As a historical prelude to a brief elaboration of this essay’s title, one speculation is that the genesis of the Hindutva Hate Doctrine (HHD) virus began with the advent of Islam into South Asia over 1200 years ago. Then, it grew slowly, gradually over the 700 years, when Muslim rulers, representing a minority, dominated vast parts of the region in which the majority of the population was non-Muslim.
Yet, for the most part, there was a passivity to the hate rather than an active facet. And the hate was confined to relatively small numbers despite the deliberate or accidental demolition of temples. Even as the inherently equitable, non-caste-based universality of Islam attracted voluntary, mostly non-violent conversion to its faith of peoples riven by profoundly deep, entrenched caste-divisions, the influx of Muslim Turkish, Persian, Central and West Asian rulers and communities was accepted, even welcomed at times as a relief from entrenched oppression. There were numerous instances where Muslim rulers shared power with non-Muslim princes and generals.
Al-Biruni ‘s prescience:
Recording observations of his travels in the 11th century, Al Biruni of Persia, in his treatise “Kitab al Hind,” was fascinated by the total contrast between communities living side by side while possessing widely different religious, cultural, and ethnic characteristics. Indeed, over time, there was a conscious effort to reinforce the differences because they became an anchor for the identity at birth to stay fixed and unaltered by neighbours. In the 1930s, sociologist Gregory Bateson formulated the term “schismogenesis” to describe this phenomenon that exists in several other parts of our world as well: when one community preserves its sense of self by defining itself as being against, or irreconcilably different from the other.
Perhaps the transition from passive acceptance to active rejection began with the end of the Muslim Mughal dynasty in 1857. Broadly speaking, Hindus began a subconscious and then increasingly conscious search for their new political role over unfolding decades when Muslims no longer wielded superior power, which had been replaced by British power.
The search manifested itself diversely. The reformist, anti-idol worship, anti-caste-based Arya Samaj, founded in 1875, was a significant initiative. A decade later, even though there was only one major Hindu figure among the four co-founders of the Congress Party in 1885 (Surendranath Bannerjee, with two Zorastrians, Dadabhai Nauroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, and one Englishman, Allan Hume), Hindus soon became the leading segment in the secular public persona of the Congress. Thirty years later, from within the Congress in 1915, the Hindu Mahasabha emerged as a pressure group for Orthodox Hindus. Ten years later, in 1925, with a paramilitary face promoting Hindu discipline and character-building, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) laid the foundation for other entities, becoming the driving force behind the upsurge of the BJP in the 1980s, 1990s, and over the past quarter century. Through these phases, for a variety of reasons, assertion became aggression: you had to be Hindu, of whichever caste, for you to have the right to live and thrive in Bharat.
Simultaneously, post-1857, Muslims too began their own search for a new role in times wherein they were substantive in numbers but, in overall regional terms, a minority. Following the successive phases of Sir Syed, the formation of the Muslim League in 1906, the invention of the word “Pakistan” in 1933 by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, and the transformative leadership of Mr. M.A. Jinnah, Pakistan eventually became a reality in 1947 and remained so until 1971.
But even after the disintegration of the original state structure, Muslim nationalism remains the pivotal force in 2025 for the abiding nature of Bangladeshi identity -- while respecting the rights of the non-Muslim parts, which constitute about 10 per cent of the population. Numbers are relevant to note. In Pakistan, non-Muslims are only about 3 per cent, which does not diminish their importance but indeed enhances it. Whereas in India, Muslims as a percentage of the total are about 15 per cent among a total of about 22 per cent non-Hindus.
Pakistan is the only nation-state in South Asia with the will and capacity to confront the external expressions of Hindutva Hate Doctrine (HHD)
Internal impact:
Which brings us to consider the first internal implication for India of the HHD doctrine. In the world’s most populous and diversely composed state, at 1.43 billion in 2023 and growing, with enduring inequalities in multiple spheres, at least 400 million to 500 million remain mired in harsh poverty or severe disadvantage. HHD drives schisms and divisions even deeper.
The writer is an author, a former Senator and Federal Minister, and a member of the longest-running ‘Pakistan-India Track II dialogue known as the Neemrana Initiative’ (1992-2015).
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