"3.
Expecting help from others and pleading for it is a
clear sign of weakness. This clearly reflects in behavior. So, Sangh
swayamsewaks should fearlessly proclaim, “Hindusthan of Hindus”. Remove all
narrow-mindedness. We do not say that others should not live here. But they
should be aware that they are living in Hindusthan of Hindus. (Like others
would realize if they were living there- that they are living in France of
French people, or Germany of Germans, or Spain of Spanish people). Others
cannot infringe on rights of Hindus here."
In the
interbellum, there was no multiculturalism yet, the monolithic concept of the
nation-state was in the ascendant. This was strengthened by US President
Woodrow Wilson’s recognition of the “self-determination of nations” at the end
of World War 1, which was applied in the redrawing of borders in Central
Europe. A century earlier, or even just before the World War 1, multinational
empires still prevailed. Some continued to exist, including the British Empire
(though it had lost Ireland, which exercised its own right to
self-determination), from which India wanted to break away.
There were
four options to conceive India in term of nationhood. One was to deny the
relevance of the “nation” concept altogether. This was the colonial view: India
only had a population, which for the first time was forged into a political
unit.
A second was
to accept all people living in India as equally entitled to citizenship and to
be reckoned as Indian nationals. This was and is the Nehruvian view. It
presupposed the colonial view that India had never been a nation, but differed
from it by considering India “a nation in the making”.
The third
was that India was fragmented into many nations, of which the contours were
uncertain. The Communists preferred this fragmentation, and many Western
commentators likewise think that India shouldn’t be a unity. Long after Indian
independence, Bhimrao Ambedkar’s grandson Prakash Ambedkar would call “every
caste a nation”, as castes originated in separate tribes (“nations”) that got
integrated in the expanding Vedic society, and as castes historically differed
in a number of daily habits like dress, dialect (“Brahmin Tamil”) and cuisine.
One instance
of this fragmented view of India as a nation was the Muslim League’s “two-nation
theory”. It presupposed Western nationalism but defined “nation” such that the
Indian Muslims constituted a separate nation. The other nation was the
non-Muslims, and whether that was one nation or many, didn’t interest the Muslim
League. When the possible contours of the post-Independence subcontinent became
clear, viz. a Muslim and a non-Muslim state, the Communists also threw in their
lot with the two-nation theory. The rationale for the claim of Muslim
nationhood was that by every criterion (though not biological race), the
Muslims differed from the non-Muslims. In those days, there was still a large
grey area of Muslims who practically lived like Hindus, a phenomenon which the
Tabligh (“propaganda”) movement tried to combat by “purifying” them into real
followers of Islam. Today, however, the rationale of Muslim nationhood applies
to a much larger percentage of the Indian (let alone Pakistani) Muslims. Thus,
many more have interiorized the Islamic worldview through Madrassa education
(supported by the Indian state), and many more have adopted Urdu as their
language. Yet, the fast-growing Muslim community does not clamour for a second
Partition, as it now understands that Islam would now be much stronger if the
Pakistanis had remained with India, and because they have experienced that they
can flourish very well in secular India.
The fourth
is that only Hindus constitute the nation. “Hindu” here is broadly defined, and
comprises all Indians who have their sacred places inside India. Muslims and
Christians, however, are a kind of resident aliens. Hedgewar says in so many
words that they can live in India, but that they should play no role in
decision-making. They are just guests of the Hindu nation.
Critics will
find it strange that the founder of the supposedly narrow-minded RSS admonishes
his followers: “Remove all narrow-mindedness.” Nationalism in the beginning was
a movement directed against foreign rule or multi-national empires, but also
against local loyalties. It pressed upon the “backward” fellow-countrymen to
outgrow these local or sectional loyalties and identify with the nation as a
whole. (That is the meaning of Deutschland
über Alles, “Germany above everything”: it does not originally mean “Germany
above other nations” but, for instance, “Germany above Bavaria”.) An instance
is the self-identification of the Hindus in the census, where the first decades
saw the caste name as prime identificator give way to the category “Hindu”. When
you ask RSS men for their caste, they will say: “Hindu”.
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