In a book entitled Hindutva: Who is a Hindu, first published in 1923, Savarkar makes his case that we must move away from the label “Hinduism” and exchange it for the label “Hindutva.” Hinduism, for him, is of “alien growth”’ thus “we should not allow ourselves to be confused by this newfangled term.’’14 Moreover, the term Hinduism is associated only with religious dogma; thus it fails to take seriously the inclusion of other religious offspring of the land of Saptasindhu, i.e. Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism.
For Savarkar, the term Hindutva overcomes three of the main problems with the term Hinduism. First, Hindutva speaks of a sacred geography. “The first image that it rouses in the mind is unmistakably of our motherland and by an express appeal to its geographical and physical features it vivifies it into a living Being. Hindustan means the land of Hindus, the first essential of Hindutva must necessarily be this geographic one.”15 This sense of motherland is passionately described. Unless one “has come to look upon our land not only as the land of his love but even of his worship, he cannot be incorporated into the Hindu fold.”16 Second,
Hindutva binds all those of the motherland together by a common blood. Again Savarkar puts this emphatically:
The Hindus are not merely the citizens of the Indian state because they are unified not only by the bonds of love they bear to a common motherland but also by the bonds of a common blood. They are not only a Nation but also a race-jati. The word jati, derived from the root Jan to produce, means a brotherhood, a race determined by a common origin — possessing a common blood All Hindus claim to have in their veins the blood of the mighty race incorporated with and descended from the Vedic fathers, the Sindus.17
Third, Hindutva asserts that as a result of this biological community, all Hindus (must) share a common culture: “the brave and loving defense of the Hindu culture have been incorporated with and bound to us by the dearest of ties — the ties of common blood.”18 In a longer passage Savarkar expresses this third essential characteristic of Hindutva clearly:
[W]e Hindus are bound together not only by the ties of love we bear to a common fatherland and by the common blood that courses through our veins and keeps our hearts throbbing and our affections warm, but also by the ties of common homage we pay to our great civilization — our Hindu culture, which could not be better rendered than by the word Sanskriti suggestive as it is of that language Sanskrit, which has been the chosen means of expression and preservation of that culture. of all that was best and worth-preserving in the history of our race. We are one because we are a nation, a race and own a common Sanskriti (civilization).19
Interestingly, though quite predictably, the common culture which binds all Indians together is the one common Hindu culture with deep roots in Brahmanic religion. symbolized by its sacred language (Sanskrit). Accepting and working toward the reclamation of this religio-cultural commonality is crucial to the Hindutva agenda. As Savarkar puts it, “For the first two essentials of Hindutva — nation and jati [race] — are clearly denoted and connoted by the word pitrubhu [Fatherland] while the third element of Sanskriti [civilization] is pre-eminently implied by the word Punyabhu [Holyland]. as it is precisely Sanskriti including sanskaras i.e. rites and rituals, ceremonies and sacraments, that make a land a Holyland.”20 One geographic region is made to correspond with one race, which in turn is constructed to be religiously and culturally homogenous through the civilization engendered and developed by the Brahmins.
The interpretation of Dalit and Adivasi communities in this common nation, common race, and common civilization (religio-cultural heritage) is somewhat mixed. On the one hand, the ideology of Hindutva, as propounded by Savarkar, asserts that all communities, be they Brahmin or Dalit or Adivasi, share in a common blood. This testimony of a common flow of blood “is true not only in the case of those that are the outcome of the intermarriages between the chief four castes, or between the chief four castes and the cross-born but also in the case of those tribes or races who somewhere in the dimness of the hoary past were leading a separate and self-centred life.”21 This biological connectedness among all communities in India, which affirms the anthropological basis of Dalit and Adivasi existence, is a major step in espousing the universalization of human rights for all people. In another passage, primarily referring to specific Adivasi communities (Santals, Kolis, Bhils) and Dalits (Panchamas and Namashudras), Savarkar writes
The race that is born of the fusion . . . of the Aryan, the Kolarians, Dravidians, whose blood we as a race inherit, is rightly called neither an Aryan, nor Lolarian, nor Dravidian — but the Hindu race; that is, that people who live as children of a common motherland, adorning a common holyland. . . Therefore the Santals, Kolis, Bhils, Panchama, Namashudras and all other such tribes and classes are Hindus
