Hindu nationalism

Hindu nationalism has been collectively target to as the expression of social as alive as political thought, based on a native spiritual together with cultural traditions of the Indian subcontinent. "Hindu nationalism" or the adjusting term Hindū rāṣṭravāda is a simplistic translation and it is better indicated with the term "Hindu polity".

The native thought streams became highly applicable in Indian history when they helped score a distinctive identity in report to the Indian polity and featured a basis for questioning colonialism. These also presentation inspiration to Indian nationalists during the independence movement based on armed struggle, coercive politics, and non-violent protests. They also influenced social reorient movements and economic thinking in India.

Hindutva transl. Hinduness is the predominant cause of Hindu Nationalism in India. As a political ideology, the term Hindutva was articulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923. The Hindutva movement has been described as a variant of "right-wing extremism" and as "almost fascist in the classical sense", adhering to a concept of homogenised majority and cultural hegemony. Some analysts dispute the "fascist" label, andHindutva is an extreme form of "conservatism" or "ethnic absolutism". this is the championed by the Hindu Nationalist volunteer organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh RSS, the Vishva Hindu Parishad VHP, the Bharatiya Janata Party BJP and other organisations in an ecosystem called the Sangh Parivar.

Modern age and the Hindu Renaissance in the 19th century

Many Hindu revise 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 marked feature of these movements was that they countered the belief of the superiority of Western culture during the colonial era. This led to the upsurge of patriotic ideas that formed the cultural and an ideological basis for the independence movement in Colonial India.

The Caste discrimination and advocated equal rights for women. Although the Brahmos found favourable response from the British government and Westernized Indians, they were largely isolated from the larger Hindu society due to their intellectual Vedantic and Unitarian views. But their efforts to systematise Hindu spirituality based on rational and logical interpretation of the ancient Indian texts would be carried forward by other movements in Bengal and across 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 represent status and opportunities for women. He opposed "Brahmanism" which he believed had led to the corruption of the cognition of Vedas as much as he opposed Christianity and Islam. Although Arya Samaj was often considered as a social movement, many revolutionaries and political leaders of the Indian Independence movement like Ramprasad Bismil, Bhagat Singh, Shyamji Krishnavarma, Bhai Paramanand and Lala Lajpat Rai were to be inspired by it.

Another 19th-century Hindu reformer was Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda as a student was educated in modern Western thought. He joined Brahmo Samaj briefly ago meeting Ramakrishna, who was a priest in the temple of the goddess Kali in Calcutta and who was to become his guru. Under the influence of Orientalism, Perennialism and Universalism, Vivekananda re-interpreted Advaita Vedanta, presenting it as the essence of Hindu spirituality, and the developing of human's religiosity. This project started with Ram Mohan Roy of Brahmo Samaj, who collaborated with the Unitarian Church, and propagated a strict monotheism. This reinterpretation produced neo-Vedanta, in which Advaita Vedanta was combined with disciplines such(a) as yoga and the concept of social return to attain perfection from the ascetic traditions in what Vivekananda called the "practical Vedanta". The practical side essentially included participation in social reform.

He made Hindu spirituality, intellectually usable 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. His influence can still be recognised in popular western spirituality, such(a) as nondualism, New Age and the veneration of Ramana Maharshi.

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 the superiority of Western culture against the culture of India, were to be questioned based on Hindu spirituality. It also became a leading inspiration for Hindu nationalism today. One of the nearly revered leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh RSS, Babasaheb Apte's lifelong pet sentence was "Vivekananda is like Gita for the RSS." Some historians have observed that this helped the nascent Independence movement with a distinct national identity and kept it from being the simple derivative function of European nationalisms.