| Author | Vinayak Damodar Savarkar |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
Publication date | c. 1923 |
| Publication place | British India |
| Pages | 88 (original publication) |
| ISBN | 9-788-188-38825-7 |
| OCLC | 0670049905 |
Essentials of Hindutva is a 1923 political pamphlet by Indian politician and ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. [1] [2] It was published while Savarkar was still in jail. [3] It was retitled Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? when reprinted in 1928. Savarkar's pamphlet formulated the Hindu nationalist ideology of Hindutva.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was tried and convicted of sedition in 1910. In July 1911, he was transported to Port Blair and incarcerated in Cellular Jail to serve a fifty-year sentence. [4] After submitting a series of clemency petitions, he was transferred to a prison in Ratnagiri, where he remained until his conditional release in 1924. [5] During his imprisonment in Ratnagiri, he wrote Essentials of Hindutva in 1922. [6] [7] The pamphlet was smuggled out of his cell and published in 1923 by a lawyer from Nagpur, named Vishwanathrao Kelkar. [8] The pamphlet was written and published in English, [9] comprising just eighty-eight pages. [10] It was reprinted in 1928 under the title Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?, with the second phrase serving as a subtitle. [11]
Savarkar used the term "Hindutva" (Sanskrit -tva, neuter abstract suffix) to describe Hinduness (or the "quality of being a Hindu)". [12] [ failed verification ] Savarkar regarded Hinduism as an ethnic, cultural and political identity.[ citation needed ] Hindus, according to Savarkar, are those who consider India to be the land in which their ancestors lived (pitrubhumi, Sanskrit : पितृभूमि), as well as the land they consider to be pure or virtuous (punyabhumi, Sanskrit : पुण्यभूमि); "one for whom India is both Fatherland and Holyland".[ citation needed ]
Sarvakar includes all Indian religions in the term 'Hinduism' and outlines his vision of a Hindu Rashtra ("Hindu nation" or "Hindu polity") as Akhand Bharat ("Undivided India"), stretching across the entire Indian subcontinent.
"We Hindus are bound together not only by the tie of the 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 tie of the common homage we pay to our great civilization - our Hindu culture" Fifth Edition 1969 p91 (Internet Archive PDF p108)