India: A Civilizational Perspective

39 min readSep 21, 2021

NOTICE: In the hallowed quest of protecting the frail emotional-intellectual constitutions of those, who may feel enslaved by the weight of those missiles of historical accuracy which may glaciate their rose-perfumed sauna of quixotism, the moderation of this august site has deleted my answer that ventured a compendious assessment of Hindutva, in response to the question “What is Hindutva?” Intransigent as I am in this regard, however, I proceeded to rewrite the answer in its entirety, and that I have produced here, too.

PROLOGUE

An eremitic ‘saint’ who lived in various places of Uttar Pradesh for three-and-a-half decades until his death on 16 September 1985, once remarked that the greatest misfortune of the Indian civilization, was that it birthed no military seer after Chanakya, who lived twenty-three centuries ago. Over the course of a millennium-and-a-half, Bhāratvarsha steadily descended from its noontime, to increasing atrophy, indolence and loss of confidence. The soul of this civilization, namely the Hindu religion, decomposed into a nightmare of caste stratification, and hindered social progress.

15 August 1947 signalized, it appeared, a long awaited end to foreign tyranny, and our subservience. We could finally, it was thought, revive our lost intellectualism. Such hopes, however, were crushed as soon as they were expressed. In a manner of supreme irony, it was possible for such nationalist approaches to history as were taken by Sir Jadunath Sarkar and Sri Aurobindo, such scholarly approaches to Hinduism as were taken by Swami Vivekananda, in the days of the peremptory British Raj; but the government of a supposedly free India, ardently ensured that such endeavours would not be rewarded. R.C. Majumdar, Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel wrote copiously, but were never acclaimed as historians by the blinkered, deracinated establishment. The government saw itself as distant from the masses, heritors of the British Raj, and in the guise of post-colonialism, employed very much the same paradigms, as did the British, in understanding India — not as a nation but an amalgamation of warring castes and religions. Of greater irony was the fact that, while the Hindu temple as a physical structure was often demolished by the despots of Islamist rule, the same as an institution was nonetheless secure, but while the Hindu temple as a physical structure was often secure in a supposedly free India, the same as an institution progressively enfeebled, as the avaricious arms of the state seized temples galore.

The intellectual atrophy of the Hindu religion was complemented with a deplorable state of military preparedness, as the virus of fanatic non-violence seemed to infect the masses and the government. Author Anuj Dhar, famous for his long years of research on freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose, has narrated instances of the government of a supposedly free India, by vice of its lunatic idealism, having sought to reduce the strength of the Indian Armed Forces, notwithstanding portents of a bellicose China, and the extant threat of that purposeless entity called Pakistan, from men of considerable prescience. He mentions an instance of one of the presidents of India, an office regarded as that of the commander-in-chief of the Indian Armed Forces, himself writing to the Prime Minister, that the reduction of military strength is a desirable kalash atop the metaphorical temple of global non-violence that India had ventured to build. None seemed to care about such trivialities as national security, lest their divine occupations of being prophets of non-violence, successors to Gandhi, be troubled by the increasing burden of conscientious pragmatism. Anuj Dhar is candid in his acerbic gratitude to China, for having rudely stabbed the lunatic Indian state in 1962, with the welcome sabre of reality, thereby inflicting an ignominious defeat on India, for it is only then that the pathological disdain for the Armed Forces seemed to greatly if not wholly abate.

The independent nation evinced, therefore, not much of a welcome change. Suspicions abound to date, that in seventy years of independent India, there have been far the more numerous atrocities by the police forces, than the number that sullied this land, though not the conscience of the British, if there ever was one, in the noontime of its inglorious empire.

But the spark of that confidence and pertinacity, which hails from an appreciation of a great heritage, a past of military and cultural eminence, and a mind cognizant of a responsibility to defend it, has ever been latent, never to fully die. Much of its intellectualism may have dissipated, much of its once prevalent valour having been only a faint memory, but a memory it certainly remained to be cherished by a few, and it has on many an occasion, manifested to defend this civilization, for all its faults one of the richest abodes of wisdom, from the grotesque sword of barbarism.

That spark, which while gathering much momentum after India’s administrative independence in 1947, seems now to have evolved into a nationally welcome contagion, is popularly known as Hindutva. In its vitals flow a perdurable pride and respect for our potential; a cognizance that our history commenced not in 1947 but millennia ago; the firm acceptance that we need be obsequious to none, and the conviction that no degree of misinterpretation, deliberate or otherwise, could sully this axiomatic fact.

This nationally welcome contagion, while for long latent and occasionally potent, may be said to have been invigorated with the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections, which, in more ways than one, significantly altered India. A party not in alliance with the Indian National Congress, and indeed not the Indian National Congress itself, had secured a majority. A gifted orator and a leader with a cult of personality, had ascended to power. The ascent of his political party signified the emergence of pride in vernacular, and that quite substantially in Hindi, while English, its continuing importance notwithstanding, relatively faded in importance. Author Sanjaya Baru describes this phenomenon, as the swell of confidence in a middle class, whose members, so to say, felt hitherto like misfits in the elite, anglophone circles. No longer was unacquaintance with the “differing purposes of a spoon and a fork”, a ground for apprehension and want of confidence.

But the most momentous phenomenon was the resurgence of a nebulously defined “Hindu cultural consciousness” — widely regarded as the weltanschauung of those politicians of humble estate, who were now regnant in the august corridors of power in Delhi; and putatively distinct from the civic nationalist philosophy, of the hitherto dominant Indian National Congress, warped though it was. This new weltanschauung is nebulous, for its pride in a Hindu identity notwithstanding, the government has not so far, seven years since its presence in Delhi as I write, ventured to create an academic elite, to have its Hindu cultural nationalist worldview permeate the academia. It regards, for reasons best known to itself, an electoral victory alone as evidence of its long term sustenance.

The prudent and prescient differ from so improvident a view. Electoral victories alone, or even when supplemented by popularity on social media, could not justly be regarded as effective substitutes, for an intellectual ecosystem consisting of well-remunerated professors and other cognoscenti, willing to cultivate intellectual acceptance of a Hindu nationalist perspective amongst the people. This disquisition of mine, if only dilettantish in its expanse, is in pursuit of the same.

The Origins of ‘Hindu’

Rolling in all her might down the slopes of the Himalayas in Tibet, coursing through a prodigious tract in ancient northern Bhāratvarsha before meeting the Arabian Sea, was the river Sarasvati. Ere ill fate befell her existence, in her tempest and in her sanctitude, she exceeded the Ganga and the Brahmaputra. Poetic are the spells of fate, that amongst the most timeless wisdom on Earth, should first take root in a civilization chiefly defined and nourished by this river, along whose banks the Vedas were perhaps first composed; a river which should be associated with learning and wisdom!Her unfortunate desiccation reduced her from a tempestuous river to a string of pools, but erased her not from the memory of those, who lived along her banks, who revered her as a goddess and a mother, and who passed on to posterity the knowledge and memories of her — naught short of a mother to our civilization. In the fancies of post-independence Indian historiography, it was common to omit altogether the very existence of the Sarasvati, and some ventured so far as to say that she existed but in myth. By virtue of science, however, we can now adduce sufficient evidence to prove that the Sarasvati did indeed nourish a vast tract of our land; that above half of the settlements purported to have been built on the banks of the river Sindhu, herself by no means insignificant, were in point of fact subsistent, on the banks of the Sarasvati.

The Rig Veda, the oldest scripture in the world, describes the Sarasvati thus:

आ यत साकं यशसो वावशानाः सरस्वती सप्तथी सिन्धुमाता |
याः सुष्वयन्त सुदुघाः सुधारा अभि सवेन पयसा पीप्यानाः ||
The Rig Veda 7.36.6
[Coming together, glorious, loudly roaring — Sarasvati, Mother of Floods, the seventh; With copious milk, with fair streams, strongly flowing, full swelling with the volume of their water.]
अम्बितमे नदीतमे देवितमे सरस्वति ।
अप्रशस्ताइव स्मसि प्रशस्तिमम्ब नस्कृधि ॥
The Rig Veda 2.41.16
[O Greatest of Mothers, Greatest of Rivers, Greatest of Goddesses, Sarasvati, we are, as ‘twere, of no repute and dear Mother, give thou us renown.]

That which merits our interest is the reference to Sarasvati as ‘Sindhu-Mata’. The word ‘Sindhu’ may variously be interpreted as the common noun for ‘river’, and as the specific river ‘Sindhu’ which we today know as Indus. ‘Sindhu-Mata’, therefore, may, by this metric, imply either ‘mother of rivers’ or ‘mother of the river Sindhu’. The foregoing translation employs the phrase, ‘mother of floods’, but there is no reason to discount the other two interpretations, and conformity to any one amongst the three would not mitigate the importance of the Sarasvati.

In his book “The Sarasvati Civilization”, Major General G.D. Bakshi describes it as a perennial river, roaring across a length of 4,600 km and a width of 6 to 8 km; a width which would increase to 20 km near the south of Patiala, where in his view, there was an apparent confluence with Yamuna, and later the Shutudri, the latter now known as Satluj.

The greatness of and primary regard for the Sarasvati notwithstanding, she alone would not define the civilization. In the foregoing translations shall be found the significant words, “Sarasvati, Mother of Floods, the seventh”, implying that the Rig Veda held in esteem six more rivers, which elicits from us a natural question, “Which are those other rivers?” The answer is found in the famous 106th verse of the Aahnika Sutravali.

गङ्गे च यमुने चैव गोदावरि सरस्वति।
नर्मदे सिन्धु कावेरि जलेऽस्मिन् संनिधिं कुरु॥
Aahnika Sutravali (verse 106)
[May the rivers Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Sarasvati, Narmada, Sindhu and Kaveri, have holy confluence in this water!]

Collectively, these rivers were known as the ‘Sapta Sindhavah’ (सप्तसिन्धवः) and also as ‘Sapta Sindhu’, and so was the land of Bhāratavarsha which was defined by these rivers, which has now ascribed to India the honorific, ‘The Land of the Seven Rivers’. It is thus highly probable, that contrary to the notion of the word ‘Hindu’ being implicative of a civilization around the Sindhu alone, it referred to a denizen of this land defined by these seven rivers. The word “Hindu”, therefore, is not so much a theological proper noun, as a geographical and cultural proper-noun.

Yet, it would refer merely to the people. The essence of being a Hindu, an idea that undergirds the culture of this land, which in English may be called ‘Hindu-ness’, is best denoted by the word ‘Hindutva’ — the comprehensive quality of being a Hindu, which is embodied in the Dhārmic culture. The words ‘Hindutva’ and ‘Sanātana Dharma’, therefore, are synonymous, and the differentiation between ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Hindutva’ proffered by Dr. Shashi Tharoor is an expedient, incorrect edifice, for the purpose alone of rusty political communication, devoid of substance.

India: A Nation Since the Sarasvati Civilization

There has been, concomitant with the Hindu nationalist groundswell, the firm assertion that nationalism can scarce be realized, in the absence of pride in Hindu culture and heritage. So soon as such a claim becomes public, a praesidium of illuminated elites feel personally disrespected, and they declare that India has never been a nation.

A nation, once wrote the famed French philosopher Ernest Renan, is a spiritual principle, of which the two constituents are a past and a present — the one a common possession of a rich heritage of memories, and the other the actual consent and the desire to live together; “the will to preserve worthily the undivided inheritance which has been handed down.”

For long having satisfied these elements, with its heritage of memories perhaps richer than any other in the world, and the unequivocal regard held by Hindus for the bounteous land of Bhāratavarsha as their motherland, India has certainly been a nation. Infighting amongst the ancient kingdoms of Bhāratavarsha is no greater a negation of the commonality of land, than is the vitriol amongst modern political parties, or the differences of opinion between states or provinces within a country. The only differing trait is that political parties do not have a sovereignty of their own, and states and provinces within a country no longer sally into the territories of others. Common to these three examples is the cognizance of India as a common motherland.

The scriptures — vital to anthropological insights into the past — support the notion of India as a nation, for has it not been lucidly stated in the Vishnu Purāna:

उत्तरं यत् समुद्रस्य हिमाद्रेश्चैव दक्षिणं ।
वर्षं तद भारतं नाम भारती यत्र संततिः ।।
[To the north of the ocean and to the south of the Himālayas lies the noble nation of Bhārata, for there reside the descendants of Bharata.]

The foregoing verse is evidence that, centuries prior to the advent of the British, who are erroneously credited with infusing nationhood into a geographical disarray, India had been borderline defined in terms of geography.

It is the religion of some to aver, that India is substantially similar to Europe; blessed with common history and religious ideas, but nothing so enlightened as a nationality. Author Sankrant Sanu expertly refutes it thus:

Our hymns and religious stories not only share common themes, heroes and deities, they also uniquely link us to this particular land in a way Christian stories do not link to the land of Europe. There are no hymns that Europeans sang that spoke of the land from the Urals to Scandinavia or from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean as one. No one sang devotional songs listing all the major rivers of Europe, east to west. The idea of Europe is like another continent, like Africa or Americas — with some shared geography and history but no historic conception of the integrated whole as a unity that was recognized among all the common people.
Thus, there have been no religious stories of Europe linked to its particular boundaries and capturing the common fealty of the people, unlike the story of Shakti being dispersed over the land of India in peethams that millions of people visit, or the sage who set up mathas in the four quadrants of the land, or who wrote the Mahabharata, or who wrote of the land of Bharatvarsha and Aryavarta. So, there is a unity to India, an Indian nationhood that is far greater than any shared similarities between Europe.

In the sullied armamentarium of the illuminati, some of whose members are connately either malicious or ingenuous, rests the seemingly potent weapon of the theory of ‘Aryan Invasion’, which holds that the Vedic culture was a violent imposition on ‘Dravidian’ natives by a foreign race of ‘Aryans’. Scrupulous assessment, however, leads us to disregard it as a weapon, let alone a potent one. For, not only may the theory be considerably oppugned, it would, if it were true, be nonetheless irrelevant in support of the notion that India is verily not, and thus ought not to be, a nation-state. Mr. Sankrant Sanu’s reasoning illustrates why:

Practically all countries that exist today were settled by migrants. The Saxons, the Franks and the Visigoths were all migrants to western European countries such as present-day England, France and Spain. North America was recently settled (or more accurately, usurped) by migrants. Even the Native Americans in North and South America are considered to have migrated from Asia 30,000 years ago. At some point in history, it may be that all people came from Africa. Clearly, using this (Aryan) criterion, all nations of today are illegitimate.
So, the validity or lack thereof of a particular Aryan migration theory, even assuming such a migration ever actually took place, does not concern us. Suffice to say, that even those that subscribe to the theory of an invasion or migration place the date no later than 1500 BC. By contrast, the Saxon reached present-day England in only the 5th or 6th century AD, about 2000 years after the hypothetical Aryan migration — yet England is considered an Anglo-Saxon country and no one wastes a whole lot of energy arguing otherwise or creating political factions representing the `pre-Saxon’ people. That a hypothetical Aryan invasion 3500 years ago is still relevant to our politics shows the absurd divisions created in our minds by colonial theories, intended to keep us fighting amongst ourselves on artificial boundaries.
So, regardless of whether there were such a people as Aryans or whether they came from the outside, our interest is in the fact that the people who have inhabited India over the last 3000 or more years formed both a conception of Indian nationhood and a distinct civilizational continuity. Our hymns sing glories of the Himalayas, not of the Caucuses. Our stories talk of the Vindhyachal not a mountain in the Central Asia. We sing of the Ganga and the Cauvery, not the Amu Darya. Thus, for thousands of years the people who have lived in India have celebrated its sacred geography. Regardless of their origins in pre-history, our ancestral people made the land of India their home and wove stories around its features.

This reasoning is fortified only too well by Dr. Ambedkar’s own observation, “Ethnically all peoples are heterogeneous. It is the unity of culture that is the basis of homogeneity. Taking this for granted, I venture to say that there is no country that can rival the Indian peninsula with respect to the unity of its culture.”

The proponents of Hindutva, therefore, may well be said to have been vindicated in their assertion, that nationalism in India was incomplete in the absence of pride in its culture and heritage, albeit such incomplete nationalism could not so much be held devoid of probity, as a state of poor instruction typical of an arriviste.

The Possible Elements of Hindutva and Its Necessity.

The pretence of victimhood is the manifestation of petulance. It is nevertheless not embroidery to say that Hindus must fend for themselves. A cursory view of the Jews and the Muslims suffice to convince a troglodyte that the one constitutes a financially sound lobby in the chambers of, and the other a homogenous voting bloc for, the amoral highbrows of the world. Organizations of global repute, rife with farcical paradigms of activism, have never advanced the cause of hapless Hindus. Never has one of Amnesty International, UNHRC and USCIRF, called upon the Government of India, or upon the other global embodiments of pristine virtue to demand from the Government of India, to do justice to the Kashmiri Pandits. The BJP, ostensibly a party oriented around Hindutva, is presently a pusillanimous entity, never advocating the Hindu cause, save by rhetoric. The Hindus as a whole are accommodating, and a Hindu shall fight a fellow Hindu to defend the undefined creed of his contemporary nation-state, namely, secularism, which while not always execrable, has quite often no positive connotations either.

In the labyrinths of Hinduism, it is common to regard culture not as political religion but as a means of intellectual and spiritual advancement. That it has ever been receptive to the Jews, the Parsis, the Muslims; and ever prepared to syncretize; not out of avuncular benevolence but out of a natural instinct to accommodate, is testified by history.

Yet, we would be remiss to ascribe to our culture a timeless perfection, for it is equally testified by history that this once advanced culture substantially atrophied over the course of centuries. Perhaps the vilest and the most entrenched element in this atrophied possession is the system of caste stratification. Dr. Ambedkar would note in his book, “Who were the Shudras?”, that the caste system, while initially meant to serve as a means of division of labour, was no longer restricted to its purpose, and had degenerated into the “division of labourers”. Its calcification engendered the evil of untouchability. The clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson has proffered his insight into the philosophy of the Nazis — if we may dare use that respectable word for the grotesque articles of faith of the Nazis. Theirs, he avers, was not merely an exclusivist doctrine that regarded the Jews as enemies; it regarded the Jews as impure. The Nazis exemplified an aversion to squalour, which while in itself a just concern of man, was abhorrently and unscientifically applied to the Jews, who in the Nazi doctrine were a squalid people, and who needed to be eliminated, that the much fancied Aryan “purity” may be preserved. In terms purely of principle and of courtesy of man towards fellow man, untouchability was no different from this grotesque doctrine of the Nazis.

Hindutva, therefore, must concern itself with the absolute annihilation of that root evil which is the caste system. The logic of division of labour is vital to economics, but to impute to it the inhibitions of heredity is the primrose path to social exclusion. The caste system is therefore decrepit, and an anachronism in our era. The Hindutva groundswell of today is a macrocosm of the Ram Janmabhoomi Movement, a nationwide agitation that sought to rebuild a temple to Lord Rāma at his birthplace in Ayodhya, which, in contempt of ubiquitous caste virulence, had a countless multitude, transcending the barriers of caste, in united agitation for that ideal. That the preponderance thereof consisted of long oppressed castes and classes is testimony to their faith in the Hindu religion, and to their munificence in pardoning the sins perpetrated on them by an ingrate society at large.

In addition to a decidedly anti-caste foundation, Hindutva must devise a broader view of India, incorporating that very vital component of the Vedas which is essential to the purpose of scientific inquiry, namely, skepticism. The famous verse of the Nasadiya Sukta of the Rig Veda, which dwells on how creation eventuated, and which ends with “He knows — or maybe even he does not know”, exemplifies this skepticism perfectly. The Hindu culture, at its essence, has been in close consonance with the spirit of science, for it can accept its errors. Unlike the teleological worldview of Marxism, which insists on the existence of laws of historical destiny that leads towards a definite end, it is vital to the Hindu culture to discard such pretensions of omniscience and omnipotence. It reposes firm faith in individual human action, and the life it shapes as a consequence.

Authors Harsh Madhusudan and Rajeev Mantri note in their book, “A New Idea of India”:

It is because of the sceptical tradition within the metaphysical aspects of what is now called Hinduism that even atheists and agnostics can be a part of the fold. Like other religions, hypocrisies and hierarchies exist in Indic religions as well, but they are primarily sociological — related to gender and caste — and less theological. This is not because there are no holy texts or doctrines, but because those texts and doctrines can be selectively followed.
… Similarly, an economic system that imbibes such scepticism cannot, by definition, be centrally planned, for that would require an omniscient, omnipotent body to allocate resources. In this sense, socialism is analogous with obscurantist faith, while liberal capitalism is analogous to a ‘scientific’ religion. Also, scepticism — and the intellectual humility that it engenders — is required to cultivate genuine tolerance in a society, for it allows fellow human beings to accept mutual differences. This tolerance is also mediated through the mechanism of the social contract in the modern era of democratic nation-states, where the views of one person or group cannot be forced on fellow individual citizens.

No Hindu, reasonably instructed in his faith, would be much surprised to find the advocacy, if not immaculate practice, of some ideals of the Enlightenment, in the pages of Hindu scriptures. Unmistakably, however, as the civilization-state of Bhāratavarsha commenced its journey as a nation-state in the Westphalian sense, it seemed to deviate substantially from its civilizational substratum.

India under Jawaharlal Nehru and his successors decided to pursue a development model partially inspired by Soviet Russia, with the State having a gargantuan participation in the economy. Under his leadership, Indian democracy came to be based upon the State brokering and negotiating settlements between groups of religions, castes and languages rather than guaranteeing equal rights and freedom to individual citizens. Inevitably, the State favoured some groups over others, anointing itself as the referee. In both economic and social spheres, the Indian State exuded a certitude that chafed against the millennia-old pluralist and sceptical ethos of the society it sought to govern.
But the governance philosophy was not limited only to certitude; it was selectively condescending as well. While Hindu personal laws were modernized, Muslim laws were not. Perhaps Nehru wanted to cultivate a committed voter base to support him as he pushed through his programme of leftist economics, for, despite being deservedly criticized, Nehru always understood why India was united.
(Ibid).

The authors venture to quote an excerpt from a speech, delivered by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to a session of the All-India Congress Committee, in which he recognized India’s unity as contingent on its culture. He observed, “From the very beginning of history, the people of India always thought of themselves as a people belonging to one great country. What has drawn our people from the south to the north and from north to the south in great pilgrimages? What is the common thought that has made them travel from one region to another? It is the feeling of one country and one culture and this feeling has bound us together.” Not all fared well, however, his cognizance of India’s cultural identity notwithstanding.

But Nehru’s philosophy of centralization and certitude, carried forward with increasing intensity by the successor-members of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, had disastrous consequences for economic development and communal harmony. Today, the fact that the Nehruvians are hard pressed to even acknowledge the civilizational unity that seemed obvious to Nehru himself shows how far they have travelled from their roots. In the quest to brand themselves ‘secular’, and guided by narrow electoral interests, they have transformed into deniers of India’s heritage.

This was also noted by author and former Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament Swapan Dasgupta in his book Awakening Bharat Mata:

Till the lifetime of Indira Gandhi at least, the Congress — despite many secular adjustments — broadly represented the mainstream of Indian nationalism. However, as it progressively vacated the old ground and simultaneously lost its overwhelming political dominance, traditional Indian nationalism increasingly came to be identified with forces that had hitherto been on the fringes. The slow transition of Vande Mataram and Bharat Mata from being a mainstay of the Congress to being identified with the BJP epitomized the shift.

Madhusudan and Mantri note the problems within the academically dogmatic secularist, civic nationalist conception of India:

The fundamental flaw of modern India’s secularism as practiced today is that it embodies a confusion between the State and the Society. Nowhere is this confusion more evident than in the way secularism and communalism are routinely hailed as antonyms. The opposite of secularism is not communalism but theocracy, for secularism is a feature of the State; nation-states can be secular or theocratic. Communalism is a feature of all societies. In a free, democratic and liberal country, when people who share the same ideas build coalitions and alliances, it is not only acceptable but sometimes even welcome. It is precisely through the creation of non-birth-based, idea-driven networks and communities that ideational synthesis happens and social mobility accelerates.
The networks of tryst and cooperation that high social capital catalyses help bind together a society in myriad ways and thus encourages intercourse rather than creating distinctions, to use English-American political philosopher Thomas Paine’s words…The degree of economic freedom determines the type of social capital, and the greater the economic freedom, the more likely it is that communities not tied exclusively to social, religious, linguistic or ethnic identity will emerge…
…More broadly, this confusion between the State and society rears its head when India is spoken of as a ‘Hindu nation’. Whenever any politician, intellectual or public figure says so, there is much outrage and heartburn among a section of the intelligentsia, who wail that secularism is in danger. But these people fail to distinguish between nation and State. Because of India’s civilizational ethos, demography and history, India is already largely a Dharmic nation and society. But it follows from the scepticism innate to India’s philosophical tradition that the concept of a theocratic Hindu State is illogical. As the Deputy Prime Minister of India at the time, Lal Krishna Advani, said, ‘India is a Hindu Rashtra, but can never become a theocratic state…a Hindu Rashtra and a secular state are virtually synonymous.

The core of Hindutva, therefore, ought to be that skepticism on which the authors have elaborated; not as an innovation but because it was meant to be its constitution. It must be the key to India’s own renaissance. The authors are not oblivious to prevalent illiberalism in India, and they note that the fears of the entrenched elite are not entirely unfounded. The seeming prevalence of the acceptability of attacking young couples on Valentine’s day; the hostility to multiple interpretations of the Ramayana; and suchlike are veritable truths, and must be treated by the intellectual leaders of India’s renaissance as an aberration — however ingrained it may have become — to summarily be discarded from Hindu practice. Such illiberalism must have no place in Hindutva.

A pertinent question is as follows: how can Hindutva, as an emollient alternative to the hitherto secularist philosophy, gain considerable footing? At present, the masses appear to know as a matter of intuition, that the preservation of their culture is paramount. But India must confront some very uncomfortable questions, which Madhusudan and Mantri enumerate:

After more than seven decades of independence, why are we as a nation still occasionally scarred? Is it due to the centuries of foreign rule experienced by our society? Despite all the bluster, do most Indians believe that India can take on the world? India will soon be the largest section of humanity but do we really belong at the high table, and what do we hope to contribute?

There are in existence a few lapidary answers both authors offer, which present a broad view; that India must make prosperity and not merely the removal of poverty the overarching aim; that the mantra of Indian society ought to be self-improvement; that Indians ought to take responsibility for their destiny and channelize their energies towards preparing to win, and as Krishna advised Arjuna, do so without worrying about the outcome.

Such ambitions, however, require a fundamental alteration of narrative. For long, the prevalent Nehruvian conception of India has been one of a post-colonial state with multiple groups that had to be reconciled in a collective pursuit of peace and progress. As Madhusudan and Mantri note, “In this worldview, Nehru was ‘civilizing a savage world’, to borrow from the title of a hagiographic volume on India’s first prime minister by the writer and Nehru’s niece Nayantara Sahgal.” This Nehruvian worldview, they contend, which was not necessarily the view of the flesh-and-bone Nehru himself, saw India primarily as an accident of history and a collection of communities. It did not see Indians as individual citizens, which while likely reflective of the ground reality in the early years of India as a nation-state, later got calcified into a convenient political and ideological doctrine.

Indeed, not all of Nehruvianism was flawed. The authors note as an example that the linguistic reorganization of states permitted more coherent sub-sovereign entities without sacrificing the unity of the nation. But its flaws have left so indelible an impression, as to generate the view, that Nehruvianism was wholly antithetical to India. On meticulous examination, this turns out untrue.

This calcification has made, for instance, something so classically liberal as insisting on same laws (with regard to civil codes) for all Indians regardless of religious, ethnic, linguistic backgrounds appear bigoted by sections of the Indian intelligentsia. A start, of course, is the eradication of this approach and treating Indians as responsible, individual citizens.

Just to take an example, an Indian Muslim man can have four wives, while a Hindu man cannot (and no woman can have multiple husbands). Whether this provision is used frequently or not is hardly the point; soft or symbolic secessionism within the Indian republic through a diluted Sharia remains the norm.
(Ibid)

The unequivocal view of the Hindu nationalists, in this regard, is worthy of praise. They are fervid for a Uniform Civil Code (UCC), premised not on dated scriptural dogma from Hinduism, but on constitutional law. The self-anointed custodians of idea of India, should they be burdened with conscience, may rest secure that India is not imperiled by the tide of Hindutva, for there could not be a more ‘secular’ stance.

Of greater importance is the propitiousness of Hindutva to national security. For long, with the word of enlightenment, have man-children in the guise of intellectuals, normalized the treatment of candour as an exercise in offending sentiments, as if we were entitled to eternal puerility. We have developed, in consequence, such frail emotional-intellectual constitutions, that we cannot be candid as regards the forces that imperil our national security, lest there be an offence to the privileged sentiments of those communities, whose fringe elements constitute the threat.

The mandarins, however, rest secure in their manors, gracing the privileged demesnes of such cities as they may elect, preferably the national capital, and therefore do not bear the brunt, should that slight of sentiment morph into a predictable riot. Notwithstanding such security, they are indisposed to confront realities of the proliferation of the Aryan-Dravidian divide in the southern parts of India, which has often been if not still used to fuel separatism in the south. This could only be explained by their destitution of regard for the country. There abounds, in the magnum opus by Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan, titled, “Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines”, evidence with regard to the sustained efforts in academia both in India and overseas, to inflame separatist forces, if not to outright precipitate India’s balkanization; the latter of which would be an inevitable consequence once separatist ideology is inflamed. Hindu consolidation alone could be the redoubtable intellectual counter to such malicious forces. Of that principled desire alone, and not the illiberal propensities that unfortunately characterize its manifestation, no right-thinking person could possibly be a nemesis.

Achieving a Hindu Rashtra

Those Hindus, who are of a persuasion favourable to Hindutva, must not fancy a Hindu uprising to heal our national ills. There may be a degree of truth to the observation, that had India a hundred times as many as industrialists and businessmen as it today has, and a hundredth of the ‘activists’ that it today has, we might have seen better days. We have a surfeit of those who, ennuied with the monotony of their lives, regard it necessary to feel animated, in the pursuit of which they morph their pristinely enlightened concern for the wellbeing of society, into a supposed revolution. The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) happens to be home to many such idealists, who may pursue the part-time ardour of being students; wherefore, they devote their time in protests against all and sundry, including foreign countries, save curiously China. But away from their cacophony, dwells the multitude of genuine students, who have laboured to secure education at their august institutions. It must be remembered that the fancies of an armed uprising, inflame an orgasmic excitement amongst the aforesaid, as well as those impecunious pipe-dreamers of Ghazwa-e-Hind in Pakistan, who are used and abused by their ‘omnipotent’ ISI-military complex. We ought never to lose the stark distinction between a renaissance and an armed uprising.

The following precepts would be of immense help:

Renunciation of Sensationalism: We would be remiss, as an instance, to lose lose temper akin to a petulant child should a pretend comrade or a fanatical religious cleric slander Lord Krishna or Lord Rāma. So far as I am concerned, these were not gods; these were merely great men of their times who heralded a new age in their societies. Nevertheless, in deference to the assumption that they were gods, none of us could pretend so immaculate and cultured a conscience and enlightenment as to act as custodians and guardians of their reputation. Any response ought to be equanimous.

Rejection of Dogmas: The quintessence of Hindutva or Sanātana Dharma — regardless of the appellation — is that no path is singularly declared the true path to salvation. Whether one worships a god or a goddess, a tree or an animal, a stone or a monument; indeed, whether one worships or not in the first place — is immaterial. That ought strictly to be an individual remit. So long as we have a moral conscience and an element of humanity, we are Dhārmic. The fluidity of Sanātana Dharma must not be compromised by dogma.

The caste system, as aforesaid, is one such dogma which is to be rejected. The caste system has morphed into an evil, and nothing short of its destruction can rid the Hindu society of odious stratification.
We might well be served in not regarding ourselves as servants of gods, inasmuch as it may involve entrusting one’s very life to the gods. In his book, Pakistan or the Partition of India, Dr. Ambedkar describes how intemperate reliance on the power of an imagined god, led the pious devotees to ignore the looming threat of invasions from Central Asia. They, with their guilelessness, believed that their god would condescend to defend his worshippers and expel those who dared cast an evil eye on the Dhārmic lands. The idol’s power stood negated. Thus, self-responsibility must not be sacrificed at the altar of worship.

Rejection of Petty Sexism: Shiva and Shakti, so holds the Hindu culture, make a complete whole, and are complementary to one another. Men and women must be equal. Behind the rise of the heroic Shivaji, to whom the present-day Hindus could be said to owe their existence in great measure, was the spirited and indomitable Jijamata, his mother. She engendered the spark of nationalism in the young Shivba, as he was fondly called. We do recall, particularly in Maharashtra, the heroic deeds of Shivaji. But so long as we do not teach our girl children about Jijamata, we shall never have another Shivaji from the womb of an Indian woman.

It must also be remembered that India won its most significant military victory when a woman was at the helm of affairs. The defiant Indira Gandhi did not acquiesce to the diktats of world powers. The mightiest nation in the world, the United States, watched helplessly as Indian forces stormed into Dhaka, liberated Bangladesh and, it would not be embroidery to say, avenged the twenty-four-year-old sanguinary partition of India by dividing a dear American ally into two. This is not to suggest that a man may have dealt with the war in a less competent manner. This is to inform that a woman is not by default incompetent.

The Adoption of Utilitarianism

Our interest in our past must be actuated, chiefly by materialistic desires, and secondly by the desire of intellectual growth. There ought to be inquiries as to the utility of past knowledge in solving present-day problems. An instance may be adduced, of Major General G.D. Bakshi proposing, in his book The Sarasvati Civilization, a partial if not complete revival of the once mighty river, whereafter could be commenced a project of linking the rivers.
Another instance may be adduced, of the utility of temples. They could well be morphed into centres of learning, subject, of course, to a tax, for to the state, they must be as material and earthly as a village hut or a city skyscraper.

The Constitution is an ally: Embodied in the Constitution are principles dear to the cause of the Hindus. While it has numerous provisions that once graced the Government of India Act of 1935, it is not wholly antithetical to India’s spirit. One may consider, as an instance, the following two articles:

Article 44: Uniform Civil Code for the Citizens — The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.
Article 48: Organisation of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry — 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 calves and other milch and draught cattle.

Part as they are of Directive Principles of State Policy, non-adherence to them is not a matter admissible in Court. The Hindu community can, however, consolidate itself into an electorate insistent on the realization thereof.

Yet, Hindus must not be dogmatic, inasmuch as protection of cows need not presuppose a ban on cow slaughter. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who popularized Hindutva, once stated something to the effect that the bovine is not divine. Its protection must be based on the fact that it is of use to man.

Savarkar was bitterly critical of the Marathas for ostensibly having lost many a battle with the Islamist rulers due to cow worship. He alleged that Muslim armies had often used cows as a shield during key battles against the Hindus. Savarkar’s biographer Vaibhav Purandare writes:

When Hindu forces marched on Multan, he [Savarkar] said, the Muslims had threatened to destroy the famous Sun temple there as a warning, and when Malharrao Holkar, a Maratha chieftain, had sought to “liberate” Kashi, the Muslims had again threatened to defile all things holy to the Hindus (Savarkar said) and he castigated India’s majority community for backtracking at such moments for fear of being responsible for the razing of temples, the humiliation of Brahmins and cow slaughter.

Savarkar particularly abhorred the then widely prevalent habit of consuming cow urine and, in some cases, even cow dung, and believed the practice may have actually started out in ancient India as a form of punishment so that a person could “expiate his sins”.

In his book, “The Ideology of India’s Modern Right” the economist and legal scholar Dr. Subramanian Swamy notes:

Ancient Bharat or Hindustan was of janapadas and monarchs. But it was unitary in the sense that the concept of chakravartin [propounded by Chanakya], i.e., of a sarvocch pramukh or Chakravarti prevailed in emergencies and war, while in normal times the regional kings always deferred to a national class of sages and sanyasis for making laws and policies, and acted according to their advice. This is equivalent to Art.356 of the Constitution.

An examination of Article 356 would illustrate that he is correct, for it provides for the imposition of President’s rule in states in the event of failure of constitutional machinery of the states. Dr. Swamy thereafter proceeds to note:

In that fundamental sense, while Hindu India may have been a union of kingdoms, it was fundamentally not a monarchy but a Republic. In a monarchy, the King made the laws and rendered justice, as also made policy but in Hindu tradition the king acted much as the President does in today’s Indian Republic. The monarch acted always according the wishes and decisions of the court-based advisers, mostly prominent sages or Brahmins. Thus, Hindu India was always a Republic, and except for the reign of Ashoka, never a monarchy. Nations thus make Constitutions but Constitutions do not constitute nations. Because India’s Constitution today is unitary with subsidiary federal principles for regional aspirations, and the judiciary and courts are national, therefore the Rajendra Prasad — monitored and Ambedkar — steered Constitution — making, was a continuation of the Hindu tradition. This is the second pillar of constitutionality for us — the Hindutva essence! These aspects were known to us as our Smritis. Therefore, it is appropriate here to explore ways by which Hindutva can be blend into the present Constitution more explicitly.

Thus, the principles expounded by modern Hindutva are already enshrined in our most cherished Constitution. The following have been the interpretations by the Supreme Court as regards the term “Hindu”:

1966, Chief Justice P.B. Gajendragadkar, writing for a five-judge Constitution Bench in Sastri Yagnapurushadji and … vs Muldas Brudardas Vaishya and … on 14 January, 1966: When we think of the Hindu religion, we find it difficult, if not impossible, to define Hindu religion or even adequately describe it. Unlike other religions in the world, the Hindu religion does not claim any one prophet, it does not worship anyone god, it does not subscribe to any one dogma, it does not believe in any one philosophic concept, it does not follow anyone set of religious rites or performances. In fact, it does appear to satisfy the narrow traditional features of any religion or creed. it may broadly be described as a way of life and nothing more.
1976, Commissioner Wealth Tax, Madras vs Late R Sridharan’ [1976 (Sup) SCR 478]: It is a matter of common knowledge that Hinduism embraces within the self so many diverse forms of beliefs, faiths, practices and worships that it is difficult to define the term ‘Hindu’ with precision.
1995, Dr. Ramesh Yeshwant Prabhoo vs Shri Prabhakar Kashinath Kunte & … on 11 December, 1995: It is difficult to appreciate how in the face of these decisions, the term ‘Hindutva’ or ‘Hinduism’ per se, in the abstract, can be assumed to mean and be equated with narrow fundamentalist Hindu religious bigotry, or be construed to fall in the prohibition in subsection(3) and/or (3A) of Section 123 (of the Representation of the People Act).

It must also be noted that clause (f) of Article 51A of the Constitution, that deals with Fundamental Duties, states as follows:

Article 51A(f): It shall be the duty of every citizen of India to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture.

Dr. Swamy further notes the following aspect of the culture which finds mention in the Constitution:

Throughout ancient Indian history, Hindu kingdoms, never required any ‘subject’ to be of Hindu religion in order to be regarded a first-class citizen. Only in Asoka’s reign and Islamic rule, India was a theocracy. Hindu is naturally ‘Secular’. But secularism is a much-bandied-about subject nowadays. Unfortunately, those political parties who have been swearing by it all these years have failed to persuade the masses that secularism is good for country.

The Constitution, therefore, has long incorporated principles consistent with Hindutva. Many of these principles, to our misfortune, are not implemented on account of vote-bank politics and power politics. Their fulfillment would merely secure implementation of the directives enshrined in our Constitution.

In Dr. Swamy’s view, the following was an error on Nehru’s part:

When Rev. Martin Luther had defined secularism in Europe, it simply meant that the power of the state would be exercised independently of the directions of the Church. Thus, a secular government would act to safeguard the nation-state, even if such action was without Church sanction. Later, Marx calling religion the ‘opium of the masses’ defined secularism to completely eschew religion.
In India, Jawaharlal Nehru and his followers subscribed to the later Marxist redefinition of the concept in which even in public functions, cultural symbolism such as lighting a lamp to inaugurate a conference or breaking a coconut to launch a project was regarded as against secularism.
This orthodoxy induced a reaction in the Indian masses. Nehru failed to define what historical roots ought to be a part of the modem Indian, and what was to be rejected. In the name of ‘scientific temper’, he rejected most of our past as ‘obscurantism’.
His orthodox secularism sought to alienate the Indian from his hoary past. Since nearly 85 per cent of Indians are pan- Hindu in beliefs, and Hindu religion from its inception has been without a ‘Church’, ‘Pope’ or ‘Book’ (in contra — distinction to Christianity), therefore neither Martin Luther nor Marx made any sense to the Indian masses.
But Congress Party continued thereafter to fail to provide a political concept of secularism by which an Indian citizen could comprehend how he should bond “secularly” with another citizen of a different religion or language, or region and feel equally Indian. The Hindu instinctively could not accept the idea that India was what the British had put together, and that the country was just an area incorporated by the imperialists.
Such a ridiculous idea, fostered quixotically by Jawaharlal Nehru University historians, found just no takers amongst the Indian people. The void remained thus, but the yearning in the masses to be “Indian” grew over the years with growth of mass media. This void had therefore to be filled and the yearning of national identity required to be articulated for the masses.

Such was the void that led to the resurgence of Hindutva. The Hindu nationalism we see today is not a remote relation of theological nationalism. It is verily a cultural type of nationalism, emphasizing the moral principles expounded by Hindu culture. To revile the idea of Hindu nationalism, therefore, is to negate the cultural legacy of the Indian civilization, an act most unfair to its memories. One would be just in reviling those who contravene law and order in the guise of Hindu nationalism, but the idea itself is not inappropriate, and is not remotely in violation of our Constitution.

The incorporation of the Sikhs, the Buddhists, the Christians, the Parsis, the Bahais, the Muslims, the Jews, the atheists and the agnostics: The Hindus should embrace Vedanta, Sikhism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Nirishvaravada (atheism) and agnosticism as different schools of thought under the grand umbrella of Sanātana Dharma, and must equally be satisfied should all of them be desirous of being regarded as separate religious communities.

The same reasoning ought to be applied in case of Christians and Muslims. For the purpose of incorporation, however, there ought to be sweeping reforms. Educated Muslims must take advantage of a Hindu Renaissance and bring about a change in the disposition of the other Muslims, too.
They must also end the hegemony of their clerics, who ought to be reduced to figureheads, only officiating on ceremonies. They must not be permitted to issue such religious edicts as may violate the law of the land. Only then can evils such as Wahhabism be tackled. If Allah is indeed merciful, he could not possibly keep his cherished adherents subject to the draconian control of the religious clerics. It may, in significant measure, pulverize the unholy alliance between radical Islamism and Communism. Had the adherents of either been literal in the interpretation of their doctrines, they may have been sworn enemies. The radical Islamist believes that those who do not believe in Islam and in Allah must be eliminated. Communism explicitly rejects god and religious authority. Both of these, therefore, should have been two warring camps. However, there is at present a marriage of convenience, for both have a common enemy: the Hindu. Hindus must therefore ingeniously attempt to reach out to the Muslims.
I would go so far as to say that the Hindus ought not to be inimical to the idea of Indian equivalents of Mecca, Medina and the Vatican, so that they would not have to defer to the actual Mecca, Medina and the Vatican. Some might suggest, as congenial to a national identity, a hopefully true future decision by Muslims to not attempt to emulate Arabian attires. But should they choose to travel to Mecca and Medina and don an Arab appearance, they must not be prevented from doing so. The same must apply to Christians.
The fundamental difference between the Hindus and the adherents of the Abrahamic faiths is the overly organized nature of the latter. There exist, therefore, conditions quite austere, that need be fulfilled, that they may be regarded as part of the latter’s fraternity. Thus, the Abrahamic faiths are indeed religions, for bereft of theology, they have no existence. The same does not apply to Hindutva. One may contend that Sikhism and Buddhism, too, are, in accordance with the rationale aforesaid, full-fledged religions. Indeed so. They are, however, not dogmatic inasmuch as there are no gods who must be propitiated, central to these faiths. There exists no dichotomy of believers and infidels, and therefore gel well with what is today termed Hinduism. Consequently, Sikhism and Buddhism have perfectly adapted themselves to the requirements of the modern era. Should the same be done with respect to Islam and Christianity in India, there would little reason to doubt its compatibility with the modern era.

It is not merely my personal opinion that everyone could be encompassed by the common cultural umbrella. The Constitution of India supports my view. Consider for instance Article 25:

Article 25: Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion:
(1) Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion
(2) Nothing in this article shall affect the operation of any existing law or prevent the State from making any law
— regulating or restricting any economic, financial, political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice;
— providing for social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus
Explanation I — The wearing and carrying of kirpans shall be deemed to be included in the profession of the Sikh religion Explanation II In sub clause (b) of clause reference to Hindus shall be construed as including a reference to persons professing the Sikh, Jaina or Buddhist religion, and the reference to Hindu religious institutions shall be construed accordingly.

It can be seen, therefore, that the Constitution itself embodies the definition of a Hindu as given by Savarkar.

That such ideas may manifest in practice, the following steps may be thought fruitful:

Lending support possible to institutions such as Sangam Talks, The Jaipur Dialogues, Indic Academy etc.
Using the rational and scientific interpretations of our legends, by such authors as Amish Tripathi, to propagate the Dharmic philosophies. Give his interpretations an equal status among our Hindu texts. Ours is a culture that permits 300 interpretations of the Ramayana, and there is no reason to insist that the one authored by Amish Tripathi ought not to grace the list. His rational approach would have the merit of appealing to youngsters. One could hardly expect youngsters to accept fables of Hanumāna flying from Lanka to the Himalayas without noticeable means of propulsion, without understanding literary metaphors and suchlike, which necessitates an understanding of language. Such works of historical fiction may serve as inducements to reading original epic literature, and undertaking the ardour to both imbibe values and form a mental literature review.
Ashwin Sanghi’s books contain a profusion of information obtained through painstaking research from our scriptures, the fictionality of the plot itself notwithstanding. Scarcely would one have thought that the Hindu and Buddhist texts share several similarities and have references to quantum physics (reference: his book Keepers of the Kalachakra). Scarcely, further, could one have thought that the Syamantaka Mani described in the Mahabharata was possibly (‘possibly’ being the operative word) a gem that could induce nuclear transmutation (reference: his book The Krishna Key). This must set a precedent of researching into the scientific aspects of our scriptures, for while as Amish says our civilization definitely did not travel to Mars, it is equally untrue that it was wholly devoid of scientific accomplishments.
Popularization of the genre of historical fiction in which writers such as Amish Tripathi write. Organization of the readership into a massive audience and demand of movies based on these scriptures from Bollywood. We may well bring an end to the era of mindless romance and instead churn out such films that can decisively challenge Marvel and D.C. superhero universes. Emerging actors need be given appropriate roles, so that we may well see them act to the best of their abilities. Otherwise, we are perfectly at liberty to assault our intelligence quotients with such achievements as ‘Student of The Year’!
Enlisting children into the RSS at a very early age. In the achievement of it all, the RSS could well essay a monumental role. In its shakhas shall be found people from an assortment of professions, castes, languages and hometowns, in which sense it is truly a microcosm of India itself. This would afford them an environment close to our culture and a firm nationalistic disposition. They would thus inculcate absolute discipline, and a firm adherence to cleanliness and affection for the environment. It must be ensured that they accord priority to academics. It is advisable to strive for fluency in English communication, for without proficiency in English, it would be difficult to qualify for the chambers of academia. It must also be ensured that they obtain basic knowledge of economics and the financial market. Subsequently, they may join government services and political parties in large numbers. It is only then that the system might well be rid of colonial, leftist and lethargic bureaucracy, by means of implementing the aforementioned reforms (legislation in favour of cow protection, adding and revising history objectively, adding to knowledge base using scriptures etc.) It is also only in the power of this new generation, fresh out of the RSS discipline, to slowly and steadily adopt capitalism and make India much more business-friendly. We are in desperate need of creating employment in India. The old sods in power are still very, very socialist-minded. They shall force the companies to pay CSR to fund their ever-growing socialist schemes. They keep raising interest rates which make it difficult for small and medium enterprises to borrow, whereupon they have to shut shop. It is time we stop regarding companies as evil conglomerates hell bent on causing misery. Without these companies, our GDP growth shall be adversely affected, which would exacerbate the unemployment problem in India.
It is also indispensable to modernize our military forces. We ought to encourage, but not compel, the physically fit to join the Armed Forces. Once in government, privatization of our defence production to the greatest extent possible, ought to be our priority. Incentives need be offered to the young engineering graduates to use their engineering skills in the defence sector.

It should be an impassioned appeal to the Muslims and the Christians to join the Hindus in the proposed renaissance; that they, as inseparable denizens of our civilizations, may reform their ills with equal ardour in the tide of this renaissance; that a unified front may be projected against those, who harbour naught but the most pristine malice against our country.

The government may, at present, be ill expected to fulfil its airy promises. Much though we may desire, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not the leader of this proposed endeavour. His ascent has been a catalyst not of substantive, substantial cultural renaissance, but solely of the beginning of a resurgence; an expression of sentiment. As regards his integrity, we need not much doubt, but so comprehensive an endeavour cannot by him alone be fulfilled. Only we can reclaim our past glory.

I contend that Hindus ought to be so liberal as to not feel revulsed at the potential discomfort of some other communities with the name “Hindu Rashtra”. Hopefully, this rather basic disquisition helps in the provision of keen insights into the possible zeitgeist of a Hindu Rashtra.