Hindu nationalism
[7] The Hindutva movement has been described as a variant of "right-wing extremism"[8] and as "almost fascist in the classical sense", adhering to a concept of homogenised majority and cultural hegemony.
[14][page needed] The word "Hindu", throughout history, had been used as an inclusive description that lacked a definition and was used to refer to the native traditions and people of India.
As Hindus were identifiable as a homogeneous community, some individual Congress leaders were able to induce a symbolism with "Hindu" meaning inside the general stance of secular nationalism.
[20] Maharajadhiraja Prithvi Narayan Shah proclaimed the newly unified Kingdom of Nepal as Asal Hindustan ("Real Land of Hindus") because North India was ruled by the Islamic Mughal rulers.
[21] After the Gorkhali conquest of the Kathmandu valley, King Prithvi Narayan Shah expelled Christian Capuchin missionaries from Patan and renamed Nepal as Asali Hindustan (the real land of Hindus).
[22][full citation needed] The policies of the old Bharadari governments of the Gorkha Kingdom were derived from ancient Hindu texts such as the Dharmashastra[25] The King was considered an incarnation of Lord Vishnu and was the chief authority over legislative, judiciary and executive functions.
It was an attempt to include the entire Hindu as well as the non-Hindu population of Nepal of that time into a single hierarchic civic code from the perspective of the Khas rulers.
[35] Although the Brahmos found favourable responses from the British government and Westernized Indians, they were largely isolated from the larger Hindu society due to their intellectual Vedantic and Unitarian views.
However their efforts to systematise Hindu spirituality based on rational and logical interpretation of the ancient Indian texts would be carried forward by other movements in Bengal and across India.
Swami Dayananda, the founder of Arya Samaj, rejected idolatry, caste restriction and untouchability, child marriage and advocated equal status and opportunities for women.
[3] Under the influence of Orientalism, Perennialism and Universalism, Vivekananda re-interpreted Advaita Vedanta, presenting it as the essence of Hindu spirituality, and the development of human's religiosity.
[42] Both Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo are credited with having founded the basis for a vision of freedom and glory for India in the spirituality and heritage of Hinduism.
It pains me to have to say that the Christian missionaries as a body, with honorable exceptions, have actively supported a system which has impoverished, enervated and demoralized a people considered to be among the gentlest and most civilized on earth.
The report sent from Andrew Fraser, the then Lt Governor of Bengal to Lord Minto in England declared that although Sri Aurobindo came to Calcutta in 1906 as a Professor at the National College, "he has ever since been the principal advisor of the revolutionary party.
When Gandhi visited London in 1909, he shared a platform with the revolutionaries where both the parties politely agreed to disagree, on the question of adopting a violent struggle and whether Ramayana justified such violence.
Hindutva was to gain relevance in the run-up to the Indian Independence and form the core ideology of the political party Hindu Mahasabha, of which Savarkar became president in 1937.
[70]: 60 After the Muslim League passed the Lahore Resolution demanding a separate Pakistan, the RSS campaigned for a Hindu nation, but stayed away from the independence struggle.
Patel then demanded an absolute pre-condition that the RSS adopt a formal written constitution[78] and make it public, where Patel expected RSS to pledge its loyalty to the Constitution of India, accept the Tricolor as the National Flag of India, define the power of the head of the organisation, make the organisation democratic by holding internal elections, authorisation of their parents before enrolling the pre-adolescents into the movement, and to renounce violence and secrecy.
After a failed attempt to agitate again, eventually the RSS's constitution was amended according to Patel's wishes except the procedure for selecting the head of the organisation and the enrolment of pre-adolescents.
[86][87] The party was influential in sponsoring a serious of agitations in support of women and protests against the alleged rape and murder of a woman doctor, a movement that has been called "reclaim the night".
[91] In 1919, he authored a study in the American Political Science Review presenting a "Hindu theory of international relations" which drew on thinkers such as Kautilya, Manu and Shookra, and the text of the Mahabharata.
In this book which was written in the backdrop of the Khilafat Movement and the subsequent Malabar rebellion, Savarkar wrote "Their [Muslims' and Christians'] holy land is far off in Arabia or Palestine.
The BJS also favored a uniform civil code governing personal law matters for both Hindus and Muslims, wanted to ban cow slaughter and end the special status given to the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir.
M. S. Golwalkar, the second head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was to further this non-religious, territorial loyalty based definition of "Hindu" in his book Bunch of Thoughts.
He added: As far as the national tradition of this land is concerned, it never considers that with a change in the method of worship, an individual ceases to be the son of the soil and should be treated as an alien.
[103]He further would echo the views of Savarkar on territorial loyalty, but with a degree of inclusiveness, when he wrote "So, all that is expected of our Muslim and Christian co-citizens is the shedding of the notions of their being 'religious minorities' as also their foreign mental complexion and merging themselves in the common national stream of this soil.
Deendayal Upadhyaya, another RSS ideologue, presented Integral Humanism as the political philosophy of the erstwhile Bharatiya Jana Sangh in the form of four lectures delivered in Bombay on 22–25 April 1965 as an attempt to offer a third way, rejecting both communism and capitalism as the means for socio-economic emancipation.
Later thinkers of the RSS, like H. V. Sheshadri and K. S. Rao, were to emphasise on non-theocratic nature of the word "Hindu Rashtra", which they believed was often inadequately translated, ill interpreted and wrongly stereotyped as a theocratic state.
Everything was going well until we were ambushed by political parties’ sudden decision to declare the country secular, which is deplorable as it is clear that they acted at the behest of foreign agents.
[119] The protestors carried the national flags and posters of the founding father of modern Nepal, King Prithvi Narayan Shah, and chanted slogans supporting Hindu statehood.
