims. At the center in New Delhi, it is the leading member of a coalition that is currently in power.
  
   

  • OFBJP—Overseas Friends of BJP: This is the BJP support group in the US. While it cannot monetarily support the BJP directly from the US, many OFBJP functionaries work with other Sangh operations in the US to propagate Hindutva. In addition, it works to mobilize opinion in Washington D.C and invites BJP leadership from India to the US to meet with the Indian Diaspora.
    
     

• VHP—Vishwa Hindu Parishad: It was formed in 1964 with the explicit purpose of forming an aggressive and an activist wing to promote Hindutva. The first general secretary of the VHP, S.S. Apte, made its goals clear as follows: “It is therefore necessary in this age of competition and conflict to think of, and organize, the Hindu world to save itself from the evil eyes of all three” [all three being Christianity, Islam and Communism]. [61] Since its formation, the VHP has played an aggressive and agitational role in India. It rose to prominence for spearheading from the early 1980s onwards the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that ultimately led to the violent take over and destruction of a 16th century Babri mosque in Ayodhya, India. This mobilization that lasted the better part of a decade was a watershed event in terms of creating new levels of polarization between Hindu and Muslim communities in India. More recently, its international working president, Mr. Ashok Singhal, called the carnage against Muslims in Gujarat a ‘successful experiment’ and warned that it would be repeated all over India [62]. In other words, the VHP, is the core political mobilization unit that is used to create and spread conditions of religious intolerance and violence.
  
   

  • VHP— America : This is the US counterpart of the VHP in India, and is active at two levels – as the VHP of America chapters in large parts of the North East and the South with the primary function of support work for the Sangh in India among the professional Indian diaspora and as a student organization called the Hindu Student Council (HSC) with significant presence on prestigious American university campuses. Its work within the professional Indian diasporic community is essentially both ideological and fund raising. Though it claims to be independent of the VHP itself, this claim is at best a legal/technical claim. In real terms it works actively and in close cooperation with VHP, India. For instance, VHP America’s biggest event to date in the US was the World Vision 2000, a conference organized in Washington D.C. The guest list for that event included nearly every potential luminary in the VHP India hierarchy – from Ashok Singhal to Uma Bharati and Vijaye Raje Scindia. In addition, the VHPA promotes fund collection for a range of Sewa Vibhag activity in India. [63]
    
    The HSC in contrast works primarily with second generation Indian Americans with a project of bringing them under the influence of Hindutva. It does this through multiple levels of ideological work – by organizing mass meetings and readings on campuses on a narrow range of Hindu thought, that is ideologically a perfect fit for Hindutva, (such as Gita readings) and for those who wish to get more involved as a gateway to larger Hindutva operations in the US.
    
     

• Bajrang Dal is the paramilitary wing of the VHP, and was started in 1984 to provide muscle and manpower to the VHP agitations. The Bajrang Dal regularly organizes arms training camps for its members, where it teaches them the use of firearms and trishuls (tridents). According to one of the participants, the training is imparted in order to teach them “how to beat those who do not respect Hinduism.”[64] Bajrang Dal has been at the forefront of recent communal attacks against Christians in the tribal regions, against artists and intellectuals and against Muslims in Gujarat.
  
   

  • HinduUnity.org, a website run from the US claims to be the official website of the Bajrang Dal. This site is a virulent hate-filled site that has already once been yanked by a web-hosting service Addr.com because of the spiteful vitriol that it publishes, and its frequent calls to violence against Muslims. A typical passage from the Website under the pop-up window called Hindu Force is given below as a sample:
    
    “Revenge on Islam must become the sole aim of the life of every Hindu today. Islam has been shedding Hindu blood for several centuries. This is something we should neither forget nor forgive. This sinister religion has been striking at Hinduism for just too long. It is time we resist this satanic force and kick it back into the same pit it crawled out of.”
    
     

• Sewa Vibhag: The Service Wing of the Hindutva Movement is the RSS’s most incoherent structure. However, in its very incoherence lies its ingenuity. The service wing operates through hundreds of organizations spread across the country – many different names and functions – all presented as if they were entirely independent organizations. This proliferation of Sewa Vibhag projects as independent organizations gives an impression of seeming incoherence. However, it is also the most inconspicuous way of placing swayamsevaks distributed across the country and creating entry points for them to do their ideological work. Often it is difficult to place an organization as an RSS Sewa Vibhag operation. It takes systematic matching of organizational trustees with other known RSS operations to establish the links. However, while this is true for a large number of RSS Sewa Vibhag operations, the role of the Sewa Vibhag as an entry point to do the core ideological work of the Sangh creates some long term patterns and institutions. For instance, education offers an effective cover for ideological work and the remaking of identities. Thus many Sewa Vibhag operations are crafted as educational activities. Following such patterns it becomes possible to identify Vidya Bharati as an RSS operation. Similarly, it becomes possible to identify a whole range of organizations that work with tribals (adivasis) as RSS operations because the adivasis are an important target constituency for the RSS. As these multitude of projects are what is the object of funding from the US, in a sense, these organizations of the Sewa Vibhag that do the core work of spreading the ideology of the Sangh are an extremely critical part of this report. Thus two more appendices – F and G – attached to Part 3 of this report (Funding Hate?) are on the Sangh’s work in tribal (adivasi) areas and on the Sangh’s educational work.
  
   

  • India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF): IDRF is the US based funding arm of the Sangh and primarily funds the Sangh through its Sewa Vibhag operations. It is directly connected to Sewa International, the part of the Sewa Vibhag that coordinates international Sewa activity. Sewa International itself operates as the equivalent to IDRF in the UK.

“If the Jaganmohan Reddy Commission on the Ahmedabad riots (1969) and the Madan Commission on the Bhiwandi riots (1970) exposed the Unified Front tactics of the RSS and its political wing, the Jan Sangh, ancestor of the BJP, Justice Vithayathil’s report on the Tellicherry riots (1971) censured the RSS for ‘rousing up’ communal feelings and for ’preparing the background for the disturbances’. Justice Jitendra Narain’s Report on the Jamshedpur riots (1979) censured the RSS supremo M.D Deoras personally for the communal propaganda that had caused the riots. The RSS had held a conference there ‘only four days before the Ram Navami festival (when the riots erupted) and the speech delivered by Balasaheb Deoras contributed their full share in fomenting these communal feelings’. The RSS had created ‘a climate for these disturbances’. The report of Justice P Venugopal of the Madras High Court, on the riots in Kanyakumari in March 1982, found the RSS guilty of fomenting anti-Christian feelings: ‘It has taken upon itself the task to teach the minority their place and if they are not willing to learn their place, teach them a lesson. The RSS has given respectability to communalism and communal riots and demoralise (sic) administration.’ ” [65]

“Between February 28 and March 2, thousands of attackers descended on Muslim neighbourhoods, clad in saffron scarves and khaki shorts, the signature uniform of Hindu nationalist groups, and armed with swords, sophisticated explosives, and gas cylinders. They were guided by voter lists and printouts of addresses of Muslim-owned properties-information obtained from the local municipality… The groups most directly involved in the violence against Muslims include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP), the Bajrang Dal, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that heads the Gujarat state government” [66]

“In testimony after testimony, people identified by name members of the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad involved in inciting and committing violence. The fact-finding team spoke with women activists and victims in the camps about their views on the growing polarization between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Both sets of people linked it to the aggressive agenda of the Sangh Parivar - particularly the Bajrang Dal, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and, in some cases, the Shiv Sena. In the rural context, women directly linked a rise in tension with the establishment of local units of the Bajrang Dal and the VHP. They spoke of meetings organized by these groups, and the arms they distributed at these meetings. Many believe that the tension has really escalated in the last six months.” [70]

Attacks against Christians throughout the country have increased significantly since the BJP began its rule at the center in March 1998. They include the killings of priests, the raping of nuns, and the physical destruction of Christian institutions, schools, churches, colleges, and cemeteries. Thousands of Christians have also been forced to convert to Hinduism.

• Godse’s successful attempt to kill Gandhi was not the first but the sixth attempt on Gandhi’s life by the Hindutva movement [73]. The thesis that Godse was an exception and a misguided young man marginally associated with Hindutva, fades in light of this history of attempts from within the movement.
  
   

• Further, the reaction to the murder of Gandhi within the RSS, was one of open elation – where RSS swayamsevaks were on streets celebrating. Clearly the sentiment was an openly available one within the Sangh. Sardar Patel, the first Home Minister of India, confirmed this in a letter to the RSS supreme, M.S. Golwalkar in a letter dated September 11, 1948, he wrote [74],
  
  “As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji. Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government or of the people no more remained for the RSS. In fact, opposition grew. Opposition turned more severe when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji's death.”
  
   

• Years later, Gopal Godse, one of the co-accused in the Gandhi murder case and Nathuram Godse’s brother, confirmed that both he and his brother were actively involved with the RSS at the time of the assassination. In an interview in 1994, he stated [75]:
  
  “All the brothers were in the RSS. Nathuram, Dattatreya, myself and Govind. You can say we grew up in the RSS rather than in our home. It was like a family to us. Nathuram had become a baudhik karyavah [intellectual worker] in the RSS. He has said in his statement that he had left the RSS. He said it because Golwalkar [the RSS Supremo] and the RSS were in a lot of trouble after the murder of Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS.”