‘Hindutva Is Not Hinduism’: Mahua Moitra Targets VD Savarkar in Fiery Political Debate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q8yAjNgGsY
YT Transcript It was Savarkar who tied this Hindutva to the theory of monolithic Indian nationalism. This territorial, racial, cultural, political nationalism that had no room for Islam. It had no room for Christianity. No other form of consciousness that couldn't be traced
back to a Hindu core.
I'm glad to be speaking after
um Shaunda who actually I'm very fond
of. But the good thing with going after
Mr. Sha going after Shaunda is that he
adlibs so much that it is so easy to
just you know pick up like so. So when
Dada says three things he says in this
city in 1894 actually no Rada Chandraat
Bushu wrote it not in 1894 it was 1892
then he says my non-vegetarian something
I love it is actually our Hinduism Shop
that allows you to eat that chicken
patty here and not say anything about it
because if it was your Hindutwa 1
kilometer away in the in the Kolkata
Maidan just for eating that chicken
patty your brothers might have beaten
you to pulp,
right? You tell us about that
half-educated babu who ate beef and I
remember reading quite a few columns
about your beef eating history in
Oxford. But be that as it may, let me
get to the point.
So let us start. I think it's actually
quite wonderful that we are having this
debate in Kolkata. Even with all the
Guspatias in the audience, I think it is
one of the few cities in which we can
have this debate today because both
Hinduism and the word Hindutwa can be
traced back to two Bengali gentlemen at
the at either end of the long 19th
century. One is Dr. Rajar Ra Mahanroy
sorry one is Raja Ram moanroy
uh to whom as an English word Hinduism
is traced back to in 1816 and he took it
to mean a fairly capacious term for the
diverse spiritual traditions deriving
from the vidantic corpus
but then we go on to Chandraad Bush and
Chandrabasu invented I say the word
invented coined Hindutwa in 1892 he's
also like Savar has a very interesting
history and not a lot of people know
about it because when my colleague uh
Mr. Mr. Manushankar Aayer was talking
about 1923. Yes, Sabarka wrote his book
in 1923. But way before that, 30 years
before that in 1892 was when the term
Hindutwa was coined in this city. And
Chandraat was a native of Hugli. It's a
place from which Chopa likes to fight
elections and often lose them. But he
was a native of Ugli and he graduated
from Presidency College and equally
proficient in English and Bangla served
as a deputy magistrate in Dhaka and then
was an official translator to the Bengal
government for over 30 years. He
originally wrote in English and then he
wrote a review in Bengali of Krishna
Kant will which caught Bongim
Rishiongim's eye and Bongim the Bonkim
da I'm sure our prime minister wouldn't
mind me referring to him since he set
the tone like the same way so when uh
Bonkim Chhatra read the review he
encouraged him to say why don't you
write in Bengali so he starts writing in
Bongodor which by the way is the same
literary magazine in which the two first
Two stanzas of Bandai Mataram were first
published in 1875.
So Chandraat while his time in
presidency used to frequent Brahmo
discussions and was quite sort of
liberal but then he meets this very
orthodox Brahman Pundi called Shashodhor
Tkuramun in Bongin Chon Chhattaji's
house and he returns to religious
scriptures with a passion and he starts
advocating a very rigid sort of return
to religious scriptures. He writes
something called Poshupati Shangbad then
writes something called Shokunalto
and again there in Shokto he very
interestingly compares Kalidas Shokuna
to Shakespeare's Juliet and he
highlights the victory of self-restraint
and penance which he calls Dhmo over the
uncontrolled and unbriddled love which
he calls Odormo.
So Omia Pushad Shen the prominent
historian who just passed away he said
that Chandraunat's work was a
thoughtless application of hardcore
orthodoxy where he was trying to find
conservative values where none existed.
Anyway in 1892 Chandraat produces his
magnum opus which is called vindut hind
procrito it and that is where the term
hindut first comes in and this envelops
a sort of variety of traditional and
often very contradictory beliefs.
Chandra goes on to portray Hindus as
fundamentally superior to people of all
other faiths. Says Hindu traditions are
superior to western culture. Says India
shall not be a homeland for foreign
religions like Islam and Christianity.
He says Tantra is an integral part of
Hinduism. It represents an inherent
Hindu manliness and vigor. And uh he
then writes two pamphlets and for all
the women in the audience you'll quite
enjoy it. I mean it's quite preachy. In
these pamphlets, Chandraat says, he
says, "The superiority of the Hindu
woman is in her dedication to cooking in
the kitchen for long hours because she
can take the heat and smoke." He then
writes Shabitri Toto. He says Shabitri
is the ideal Hindu wife. And then
besides this, the other interesting
things he did again I'm speaking here on
the second oldest club led by F for the
first time a lady. He supported child
marriage. He says this led to the
development of the ideal housewife. He
praised female chastity as a social
gift. Mind you, he opposed reforms in
female education. He opposed rid of
remarage. He dissented against the 1891
consensual age of consent act which
raised the age of sexual intercourse
consent of women from 10 to 12 which
said that you know it would be rape if
it was more than under the age of um
between 10 and 12. He says no the age of
10 is absolutely okay. So this is his
concept of hindutwa. This is the man who
gave us Hindutwa and this is what you're
proud of. But Chandrana for all this
folks was his hindutwa was confined to a
religious a scriptural and a literary
framework.
Then what happens then comes along 1923.
Who do we have? We have Vinaga Modar
Sawer. He is the one who gives Hindutwa
the core political spin. If it weren't
for him, we wouldn't have all the
Guspayas in the audience because
Chandraat's Hindu Hindutwa was actually
quite boring, you know. Um, it was
Sabakar who tied this Hindu to the a
theory of monolithic Indian nationalism,
this territorial, racial, cultural,
political nationalism that had no room
for Islam. It had no room for
Christianity, no other form of
consciousness that couldn't be traced
back to a Hindu core. Now it's also
important to note here that the very
word Hindu is not in the Vedas. It's not
in the upanishads. It's not in any
vantic opishadic corpus. It's not in the
epics. It's not in the Dhashastras.
It's not in any major Sanskrit or prait
literary text. It is not even in the
majority of the puranas. Sabaka relied
on a fake purana. And the reason I call
it a fake purana was because in he calls
it is called the bhavisha purana. And
the reason I call it a fake piranha was
in this piranha you have reference to
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday as days of the
week and reference to Queen Victoria.
Now Queen Victoria's timeline was 1819
to 191. So if any purana which made a
reference to this had to be a fake puran
and then sabar what he says is he says
militarized Hinduism and Hinduized
militarism when after savar's pleads
with the British gets out of gets the
get out of jail free card remember he
goes out and he boycotts the quit India
movement when Gandhi calls for the quit
India movement 1942 Savakar is
boycotting it he's head of the Hindu
Mahas Sabha he boycots it and he is
asking members of the Hindu Masaba
please get into the British army and he
uses the term Hinduized militarism and
militarized Hinduism. This is his idea
of Hindua. It is political, racial,
cultural. It has nothing to do with
either religion or spirituality which is
what Hinduism as we know it is. And when
you talk of uh Chapunda again was
referring to this Savar actually wrote
he said you know he hated Muslims but he
he said that the one good thing about
Muslims is when you're talking about
Muslims in the medieval age they went
around raping all these Hindu women and
giving birth to more and more Muslims
and Hindus should actually take a leap
out of that book because this suicidal
Hindu idea of chivalry of treating enemy
women with respect was going to do no
good for the predominance of the Hindu
race. Now as Hindus we can accept the
diversity of practices under rubric
Hinduism as a modern concept and we can
argue about liberal liberal
how liberal it is how open it is on one
side you can have the spirituality of
Ramach Krishna which is highly
accommodative you have Bur mod that has
Jishu Pujo which has Jishu uti done with
cake and flowers and you know that's on
one side where he regarded even Jesus as
a form of divinity which is absolutely
okay with Ramach Krishna. He saw no
conflict in that and um but even the RSS
I would say they do not confuse Hindutwa
with a religion. Hindutwa is a political
expression that seeks to consolidate
Hindus in an exclusionary platform that
is adversarial. That is the soul. If
there is one word that is the divide
between Hinduism on one side and
Hindutwa on the other, it was
adversarial. Hindua believes that as a
political platform mine is the only way
and Hinduism believes as a religion and
a spiritual platform that there is room
for a lot of others along the way. So
for instance while there's some Hindu
practices one minute where Hindu
practices and Hinduism can imagine love
between Hindus and Muslims a Hindutwa
practitioner will say no this is love
jihad. So a Bengali Hindu eating meat
will offer meat to mali but a
practitioner of hinduta will say that's
not on. So a Hindu doesn't need to
bother about the fact that there are
lots of things that we do including
imagining mali in a form and referring
to go Krishna as the love of my life.
There's nothing wrong with it. It's not
blasphemy but for a Hindua that is
blasphemy. So the core question here is
does Hinduism need to protect itself
from Hindu from Hindutwa. I would say
that the best way to continue to protect
Hinduism is to continue to realize that
Hindutwa is there because Hindua was
there because Hinduism was there Hindu a
hindut
is not the other way around. So in a way
when Hinduism is religious, it is
spiritual and the only deed of the hour
is to free it from this Hindutwa sort of
brand of rabbit noxious political
nationalism that has overtaken it and um
we've got to wind up
uh sorry Mr. Mr. Mananka I referred to
this I'm going to wind up right here.
Now when we're talking of Kolkata club
the one of the most important things
about Kolkata club I remember from my
childhood used to be the Christmas lunch
and while everyone wore their Santa hats
inside including I'm sure Mr. Gupta and
enjoyed his turkey and Christmas
pudding. You had lots of people going
outside and saying
but you know what even today in Bengal
that same thing has been replicated in
Park Street. No one's tried to ruin it
when was happening in Kolkata club.
That's the difference between Hinduism
and Hindua. we have tried to replicate
this somewhere else rather than coming
in and saying let's destroy this once
and for all. So that's the classic
difference between there hindutwa is
there because we as Hinduism allow it to
not the other way around.