JK PANORAMA VOL 4 ISSUE 5 MAY

How Hinduism Became a Political Weapon in India
India The seven pandits draped in cloth of
gold are clearly competing against the five
in saffron. In front of thousands of
assembled pilgrims, each bevy of priests
furiously recites Sanskrit chants, deftly
swinging pyramids of flaming oil lamps,
banging on bells and blowing on conch shells,
wafting thick clouds of incense over the
moonlit waters of the limpid, unlistening
Ganges. The celebration of Ganga Aarti has
taken place daily at this spot for hundreds, or
perhaps thousands, of years.
This is Hinduism. But it is not Hindutva, the
creed of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP). And the difference between them
between the practices of faith and
politics—may determine the future of what
will soon be the largest nation on Earth.
Here in Varanasi, posters of Prime Minister
Narendra Modi are slapped on crumbly
ancient walls, splintery doorjambs, a tangle of
electrical wires draped perilously over a traffic
circle. Orange-and-green flags bearing the
lotus leaf of the BJP flutter on bicycle
rickshaws, rooftops, and rowboats plowing
their way along the holy Ganges. In much of
the city, these are the only election signs one
can see: You generally have to dive into the
twisty alleyways near a mosque to find a few
timid banners for the Indian National Congress
or any other BJP rival.
The city of Varanasi is the holiest site in the
Hindu faith. It is also, not coincidentally, the
parliamentary constituency of Modi, who has
just won a second five-year term. He did it, in
large measure, by emphasizing Hindutva, an
ideology that seeks to reformulate Hinduism
into something that most practitioners'
grandparents would barely understand.
BY: JONAH BLANK
Religions change—that's as timeless as time.
But the transformation currently under way in
Hinduism is among the most significant in
modern history. It has much in common with
similar changes taking place in Islam,
Buddhism, and Christianity: Why are so many
radical Islamists poorly versed in the Koran?
How can Buddhist monks sworn to
nonviolence lead pogroms in Myanmar and Sri
Lanka? Why do evangelical Christians care so
much about issues never mentioned by Jesus,
such as abortion and homosexuality? The
answer is not always hypocrisy. For many
today, religion is less a matter of what you
believe, or even what you do, than of who you
are.
The term Hindutva can be (sort of) translated
as “Hindu-ness,” and that gets (sort of) at what
it's all about: Hinduism not a theology, but an
identity. The movement's intellectual father,
Veer Savarkar, wrote its foundational text
(helpfully titled Hindutva) a century ago. At
the time, the notion of a unified faith or
doctrine, let alone a shared identity, would
08 May 2019