The term Hindutva was coined by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923 to create a corporate Hindu identity.
ISLAMABAD: The term Hindutva was coined by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923 to create a corporate Hindu identity. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, primarily the word Hindutva is the state or quality of being Hindu or ‘Hinduness’. It is a nationalistic ideology that is trying to set up a Hindu hegemony and a Hindu way of life.
Before understanding Hindu fascism, we must understand the term fascism. Fascism is an anti-democratic and authoritarian state, controlled by the far-right that suppresses its opposition by force and concentrates its power into a one-party or one-man dictatorship.
The current Hindu government in India has granted superiority or higher status to Hindus under the ideology of Hindutva. All Hindu organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal, etc. suppress minorities like Muslims, Christians and Dalits to enforce their rule. Hindutva’s leaders, and followers utilise the same strategies and tactics as the Nazis of Germany under Hitler, as Italian fascists under Benito Mussolini and as the neo-Nazis and white supremacists of the US and Europe today.
Additionally, they also target journalists, media activists, and their political opponents through force and violence. The ruling BJP exaggerates the Hindutva ideology in an extreme form and forces others to abide by it.
The RSS is the main promoter of the Hindutva ideology and the fountainhead of its wing organisations are the Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and Hindu Sena. The rise of Modi to the helm in democratic India is not much different from the rise of Hitler to power in Germany, which also took place under a democratic electoral system.
Saba Nawaz
Published in The Express Tribune, February 16th, 2020.
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