Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?
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Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? is a 1923 ideological pamphlet by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The text exhibits one of the early uses of the term "Hindutva" (Sanskrit -tva, a neuter abstract suffix, meaning "Hinduness", "quality of being a Hindu"). It is one of the foundational texts of contemporary Hindu nationalism and seeks to restore the greatness of past Indian civilizations.[1]
Savarkar regarded Hinduism as an ethnic, cultural and political identity. Hindus, according to Savarkar, are those who consider India to be the land in which their ancestors lived, as well as the land in which their religion originated. He advocates the creation of a Hindu state in that sense.[1]
Sarvakar includes all Indian religions in the term "Hinduism" and outlines his vision of a "Hindu Rashtra" (Hindu Nation) as "Akhand Bharat" (United India), stretching across the entire Indian subcontinent.[2]
the Aryans who settled in India at the dawn of history already formed a nation, now embodied in the Hindus.... Hindus are bound together not only by the tie of the love they bear to a common fatherland and by the common blood that courses through their veins and keeps our hearts throbbing and our affection warm but also by the tie of the common homage we pay to our great civilisation, our Hindu culture."—(p. 108)
Savarkar wrote the pamphlet while imprisoned for his alleged role in the assassination of William Hutt Curzon Wyllie.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Peter Lyon (2008), Conflict between India and Pakistan: an encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, p. 75, ISBN 9781576077122
- ^ Veer Savarkar, "Essentials of Hindutva","Savarkar.Org"
- ^ Shōgimen, Takashi; Nederman, Cary J. (2009), Western political thought in dialogue with Asia, Lexington Books, p. 190, ISBN 9780739123782
