Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist volunteer paramilitary organisation. It is the progenitor and leader of a large body of organisations called the Sangh Parivar, which has developed a presence in all facets of Indian society and includes the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling political party under Narendra Modi, the 14th prime minister of India. Mohan Bhagwat has served as the Sarsanghchalak of the RSS since March 2009.
Hindutva is a political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and the belief in establishing Hindu hegemony within India. The political ideology was formulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1922. It is used by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the current ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and other organisations, collectively called the Sangh Parivar.
The term pseudo-secularism is used to describe individuals who claim to be secular but may display biases towards a particular religion, whether consciously or unconsciously. This term has gained popularity in recent Indian politics, where it is often used to criticize individuals who identify as secular and advocate for minority rights while remaining silent or opposing concerns faced by the majority religion. Some Hindu nationalist parties employ this term as a counter-accusation against their critics, alleging that the secularism followed by the Indian National Congress and other self-declared secular parties are flawed or distorted.
Bajrang Dal is a Hindu nationalist militant organisation that forms the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). It is a member of the right-wing Sangh Parivar. The ideology of the organisation is based on Hindutva. It was founded on 1 October 1984 in Uttar Pradesh, and began spreading more in the 2010s throughout India, although its most significant base remains the northern and central portions of the country.
The Sangh Parivar refers, as an umbrella term, to the collection of Hindutva organisations spawned by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which remain affiliated to it. These include the political party Bharatiya Janata Party, religious organisation Vishva Hindu Parishad, students union Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), religious militant organisation Bajrang Dal that forms the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), and the worker's union Bharatiya Kisan Sangh.
Asghar Ali Engineer was an Indian reformist writer and social activist. Internationally known for his work on liberation theology in Islam, he led the Progressive Dawoodi Bohra movement. The focus of his work was on communalism and communal and ethnic violence in India and South Asia. He was a votary of peace and non-violence and lectured all over world on communal harmony.
India since its independence in 1947 has been a secular country. The secular values were enshrined in the constitution of India. India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru is credited with the formation of the secular republic in the modern history of the country. With the Forty-second Amendment of the Constitution of India enacted in 1976, the Preamble to the Constitution asserted that India is a secular nation. However, the Supreme Court of India in the 1994 case S. R. Bommai v. Union of India established the fact that India was secular since the formation of the republic. The judgement established that there is separation of state and religion. It stated "In matters of State, religion has no place. Any State government which pursues nonsecular on policies or nonsecular course of action acts contrary to the constitutional mandate and renders itself amenable to action under Article 356". Furthermore, constitutionally, state-owned educational institutions are prohibited from imparting religious instructions, and Article 27 of the constitution prohibits using tax-payers money for the promotion of any religion.
Religious violence in India includes acts of violence by followers of one religious group against followers and institutions of another religious group, often in the form of rioting. Religious violence in India has generally involved Hindus and Muslims.
Violence against Christians in India is religiously motivated violence against Christians in India. Human Rights Watch has classified violence against Christians in India as a tactic used by the right-wing Sangh Parivar organizations to encourage and exploit communal violence in furtherance of their political ends. The acts of violence include arson of churches, conversion of Christians by force, physical violence, sexual assaults, murders, rapes, and the destruction of Christian schools, colleges, and cemeteries.
Hindu nationalism has been collectively referred to as the expression of political thought, based on the native social and cultural traditions of the Indian subcontinent. "Hindu nationalism" is a simplistic translation of Hindū Rāṣṭravāda. It is better described as "Hindu polity".
Sabrang Communications is an organization founded in 1993 that publishes the monthly Communalism Combat magazine and that operates KHOJ, a secular education program, in schools in Mumbai, India. Communalism Combat is edited by Javed Anand and Teesta Setalvad. The Khoj programs try to help children to get past identity labels.
There have been several instances of religious violence against Muslims since the partition of India in 1947, frequently in the form of violent attacks on Muslims by Hindu nationalist mobs that form a pattern of sporadic sectarian violence between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Over 10,000 people have been killed in Hindu-Muslim communal violence since 1950 in 6,933 instances of communal violence between 1954 and 1982.
Des Raj Goyal (1929-2013), also known as Desraj Goyal or D. R. Goyal, was an Indian journalist, academic and a well-known author of books on secularism and communalism. Having been a member of the Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in his younger days, he wrote a seminal book on the organisation in 1979, which is widely cited in academic works.
These are the references for further information regarding the Sangh Parivar.
Hindu–Muslim unity is a religiopolitical concept in the Indian subcontinent which stresses members of the two largest faith groups there, Hindus and Muslims, working together for the common good. The concept was championed by various persons, such as leaders in the Indian independence movement, namely Mahatma Gandhi and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, as well as by political parties and movements in British India, such as the Indian National Congress, Khudai Khidmatgar and All India Azad Muslim Conference. Those who opposed the partition of India often adhered to the doctrine of composite nationalism.
1999 Ranalai violence refers to the incident of violence that occurred on March 15, 1999, in the village of Ranalai in Gajapati district of Orissa. The violence occurred after a dispute of adding religious symbols in the Khamani Hill of the village. A crowd of 2000 people, reportedly followers of the Sangh Parivar, armed with country made guns and weapons, completely burned down 157 Christian houses and looted the remaining Christian houses in the village. 14 Christians were injured including three injured by gun shots. An investigation by the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the violence.
The 1998 Ramgiri-Udaygiri violence was an incident of violence that took place in the town of Ramgiri-Udaygiri in Gajapati District, Odisha on December 8, 1999. Two prisoners who were arrested for dacoity were murdered by a mob of 5000 tribal people after breaking into the sub-jail. In a separate case, a mob of 500 people looted and burned down 92 to 111 Christian houses and 2 Churches on the same day. 27 people were arrested.
Shamsul Islam is an Indian author, academic, and activist known for his work on the intersection of religion, politics, and history in India. He is a retired professor of political science from the University of Delhi, where he taught from 1973 to 2013. He has been particularly vocal about the rise of communalism and the distortion of historical narratives, especially in the context of Hindu-Muslim relations in India. His work often critiques the ideological underpinnings of the Hindu nationalist movement, particularly its attempts to rewrite Indian history in a way that marginalizes minority communities.
