Hindutva

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===Pseudohistory of science and technology===
 
===Pseudohistory of science and technology===
Y. Sudershan Rao claimed that Indians used to fly [[aircraft]], conducting [[stem cell research]] and using cosmic weapons 5000 years ago and believes that the Indian epics the {{wpl|Mahabharata}} and the {{wpl|Ramayana}}, which were written two millennia ago, are not fiction, but essentially [[history]] books.<ref>Similar to how [[Fundamentalist Christianity|some people]] [[Biblical literalism|read]] the [[bible]].</ref> He argues humans [[Not even wrong|did not develop the art of fiction writing until a few centuries ago]], hence, the events and things described in these epics [[False dilemma|must be]] [[Occam's Razor#Occam's duct tape|real]].<ref name="Reuters Modification">[http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/21/us-india-religion-education-idUSKCN0J50BZ20141121 Fears grow in India about Hindu 'Modi-fication' of education], ''Reuters''</ref>
+
Y. Sudershan Rao claimed that Indians used to fly [[aircraft]], conducting [[stem cell research]] and using cosmic weapons 5000 years ago and believes that the Indian epics the {{wpl|Mahabharata}} and the {{wpl|Ramayana}}, which were written two millennia ago, are not fiction, but essentially [[history]] books.<ref group=note>Similar to how [[Fundamentalist Christianity|some people]] [[Biblical literalism|read]] the [[bible]].</ref> He argues humans [[Not even wrong|did not develop the art of fiction writing until a few centuries ago]], hence, the events and things described in these epics [[False dilemma|must be]] [[Occam's Razor#Occam's duct tape|real]].<ref name="Reuters Modification">[http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/21/us-india-religion-education-idUSKCN0J50BZ20141121 Fears grow in India about Hindu 'Modi-fication' of education], ''Reuters''</ref>
  
 
In 2014, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi asserted that [[genetic science]] and [[IVF]] existed in ancient India. To support his claim, he pointed towards the Mahabharata and argued:
 
In 2014, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi asserted that [[genetic science]] and [[IVF]] existed in ancient India. To support his claim, he pointed towards the Mahabharata and argued:
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Dinanath Batra's textbook also claims that cars are an example of something first invented in ancient India:
 
Dinanath Batra's textbook also claims that cars are an example of something first invented in ancient India:
{{Cquote|What we know today as the motorcar existed during the Vedic period. It was called aanashva rath.<ref>''aanashva'' is a name of a kind of rath, ''rath'' is a Hindi word which means chariot</ref> Usually a rath (chariot) is pulled by horses but an anashva rath means the one that runs without horses or yantra-rath,<ref>''yantra'' is a Hindi word which means machine, hence ''yeantra-rath'' means a machine chariot</ref> what is today a motorcar. The Rig Veda refers to this.|||Dinanath Batra<ref name=Science Gujarat"/>}}
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{{Cquote|What we know today as the motorcar existed during the Vedic period. It was called aanashva rath.<ref group=note>''aanashva'' is a name of a kind of rath, ''rath'' is a Hindi word which means chariot</ref> Usually a rath (chariot) is pulled by horses but an anashva rath means the one that runs without horses or yantra-rath,<ref group=note>''yantra'' is a Hindi word which means machine, hence ''yeantra-rath'' means a machine chariot</ref> what is today a motorcar. The Rig Veda refers to this.|||Dinanath Batra<ref name=Science Gujarat"/>}}
  
 
==External links==
 
==External links==

Revision as of 12:22, 14 April 2015

Hindutva (which can be literally translated into English as "Hinduness"[note 1]) is a word coined by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in his 1923 pamphlet entitled Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?. It forms the basis of the Hindu nationalist movement in India.

The Hindu nationlist movement, though primarily concentrated in India, has global presence and a section of the Indian diaspora living in the Europe and North America fund Hindutva groups in those coutries, as well as in India.

Contents

What is Hindutva?

Savarkar, the founder of the Hindutva notion, was an atheist[1][2][note 2] and admirer of Mussolini's Italian fascism and Hitler's Nazism.[note 3] As per Savarkar, who defined Hindutva as an ethnic and political identity, a Hindu is a person whose ancestors lived in the land he called "Akhand Bharat[wp]" (Greater India, which consists of India and several nation states in the Indian subcontinent) as well as the land in which their religion originated. Thus, the adherents of all religions that originated in the Indian subcontinent, i.e. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, are Hindus, according to Savarkar. In this sense, he advocated the establishment of a Hindu State. By using this argument, Hindutva advocates believe all people living in India must adhere to these religions. So it is very clear that Hindutva does not view religion as a matter of personal choice, but as a political issue.

Many of Savarkar's views were contradictory. Savarkar tried to project himself as a progressive who rejects religious dogma by writing that the term Hindutva was not reserved for "believers of the dogmas and religious practices that go by the name Hinduism".[3] On the other hand, as per the tradition in Hinduism, he emphasized the "protection" of cows, saying, "To protect and sustain the cow is our personal and familial duty. At least in the case of Hindusthan, it is also our national duty."[4] Most modern Hindutva advocates involve dogmas and religious practices as an integral part of their ideology.

The three essentials of Hindutva are common nation (rashtra), common race (jati) and common culture/civilisation (sanskriti).[5] Lancaster University lecturer Amalendu Misra notes that for Savarkar, a common ancestry, a common history and a common religion form the basis for national identity. Thus, the essentials of Hindu identiy, as per the notion of Hindutva, are the following:[6]

  1. bond of common blood[6] or blood purity, which was central to Nazi ideology,
  2. common civilization,[6]
  3. common culture and[6]
  4. common law and rites.[6]

Savarkar's idea of Hindu identity is religious and territorial.[6] It is also very similar to the Blood and Soil[wp] of the Nazis.[7]

Hindutva in practise

Hindutva advocates are accused of practical violence like riots, forcibly converting non-Hindus into Hinduism, suppressing freedom of speech and freedom of expression by banning books, films and other cultural mediums which they don't like, and terrorizing people through mob violence. In general, Hindutva advocate reject the idea of freedom of choice. In India, an umbrella organization called the Sangh Parivar champions the concept of Hindutva. The Sangh comprises organizations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and others.

Hindu nationalism

Hindu nationalism is an ethno-religious nationalism that aims to make secular India a Hindu state (Hindu Rashtra).

Goals of Hindu nationalists are:

  • To remove India's status as a secular country and make Hinduism the state religion of India
  • To make Hindi the national language of India
  • Replace the secular Constitution of India with Manusriti, a Hindu scripture that deals with criminal justice and law and order.

Actions by Hindu nationalists

The Babri Mosque was a historic monument in India which was destroyed by Hindus due to a gripe regarding the location of a historical temple. Ayodhya is said to be the birthplace of the Hindu Avatar of Vishnu, Rama. It is further noted that Babur's commander-in-chief Mir Baki destroyed an existing Hindu temple at the site.[8] The Babri Mosque was one of the largest mosques in the state Uttar Pradesh, where 31 million Muslims lived. The ensuing riots are known as the Ayodhya Riots.

Political implications

In India's 2014 general election, the ruling Nehru-Gandhi dynasty leading the Congress Party lost its national legislative majority for the first time at the hands of the Hindu-centric, right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party. As a result of this change of power, the position of Prime Minister of India went to Narendra Modi, a militant Hindu nationalist previously implicated by Indian courts in enough religious violence that the United States had prohibited him from entering the country for quite a while. Later they welcomed him to the US and Obama visited him in India in 2015.

What do adherents of Hindutva notion say?

Forced sterilization of people on the grounds of their religion

Sadhvi Deva Thakur, vice-president of a Hindutva organization called Hindu Mahasabha[wp], says that Muslims and Christians living in India should be forcibly sterilized, and for the purpose of doing this, the government should impose a state of emergency.[9][10]

The population of Muslims and Christians is growing day by day. To rein in this, Centre[wp] will have to impose emergency[wp], and Muslims and Christians will have to be forced to undergo sterilisation so that they can't increase their numbers
—Sadhvi Deva Thakur[9]

She also urged Hindus to have more children to increase their population.[9]

On women

The Hindutva organization Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha[wp] (ABHM, translated into English as All India Hindu Assembly) wanted to impose a conservative dress code on school and college-going girls. Dharmapal Siwach, vice-president of the ABHM, also argued that the use of cell phones should be banned in the premises of educational organisations as he believed use of cell phones lead to "increasing obscenity". Siwach also believed that girls must wear dupatta[wp], a kind of long scarf.[11]

Vulgar clothes lead to incidents of rape. To curb increasing obscenity in society, a particular dress code should be introduced in schools and colleges. The attire should cover the body and not be indecent. Moreover girls should be banned from wearing tight jeans and tops.
—Dharmapal Siwach of the ABHM[11]

Later the ABHM clarified that they did not demand ban on all jeans but "half-jeans" by which they probably meant capris[wp].[12]

We are not against girls wearing jeans but we are against girls wearing skimpy clothes.
—Lalit Bhardwaj, spokesperson of ABHM[12]

In 2015, a BJP MP (member of parliament) Sakshi Maharaj said that every Hindu woman must have four children.[13][14]

The time has come when a Hindu woman must produce at least four children in order to protect Hindu religion.
—Sakshi Maharaj, BJP MP

After this remark, another BJP political said that Hindu women should have five children.[15]

I want to tell my Hindu mothers and sisters that if they don’t have five children, there will be no equilibrium in India in future.
—Shymal Goswami, BJP politician[15]

On cohabitation

ABHM vice-president Dharmapal Siwach wanted to criminalize cohabitation.[11]

Our culture is getting affected due to live-in- relationship (cohabitation) and hence a law prohibiting live-in-relationships should be enacted.
—Dharmapal Siwach of the ABHM[11]

Pseudoscholarship

Pseudoscience

The Sangh Parivar and Hindutva advocates in general also indulge in a lot of pseudoscientific claims. For example, it is not uncommon to find Hindutva proponents claiming that the discoveries of modern science are actually re-discoveries of what had been found ages ago by the ancient Hindu saints. Also, they tend to justify things like Ayurveda using pseudoscientific blabber.

Vedic Science is a concept used by Hindutva advocates to denote to the scientific tradition of ancient India.[16] Astrologer Gayatri Devi Vasudev writing for The Organiser, a publication of the main Hindutva organization in India, RSS, claimed that the distinction of science and pseudoscience (or proto-science) is Eurocentric and inapplicable to Vedic Science:

Western scientific thought draws on the traditions of Greek rationalist thinking according to which only what is within the purview of the five senses is taken cognisance of. Scientific methods follow some kind of closed scientific reasoning which insulates itself against facts that its methods cannot account for. How else can they [scientists] dare dismiss Jyotisha (astrology) which sees a level of existence beyond the purview of the five senses?
—Vasudev 2001[17]

Hindutva advocates even go as far to claim that religion and science is identical in India:

The idea of 'contradiction' is an imported one from the West in recent times by the Western-educated, since 'Modern Science' arbitrarily imagines that it only has the true knowledge and its methods are the only methods to gain knowledge, smacking of Semitic dogmatism in religion.
—Mukhyananda 1997:94[18]

Pseudohistory and pseudoarcheology

In 2014, after the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power, it appointed Y. Sudershan Rao, a history professor associated with a RSS-affiliated organization, as the head of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR).[19] Rao believes that material evidence is not necessary to write the history of India. He said,

Western schools of thought look at material evidence of history. We can’t produce material evidence for everything. India is a continuing civilisation. To look for evidence would mean digging right though the hearts of villages and displacing people. We only have to look at the people to figure out the similarities in their lives and the depiction in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. For instance, the Ramayana mentions that Rama[wp] had travelled to Bhad­ra­chalam[wp] (in Andhra Pradesh[wp]). A look at the people and the fact that his having lived there for a while is in the collective memory of the people cannot be discounted in the search for material evidence. In continuing civilisations such as ours, the writing of history cannot depend only on archaeological evidence. We have to depend on folklore too.
—Y. Sudershan Rao, head of the Indian Council of Historical Researh[20]

His statement is full of fallacies and other nonsense which is refuted below.

Rao's argument   RationalWiki responds
Western schools of thought look at material evidence of history.   Historians actually use a method called oral history[wp] to record non-material evidence. It deals with collective memory and individual construction of history, so Rao is straw manning here. The difference between oral history and Rao's "method" (if you can call it that) is that the former has a critical approach, whereas Rao simply takes folklore at face value.

Rao also sets up a false East/West dilemma, a technique used by fundamentalists in Asia to attack the supposed Euro- and Americentric scientism of "Western" academia and replace it with their preferred brand of pseudoscience.

We can’t produce material evidence for everything. India is a continuing civilisation.   See my hands waving!. Sorry Rao, as Christopher Hitchens so pithily put it: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

Rao also forgets to explain what "a continuing civilisation" is and why it means we should ditch normal criteria for conducting historical enquiries. Rao seems to bee taking a page from the book of paranormal woo peddlers who make all kinds of excuses for why their branch of woo doesn't work when subjected to controlled experiments. Try imagining a Dane, making this same argument and insisting that the tales of Thor and the Jörmungandr[wp] has to be taken as fact(oids), because Denmark is part of "a continuing Norse civilisation". Try again.

To look for evidence would mean digging right though the hearts of villages and displacing people.   Argument from adverse consequences. It's also a red herring or possibly an escape hatch bordering on an emotional appeal ("Oh, the poor farmers!" - as if anyone suggests that it's necessary to move in with bulldozers and demolition crews and raze the houses of villagers. Contrast with how we've acquired knowledge of other ancient, but still inhabited, sites, such as Rome, Jerusalem, Jericho or Istanbul).
We only have to look at the people to figure out the similarities in their lives and the depiction in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.   If this seems familiar, it's because it's a Hindu version of the old biblical literalist nugget of "these events were real, hence the entire bible must be correct!" Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, Rao.

Rao is also begging the question, because he use the fact that folklore match written epics which were originally oral epic as evidence that the written version is correct. This is patently absurd because it amounts to using the correspondence between the depiction of Spider-Man in the movies and in the comics as "evidence" that Spider-Man must be real and that the movies are essentially documentaries. It's what we call circular evidence.

For instance, the Ramayana mentions that Rama[wp] had travelled to Bhad­ra­chalam[wp] (in Andhra Pradesh[wp]). A look at the people and the fact that his having lived there for a while is in the collective memory of the people cannot be discounted in the search for material evidence.   Here Rao combines the appeal to tradition with an argumentum ad populum. Why would the fact that countless people have believed something for a long time mean it's real? Loads of people believed in the pantheon of the Greco-Roman or ancient Egyptian religions, but practically no one do so now. Why should we accept Rao's myths?
In continuing civilisations such as ours, the writing of history cannot depend only on archaeological evidence. We have to depend on folklore too.   And so we return to the hand waving, ad hoc'ing and argument by assertion. Yeah, Rao, keep repeating it and it will magically become a good argument...

Hindutva advocates propagate the pseudohistorical and pseudoarchaeological Indigenous Aryans theory which asserts that the speakers of Indo-Aryan languages are "indigenous" to the Indian subcontinent.

Hindutva writer P. N. Oak claimed Taj Mahal, a Mughal mausoleum considered the 7th wonder of the world, was a Hindu temple.[21]

Pseudohistory of science and technology

Y. Sudershan Rao claimed that Indians used to fly aircraft, conducting stem cell research and using cosmic weapons 5000 years ago and believes that the Indian epics the Mahabharata[wp] and the Ramayana[wp], which were written two millennia ago, are not fiction, but essentially history books.[note 4] He argues humans did not develop the art of fiction writing until a few centuries ago, hence, the events and things described in these epics must be real.[22]

In 2014, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi asserted that genetic science and IVF existed in ancient India. To support his claim, he pointed towards the Mahabharata and argued:

We all read about Karna[wp] in the Mahabharata. If we think a little more, we realise that the Mahabharata says Karna was not born from his mother’s womb. This means that genetic science was present at that time. That is why Karna could be born outside his mother’s womb.
—Narendra Modi[23]

In the textbook Tejomay Bharat written by Hindutva writer Dinanath Batra which is taught in schools in the Indian state of Gujarat, it is claimed that television was invented in the age of Mahabharata ca. two millennia ago:

We know that television was invented by a priest from Scotland called John Logie Baird in 1926. But we want to take you to an even older Doordarshan[wp]… Indian rishis[wp] using their yog[wp] vidya[wp] would attain divya drishti.[wp] There is no doubt that the invention of television goes back to this.
—Dinanath Batra[24]

Dinanath Batra's textbook also claims that cars are an example of something first invented in ancient India:

What we know today as the motorcar existed during the Vedic period. It was called aanashva rath.[note 5] Usually a rath (chariot) is pulled by horses but an anashva rath means the one that runs without horses or yantra-rath,[note 6] what is today a motorcar. The Rig Veda refers to this.
—Dinanath Batra[24]

External links

See also

Notes

  1. Hindutva or Hindu-tva, Sanskrit -tva, neuter abstract suffix, So in English it is Hindu-ness.
  2. His atheism is not incompatible with Hinduism, see Atheism in Hinduism[wp]
  3. Savarkar said this about Nazism and fascism, "Surely Hitler knows better than Pandit Nehru (refers to Jawaharlal Nehru[wp], the first prime minister of India) does what suits Germany best. The very fact that Germany or Italy has so wonderfully recovered and grown so powerful as never before at the touch of Nazi or Fascist magical wand is enough to prove that those political ‘isms’ were the most congenial tonics their health demanded." [1]
  4. Similar to how some people read the bible.
  5. aanashva is a name of a kind of rath, rath is a Hindi word which means chariot
  6. yantra is a Hindi word which means machine, hence yeantra-rath means a machine chariot

Footnotes

  1. Nandy, Ashis (2003). Time Warps: The Insistent Politics of Silent and Evasive Pasts. Delhi: Orient Longman. p.71. ISBN 9788178240718. OCLC 49616949.
  2. Kumar, Pramod (1992). Towards Understanding Communalism. Chandigarh: Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development. p.348. ISBN 9788185835174. OCLC 27810012.
  3. ^ Sushil Mittal (2008). Studying Hinduism: key concepts and methods. Routledge. pp.272–. ISBN 978-0-415-30126-8. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  4. Cow-protection and cow-worship
  5. Sharma, Arvind (2002). "On Hindu, Hindustan, Hinduism and Hindutva". Numen 49 (1). JSTOR 3270470. 
  6. 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 Amalendu Misra, Identity and Religion: Foundations of Anti-Islamism in India, p.159-160
  7. "Savarkar, the proponent of Hindu blood as a unifying factor of cohesion, admiringly cited the example of the Nazis with respect to the theory of purity of blood making for a strong nation of one people." I. K. Shukla, Hindutva: An Autopsy of Fascism as a Theoterrorist Cult and Other Essays, p. 64
  8. Jesuit Joseph Tieffenthaler wrote in 1768: "Emperor Aurangzeb demolished the fortress called Ramcot, and erected on the same place a Mohammedan temple with three cupolas. Others believe that it was constructed by Babor." (Quoted by R.S. Sharma et al.: Historians Report, p.19)
  9. 9.0 9.1 9.2 Muslims, Christians should be forcibly sterilised: Sadhvi Deva Thakur, India Today
  10. Hindu Mahasabha Leader Sadhvi Deva Thakur Says Muslims, Christians Should Be Forcibly Sterilised, Huffington Post India
  11. 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha warns girls: ‘Vulgar clothes lead to rape'; wants ban on jeans, cell phones Financial Express
  12. 12.0 12.1 Never demanded ban on jeans but half-jeans, claims Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha DNA
  13. Every Hindu woman must produce at least 4 kids: Sakshi Maharaj Times of India
  14. India MP Sakshi Maharaj: Hindus must have more babies BBC
  15. 15.0 15.1 After Sakshi Maharaj’s ‘4 kids’ remark, a BJP leader now asks Hindu women to bear five children Indian Express
  16. Quite similar to the Hare Krishnas use of the term "Vedic creationism" to give their brand of creationism some ancient Indian patina
  17. Vasudev, Gayatri Devi. 2001. Vedic astrology and pseudo-scientific criticism, The Organiser (an English-language publication of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), reprinted in The Astrological Magazine, cited after Sokal (2006:38)
  18. Mukhyananda, Swami. 1997. Vedanta in the Context of Modern Science: A (Comparative Study. Mumbai [Bombay]: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
  19. Ancient India had aeroplanes, nuclear weapons, says chief of India's premier history body India Today
  20. ‘Ramayana, Mahabharata Are True Accounts Of The Period...Not Myths’ Outlook
  21. The Tajmahal is Tejomahalay
  22. Fears grow in India about Hindu 'Modi-fication' of education, Reuters
  23. Plastic surgery to IVF: Things BJP says hum Indiawaale had before the world did Firstpost
  24. 24.0 24.1 Science lesson from Gujarat: Stem cells in Mahabharata, cars in Veda Indian Express
Articles on RationalWiki about Hindu nationalism
  Bharatiya Janata Party  -  David Frawley  -  Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh  -  Hindu University of America  -  Indigenous Aryans theory  -  Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh  -  Sanskrit  -  Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America  
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