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Are Hindutva and Indianness the

same thing? The Supreme Court will
consider this today
SHOAIB DANIYAL OCTOBER 18, 2016

Are the words "Hindu", "Hinduism" and "Hindutva" related to a specific

religion? Given how they’re used in everyday language, it might sometimes
seem that they are. But in 1996, the Supreme Court of India disagreed.
These words, the court held, cannot be held to the “narrow limits of religion
alone” and could also refer to “Indian culture and heritage”. Hindutva, the
court held, is related to the “way of life of the people in the subcontinent”.

As could be expected, the judgement was controversial and was challenged

right away. Twenty years after that challenge, a seven-judge bench of the
Supreme Court will revisit the 1996 Hindutva judgement on Tuesday and
decide if the words Hinduism, Hindu and Hindutva refer to a religion or to
India’s broader culture.

The Hindutva judgement

The case has its roots in Mumbai in 1987, when Shiv Sena member Ramesh
Yeshwant Prabhoo was contesting the state elections for the Vile Parle
Assembly seat. He was helped in his campaign by Bal Thackeray, the leader
of the Shiv Sena. Thackeray delivered a number of election speeches in
Mumbai that referred to Hinduism. “We are fighting this election for the
protection of Hinduism,” Thackeray said. “Therefore, we do not care for the
votes of the Muslims. This country belongs to Hindus and will remain so”.
In another speech, Thackery claimed, “Anybody who stands against the
Hindus should be showed or worshipped with shoes.”

A petitioner filed a case claiming that Thackeray had violated Section 123
(3) of the Representation of the People Act. The act outlaws corrupt election
practices, a definition that includes canvassing for votes in the name of
religion.

The petitioner also filed the same complaint against Thackeray's lieutenant
Manohar Joshi for saying in his election speech that the first “Hindu rashtra
will be established in Maharashtra”.

However, the Supreme Court, under Justice JS Verma, stuck down the
petitioner’s argument. The judgement held that while the speeches did make
appeals to Hinduism and Hindus, the terms here did not apply in the
religious sense and could not be said to violate the Representation of the
People Act.

The public speeches in question did not amount to appeal for votes on the
ground of his religion and the substance and main thrust thereof was
“Hindutava”, which means the Indian culture and not merely the Hindu
religion.

By conflating Hinduism and Hindutva with Indianess itself, the court had
defined Indian secularism to be so far away from any dictionary meaning of
the term as to make it almost meaningless. In form, it was similar to many
fallacious arguments in Pakistan, where Islamists argue that minority
religions have more rights under an Islamic polity than in a Western-
inspired system of liberal government.

Rather than everyday language, the court relied on a book by an obscure

writer named Wahiduddin Khan to define Hindutva. Justice Verma quoted
this line from Khan's 1993 book Indian Muslims – Need for a Positive
Outlook: “The strategy worked out to solve the minorities problem was,
although differently worded, that of Hindutva or Indianisation.”

Though Khan had actually gone on to criticise the conception of conflating

Hindutva with the culture of all Indians, the judgment quoted this line out
of context to justify treating Hindutva and Indianness as synonyms. Most
glaringly, the judgement completely bypassed the thoughts of Vinayak
Savarkar, the Raj-era Marathi politician and intellectual who had coined the
word Hindutva in the first place. A Hindu, held Savarkar, has to be one
whose holy land is in the subcontinent, a definition which, of course, ended
up excluding Muslims and Christians:

For though Hindusthan to them [Muslims and Christians] is Fatherland as

to any other Hindu yet it is not to them a Holyland too. Their holyland is
far off in Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and Godmen, ideas and
heroes are not the children of this soil. Consequently their names and their
outlook smack of a foreign origin. Their love is divided.

Even more basically, Justice Verma ignored a Supreme Court judgment

delivered just five months earlier that warned the judiciary to stick to the
law and not attempt to undertake explorations of the philosophy of religion
while ruling on the use of faith in election speeches.

The fall-out

The judgement, which now oxymoronically held that Joshi’s invocation of a

Hindu rashtra was, in fact, a secular statement, was instantly controversial.
Just four months later, a three-judge Supreme Court bench asked that the
decision be reviewed by a larger bench.

The Verma Hindutva judgement provided a legal imprimatur to the

Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideology – which was still at the time quite
unorthodox in the Indian political space. The BJP, in fact, refers to it when
explaining what its ideology of Hindutva means.

What also helped Hindutva to gain a foothold was the delay by the Supreme
Court in constituting a larger bench to review the judgement. Faced with a
highly flammable point of law, the court, it seems, preferred to bat the
session out. Taking place after two decades – the BJP has, in the meanwhile,
seen three terms in the Union government – the review might be an
interesting exercise in law and semantics. But it is difficult to see how it
could impact the politics of the country in any meaningful manner given
how mainstream and entrenched Hindutva has become since Justice Verma
passed his judgement.

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