Savarkar and Hindutva The Godse Connection -A.G.Noorani

BELIEVERS IN THE ideology of Hindutva are in the driving seat of power in India today. Though its author, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, was at is to emphasize that he had ‘coined the term in 1923 for the Theme of his essay Hindutva, many persist in identifying it with Hinduism. Neither Swami Vivekananda nor Swami Rama Tirth nor,
for that matter, any of the other great exponents of this noble faith used the word Hindutva. That Hindutva is a political philosophy that has nothing to do with religion is also seen in the fact that its author Savarakar himself was an atheist, and had little time for religion or philosophy. He was engaged in a political enterprise,and used history in the service of his politics of hate.In 1989–90, the BJP adopted the credo of Hindutva. Only in 2002 could Lal Kishen Advani, the BJP’s foremost exponent of Hindutva, muster courage to laud Savarkar as a national hero. It is a sinister move whose implications will emerge only gradually, as did the impact of Hindutva in the last decade since the BJP began advocating it openly. It is a blood-soaked trail, from the demolition of the Babri Masjid, on December 6, 1992, right down to the pogrom in Gujarat in 2002. The BJP has profited by its Ayodhya campaign,
as Advani has acknowledged time and again. The nation suffered grievously and wantonly. There was no other way that the RSS political front could have won power.Savarkar had pitted himself against the ideology of Indian
nationalism. He rejected the concept of ‘territorial nationalism’ and advocated the concept of ‘cultural nationalism’. The RSS and the BJP swear by it. The content and contours of Hindutva emerge sharply from the writings of Savarakar and of the leaders of the RSS and the BJP.