CONTRIBUTION OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA TO HINDUTVA
AND NATIONAL RENAISSANCE
DR.SUBRAMANIAN
SWAMY, Ph.D. (Harvard)
President of Janata Party
Swami
Vivekananda told a rapt Harvard University Law School audience just before
going to Chicago to deliver his famous address in 1893 that Hinduism, by its premises has never
and can never be opposed to
Science due to the fundamental belief in the search
for truth. It was this belief in truth that led to the development and growth of science and knowledge in ancient India far ahead of any other country. Swamiji
fervently believed in the Hindu identity of India, which today we call
Hindutva.
Every nation must have an identity to be regarded distinct. Even in United States of America, a relatively
young nation created by an influx
of immigration from diverse countries, to define the identity of an American, Samuel
Huntington penned a book titled Who Are We? [Penguin Books, India
2004] to define American's identity as a
“White Anglo-Saxon Christian who speaks English”. It seems contrived since
majority of Americans are not ‘White’, but Huntington is emphatic.
Huntington's contribution to definition of an identity lies is in seeing the two components of this
identity: Salience, which is the importance that the citizen attributes
to national identity over the other many sub-identities. Second, Substance,
which is what the citizens think they have in common, and which distinguishes
them from others of other countries.
We in India today have Salience imbedded in the concept of Chakravartin,
which Chanakya had spelt out with great clarity, while Substance is what Hindus have always searched for and found
unity in all our diversities in, thanks our spiritual and religious leaders,
especially Swami Vivekananda.. And that substance in Indian Identity invariably
is the Hindu-ness of our people, which we now call as Hindutva.
Is today’s India as a nation state, a British
imperialist by-product, or is an ancient nation of continuing unbroken
civilization? In other words, in the past was the word ‘India’ used the way we
today use ‘Africa’ or ‘Europe’ to denote
a sub-continental region of separate nations and cultures or was India always a
nation of one culture of a people with a common history? The battle to settle the answer to this
question is on today-- between the
nationalist Indian and the internationalist liberal.
Dr.Ambedkar, whom Swami Vivekananda would have adopted as his true sishya had he lived then,
had in his paper presented in the Department. of Anthropology of Columbia
University’s seminar in 1916 titled “Castes in India, Their Mechanism, Genesis
and Development”. It was published in
Indian Antiquary Vol XLI, May 1917, p81-85. On page 84, he concludes as
follows:
“I
venture to say that there is no country that can rival the Indian peninsula
with respect to the unity of its culture.
It has not only a geographic unity, but it has over and above all a
deeper and much more fundamental unity—the indubitable cultural unity that
covers the land from end to end”
We are one indigenous people
according the recent DNA genetic studies.
It is thus Hindu culture and religion gives the geographical area of
India its distinctiveness.
I define therefore an Indian as one who is a
Hindu or one who acknowledges that his ancestors are Hindus. This concept would include willing Muslims,
Christians, Parsis and Jews. Thus,
religion of any Indian can charge, but not the Hindu civilization culture. Thus
Hinduism provides the foundation or the defining characteristic of an Indian.
Swami Vivekananda defined Hindutva, upon
returning from Chicago in 1896
in an address in Lahore as follows:
“Mark me, then and then alone you are a Hindu when the very name
Hindu sends through you a galvanic shock of strength. Then and then alone you
are a Hindu when every man and woman who bears the name Hindu, from any
country, speaking our language or any other language, becomes at once the
nearest and dearest to you. Then and then alone you are a Hindu when the
distress of anyone bearing the name Hindu comes to your heart and makes you
fell as if your own son or daughter were in distress” [Collected Works,
vol 3, page 379].
Paraphrasing thus what Veer Savarkar
had said, the following is what enlightened Hindus need to tell India's
minorities and others:
“If you come along with us, then
with you. If you do not, then without you.
If you oppose us, then inspite of you.
Hindutva shall prevail”.
Thus, we should invite Muslims and
Christians to join us Hindus on the basis of common ancestry or even their voluntary return to our fold as Hindus, in this grand endeavour
as Hindustanis, on the substance of our shared and common ancestry.
Hindu Rashtra thus defined, is our
nation which is a modern Hindustan Republic today, whose foundation of which is
also in the long unbroken Hindu civilisational history. Throughout this
history we were a Hindu Republic and not a monarchy [a possible but weak
exception being Asoka's reign]. In this ancient Republican concept, unlike in
Europe, the king in India did not make policy or proclaim the law. It was the
Brahmin who lived by his vows of pursuing knowledge and not material
prosperity.
Hindutva has to be inculcated in our people from values
and norms that emerge out of a Hindu
renaissance, that is, a Hindu theology which is shorn of the accumulated but
unacceptable baggage of the past as also by co-opting new scientific discoveries, perceptions and by
synergizing with modernity. And Deendayal Upadhyaya outlined how to modernize
the concepts of Hindutva as follows:
“We have to discard the status quo mentality and
usher in a new era. Indeed our efforts at reconstruction need not be clouded by
prejudice or disregard for all that is inherited from our past. On the other
hand, there is no need to cling to past institutions and traditions which have
outlived their utility”. This is the essence of renaissance.
This is
the only way that Hindustan can become a modern Hindu Rashtra.
However, to defend this Hindutva it
is essential to resolve an intrinsic paradox of Hindutva arising out of the
individual freedom afforded by Hindu theology. The individual-centric
distinctiveness of Hinduism, makes it possible to see millions of Hindus, for
example, to come to Kumbh Mela on their own, without a fatwa or
invitation, or travel subsidy, or even any publicity about date and place of
the Mela, and peacefully and without guidance or
dictation, perform their pujas and then depart. It is purely voluntary even as
the state does not provide any organization. This is individualism par
excellence.
With this kind of widespread
voluntary commitment of Hindus, seen not only in Kumbh Mela, but in other
pilgrimage occasions such as in Sabarimalai, Vaishno Devi, etc., and the
reality of our tolerant civilisational history, can we feel secure that we Hindus can and will unite with a
collective mindset when it becomes necessary to defend against sinister,
sophisticated, and violent threats that the religion faces today from within
and from abroad ?
We cannot be sure, because the Kumbh
Mela spirit not only represents the innate strength of Hinduism, but
paradoxically also its main weakness. That is, those who assemble at Kumbh
Mela do it as an act of individual piety. Hindus do not go to Kumbh Mela to be
with other Hindus in a religious congregation, but because they believe that
their individual salvation lies in going there. But the current threats to
Hindu religion requires a coordinated collective response. Therein lies the
paradox to be resolved.
Patriotic Hindus should understand
this structural limitation in the theology of Hinduism, that is individualism,
is mistakenly taken as apathy, but it is now required of us to find ways to rectify it for the national
good.
It is worthy of notice that,
recognizing this limitation, Hindu spiritual leaders in the past have from time
to time come forward to rectify it, whenever the need arose e.g., as the
Sringeri Shankaracharya did by founding the Vijayanagaram dynasty or Swami
Ramdas did with Shivaji and the Mahratta campaign. Such involvement of sanyasis
is required even more urgently today.
In fact, this is the real substance
of India as Swami Vivekananda had aptly put it when he stated that: “National
union of India must be a gathering up of its scattered spiritual forces. A
Nation in India must be a union of those whose hearts beat to the same
spiritual tune.... The common ground that we have is our sacred traditions, our
religion. That is the only common ground... upon that we shall have to build”
On this principle of Hindutva, we can
shape events and form a new Brihad Virat
Akhand Hindustan. Without such a virile mindset which is Virat Hindutva, Swami Vivekananda
consistently held that Hindus will be unable to confront the subversion and
erosion that today undermine the Hindu foundation of India. This foundation is what makes India
distinctive, and hence we must safeguard it with all the might and moral fibre
that we have. National renaissance flows
out from that.
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