Smokers' corner: The narratives of nationalism
In his 1934 book The Story of My Life, the early Hindu nationalist and author Bhai Parmanand laments that, when he visited the United States in 1914, many Americans asked him, “Are all Hindus Muslim?”
The Indian historian Gyanendra Pandey in his essay for the anthology, Hindus and Others, wrote that, even till the late 19th century, being a Hindu largely meant being an inhabitant of India, no matter what religion he or she belonged to.
Both Hindu and Muslim nationalisms in India have their roots in the aftermath of the failure of the 1857 War of Independence. Nationalism as an idea was largely foreign to both the communities. It was uncannily introduced in the subcontinent by the British. The eminent historian Ayesha Jalal, in her book Self and Sovereignty, writes that at least one of the reasons behind the emergence of Hindu and Muslim nationalism was the introduction of the holding of a nationwide census by the British, who insisted that the natives declare their faith.
Bhai Parmanand should not have been surprised by what the Americans asked him. The idea of defining the Hindus and Muslims as separate communities of India was still new to those living thousands of miles away. To them India was Hindustan, and its citizens were Hindu just as America’s citizens were American — be they Christian or otherwise. But Parmanand was aware of the fact that, unlike Islam, Judaism or Christianity, Hinduism was a dispersed faith which did not have a centre.
Formulating a cohesive narrative about Hindu nationalism and polity in india has been hampered by the reality of history
According to author and historian Craig A. Lockhard, in his book Societies, Networks and Transitions, Hinduism emerged over centuries as a synthesis and fusion of various cultures and beliefs which sprang up in the region. But this synthesis was more cultural and geographical in nature. It wasn’t tied together by a single, overarching theological thread.
The British scholar of comparative religion G.D. Flood writes in his tome An Introduction to Hinduism that the word ‘Hindu’ was first used as a geographical term in the Persian texts of 6th century BCE to describe people who lived beyond River Indus (in present-day Pakistan).
Flood also writes that the Persians formulated this word from the original local name of the Indus, which was Sindhu. According to Indian historian Romila Thapar, the term ‘Sindhu’ was derived from ‘Sapta Sindhu’ mentioned in the Rig Veda — a book of Sanskrit hymns composed between 1500 and 1200 BCE. The sapta sindhu is described as a river in the Rig Veda. The post-seventh century Arabs picked up on the word ‘Hindu’ first coined by the Persians to form the word ‘al-Hind’ or ‘Hindustan.’ By this they meant a region inhabited by the people of the Indus.
J.T. O’Connell, in his 1973 essay “The Word Hindu” published in Gaudiya Vaisnava Texts, writes that it was only in the 16th century CE that the word ‘Hindu’ initially emerged in the context of being a faith. According to him, it is described as a religion in the 16th century Bengali tome Chaitanya Charitamrita which uses the term ‘Hindu dharma.’
Pandey writes that to overcome this realisation, early Hindu nationalists claimed that a majority of non-Hindu people living in the region had originally been Hindu and were converted. On the other hand, also in the 19th century, early Muslim nationalists claimed that their ancestors were non-Indian and had roots in Muslim Arabia and Central Asia. But the early Muslim nationalists had an established monotheist faith to help them concoct a social and political link with Muslim-majority regions; early Hindu nationalists struggled to formulate a coherent history of Hinduism.