This article is about various Hindu nationalist mobilisations in the last two centuries. For present day Hindu nationalism, see Hindutva. Hindu nationalism has been collectively referred to as the expression of social and political thought, based on the native spiritual and cultural traditions of ukrainian brides in india Indian subcontinent.
The native thought streams became highly relevant in Indian history when they helped form a distinctive identity in relation to the Indian polity and provided a basis for questioning colonialism. Hindu nationalist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923, is the predominant form of Hindu nationalism in India. Many Hindu reform movements originated in the nineteenth century. These movements led to the fresh interpretations of the ancient scriptures of Upanishads and Vedanta and also emphasised on social reform. The Brahmo Samaj was started by a Bengali scholar, Ram Mohan Roy in 1828. Ram Mohan Roy endeavoured to create from the ancient Upanishadic texts, a vision of rationalist ‘modern’ India.
Arya Samaj is considered one of the overarching Hindu renaissance movements of the late nineteenth century. Swami Dayananda, the founder of Arya Samaj, rejected idolatry, caste restriction and untouchability, child marriage and advocated equal status and opportunities for women. Swami Vivekananda on the Platform of the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Another 19th-century Hindu reformer was Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda as a student was educated in contemporary Western thought.
He made Hindu spirituality, intellectually available to the Westernized audience. His famous speech at the Parliament of the World’s Religions at Chicago on 11 September 1893, followed huge reception of his thought in the West and made him a well-known figure in the West and subsequently in India too. A major element of Vivekananda’s message was nationalist. He saw his effort very much in terms of a revitalisation of the Hindu nation, which carried Hindu spirituality and which could counter Western materialism. The notions of White supremacy and Western superiority, strongly believed by the colonizers, were to be questioned based on Hindu spirituality. Sri Aurobindo was a nationalist and one of the first to embrace the idea of complete political independence for India. He was inspired by the writings of Swami Vivekananda and the novels of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.
I say that it is the Sanatan Dharma which for us is nationalism. This Hindu nation was born with the Sanatan Dharma, with it, it moves and with it, it grows. When the Sanatan Dharma declines, then the nation declines, and if the Sanatan Dharma were capable of perishing, with the Sanatan Dharma it would perish. But what is the Hindu religion ?
What is this religion which we call Sanatan, eternal ? It is the Hindu religion only because the Hindu nation has kept it, because in this Peninsula it grew up in the seclusion of the sea and the Himalayas, because in this sacred and ancient land it was given as a charge to the Aryan race to preserve through the ages. The influence of the Hindu renaissance movements was such that by the turn of the 20th century, there was a confluence of ideas of the Hindu cultural nationalism with the ideas of Indian nationalism. Both could be spoken synonymous even by tendencies that were seemingly opposed to sectarian communalism and Hindu majoritism. Anushilan Samiti was one of the prominent revolutionary movements in India in the early part of twentieth century.
It was started as a cultural society in 1902, by Aurobindo and the followers of Bankim Chandra to propagate the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. But soon the Samiti had its goal to overthrow the British rule in India. On 30 April 1908 at Muzaffarpur, two revolutionaries, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki, threw bombs at a British convoy aimed at British officer Kingsford. Both were arrested trying to flee. Aurobindo was also arrested on 2 May 1908 and sent to Alipore Jail. In 1910, when, Aurobindo withdrew from political life and decided to live a life of renounciate, the Anushilan Samiti declined.
A revolutionary movement was started by Shyamji Krishnavarma, a Sanskritist and an Arya Samajist, in London, under the name of India House in 1905. The brain behind this movement was said to be V D Savarkar. The India House had soon to face a closure following the assassination of William Hutt Curzon Wyllie by the revolutionary Madan Lal Dhingra, who was close to India House. Lal-Bal-Pal” is the phrase that is used to refer to the three nationalist leaders Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal who held the sway over the Indian Nationalist movement and the independence struggle in the early parts of twentieth century. Lala Lajpat Rai belonged to the northern province of Punjab.
He was influenced greatly by the Arya Samaj and was part of the Hindu reform movement. He joined the Indian National Congress in 1888 and became a prominent figure in the Indian Independence Movement. Bal Gangadhar Tilak was a nationalist leader from the Central Indian province of Maharashtra. He has been widely acclaimed the “Father of Indian unrest” who used the press and Hindu occasions like Ganesh Chaturthi and symbols like the Cow to create unrest against the British administration in India. Bipin Chandra Pal of Bengal was another prominent figure of the Indian nationalist movement, who is considered a modern Hindu reformer, who stood for Hindu cultural nationalism and was opposed to sectarian communalism and Hindu majoritism. Mahatma Gandhi never called himself a Hindu nationalist, but preached Hindu Dharma. Madan Mohan Malviya, an educationist and a politician with the Indian National Congress was also a vociferous proponent of the philosophy of Bhagavad Gita.
