Domain name Hindutva

Although the subjects on which the most substantial contributions to Hindutva web sites are made vary considerably, the web masters and their associates are united in their resolve to offer radically altered accounts of even the most common verities of India history.

Thus, while it is generally agreed that the Mughal Emperor Akbar reigned 1556-1605 was, especially for his times, a just ruler, that his policies of tolerance were conducive to the expansion of his empire and the good of his subjects, and that he is said to have introduced elements of Hinduism, into his own practices of worship and even the culture of the court, in Hindutva web sites he appears as a 8216;8216;tyrannical monarch8217;8217;; not unexpectedly, then, Aurangzeb reigned 1658-1707, who has always been disliked by Hindu historians as a sworn enemy of the Hindus and breaker of idols, is viewed as entirely beyond the pale.

The Taj Mahal, which no serious historian doubts was built at the orders of Shah Jahan reigned 1628-58, is transformed into a Hindu monument by the name of Tejomahalay, as though its history as one of the finest examples of Mughal architecture was wholly inconsequential, a malicious invention of Muslim-loving Hindus.

Lest these revisionisms be considered merely arbitrary and anomalous, the systematic patterning behind these re-writings is also evidenced by the attempt to argue, for example, that the Aryans, far from having migrated to India, originated there.

These sites weave their own intricate web of links, conspiracies, and nodal points: at one moment one is in one web site, and at another moment in another. Even Krishna, who by his leela or divine magical play could be among several gopis lovers simultaneously, might have found his match in the world wide web; he might have gazed with awe at rhizomatic Hindutvaness at its propagandistic best.

Among the most remarkable and most comprehensive of the sites are those created by the VHP and students who have constituted themselves into the Global Hindu Electronic Network GHEN. Links take the surfer to such sites as hindunet, the Hindu Vivek Kendra, and the various articles culled from the archives of Hinduism Today, a glossy magazine published by a white sadhu who is constructing a lavish temple amidst the rich tropical green of Hawaii8217;s Kaui island.

GHEN is sponsored by the Hindu Students Council, and the astuteness of its creators, no less than their zeal and ardour, can be gauged by the fact that it had developed into the most comprehensive site on Hindutva philosophy and aggressive Hindu nationalism at least eight years ago, when such work in cyberspace was in its infancy.

GHEN was the recipient in 1996 of an award from IWAY, then one of the leading Internet magazines, for the 8216;8216;Best Web Page Award8217;8217; in the religious category, and one of GHEN8217;s members described himself as pleased that the world was finally 8216;8216;taking cognisance of the most important movement in this century: the Hindutva movement8217;8217;.

If GHEN shares something ominous in common with Hindutva web sites, it is the deliberate attempt to obfuscate the distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva. Swami Vivekananda, to take one instance, becomes in their histories an exponent of Hindutva ideology, not an advocate of a mere Hinduism 8230;

Judging from GHEN8217;s 8216;8216;Swami Vivekananda Study Center8217;8217;, which presents the RSS as the fulfilment of Vivekananda8217;s ideas, the Swami was a militant Hindutvavadi who desired 8216;8216;the conquest of the whole world by the Hindu race8217;8217;. If Argentina is nothing other than 8216;8216;Arjuna town8217;8217;, where Arjuna 8212; one of the five Pandava heroes who in the Mahabharata are condemned to spend 13 years in exile 8212; went for the year that he was enjoined to remain incognito; if Denmark, rich in dairy products, is none other than 8216;8216;Dhenu Marg8217;8217;, the abode of cows which the cowherd Krishna would have recognised as his own home; if the 8216;8216;Red Indians8217;8217; are the signposts for the advance of an Indian civilisation in remote antiquity; and if Vivekananda8217;s own name, 8216;8216;Vive! Canada8217;8217;, is a ringing testimony to his reach over the world, even demonstrable proof of intrepid Indian explorers having used the scientific advances of the ancient Hindus to reach Canada centuries before the European Age of Exploration commenced, then surely it is not too far-fetched to imagine that Vivekananda desired the worldwide supremacy of the Hindu race .

Sometimes the expression of Hindu identity is manifested by waging a virulent attack on Islam, as in the web site, located in the United States, that takes its name from the Sanskrit phrase Satyameva Jayate Truth Alone Triumphs, which is the national motto of sovereign India. Though viewers are invited to send e-mail to a person carrying a Muslim name, 8216;8216;Zulfikar8217;8217;, the web site is almost certainly operated by a Hindu.

The site is linked to the home page of a 8216;8216;Vedic astrologer8217;8217; and the remarks about Islam and its Prophet are so slanderous that it is nearly inconceivable that any Muslim, howsoever much an unbeliever, would have dared to be so foolishly offensive8230;

I have given a mere inkling of the Hindu histories that dominate on the Internet, and in conclusion it merits reiteration that the very proclivity to argue in the language of the historian shows how far the proponents of Hindutva have abandoned the language of Hinduism for the epistemological imperatives of modernity and the nation-state.

Nothing resonates as strongly as their desire to strip Hinduism of myth, of its ahistoricist sensibilities, and to impose on the understanding of Hinduism and the Indian past alike the structures of a purportedly scientific history.

Typically, as in the article on 8216;8216;The Destruction of the Hindu Temples by Muslims, Part IV8217;, found on the 8216;8216;Satyameva Jayate8217;8217; web site, no page numbers are ever furnished, nor are titles of works enumerated; nonetheless, a tone of authority is sought and injected by the note placed at the end: 8216;8216;Works of Arun Shourie, Harsh Narain, Jay Dubashi, and Sita Ram Goel have been used in this article.8217;8217;

The mention of 8216;8216;references8217;8217; imparts a scholarly note to the piece, and the invitation to employ the verifiability hypothesis suggests the detachment of the scientist, the objectivity of the social scientist who has no ambition but the discernment of truth, and the scrupulousness of the investigator.

I hasten to add that this is keeping well within the norm of Hindutva history: the unattributed article, 8216;8216;The Real Akbar, The not so Great8217;8217;, is likewise based on a number of sources, though their worthiness as specimens of authoritative scholarship can be construed from the great affection that Hindutva historians have developed for Will Durant.

8216;8216;The world famous historian, Will Durant has written in his Story of Civilisation,8217;8217; writes Rajiv Varma in his Internet article on Muslim atrocities, 8216;8216;the Mohammedan conquest of India was probably the bloodiest story in history.8217;8217; The West be damned, but when the occasion demands, the authority of even its mediocre historians is construed as incontestable.

From their concerted endeavours to impart a precise historical specificity to the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, as evidenced by the laborious efforts at reconstructing the chronology of the events depicted in the epics and turning the principal characters into live historical figures who were the Moses, Abraham, Isaac, and Christ of Hinduism, to the onslaught on the generally accepted theory of an Aryan migration to India 8212; an onslaught first headed, it is no accident, by an Indian aerospace engineer, N S Rajaram, who is described as valiantly having temporarily set aside his career in the interest of exposing, the largest 8216;8216;hoax8217;8217; in human history 8212; the Hindutvavadis have signified their attachment to historical discourses.

Historical discourses are preeminently the discourses of the nation, and the interest, which has something in common with the historical archive, making it intrinsically hospitable to the modernist sensibility of the historian, is poised to become the ground on which the advocates of Hindutva will stage their revisionist histories. Whether cyberspace is 8216;8216;Republican8217;8217; is a matter on which we can defer judgment, but it is poised, alarmingly, to become a Hindutva domain, considering that there are scarcely any web sites which offer competing narratives.

Dharmakshetre, Kurukshetre on the field of dharma, righteousness; on the field of the Kurus, says the Bhagavad Gita in its opening line, but today this might well be: dharmakshetre, cyberkshetre.

If the computer scientist-historian types who inhabit Silicon Valley, and their diasporic brethren, have it their way, Hinduism will become that very 8216;8216;world historical religion8217;8217; they have craved to see, and Hindutva history will be the most tangible product of the wave of globalisation over which they preside from their diasporic vantagepoint.

The History of History
Politics and scholarship in Modern India
By Vinay Lal
Oxford University Press; Pages 294
Price Rs: 650