The move to 'Hindu-ise' politics in India and the role of the diaspora

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the organisations floated by it, together called the Sangh Parivar, have worked towards Hinduising politics in India and installing a Hindu majoritarian state there. Their political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power now after winning two successive parliamentary elections – in 2014 and 2019. Besides, Hinduising India, one of the goals of the RSS, has been to unite the Hindu diaspora under its Hindutva (Hindu nationhood, an idea which means a religio-ethnic nationalism as opposed to a multi-religious or civic nationalism) umbrella. 

In order to accomplish this goal, the RSS floated an organisation called the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) in 1964. The VHP made the “vishwa” – the entire world – its work terrain and immersed itself in the task of raising Hindu consciousness among the Hindu diaspora. It tried to generate a stronger sense of “oneness and belonging” among Hindu families because it was driven by the belief that in a foreign environment they, and particularly their children, would lose their cultural bearings and get cut off from their Hindu roots. This, over the long term, would lead to a fall in the number of Hindus — so the belief went. 

The goal was also to strengthen Hindu nationalism and work towards legitimising it in a context when secularism and religious inclusivism became the foundational ideals of the independent Indian republic which promised equality of religious communities. The Sangh Parivar opposed secular and multi-religious nationalism and worked on its own ideology of Hindu ethnic nationalism.

The Sangh Parivar thus attempted to play an active role overseas through the VHP. It has worked towards maintaining a religio-cultural consciousness and cementing the Hindu identity among the diaspora. Its work is guided by the argument that Hindus abroad should not forget their roots, however much they integrate with their country of adoption. It believes that while immersing themselves in the socio-culture of these countries, the Hindus should actively practise their religion. 

A strong exclusivist narrative came up around these beliefs, which had considerable support, driven in a large measure by emotional sentiments and nostalgia among the Hindu diaspora and its younger cohorts of subsequent generations. Lived memories of India of the earlier generations brought them together and these were in turn passed on to their children in the form of narratives and chronicles. 

Hinduism is seen by them to stand for ancient wisdom, spiritualism, tolerance and peace. The exploitative social hierarchies as ingrained in the caste system and gender relations usually do not form the subject of public discussions, and a critique on these is largely missing. The anti-minority stances of the Sangh Parivar organisations in India are also something which is pushed out of the public discourse or accepted as part of the larger identity expressions by the Sangh Parivar-inspired Hindu diaspora. 

The main purpose of the Sangh Parivar abroad is to bind the Hindus as one and to raise among them a community consciousness, which of course must be supportive of the Parivar’s ideology and politics. It has had a regular pattern of holding conferences and meetings among the Hindus abroad as also being active during religious festivals and conducting rituals during occasions of birth, death, marriage and so on. 

This has brought many diasporic Hindu families together and forged close bonds between them and the Sangh organisations. This closeness becomes meaningful, especially in settings where these Hindu families have faced racial discrimination and segregation as also class discriminations and majoritarian cultural pressures. This has led to the coming together of many Hindus living in countries outside India and inculcated a feeling of brotherhood in them. 

The Sangh Parivar acts like a social network and support structure where many personal and business alliances can take place and do take place. It would like the community to be united also as a political unit and be more in alignment with the Hindutva stances in India. A good recent example of this is the event, “Howdy Modi” in the US which was addressed by Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi and the outgoing US President, Donald Trump, where the former remarked, “Abki Baar, Trump Sarkar” (“This time around, a government of Donald Trump”). This remark had a special significance, it being the presidential election year in the US. This depicts the attempts at political mobilisation of the diaspora by the Sangh and building closer political alignments between it and the Sangh organisations in India.

The VHP has taken up the task of religious organisation among the Hindu diaspora and worked in the arenas of worship and recreation. Towards this purpose, it has organised regular congregational meetings, collective celebration of festivals, sports events and generation of knowledge about Hinduism through textbooks and religious gatherings among the diasporic Hindus. 

This work is apparently not political and traverses the socio-educational terrains, but it has the desired goal of binding the community, drawing its boundaries and making it proud of its India-centric cultural heritage. It also makes the community identify with a certain distinctness rather than fully melting away in the cultural milieu of the country of adoption.

What is noticeable is that the work of the Sangh Parivar overseas is along a path which is non-confrontational and non-agitational. The VHP, placing itself within this pattern, works within constitutional boundaries and political norms and does not take an agitational path which might take it on a confrontational path with government authorities. 

It mainly works in what we call the religio-cultural sphere. This has brought it legitimacy in the countries where it has its branches. It has been successful to a considerable extent in showcasing India as a Hindu nation rather than a secular-pluralist country where all religious communities participated in the anti-colonial independence struggle and subsequent nation-building. As an organisation of Hindus, it has often carried out its programmes with the blessings of the political leadership of those countries. 

This is unlike its work style in India where it has crossed paths with governments and the constitution and challenged government authority. For instance, it has questioned the ideals of religious freedoms and secularism, which are enshrined in India’s constitution. It brands “secularism” as “pseudo-secularism” and calls it a pathway to minority appeasement (glossing over the fact that India’s largest minority group, the Muslim community, has faced economic backwardness as well as discrimination and attacks). Now being in power, it wants to take the Indian state in the direction of a monolithic religious identity based on these oppositions. It does not display the same stringent criticality against the legal structures and political functioning in the country of adoption the way it does in India.

This is an age of stronger global connectivity and a time where we have an active social media. People are better connected, and news reaches people in a matter of seconds. In such times, news of events and happenings in India reaches the diaspora faster than what it did even a few years ago. This comes in handy for the Sangh organisational networks to convey their activity to the diaspora. 

The diaspora remains well connected with the activities in the country of origin and closely identifies with the happenings and emotes accordingly. The religio-cultural happenings influence it, and it feels affected as a collective. 

However, as there are two sides to a coin, the fallout of the 20th-century media tools also is that the Sangh Parivar’s intolerant streaks are exposed to the entire world. An instance of this is the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) report in 2015, which said that religious minority communities have been subject to derogatory comments by politicians linked to the ruling BJP and also numerous violent attacks and forced conversions (ghar wapsi campaigns) by Hindu nationalist groups, such as the RSS and the VHP. 

The latter, however, called this a one-sided report aimed at maligning India.

It also should be mentioned that the diaspora’s critical or supportive stance is also dependent on its own situation in the country of settlement. One should not assume that the Hindu diaspora has a monolithic character. Like anywhere else, it has internal differences along the lines of class, region, opinions, ideologies, gender and so on. It also has a more complex link with Hindu nationalism, which must mediate between allegiance to nationalism/propaganda in the country of adoption and allegiance to nationalism in the country of origin. 

For instance, the dilemmas it faces to support VHP’s opposition to inter-religious marriages in India because this conflicts with freedoms on inter-racial and inter-religious marriage alliances in the country of adoption. However, the attempt of the Sangh Parivar is to see the dilution of these lines and complexities and to build a consolidated Hindu political unit among the diaspora. DM/MC

Manjari Katju teaches at the University of Hyderabad, India.

This article is the latest in a series looking at the rise and manifestations of authoritarianism and intolerance in India. The earlier articles are:

Modi’s Madness: India’s secularism on trial

A violent juncture: The rise of fascism in India

Narendra Modi, the BJP and Hate Speech 

A dystopian template for India’s future

Compliance and Complicity: the Role of India’s judiciary

Hindutva's War on Women

Stan Swamy, Still in Jail

Why objecting to the Citizen’s Amendment Act in India matters to us all