The sociopolitical churning that British rule triggered in India in the late 19th century led to the emergence of a few movements in the early part of the following century. It was then that the Nationalist movement led by the Indian National Congress acquired a mass character; the struggles of peasants, tribal people and workers adversely affected by the drain of wealth from the country crystallised into a movement inspired by and drawing theoretical sustenance from the Bolsheviks revolution of 1917; and the aspirations of depressed classes for self respect and dignity in a caste ridden society found expression in the social justice movement.
Embedded at the world at the core outlook of these movements were the French Revolution’s ideals of liberty, fraternity and equality, values that could be traced to the big shifts in human affairs brought about by the golden age and the enlightenment, which centrestage humanism as opposed to theologian. Humanism struck at the roots of religious orthodoxy and the shackles imposed by it on the human mind and inspired it to freely acquire into and criticise everything under the sun and above the sun.
The age of reason, immensely aided by the growth of science, and the Industrial Revolution had taken humanity far away from the darkness of medieval times and has given birth to modernist ideas like secularism, democracy, socialism, sovereignty, the cornerstone of the Indian Constitution, the adoption of the Constitution in 1950 was a watershed in Indian history after which the rule of law largely took precedence over the rule of Faith.
Yet, reason’s struggle with ideas that seek to turn back the hands of time that was not yet over. A fact starkly brought to mind by the political philosophy called Hindutva, which in the world, of its arch atheist proponent, V.D. Sarvarkar himself, should not be confused with “vaguely defined” Hinduism. Admittedly inspired by Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s Nazism Sarvarkar and his bowed left only two options before the “foreign elements”. Either to merge themselves in the national race to adopt it’s culture or to live at it’s mercy as long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race. This is the only sound view on the minorities problem. They must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, that is of the Hindu nation and must lose their seperate existence….”
Not for Sarvarkar and his class, the ideas of composite culture, territorial nationalism, secularism, democracy and social justice that galvanised the Nationalist, socialist and social justice movements of the time. For them, communism, Islam and Christanity were the internal threats to their Hindu heaven . This even while, the other political movements were in the thick of what they perceived as the immediate threat- British rule. Sarvarkar, as A.J. Noorani points out elsewhere, “perverted history for use in the service of his politics, a politics based on the manufactured ancient wrongs for the spread of hatred and the spirit of revenge”.