Opinion Ashutosh Varshney writes: The Hindutva-Ambedkar puzzle

Perhaps one could begin with how the original thinkers of Hindu nationalism saw the relationship, going all the way back to the 1920s and 1930s. For those early years, there is no better guide for us than V D Savarkar, the father of Hindutva.

Luckily, a new book — Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva (Princeton University Press, 2024) by Janaki Bakhle, Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley — gives us novel insights into Savarkar’s thinking. Ten years in the making, Bakhle’s book comprehensively examines Savarkar’s voluminous writings in Marathi, including his plays, poems and essays, which are well-known in Maharashtra but not having been translated in English, little known outside. Savarkar wrote copiously about caste, religion and nationhood, and also commented on Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar.

As Vikram Sampath’s biography of Savarkar had also earlier noted, Bakhle emphasises that Savarkar was a persistent critic of caste. But Savarkar’s position was different from both Gandhi and Ambedkar. Gandhi’s unrelenting focus was on untouchability, a “sinful” denial of basic dignity to millions of Indians. As for the other castes, hierarchy was the problem, not caste per se. While untouchability required eradication, the four-varna-based caste system simply needed reform. Minus the hierarchy and untouchability, the caste system, according to Gandhi, could simply function as a division of labour, given the historical links of castes with occupations.

Ambedkar disagreed. The entire caste system required annihilation, not just untouchability. The caste hierarchy and its horrors were anchored in religious texts, without which Hinduism was inconceivable. Brahminism was as big a problem as untouchability. Ambedkar was born a Hindu, but did not want to die as one. Before his death, he converted to Buddhism with his followers.

Bakhle shows that Savarkar’s views on caste were located somewhere between Gandhi and Ambedkar. He was constantly critical of Sanatana Dharma. To him, caste was “an enduring structure of stupidity, naivete and even innocence”; rituals were a mere idiotic superstition; and “the cow, Vedic chants and prayers were themselves not sacred”. But Savarkar also believed that Brahmins deserved no special ire for their behaviour. Rather, prejudice and oppression ran through the entire system. Kshatriyas and Vaishyas oppressed everyone beneath them; upper Sudras lorded over the lower Sudras; the “untouchable Mahars”, a caste to which Ambedkar was born, did not look kindly at those below them in the hierarchy. These “rules of bad behaviour” can be altered if we change our minds. The “untouchables”, according to Savarkar, can and should be given access to Vedic rituals and embraced by all castes.

But why should all of this be done? Though critical of caste, Savarkar never argued that the caste system was a centuries-long structure of dominance and oppression, and a birth-based, radically unequal, distribution of group dignity was built into it. Anti-Brahmin arguments, ruling many intellectual and political circles in Bombay and Madras Presidencies at the time, did not draw his sympathy. Indeed, he argued, the project of Hindu unity could be pursued under “enlightened Brahmin leadership”. Thus Savarkar “attempted to have it both ways: To enact radical reform without completely alienating the privileged elite”.

This equivocation allows Bakhle to make a key argument. Savarkar’s criticism of caste was “instrumental”. It was “primarily motivated by what he saw as an urgent and immediate need to unite Hindus against Muslims (in marked contrast with Gandhi whose critique of caste was primarily related to the need for a unified nationalist movement against British rule)”. Over time, opposing British rule became less important to Savarkar than creating a united Hindu community against the Muslims, who might rise again and dominate the Hindus, but whose disloyalty to India was, to him, far too evident. If the “untouchables” and lower castes are not incorporated in the Hindu family, they “will join forces with the Muslims”, whose demographic numbers needed contraction, not expansion by conversion. To put it in modern social science terms, Savarkar’s project of Hindu unity meant merging all castes into a singular Hindu ethnicity.

To Ambedkar, Hindu unity was exactly the opposite of what his own project sought. He wanted to “annihilate” caste and leave Hinduism altogether. Though Savarkar initially had some sympathy for Ambedkar, the fundamental clash between the two projects became all too obvious. Savarkar’s final judgement was unambiguously clear. He called Ambedkar “a man… burning with hatred against Hinduism”.

The Home Minister’s Ambedkar ridicule is arguably rooted in Savarkar’s ultimate judgment of Ambedkar as a Hindu hater. But so is Hindutva’s Hindu unity strain embedded in Savarkar. Batenge toh katenge (if divided, we will be decimated), the new political refrain of Hindutva, is a perfect contemporary illustration of Savarkar’s Hindu unity project, to be pursued without an attack on caste hierarchy, but with Muslims as an enemy.

The electoral significance of Dalits stems from their numbers. They are numerically larger than the estimated demographic size of Brahmins, if not all upper castes together. Ambedkar’s status has become so great that large proportions of Dalits not only view him as an icon, but they also see the Constitution, made under his leadership, as an emblematic canon. A fuller incorporation of Dalits into the Hindu unity project is not possible if Ambedkar and “his” Constitution are threatened. However, since Ambedkar had no interest in Hindu unity, Hindutva’s Ambedkar ambivalence continues, and is not easily resolvable.

The writer is Sol Goldman professor at Brown University, where he also directs the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at the Watson Institute. Views are personal