Hindutva

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"When once the Hindu Maha Sabha not only accepts but maintains the principles of "one man one vote" and the public services to go by merit alone added to the fundamental rights and obligations to be shared by all citizens alike irrespective of any distinction of Race or Religion. . . .<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>any further mention of minority rights is on the principle not only unnecessary but self-contradictory.</span> Because it again introduces a consciousness of majority and minority on Communal basis. But as practical politics requires it and as the Hindu Sanghatanists want to relieve our non-Hindu countrymen of even a ghost of suspicion, we are prepared to emphasise that the legitimate rights of minorities with regard to their Religion, Culture, and Language will be expressly guaranteed: on one condition only that the equal rights of the majority also must not in any case be encroached upon or abrogated. Every minority may have separate schools to train up their children in their own tongue, their own religious or cultural institutions and can receive Government help also for these,—but always in proportion to the taxes they pay into the common exchequer. The same principle must of course hold good in case of the majority too.

"Over and above this, in case the constitution is not based on joint electorates and on the unalloyed National principle of one man one vote, but is based on the communal basis then those minorities who wish to have separate electorate or reserve seats will be allowed to have them,—but always in proportion to their population and provided that it does not deprive the majority also of an equal right in proportion of its population too."

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritche...07a.html#part_2<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"The Moslem minority in India will have the right to be treated as equal citizens, enjoying equal protection and civic rights in proportion to their population. The Hindu majority will not encroach on the legitimate rights of any non-Hindu minority. But in no case can the Hindu majority resign its right which as a majority it is entitled to exercise under any democratic and legitimate constitution. The Moslem minority in particular has not obliged the Hindus by remaining in minority and therefore, they must remain satisfied with the status they occupy and with the legitimate share of civic and political rights that is their proportionate due. It would be simply preposterous to endow the Moslem minority with the right of exercising a practical veto on the legitimate rights and privileges of the majority and call it a "Swarajya." The Hindus do not want a change of masters, are not going to struggle and fight and die only to replace an Edward by an Aurangazeb simply because the latter happens to be born within Indian borders, but they want henceforth to be masters themselves in their own house, in their own Land."

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritche...07a.html#part_2<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"In my Presidential speech at Nagpur I had, for the first time in the history of our recent politics pointed out in bold relief that the whole Congress ideology was vitiated ab initio by its unwitted assumption that the territorial unity, a common habitat, was the only factor that constituted and ought to and must constitute a Nation. This conception of a Territorial Nationality has since then received a rude shock in Europe itself from which it was imported wholesale to India and the present War has justified my assertion by exploding the myth altogether. All Nations carved out to order on the Territorial design without any other common bond to mould each of them into a national being have gone to rack and ruin, tumbled down like a house of cards. Poland and Czechoslovakia will ever serve as a stem warning against any such efforts to frame heterogeneous peoples into such hotch-potch Nation, based only on the shifting sands of the conception of Territorial Nationality, not cemented by any cultural, racial or historical affinities and consequently having no common will to incorporate themselves into a Nation. These treaty-Nations broke up at the first opportunity they got: The German part of them went over to Germany, the Russian to Russia, Czechs to Czechs and Poles to Poles. The cultural, linguistic, historical and such other organic affinities proved sponger than the Territorial one. Only those Nations have persisted in maintaining their National unity and identity during the last three to four centuries in Europe which had developed racial, linguistic cultural and such other organic affinities in addition to their Territorial unity or even at times in spite of it and consequently willed to be homogeneous National units—such as England, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, etc.

Judged by any and all of these tests which go severally and collectively to form such a homogeneous and organic Nation, in India we Hindus are marked out as an abiding Nation by ourselves. Not only do we own a common Fatherland, a Territorial unity, but what is scarcely found anywhere else in the world, we have a common Holy Land which is identified with our common Fatherland. This Bharat Bhumi, this Hindustan, India is both our pitribhu and punyabhu. Our patriotism therefore is doubly sure. Then, we have common affinities, cultural, religious, historical, linguistic, and racial which through the process of countless centuries of association and assimilation moulded us into a homogeneous and organic nation and above all induced a will to lead a corporate and common national life. The Hindus are no treaty Nation—but an organic National Being.

"One more pertinent point must be met as it often misleads our Congressite Hindu brethren in particular. The homogeneity that wields a people into a National Being does not only imply the total absence of all internal differences, religious, racial or linguistic, of sects and sections amongst themselves. It only means that they differ more from other people as a national unit than they differ amongst themselves. Even the most unitarian nations of today—say the British or the French— cannot be free from any religious, linguistic, cultural, racial or other differences, sects or sections or even some antipathies existing amongst themselves. National homogeneity connotes oneness of a people in relation to the contrast they present to any other people as a whole.

"We Hindus, in spite of thousand and one differences within our fold, are bound by such religious, cultural, historical, racial, linguistic and other affinities in common as to stand out as a definitely homogeneous people as soon as we are placed in contrast with any other non-Hindu people—say the English or Japanese or even the Indian Moslems. That is the reason why today we the Hindus from Cashmere to Madras and Sindh to Assam will have to be a Nation by ourselves. . . ."

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritche...07a.html#part_2<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->". . . .who regards and owns this Bharat Bhumi, this land from the Indus to the Seas, as his Fatherland as well as his Holy Land;—i.e., the land of the origin of his religion, the cradle of his faith.

The followers therefore of Vaidicism, Sanatanism, Jainism, Buddhism, Lingaitism, Sikhism, the Arya Samaj, the Brahmosamaj, the Devasamaj, the Prarthana Samaj and such other religions of Indian origin are Hindus and constitute Hindudom, i.e., Hindu people as a whole.

Consequently the so-called aboriginal or hill-tribes also are Hindus: because India is their Fatherland as well as their Holy Land whatever form of religion or worship they follow. The definition rendered in Sanskrit stands thus:

asindhu sindha panyanta yasma bharata bhumika
pitribhuh punyabhushraiva sa vai hinduritismritah
This definition , therefore, should be recognized by the Government and made the test of 'Hindutva' in enumerating the population of Hindus in the Government census to come."

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritche...07a.html#part_2<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"Several infantile politicians commit the serious mistake in supposing that India is already welded into a harmonious nation, or that it could be welded thus for the mere wish to do so. These our well-meaning but unthinking friends take their dreams for realities. That is why they are impatient of communal tangles and attribute them to communal organizations. But the solid fact is that the so-called communal questions are but a legacy handed down to us by centuries of a cultural, religious and national antagonism between the Hindus and the Muslims. When the time is ripe you can solve them; but you cannot suppress them by merely refusing recognition of them. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>It is safer to diagnose and treat deep-seated disease than to ignore it. Let us bravely face unpleasant facts as they are. India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary these are two nations in the main, the Hindus and the Muslims in India."</span>

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritche...07a.html#part_2<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->