Hindu Manifesto   

The ideal and ideology, which S laid down, is called Hindu nationalism or Savarkarism. Although a natural development, an outgrowth and manifestation of several nationalists, the ideology was finally formulated and codified into an integral doctrine of social and political outlook on life by S. Vivekananda was a great philosopher, changed the way the world perceived India, gave Hindus pride in their religion but his ideal for India was an Islamic Body with a Vedantic heart. Aware of the separatist’s tendencies of the Muslims, Lala Lajpat Rai held that Hindus were a nation by themselves, because they had a civilization of their own. Hardaya wrote in 1925, “I declare that the future of the Hindu race rests of four pillars. 1) Hindu Sanghatan. 2) Hindu Raj. 3) Shuddhi of Muslims. 4) Conquest and Shuddhi of Afghanistan and Frontiers. So long as we do not accomplish these, the future of our children will ever in danger”. Looking at current events, how true were his forecasts. The only seer, who was conscious of this ideology in a certain way, was Swami Dayanand Saraswati but he was more of a social reformer than a politician. But S was a social reformer, politician, writer, and historian all in one.

What is Hinduvta?

Who is a Hindu? “A Hindu is a person who regards his land as Bharat-Varsha from the Indus to the Seas as his fatherland as well as his Holyland, that is the cradle land of his religion”. Thus it includes those followers of Vedism; Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism and all the hill tribes are Hindus. Around this life-center moves Hinduvta where Hinduism in only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hinduvta. It is not a theocratic state but embraces all thoughts and activity of the whole being of the Hindu race. The principal elements instrumental in the formation of a nation are a common past, common tradition and a will to live together.

A nation is a group of mankind who is bound together by some or all of these common ties such as common religion, culture, history, tradition, literature and consciousness of rights and wrongs, occupying a territory of geographical unity, and aspiring to form a political unit. When a nation realizes this ambition, it becomes a State. The principal elements in the formation of nation are a common past, tradition and a will to live together.

Various people have defined a nation more or less on the above lines. G.P.Gooch, an eminent historian in his nationalism observes, “But the strongest of all is the identity of political antecendents, the possession of national history and consequent community of recollections, collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with same incidents in the past”

Hindu Nation
S observes “The ancient and modern history of Hindus is common in friends & enemies. They have faced common dangers and won victories in common. One in national despair and one in national hope, the Hindus by an admirable process through assimilation, elimination and consolidation are welded together during the aeons of a common life and habitat”. Above all they have a common motherland and fatherland. The Hindus stated S is different from other people in the world. Their festivals and cultural forms are common. The Vedic Rishis are their common pride, their Grammarians Panini and Patanjali, their poets Bhavabhuti and Kalidas, their heroes Ram, Krishna, Rana Pratap, and Guru Govind Singh are a source of common inspiration. Like their ancient language Sanskrit, their scripts too are fashioned on the same basis and the Nagari script has been the common vehicle of the sacred writings since centuries in the past.

India has been and is dear to us, because it has been and is the home of our Hindu race, the land that has been the cradle of our heroes and Gods. Whoever came to India, the Arabs, Jews, Russians, Germans, Greeks they formed a nation together with the Hindus because these new comers also lived in India. Prior to the Muslim invasion there was only one religion in India i.e. Sanathan Dharam. S found nothing objectionable in the ideal of Hindu nationalism. The idea of territorial nationality alone was envisaged by the Congressites, who preferred to be totally ignorant of Muslim history, psychology and political trend of mind.

S observed that “Muslims in general and Indian Muslims in particular have not grown out of the historical stage, of intense religiosity and the theological concepts of state. The Khilafat Movement started by Gandhi united Indian Muslims like never before, made them realize that their future was linked to events outside Bharat rather than within it. Muslim mind divides the human world into two groups – the Muslim land and the enemy land. Muslims cannot live in peace where they are the dominant majority; elsewhere they are perpetually at loggerheads with the Christians and Hindus. Their Holy Land is Saudia, their godmen different. Compare this with other country. After Khilafat the Muslims migrated to Muslim lands like Poland, Greece, China. Yet the country of the Poles continues to be Poland, of the Grecians Greece. Go to section of Wars and Foreign affairs section of the site and read an article, Why Pakistan will never allow Bharat to live in Peace? It gives you an insight into the Muslim mind.

Gokhale had realized that the 70 million Muslims were more or less hostile to national aspirations and warned Sarojini Naidu that Hindu-Muslim unity would never come in his lifetime. Pherozshah Mehta, Annie Besant, Lala Lajpat Rai made similar statements. Said Dr Ambedkar as late as 1941, “Islam can never allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his Motherland and regard a Hindu as his kith and kin”. So to a Hindu Bharat was always his motherland. Said S “A Hindu patriot worth the name cannot but be an Indian patriot as well. We Hindus must have a country of our own in the solar system and must continue to flourish there as Hindus-descendants of a mighty people”.

S believed in the resurrection of Hindus, there was a virility and staying power inherent in the Hindu race as could find few parallels in the annals of the world.

Nationalism said S when it is aggressive is as immoral in human relations as is communalism when it tries to suppress the equitable rights of other communities and tries to usurp all to itself. But when communalism is defensive, it is as justifiable and human as an equitable nationalism itself. S was all for Hindu-Muslim unity. He held that it was suicidal to borrow hostilities and combats of the past to fight them out in the present, because Shivaji and Aurangzeb had done it. But he justified the struggle of the Rajputs, Sikhs and Marathas to overthrow the Mughal rule as long as the Muslims lived in India in their capacity as alien rulers.

S said that Muslims cherished secret designs to disintegrate the Indian state and to create a state within a state and brand non-Muslim sections with the stamp of humiliation and Muslim domination. How true was Veer Savarkar. Rafiq Zakaria’s book echoes similar sentiments if not directly, subtly. The Pakistan General Musharraf said that in a recent interview to M J Akbar too. It is the same reason why Pakistanis in London or Pakistan took to riots when it appeared that the Indian cricket team was going to win. S was not against minorities who had no evil designs on Bharat.

On the theory of Relative non-violence S believed that every nation, community must be armed to protect itself against invaders, people out to destroy its culture. He was completely against the doctrine of non-violence as propagated by the Gandhians. It had resulted in the weakening of the Hindu mind and their massacre e.g. Moplah, Noakali.

Revolution: Why and How
“A revolution is evolution in leaps. Revolutions are not regulated by fixed laws. They have their own way of marching. It has only watchword – Dashon! All sorts of new and unthought of circumstances might arise during its progress but one must stop, one must overcome them and press forward. There is no other life-killing poison to a revolution than indecision. If a delay is made after starting, the enemy gets time to guard himself, those who rise prematurely loose confidence. Therefore, to give the enemy time between the first rising and spreading of a revolution is always harmful to the revolution.

That revolution which destroys injustice is unholy. But when a revolution roots out one kind of injustice and oppression and plants, at the same moment, the seeds of another kind, it becomes unholy and the seeds of destruction accompanying that sin put an end to its life. The rule should be revolution outside and constitution within, chaos outside and cosmos within, sword outside and law within”.

Savarkar’s India

In short under the set of circumstances prevailing in India and in the context of the present world set-up, the following ideal is to be realized in the immediate future.

(a) In Savarkar’s India all citizens would have equal rights and obligations irrespective of caste, creed, race or religion provided they avow and owe an exclusive and devoted allegiance to the State.
(b) All minorities would be given effective safeguards to protect their language, religion, culture, etc. but none of them would be allowed to create a State within a State or to encroach upon the legitimate rights of the majority.
(c) The fundamental rights of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, of worship, of association, etc. would be enjoyed by all citizens a like; whatever restrictions would be imposed on them in the interest of the public peace and order or national emergency would not be based on any religious or racial considerations alone but common national grounds.
(d) One man one vote would be the general rule irrespective of caste, creed, race, or religion.
(e) There would be joint electorates.
(f) Services would go by merit alone.
(g) Primary Education will be free and compulsory.
(h) Every minority would have separate schools to train their children in their own tongue; their religious and cultural institutions would receive Government help also for these, but always in proportion to the taxes they pay into the common exchequer.
(i) The residuary powers would be vested in the Central Government.
(j) Nagari would be the national script, Hindi, the lingua franca and Sanskrit, the Devabhasha of India.

TWO

(1) People would first of all welcome the machine age. The handicrafts would, of course, have their place and encouragement. But national production would be on the biggest possible machine scale.
(2) As the peasantry and the working classes form literally the chief source of national wealth, health, and strength, every effort would be made to reinvigorate them and the village, which is their cradle. Peasants and laborers would be enabled to have their share in the distribution of wealth to such an extent as would enable them not only to live with a bare margin of existence, but with the average scale of a comfortable life free from wants. Nevertheless, it would be remembered that they being a part and parcel of the nation as a whole, would share common obligations and responsibilities and therefore would only receive their share in such a way as would be consistent with the general development and security of national industry, manufacture and wealth in general.
(3) As the national capital is under the present circumstances mainly individual and indispensable for the development of national industries and manufactures, it would also receive due encouragement and recompense.
(4) The interests of both the capital and labor would be subordinated to the requirements of the nation as a whole.
(5) If an industry is flourishing, the profits would be shared in a large portion by the laborers. But on the contrary, if it is a losing concern, not only the capitalist, but to a certain extent even the laborers would have to remain satisfied with diminishing returns so that the National Industry as such would not altogether be undermined by the over-bearing attitude of the selfish class interests of either the capitalists or the workers.
(6) Every step would be taken by the State to protect national industries against foreign competition.
(7) The key industries or manufactures and such other items would be altogether nationalized if the National Government could afford to do so and could conduct them more efficiently than private enterprise.
(8) The same principle would apply to agriculture. Government would take over the land and introduce State cultivation if it could serve to train up the peasant class as a whole with the use of big machines and would cultivate on a large and scientific scale.
(9) All strikes and lockouts which are obviously meant or inevitably tend to undermine and cripple national industries or production in general or are calculated to weaken the economic strength of the nation as a whole would be referred to State arbitration and settled or in serious cases quelled.
(10) Private property would be in general held inviolate. In no case there would be on the part of the State any expropriation of such property without reasonable recompense.

Thus Savarkar’s India would be a democratic State in which the countrymen belonging to different religions, sets or races would be treated with perfect equality and none would be allowed to dominate others or would be deprived of his just and equal rights of free citizenship, so long as every one discharges the common obligation which one owes to the State as a whole.

Hindustan, the Motherland and Holyland of the Hindus, from the Indus to the Seas, would be an organic undivided State. The appellations of this Bharat Bhoomi would remain as Bharat or Hindustan. In Savarkar’s India none would dare convert Hindus by fraud or force. Everywhere the Indians would be respected as citizens of a great nation. In that India relative non-violence would be regarded as a virtue.

The Hindus would be a casteless society a consolidated, modernized and up-to-date nation their marriage customs would be secularized and voluntary inter-caste marriages would be freely performed. Hindu corpses would be burnt in electric crematorium. In Savarkar’s India science would lead all material progress and things and would annihilate superstitions. There would be a total liquidation of landlordism. All the land would belong to the State by and by. All key industries would be nationalized. Agriculture would be mechanized. India would be self-sufficient in respect of food, clothes, shelter, and defence.

Savarkar’s India would have unbounded faith in a World Commonwealth as his political philosophy conceives that the Earth is the Common Motherland and humanism the patriotism of man, but his India would not go under during the process which leads to the welding of humanity into a World Common wealth. In international politics Savarkar’s India would help to build world peace and prosperity.

Savarkar’s philosophy finds full expression in the Flag he has designed for the Hindus. It bears the symbol of  Kundalini with the Omkar and Kripan. Hindus have perfected the science of yoga. According to Savarkar’s it is highest blessing on human life; it is the contribution of the Hindus to mankind. This yoga means full development of man’s internal powers. The symbol of that power is Kundalini. To attain the wonderfully supersensuous joy through the awakened Kundalini is, Savarkar opines the highest ideal of men, be he a Hindu or a non-Hindu. In short, the Kundalini * represents all the ultimate aspirations, feelings and powers of mankind. The Kundalini represents yoga, the highest spiritual attainment while the Kripan represents Bhoga, Abhyudaya, and the worldly advancement. The red-orchard colour of the Flag indicates renunciation-Tyaga. And there is no renunciation without Yoga and Kshema-protection. Therefore the Kripan is for the Yoga Kshema.

The Omkar is the sacred symbol of the great One with Whom the liberated souls become one in the highest state of Nihshreyas-spiritual bliss. It seems Savarkar was, with the exception of Aurobindo Ghose, the only first rate Indian leader who had experienced this super-sensuous joy. He had practiced this Yoga while in the Cellular Jail of the Andamans. So Savarkar was the only political philosopher who chose Kundalini on the Flag. The Swastik was added to the Flag later on by the Hindu Mahasabha when it accepted the Flag. Originally it was not there.