SAVARKAR-BOOK-FULL

SAVARKAR-BOOK-FULL

HINDUTHVA

What is in a name?

We hope that the fair Maid of Verona who made the impassioned appeal to her lover to change

'a name that was 'nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man'

would forgive us for this our idolatrous attachment to it when we make bold to assert that,

'Hindus we are and love to remain so!'

We too would, had we been in the position of that good Friar, have advised her youthful lover to yield to the pleasing pressure of the logic which so fondly urged

'What's in a name? That which we call a rose would smell as sweet by any other name!'

For, things do matter more than their names, especially when you have to choose one only of the two, or when the association between them is either new or simple.

The very fact that a thing is indicated by a dozen names in a dozen human tongues disarms the suspicion that there is an invariable connection or natural connection or natural concomitance between sound and the meaning it conveys.

Yet, as the association of the word with the thing is signifies grows stronger and lasts long, so does the channel which connects the two states of consciousness tend to allow an easy flow of thoughts from one to the other, till at last it seems almost impossible to separate them.

And when in addition to this a number of secondary thoughts or feelings that are generally roused by the thing get mystically entwined with the word that signifies it, the name seems to matter as much as the thing itself.

Would the fair Apostle of the creed that so movingly questioned 'What's in a name?' have liked it herself to nickname the God of her idolatry as 'Paris' instead of 'Romeo'?

Or would he have been ready to swear by the moon that 'tipped with silver all the fruit tree-tops,' that it would serve as sweet and musical to his heart to call his 'Juliet' by 'any other name' such as for example - 'Rosalind?'

Nay more; there are words which imply an idea in itself extremely complex or an ideal or a vast and abstract generalization and which seem to take, as it were, a being unto themselves or live and grow as an organism would do.

Such names though they be 'nor hand, nor foot, nor any other part belonging to a man,' are not all that, precisely because they are the very soul of man.

They become the idea itself and live longer than generations of man do.

Jesus died but Christ has survived the Roman Emperors and that Empire.

Inscribe at the foot of one of those beautiful paintings of 'Madonna' the name of 'Fatima' and a Spaniard would keep gazing at it as curiously as at any other piece of art; but just restore the name of 'Madonna' instead, and behold his knees would lose their stiffness and bend his eyes their inquisitiveness and turn inwards in adoring recognition, and his whole being get suffusedwith a consciousness of the presence of Divine Motherhood and Love!

What is in a name?

Ah! call Ayodhya, Honolulu, or nickname her immortal Prince, a Pooh Bah, or

ask the Americans to change Washington into a Chengizkhan, or

persuade a Mohammedan tocall himself a Jew, and you would soon find that the 'open sesame' was not the only word of its type.

Hindutva is different from Hinduism

To this category of names which have been to mankind a subtle source of life and inspiration belongs the word Hindutva, the essential nature and significance of which we have to investigate into. The ideas and ideals, the systems and societies, the thoughts and

sentiments which have centered round this name are so varied and rich, so powerful and so subtle, so elusive and yet so vived that the term Hindutva defies all attempts at analysis. Forty centuries, if not more, had been at work to mould it as it is. Prophets and poets, lawyers and law-givers, heroes and historians, have thought, lived, fought and died just to have it spelled thus. For indeed, is it not the resultant of countless actions- now conflicting, now commingling, now cooperating- of our whole race?

Hindutva is not a word but a history.

Not only the spiritual or religious history of our people as at times it is mistaken to be by being confounded with the other cognate term Hinduism, but a history in full.

Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva. Unless it is made clear what is meant by the latter the first remains unintelligible and vague. Failure to distinguish between these two terms has given rise to much misunderstanding and mutual suspicion between some of those sister communities that have inherited this inestimable and common treasure of our Hindu civilization. What is the fundamental difference in the meaning of these two words would be clear as our arguement proceeds. Here it is enough to point out that Hindutva is not identical with what is vaguely indicated by the term Hinduism. By an 'ism' it is generally meant a theory or a code more or less based on spiritual or religious dogma or creed. Had not linguistic usage stood in our way then 'Hinduness' would have certainly been a better word than Hinduism as a near parallel to Hindutva.

Hindutva embrases all the departments of thought and activity of the whole Being of our Hindu race. Therefore, to understand the significance of this term Hindutva, we must first understand the essential meaning of the word Hindu itself and realize how it came to exercise such imperial sway over the hearts of millions of mankind and won a loving allegiance from the bravest and best of them. But before we can do that, it is imperative to point out that we are by no means attempting a definition or even a description of the more limited, less satisfactory and essentially sectarian term Hinduism. How far we can succeed or are justified in doing that would appear as we proceed..

Although it would be hazardous at the present state of oriental research to state definitely the period when the foremost band of the intrepid Aryans made it their home and lighted their first sacrificial fire on the banks of the Sindhu, the Indus, yet certain it is that long before the ancient Egyptians, and Babylonians had built their magnificent civilization, the holy waters of the Indus were daily witnessing the lucid and curling columns of the scented sacrificial smokes and the valleys resounding with the chants of Vedic hymns- the spiritual fervour that animated their souls. The adventurous valour that propelled their intrepid enterprizes, the sublime heights to which their thoughts rose-all these had marked them out as a people destined to lay the foundation of a great and enduring civilization. By the time they had definitely cut themselves aloof from their cognate and neighbouring people especially

the Persians, the Aryans,

had spread out to the farthest of the seven rivers, Sapta Sindhus, and not only had they developed a sense of nationality but had already succeeded in giving it 'a local habitation and a name!' Out of their gratitude to the genial and perennial network of waterways that run through the land like a system of nerve-threads and wove them into a Being, they very naturally took to themselves the name of Sapta Sindhus an epithet that was applied to the whole of Vedic India in the oldest records of the world, the Rigveda itself. Aryans or the cultivators as they essentially were, we can well understand the divine love and homage they bore to these seven rivers presided over by the River, 'the Sindhu'. which to them were but a visible symbol of the common nationality and culture.

the Indians in their forward march had to meet many a river as genial and as fertilizing as these but never could they forget the attachment they felt and the homage they paid to the Sapta Sindhus which had welded them into a nation and furnished the name which enabled their forefathers to voice forth their sense of national and cultural unity. Down to this day a Sindhu- a Hindu-wherever he may happen to be, will gratefully remember and symbolically invoke the presence of these rivers that they may refresh and purify his soul.

Not only had these people been known to themselves as 'Sindhus' but we have definite records to show that they were known to their surrounding nations- at any rate to one of them- by that very name, 'Sapta Sindhu'. The letter 's' in Sanskrit is at times changed into h in some of the Prakrit languages, both Indian and non-Indian. For example, the word Sapta has become Hapta not only in Indian Prakrits but also in the European languages too: we have Hapta i.e., week, in India and 'Heptarchy' in Europe, Kesari in Sanskrit becomes Harhvati in Persian and Asuri becomes Ahur. And then we actually find that the Vedic name of our nation Sapta Sindhu had been mentioned as Hapta Hindu in the Avesta by the ancient Persian people. Thus in the very dawn of history we find ourselves belonging to the nation of the Sindhus or Hindus and this fact was well known to our learned men even in the Puranic period. In expounding the doctrine that many of the Mlechha tongues had been but the mere offshoots of the Sanskrit language the Bhavishya Puran clearly cites this fact and says -

Thus knowing for certain that the Persians used to designate the Vedic Aryans as Hindus and knowing also the fact that we generally call a foreign and unknown people by the term by which they are known to those through whom we come to know them, we can safely conclude that most of the remoter nations that flourished then must have applied the same epithet 'Hindu' to our land and people as the ancient Persians did. Not only that but even in the very region of the Sapta Sindhus the thinly scattered native tribes too, must have been knowing the Aryans as Hindus in the local dialects in accordance with the same linguistic law. Further on, as the Vedic Sanskrit began to give birth to the Indian Prakrits which became the spoken tongues of the majority of the decendants of these very Sindhus as well as the assimilated and the crossborn castes, these too might have called themselves as Hindus without any influence for the foreign people. For the Sanskrit S changes into H as often in Indian Prakrits as in the non-Indian ones. Therefore, so far as definite records are concerned, it is indisputably clear that the first and almost the cradle name chosen by the patriarchs of our race to designate our nation and our people, is Sapta Sindhu or Hapta Hindu and that almost all nations of the then known world seemed to have known us by this very epithet, Sindhus or Hindus..

Name older still

So far we have been treading on solid ground of recorded facts, but now we cannot refrain ourselves from making an occasional excursion into the borderland of conjecture.

So far we have not pinned our faith to any theory about the original home of the Aryans. But if the most widely accepted theory of their entrance into India be relied on, then a natural curiousity arises as to the origin of the names by which they called the new scenes of their adopted home. Did they coin all those name from their own tongue? Could they have done so? Is it not generally true that when we meet a new scene or enter a new country we call them by the very names- may be in a slightly changed form so as to suit our vocal ability or taste- by which they are known to the native people there? Of course, at times we love to call new scenes by names redolent with the memory of the clear old ones- especially when new colonies are being established in a virgin and but thinly populated continent. But this explanation could only be satisfactory when it is proved that the name given to the new place already existed in the old country and even then it could not be denied that the other process of calling new scenes by the names which they already bear is more universally followed. Now we know it for certain that the region of the Sapta Sindhus was, though very thinly, populated by scattered tribes. Some of them seem to have been friendly towards the newcomers and it is almost certain that many an individual had served the Aryans as guides and introduced them to the names and nature

of the new scenes to which the Aryans could not be but local strangers. The Vidyadharas, Apsaras, Yakshas, Rakshas, Gandharvas and Kinnaras were not all or altogether inimical to the Aryans as at times they are mentioned as being benevolent and good- natured folks. Thus it is probable that many names given to these great rivers by the original inhabitants of te soil may have been sansritised and adopted by the Aryans. We have numerous proofs of this nature in the assimilative expansion of those people and their tongues; witness the words Shalakantakata, Malaya, Milind, Alasada, (Alexandria) Suluva (Selucus) etc. If this be true then it is quite probable that the great Indus was known as Hindu to the original inhabitants of our land and owing to vocal peculiarity of the Aryans it got changed into Sindhu when they adopted it by the operation of the same rule that S

is the Sanskritised equivalent of H. Thus Hindu would be the name that this land and the people that inhabited it bore from time so immemorial that even the Vedic name Sindhu is but a later and secondary form of it. If the epithet Sindhu dates its antiquity in the glimmering twilight of history then the word Hindu dates its antiquity from a period so remoter than the first that even mythology fails to penetrate - to trace it to its source.

Hindus, a nation

The activities of so intrepid a people as the Sindhus or Hindus could no longer be kept cooped or cabined within the narrow compass of the Panchanad or the Punjab. The vast and fertile plains farther off stood out inviting the efforts of some strong and vigorous race. Tribe after tribe of the Hindus issued forth form the land of their nursery and led by the consciousness of a great mission and their Sacrificial Fire that was the symbol thereof, they soon reclaimed the vast, waste and but very thinly populated lands. Forests were felled, agriculture flourished, cities rose, kingdoms thrived,- the touch of the human hand changed the whole face of the wild and unkemp nature. But while these great deeds were being achieved the Aryans had developed to suit their individualistic tendencies and the demands of their new environments a policy that was but loosely centralised. As time passed on, the distances of their new colonies increased, and different settlements began to lead life politically very much centred in themselves. The new attachments thus formed, though they could not efface th old ones, grew more and more pronounced and

powerful until the ancient generalizations and names gave way to the new. Some called themselves Kurus, others Kashis or Videhas or Magadhas while the old generic name of the Sindhus or Hindus was first overshadowed and then almost forgotten. Not that the conception of a national and cultural unity vanished, but it assumed other names and

other forms, the politically most important of them being the institution of a Chakarvartin. At last the great mission which the Sindhus had undertaken of founding a nation and a country, found and reached its geographical limit when the valorous Prince of Ayodhya made a triumphant entry in Ceylon and actually brought the whole land from the Himalayas to the Seas under one sovereign sway. The day when the Horse of Victory returned to Ayodhya unchallenged and unchallengeable, the great white Umbrella of Sovereignty was unfurled over that Imperial throne of Ramchandra, the brave, Ramchandra the good, and a loving allegiance to him was sworn, not only by the Princes of Aryan blood but Hanuman, Sugriva, Bibhishana from the south-that day was the real birth-day of our Hindu people. It was truly our national day: for Aryans and Anaryans knitting themselves into a people were born as a nation. It summed up and politically crowned the efforts of all the generations that preceded it and it handed down a new and common mission, a common banner, a common cause which all the generations after it had consciously or unconsciously fought and died to defend.

General

Other names

A synthetic conception gains in strength if it finds a term comprehensive enough to give it an eloquent expression. The terms Aryawarta or Bramhawarta were not so suitable as to express the vast synthesis that embraced the whole continent from the Indus to the sea and aimed to weld it into a nation. Aryawarta as defined by the ancient writers was the land that lay between the Himalayas and the Vindhya. Although it was best suited to the circumstances which gave it birth, yet and therefore, it could not serve as a common name to a people that had welded Aryans and non-Aryans into a common race and had carried their culture-empire far beyond the bending summits of Vindhyadri. This necessity of finding a suitable term to express the expansive thought of an Indian Nation was more or less effectively met when the House of Bharat came to exercise its sway over the entire world. Without entering into speculation as to who this Bharat was the Vedic Bharat or the Jain one or what was the exact period at which he ruled it is here enough for us to know that his name had been not only the accepted but the cherished epithet by which the people of Aryawarta and Daxinapatha delighted to call their common motherland and their common cultural empire. Thus as the horizon opened out to the South we find that the centre of gravity had very naturally shifted from the Sapta Sindhus to the Gangetic Delta and the name Saptasindhu or Aryawart or Daxinapath gave way to the politically grander expression Bharatkhanda which included by the definition of our Nation attempted at a period when the vast conception must have been drawning over the minds of our great thinkers. We have met with no better attempt to define our position as a people when the vast conception must have been drawning over the minds of our great thinkers. We have met with no better attempt to define our position as a people than the terse little couplet in the Vishu Puran, 'The land which is to the north of the sea and to the south of the Himalaya mountain is named Bharata inhabited by the descendants of are Bharata.

How Names Are Given

But this new word Bharatavarsha could not altogether suppress our cradle name Sindhus or Hindus nor could it make us forget the love we bore to that River of rivers - the Sindhu at whose breast our Patriarchs and people had drunk the milk of life. Our frontier provinces which bordered the course of Indus still clung to their ancient name Sindhu Rashtra. And throughout the Sanskrit literature we find Sindhu Sauveers recognized as an integral and an important part of our body politic. In the great Mahabharata war the king of Sindhu Sauveer figures prominently and is said to have been closely related to the Bharatas. Although the limits of the Sindhu Rashtra shifted from time to time, yet the language that the people speak did then and does even now mark them out as a people by themselves from Multan to the sea, and the name 'Sindhi' which it bears is an emphatic reminder that all those who speak it are Sindhus and are entitled to be recognized as a geographical and political unit in the commonwealth of our Indian people. Although the epithet Bharatakhand succeeded in almost overshadowing the cradle name of our nation in India, yet the foreign nations seem to have cared little for it and as our frontier provinces continued to be known by their ancient name, so even our immediate neighbours - the Avestic Persians, the Jews, the Greeks and others clung to our ancient name Sindhus or Hindus. They did not merely indicate the borderland of Indus by this term as in days gone by, but the whole nation into which the ancient Sindhus by expansion and assimilation had grown. The Avestic Persians know us as Hindus, the Greeks dropping the harsh accent as Indos and through the Greeks almost all Europe and later on America as Hindus or Indians. Even Huen-tsang who lived so long with us persists in calling us Shintus or Hintus. Barring a few examples as that of Afganisthan being called as Shweta Bharat by the Parthians, very rarely indeed had the foreigners forgotten our cradle name or preferred the new one Bharat to it. Down to this day the whole world knows us as 'Hindus' and our land as 'Hindusthan' as if in fulfilment of the wishes of our Vedic fathers who were the first to make that choice.

But a name by its nature is determined not so much by what one likes to call oneself but generally by what others like to do. In fact a name is called into existence for this very purpose. Self is known to itself immutable and without a name or even without a form. But when it comes in contact or conflict with a non-self then alone it stands in need of a name if it wants to communicate with others or if others persist in communicating with it. It is a game that requires two to play at. If the world insists that a teacher or a wit must be handed down as an Ashtawakra or a Mulla Dopyaja well then he, in spite of his liking, is very likely to be remembered as such. If the name chosen by the world for us is not directly against our liking then it is yet more likely to shadow all other names. We might bear witness Page, Mujumdar, Peshawe. But if the world hits upon the word by which they would know us as one redolent of our glory or our early love then that word is certain not only to shadow but to survive every other name we may have. This fact added to the circumstances which brought us first into contact and then into a fierce conflict with the world at large, soonenabled the epithet Hindu to assert itself once more and so vigorously as to push into the background even the well beloved name of Bharatakhanda itself..

International Life

Although Indians were by no means cut off from the outside world before the rise of Buddhism and although their world activities had already assumed such dimensions as to give a just occasion to our patriotic poet law-givers to claim

[Let all the people of the world learn their duties from the elders born in this land]; yet as far as the present arguement is concerned, the international life of India after the rise of Buddhism, requires chiefly to be considered, because it was about this time when political enterprise having exposed or exhausted all possibilities of expansion in our own land naturally began to overflow its limits to an extent unevidenced before and the communications with the outsiders began to knock at our doors more impudently and even imperatively than they ever had done. In addition to these political developments the great and divine mission that set in motion 'the wheel of the law of Righteousness' made India the very heart-the very soul-of almost all the then known world. To countless millions of human souls from Misar to Mexico, the land of the Sindhus came to be the land of their Gods and Godmen. Thousands of pilgrims form distant shores poured into this country and thousands of scholars, preachers, sages and saints went from this land to all the then known world. But as the outside world persisted in recognizing us by our ancient name 'Sindhu' or 'Hindu' both these in-coming and out-going processes helped mightily to render that epithet to be the most prominent of our national names. The necessity of political and diplomatic correspondence with various states, who knew us as Hindus or Indus, must also have, by making it incumbent on our people to respond to it, revived the use of this epithet first side by side with and then at times even instead of the name Bharatkhand.

But if the rise of Buddhism has thus enabled this epithet to grow in prominence throughout the world and made us more and more conscious of ourselves as Hindus, then strange to say the fall of Buddhism only carried this process further than ever.

Fall of Buddhism

We fear that the one telling factor that contributed to the fall of Buddhism more than any other has escaped that detailed attention of scholars which it deserves. But as the subject in hand does but remotely involve its treatment here we cannot treat it here in full. All that we can do here is to make a few general remarks and leave them to be expounded and detailed out to a more favourable occasion if the work be done by others better fitted to do it. Can it be that philosophical differences alone could have made our nation turn against Buddhism ? Not wholly : for, these differences had been there all along and even flourished side by side with each other. Can it be the general inanition and demoralization of the Buddhistic Church itself ? Not wholly : for, if some of the Vuharas sheltered a loose, lazy and promiseous crowd of men and women who lived on others and spent what was not theirs on disreputable persuits of life, yet on the other hand the line of those spiritual giants of Arhat and Bhikkus had not altogether ended : nor had such scenes been peculiar to the Buddhistic Viharas alone! All these and many other shortcomings would not have attracted such fierce attention and proved fatal to Buddhistic power in India had not the political consequences of the Buddhistic expansion been so disastrous to the national virility and even the national existence of our race. No

prelude to a vast tragedy could be more dramatic in its effect in foreshadowing the culminating catastrophe than that incident in the life of the Shakya Sinha, when the news of the fate of the little tribal republic of the Shakyas was carried to their former Prince when he was just laying the foundation stone of the Buddhistic Church. He had already enrolled the flower of his clan in his Bhikkusangha and the little Shakya Republic thus deprived of its bravest and best, fell an easy victim to the strong to the strong and warlike in the very life time of the Shakya Sinha. The news when carried to him is said to have left the Enlightened unconcerned. Centuries rolled on; the Prince of the Skakyas had grown into the Prince of Princes-the Lokajit-the great conqueror of worlds. The confines of his little Shakya State expanded and embraced the confined the confines of India; and as if to give a touch of poetical precision and peotical justice, the woeful fate that had overtaken the tribal republic of Kapil-Vastu befell the whole of Bharatvarsha itself and it fell an easy prey to the strong and warlike-not like Shakyas to their own kith and kin-but the Lichis and Huns. Of course the Enlightened would perhaps remain as unaffected as ever, even if this news could ever reach him like the first. But the rest of Hindus then could not drink with equanimity this cup of bitterness and political servitude at the hands of those whose barbarous violence could still be soothed by the mealy - mouthed formulas of Ahimsa and spiritual brotherhood, and whose steel could still be blunted by the soft palm leaves and rhymed charms. We do not mean to underrate-much less accuse the services of the great brotherhood and its divine mission. We have only to point out the concomitance that is too glaring to escape the attention of any student of history. We know that it could easily be pressed against this statement that the greatest and even the most powerful Indian Kings and Emperors known, belong to the Buddhist period. Yes, but known to whom ? to Europeans and those of us who have unconsciously imbibed not only their thoughts but even their prejudices. There was a time when every school history in India opened from the Mohammedan invasion because the average English writers of that time knew next to nothing of our earlier life. Lately the general knowledge of Europe has extended backwards to the rise of Buddhism and we too are apt to look upon it as the first and even the most glorious epoch of our history. The fact is, it is neither. We yield to none in our love, admiration and respect for the Buddha-the Dharma-the Sangha. They are all ours. Their glories are ours and ours their failures.

Great was Ashoka, the Devapriya, and greater were the achievements of Buddhistic Bhikkus. But achievements as great if not greater and things as holy and more politic and statesmanly had gone before them and indeed enabled them to be what they were. So, we do not think that the political virility or the manly nobility of our race began and ended with the Mauryas alone or was a consequence of their embracing Buddhism. Buddhism has conquests to claim but they belong to a world far removed from this matter-of-fact world-where feet of clay do not stand long, and steel could be easily sharpened, and trishna-thirst-is too powerful and real to be quenched by painted streams that flow perennially in heavens. These must have been the considerations that must have driven themselves home to the hearts of our patriots and thinkers when the Huns and Shakas poured like volcanic torrents and burnt all that thrived. The Indians saw that the cherished ideals of their race-their thrones and their families and the very Gods they worshipped-were trampled under foot, the holy land of their love devastated and sacked by hordes of barbarians, so inferior to them in language, religion, philosophy, mercy and all the soft and human attributes of man and God-but superior to them in strength alone -

strength that summed up its creed, in two words-Fire and Sword ! The inference was clear. Clear also was the fact that Buddhistic logic had no arguement that could efficiently meet this new and terrible dualism -this strange Bible of Fire and Steel. So the leaders of thought and action of our race had to rekindle their Sacrificial Fire to oppose the sacrilegious one and to re-open the mines of Vedic fields for steel, to get it sharpened on the alter of Kali, 'the Terrible so that Mahakal -the 'Spirit of Time' be appeased. Nor were their anticipations belied. The success of the renovated Hindu arms was undisputed and indisputable. Vikramaditya who drove the foreigners from the Indian soil and Lalitaditya who caught and chastised them in their very dens from Tartary to Mongolia were but complements of each other. Valour had accomplished what formulas had failed to. Once more the people rose to the heights of greatness that shed its lustre on all departments of life. Poetry and philosophy, art and architecture, agriculture and commerce, thought and action felt the quickening impulse which consciousness of independence strength and victory alone can radiate. The reaction as usual was complete even to a fault. 'Up with the Vedic Dharma !' 'Back to the Vedas ! ' The national cry grew louder and louder, more and more imperative, because this was essentially a political necessity.

Buddhism - a universal religion

Buddhism had made the first and yet the greatest attempt to propagate a universal religion. 'Go, ye Bhikkus, to all the ten directions of the world and preach the law of Righteousness ! ' Truly, it was a law of Righteousness. It had no ulterior end in view, no lust for land or lucre quickening its steps; but grand though its achievements were it could not eradicate the seeds of animal passions nor of political ambitions nor of individual aggrandisement in the minds of all men to such an extent as to make it safe for India to change her sword for a rosary. Even then, to set an example, did India declare her will to 'take more pleasure in the conquest of peace and righteousness than in the conquest of arms. 'Nobly she tried : Ah ! so nobly as to make herself ridiculous in the eyes of lust and lucre. Had she not issued Royal edicts to the effect that the very water be strained before it was poured out for horses and elephants to drink, so as to enable the tiny lives in the waters to escape immediate death ? And had she not opened corn- throwing centres in the midst of the seas that fish be fed in the oceans of the world ? Nor had the very fish ceased to feed on each other ! Nobly did she try to kill killing by getting killed - and at last found out that palm leaves at times are too fragile for steel ! As long as the whole world was red in tooth and claw and the national and racial distinction so strong as to make men brutal, so long if India had to live at all a life whether spiritual or political according to the right of her soul, she must not lose the strength born of national and racial cohesion. So the leaders of thought and action grew sick of repeating the mumbos and jumbos of universal brotherhood and bitterly complained :

Those that were killed by you, O God, and the Asuras killed by Vishnu are once again born on this earth in the form of the Mlencchas.

They kill the Brahmans, destroy the religious rites like the sacrifices, abduct the daughters of the sages ; what sins do they not commit !

If the earth is conquered by the Mlecchas this land of the gods will perish, because of the abolishing of sacrifices and other religious rites.

(Gunadhya)

and when the barbarian hordes of the Shakas and the Huns - who had ravaged their fair land that had in utter confidence clad herself in a Bhikku's dress' changed her sword for rosary and had taken to the vows of Ahimsa and nonviolence - were expelled beyond the Indus and further, and a strong national state was firmly established, then it was but natural that the leaders of our race should have realised what an immense amount of strength could be derived if but the new national State was backed up by a Church as intensely national.

Moreover everything that is common in us with our enemies, weakens our power of opposing them. The foe that has nothing in common with us is the foe likely to be most bitterly resisted by us just as a friend that has almost everything in him that we admire and prize in ourselves is likely to be the firend we love most. The necessity of creating a bitter sense of wrong invoking a power of undying resistance especially in India that had under the opiates of Universalism and non-violence lost the faculty even of resisting sin and crime and aggression, could best be accomplished by cutting off even the semblance of a common worship - a common Church which required her to clasp the hand of those as her co-religionists whose had been the very hand that had strangled her as a nation.

What was the use of a universal faith that instead of soothening the ferociousness and brutal egoism of other nations only excited their lust by leaving India defenceless and unsuspecting ? No; the only safe-guards in future were valour and strength that could only be born of a national self-consciousness. She had poured her life's blood for sophistry that tried to prov otherwise !

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Buddhism - a universal religion

Those that were killed by you, O God, and the Asuras killed by Vishnu are once again born on this earth in the form of the Mlencchas.

They kill the Brahmans, destroy the religious rites like the sacrifices, abduct the daughters of the sages ; what sins do they not commit !

If the earth is conquered by the Mlecchas this land of the gods will perish, because of the abolishing of sacrifices and other religious rites.

(Gunadhya)

Then came reaction !

The reaction against universal tendencies of Buddhism only grew more insistent and powerful as the attempt to re-establish the Buddhist power in India began to assume a more threatening attitude. Nationalist tendencies refused to barter with out national independence and accept a foreign conqueror as our overlord. But if that foreign invader happened to be favourably inclined towards Buddhism, then he was sure to find some secret sympathisers among the Indian Buddhists all over Indian, even as Catholic Spain could always find some important section in England to sympathise with their efforts to restore a Catholic dynasty in England. Not only this but dark hints abound in our ancient records to show that at times some foreign Buddhistic powers had actually invaded India with an express national and religious aim in view. We cannot treat the history of this period exhaustively here but can only point to the half symolic and half actual description given in one of our Puranas of the war waged on the Aryadeshajas by the Nyanapati (the king of the Huns) and his Buddhistic allies. The records tells us in a mythological strain how a big battle was fought on the banks of the river 'Haha, how the Buddhistic forces made China the base of their operations, how they were reinforced by contingents from many Buddhistic nations:

[There appeared for battle a hundred thousand soldiers from Shymadesh as also from Japdesh, and millions from china.]

and how after a tough fight the Buddhists lost it and paid heavily for their defeat. They had formally to renounce all ulterior national aims against India and give a pledge that

they would never again enter India with any political end in view. The Buddhists as individuals had nothing to fear from India, the land of toleration, but they should give up all dreams of endangering the national life of India and her independence:

[All the Buddhists swore there and then that they would not come to the Aryadesh with any territorial designs.] (Bhavishya-Purana Pratisarga-Parva).

Institutions in favour of Nationality

And thus we find that institutions that were the peculiar marks of our nation were revived: - The system of four varnas which could not be wiped away even under the Buddhistic sway, grew in popularity to such an extent that kings and emperors felt it a distinction to be called one who established the system of four varnas. Reaction in favour of this institution grew so strong that our nationality was almost getting identified with it. Witness the definition that tries to draw a line of demarcation between us and foreigners From this it was but a natural step to prohibit our people from visiting shores which were uncongenial-in some cases fiercely hostile-to such peculiar institutions as these and where our people could not be expected to receive the protection that would enable them to keep up the spirit and the letter of our faith. Reckless as the reaction was, perfectly intelligible when viewed at politically ; for do we not frequently meet with patriotic thinkers even now in our land who would stand for laws prohibiting our men from emigrating to nations where they are sure to be subjected to national disabilities and dishonours ?

Commingling of Races

Thus is was political and national necessity that was at once the cause and the effect of the decline of Buddhism in India. Buddhism had its geographicalcentre of gravity nowhere. So it was an imperative need to restore at least the national centre of gravity that India had lost in attempting to get identified with Buddhism. When the nation grew intensely self-conscious as an organism would do and was in direct conflict with non-self it instinctively turned to draw the line of division and mark well the position it occupied so as to make it clear to themselves where they exactly stood and to the world how they were unmistakably a people by themselves-not only a racial and national, but even a geographical and political unit. On the southern side of our country the natural and sanctified. The frame work of the deep and boundless seas in which our southern peninsula is set is almost poetical in its grace and perfection. The Samudrarashana had pleased the eyes of generations of our poets and patriots. But on the north-western side of our nation the commingling of races was growing rather too unceremonious to be healthy and our frontiers too shifty to be safe. Therefore it would have been a matter of surprise if the intense spirit of self=assertion that had found so benign an asylum under the patronage of the Mahakal of Ujjain had not made our patriots turn to this pressing necessity of drawing a frontier line for us that would be as vived as effective. And what could that line be but the vivacious yet powerful stream-the River of rivers-the 'Sindhu' ? The day on which the patriarchs of our race had crossed that stream they ceased to belong to the people they had definitely left behind and laid the foundation of a new nation were reborn into a new people that, under the quieting star of a new hope and a new mission,

were destined by assimilation and by expansion to grow into a race and a new polity that could only be most fittingly and feelingly described as Sindhu or Hindu.

Back to the Vedas

Nor was this attempt to identify our frontier line with the river Indus an innovation. In fact it was but the natural consequence of the great war-cry of the national revivalists 'Back to the Vedas.' The Vedic State based on and backed up by the Vedic Church must be designed by the Vedic name, and-so far as it was then possible-identified with the Vedic lines. And this process of events which the very general trend of history should have enabled us to anticipate seems to have actually gone through. For one of patriotic Puranas assures us that Shalivahan the grandson of the great Vikramaditya after having defeated the second attempt of foreigners to rush in and expelled them beyond the Indus, issued a Royal Decree to the effect that thenceforth the Indus should constitute the line of demarcation between India and other non-Indian nations.

There-after the grandson of Vikramaditya Shalivahan, ascended the throne of his forfathers.

Having Conquered the irresistable Shakas, the Chinese, the Tartars, the Balhikas, Kamrupas, Romans, Khorajas and Shathas and

Having seized their treasures and punishing the offenders he demarcated the boundaries of the Aryans and the Mlecchas.

The best country of the Aryans is known as Sindhusthan whereas the Mlecch country lies beyond the Indus. This demarcation was made by the great king. (Bhawishya Puran, Pratisarga-Parva)

Continued in ..

...

Sindhusthan

The most ancient of the names of our country of which we have a record is Saptasindhu or Sindhu. Even Bharatvarsha is and must necessarily be a latter designation besides being personal in its appeal. The glories of a person however magnificent, lose their glamour as time passes on. The name that recommends itself by appealing to such personal glories and achievements can never be so effective and permanent a source of everrising consciousness of gratitude and pride as a name that besides being reminiscent of such national achievements and beloved personal touches, is in addition to it associated with some great beneficent and perennial natural phenomena. The Emperor Bharat is gone and gone also is many an emperor as great! —but the Sindhu goes on for ever; for ever inspiring and fertilizing our sense of gratitude, vivifying our sense of pride, renovating the ancient memories of our race—a sentinal keeping watch over the destinies of our people. It is the vital spinal cord that connects the remotest past to the remotest future. The name that associates and identifies our nation with a river like that, enlists nature on our side and bases our national life on a foundation, that is, so for as human calculation are concerned, as lasting as eternity. All these considerations must have fired the imagination of the then leaders of thought and action and made them restore the ancient Vedic name of our land and nation Sindhustan—the best nation of Aryans.

The epithet Sindhusthan besides being Vedic had also a curious advantage which could only be called lucky and yet is too substantial to be ignored. The word Sindhu in Sanskrit does not only mean the Indus but also the Sea-which girdles the southern peninsula—so that this one word Sindhu points out almost all frontiers of the land at a single stroke. Even if we do not accept the tradition that the river Brahmaputra is only a branch of the Sindhu which falls into flowing streams on the eastern and western slopes of the Himalayas and thus constitutes both our eastern as well as western frontiers. still it is indisputably true that it circumscribes our northern and western extremities in its sweep and so the epithet Sindhusthan calls up the image of our whole Motherland : the land that lies between Sindhu and Sindhu—from the Indus to the Seas.

...

What is Arya

But it must not be supposed that the epithet Sindhu recommended itself to our patriots only because it was geographically the best fitted; for we find it emphatically stated that the concept expressed by this word was national and not merely geographical.

Sindhusthan was not merely a piece of land but it was a nation which was ideally if not always actually a state (rajnah-rashtram). It also clearly followed that the culture that flourished in Sindhusthan and the citizens thereof were Sindhus even as they had been in the Vedic days. Sindhusthan was the ' Best nation of the Aryas' as distinguished from Mlechasthan the land of the foreigners. However it must be clearly pointed out that the definition is not based on any theological hair-splitting or religious fanaticism. The word Arya is expressly stated in the very verses to mean all those who had been incorporated as parts integral in the nation and people that flourished on this our side of the Indus whether Vaidik or Avaidik, Bramhana or Chandal, and owning and claiming to have inherited a common culture, common blood, common country and common polity; while Mlechcha also by the very fact of its being put in opposition to Sindhusthan meant foreigners nationally and racially and not necessarily religiously.

...

Hindu & Hindusthan.

This Royal Decree was as all Royal Decrees in Sindhusthan had generally been, the mere executive outcome of a strong and popular movement. For, the custom of looking upon Attock as the veritable Indian land's end as the very word Attock signifies could not have been originated and observed so universally and so long, had it not been inspired by and appealing to our national imagination. This custom that is so tenaciously and reverently observed by millions of people, premiers and peasants alike, is a good proof that strongly corroborates the fact that some such royal edict sanctioning the identification of our frontiers with the ancient Sindhu and associating the name of our land and nation with it as Sindhusthan had actually been issued; and that the highest religious sanctification consecrating this royal sanction and popular will must have enabled this attempt to restore the Vedic name of our country to triumph in the end. Of course centuries had yet to pass and momentous events to happen to shape and mould the destinies of the words Sindhu and Sindhusthan till they came to be as powerfully influential as to colour the thought of our whole nation and be the cherished possession of our race. But after all they have done it and today we find that while thousands would not know what Aryawarta or Bharatwarsha exactly means yet the very man in the street will understand and recognize the names Hindu and Hindusthan as his very own.*

* The verses from Bhavishyapuran quoted above seem to be quite trustworthy so far as their general purport is concerned : Firstly because they record a general tradition that, unlike dates or individual successions, can easily be remembered longer. Secondly,

independently of that, the general trend of our history as shown points to some such state of affairs. Thirdly, it is not necessary here for our arguments to be very precise either about the date of this Decree or even the king by whom it was issued. And fourthly, the author does not seem to have been writing about things only haphazardly or to which he is entirely a stranger. For the family table that he gives of the House of Vikrama-ditya is again given in other part of the work and the two agree closely with each other. The writer who knows of details about the House is likely to know the SALIENT facts of the most distinguished king that belonged to it.

After all, the main resources of our history had been and must ever be our national traditions remembered or recorded in our ancient puranas. epics and literature. Their details may be challenged, their dates determined and rejected, but on account of discrepancies here or miraculous colouring there which are in fact common to all ancient records of mankind, we cannot dismiss them altogether, especially where the acts recorded have not an impossible or unnatural clement in them or when they do not contradict events otherwise proved to be indisputably true. The habit of doubting everything in the Puranas till it has been corroborated by some foreign evidence is absurd. The sounder process would be to depend on our works especially where general traditons and events are concerned till they are found to be unreliable in the light of any more weighty and less ambiguous evidence and not simply on account of the airy imaginings

of some one to whom it does not seem probable. Take the case of this Bhavishyapuran itself ; because it contains some inaccuracies and even absurdities-and is Plutarch free from them ? Are we to reject the personality of Alexander himself because of the supernatural touches given to the story of his birth ? Would it be reasonable to doubt, say the following verse ?

[The son of Chandragupta with leanings towards Buddhism then married the yavani daughter of Sulava, Governor of Purus]

In fact we owe a debt of gratitude to these Puranas and Epics for having preserved all ancient and venerable records of our people through revolutions which had effaced the very traces of whole nations and whole civilizations elsewhere in the world. For after all, these records of our ancient and partriotic Puranas and Historis (Itihasas) are at any rate more faithful, more accurate and more reliable than the modern up-to-date western puranas that have such convincing discoveries to their credit as the one which assures us that Ramayan sings of the foundation of Vijayanagar or the other which asserts that Gautam the Buddha was merely the Sun or the Dawn personified !

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Reverence to Buddha

But before we proceed to state what further developments the history of this epithet had to undergo we feel it incumbent to render an apology to ourselves.

We have while writing this section wounded our own feelings.

So we hasten to add that the few harsh words we had to say in explaining the political necessity that led to the rejection of Buddhism in India

should not be understood to mean that we have not a very high opinion of that Church as a whole !

No, no ! I am as humble an admirer and an adorer of that great and holy Sangha the holiest the world has ever seen, as any of its initiated worshipper. We are not initiated not because the Sangha is not worthy of us, but because we are not worthy of stepping on the footsteps of the Temple that has lasted longer because it rested on ideas than many a great palace that rested on rocks.

The consciousness that the first great and the most successful attempt to wean man from the brute inherent in him was conceived, launched and carried on from century to century by a galaxy of great teachers, Arhats and Bhikkus who were born in India, who were bred in India and who owned India as the land of their worship, fills us with feelings too deep for words.

And if these be our feelings for the Sangha then what shall we say about its great Founder, the Buddha, the Enlightened ?

I, the humblest of the humble of mankind can dare to approach Thee, O Tathagat, with no other offering but my utter humility and my utter emptiness!

Although I feel that I fail to catch the purport of thy words yet I know that it must be so.

Because while thy words are gathered from the lips of Gods, my ears and my understanding are trained to the accents and the din of this matter-of-fact world.

Perhaps it was too soon for thee to sound thy march and unfurl thy banner while the world was too young and the day but just risen!

It fails to keep pace with thee and its sight gets dazzled and dimmed to keep the radiance of the banner in full view. As long as the law of evolution that lays down the iron command

Immobile forces arc the easy prey of the mobile ones

those with no teeth fall a prey to those with deadly fangs ;

those without hands succumb to those with hands,

and the cowards to the brave.

is too persistent and dangerously imminent to be catagorically denied by the law of righteousness whose mottos shine brilliantly and beautifully, but as the stars in the heavens do, so long the banner of nationality will refuse to be replaced by that of Universality and yet, that very national banner hallowed as it is by the worship of gods and goddesses of our race, would have been the poorer if it could not have counted the Shakyasinha under its fold.

But as it is, thou art ours as truly as Shri Ram or Shri Krishna or Shri Mahavir had been and as the words were but the echoes of yearnings of our national soul, thy visions, the dreams of our race, even so,

if ever the law of Righteousness rules triumphant on this our human plane, then thou wilt find that the land that cradled thee, and the people that nursed thee, will have contributed most to bring about that consummation if indeed the fact of having

contributed thee has not proved that much already !!

Hindus : all one and a nation

So far we have depended upon Sanskrit records in tracing the growth of the word Sindhu and we have left the thread of our inquiry at the point where the growing concept of an Indian nation was found to be better expressed by the word Sindhusthan than by any other existing words. It was precisely to refute any parochial and narrow-minded significance which might, as in the case of Aryawarta be attached to this word that the definition of the word Sindhusthan was rid of any association with a particular institution or party-coloured suggestion. For example, Aryawarta was according to an authority— [The land where the system of four Varnas does not exist should be known as the Mlechcha country : Aryawarta lies away from it. ]

This solution, though legitimate could not be lasting. All institution is meant for the society, not the society or its ideal for an institution. The system of four varnas may

disappear when it has served its end or ceases to serve it, but will that make our land a Mlechchadesha — a land of foreigners?

The Sanyasis, the Aryasamajis, the Sikhs and many others do not recognize the system of the four castes and yet are they foreigners ?

God forbid ! They are ours by blood, by race, by country, by God. ' Its name is Bharat and the people are Bharati' is a definition ten times better because truer than that. We, Hindus, are all one and a nation, because chiefly of our common blood — ' Bharati Santati '

...

Hindusthani Language

At this period of our history-the rise as well as the fall of Buddhism were accompanied by a remarkable spread and growth of the vernaculars of India and Sanskrit was fast being shut up in the impenetrable fortresses of classical conventionality to such an extent that new ideas and new names had to be sanskritized before they could be incorporated in any acceptable work.

Naturally the every day life and the ever changing phases of national and social activities gradually sought expession through the spoken Prakrit which thus grew better fitted to convey the living and throbbing thoughts of the people in all their freshness and vigour and precision.

Consequently although the words Sindhu and Sindhusthan are at times found in Sanskrit works, yet the Sanskrit writers generally preferred the word Bharat as being more in consonance with tlie established canons of elegance.

While on the other hand the vernaculars stuck almost exclusively to the more popular and living name of our land Hindusthan (Sindhusthan), instead of the ancient and well-beloved names Bharat or Aryawarta.

We need not repeat here how S in Sanskrit gets at times changed into H in India as well as non-Indian Prakrits. So we find the living vernacular literature of India full of reference to Hindusthan or Hindus.

Although the Sanskrit language must ever remain the cherished and sacred possession of our race, contributing most powerfully to the fundamental unity of our people and enriching our life, ennobling our aspirations and purifying the fountains of our being, yet the honour of being the living spoken national tongue of our people is already won by that Prakrit, which being one of the eldest daughters of Sanskrit is most fittingly called Hindi or Hindusthani the language of the national and cultural descendants of the ancient Sindhus or Hindus.

Hindusthani is par excellence the language of Hindusthan or Sindhusthan. The attempt to raise Hindi to the pedestal of our national tongue is neither new nor forced.

Centuries before the advent of British rule in India we find it recorded in our annals that this was the medium of expression throughout India. A sadhu or a merchant starting from Rameshwaram and proceeding to Hardwar, could make himself understood in all parts of India through this tongue. Sanskrit might have introduced him to circles of pandits and princes; but Hindusthani was a safe and sure passport to the Rajasabhas as well as to the bazaars.

A Nanak, a Chaitanya, a Ramdas could and did travel up and down the country as freely as they would have done in their own provinces teaching and preaching in this tongue. As the growth and development of this our genuine national tongue was parallel to and almost simultaneous with the revival and popularization of the ancient names Sindhusthan or Sindhus or Hindusthan or Hindus it was but a matter of course that language being the common possession of the whole nation should be called Hindusthani or Hindi.

After the expulsion of the Huns and the Shakas the valour of her arms left Sindhusthan in an undisturbed possession of independence for centuries on centuries to come and enabled her once more to be the land where peace and plenty reigned. The blessings of freedom and independence were shared by the princes and peasants alike.

The patriotic authors go in rapture over the greatness and the happiness that marked this long chapter of our history extending over nearly a thousand years or so.

( Every village has its temple ; in all districts are sacrifices performed; every family has plenty of wealth; and people are devoted to religion. )

From Ceylon to Kashmir the Rajputs—a single family of princes—ruled, often connected closely by marriages and more closely by the tradition of chivalry and culture handed down by a common law. The whole life of the nation was being brought into a harmony as rich as divine, and the growth of the national language was but an outward expression of this inward unity of our national life.

Foreign Invaders

But as it often happens in history this very undisturbed enjoyment of peace and plenty lulled our Sindhusthan, in a sense of false security and bred a habit of living in the land of dreams. At last she was rudely awakened on the day when Mohammad of Gazni crossed the Indus, the frontier line of Sindhusthan and invaded her. That day the conflict of life and death began. Nothing makes Self conscious of itself so much as a conflict with non- self. Nothing can weld peoples into a nation and nations into a state as the pressure of a common foe. Hatred separates as well as unites. Never had Sindhusthan a better chance and a more powerful stimulus to be herself forged into an indivisible whole as on that dire day, when the great inconoclast crossed the Indus. The Mohammedans had crossed that stream even under Kasim, but it was a wound only skin-deep, for the heart of our people was not hurt and was not even aimed at. The contest began in grim earnestness with Mohammad and ended, shall we say, with Abdalli ? From year to year, decade to decade, century to century, the contest continued. Arabia ceased to be what Arabia was; Iran annihilated; Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Tartary,—from Granada to Gazni—nations and civilizations fell in heaps before the sword of Islam of Peace!! But here fur the first time the sword succeeded in striking but not in killing. It grew blunter each time it struck, each time it cut deep but as it was lifted up to strike again the wound stood healed. Vitality of the victim proved stronger than the vitality of the victor. The contrast was not only grim but it was monstrously unequal. It was not a race, a nation or a people India had to struggle with. It was nearly all Asia, quickly to be followed by nearly all Europe. The Arabs had entered Sindh and single-handed they could do little else. They soon failed to defend their own independence in their homeland and as a people we hear nothing further about them. But here India alone had to face Arabs, Persians, Pathans, Baluchis, Tartars, Turks, Moguls—a veritable human Sahara whirling and columning up bodily in a furious world storm ! Religion is a mighty motive force. So is rapine. But where religion is goaded on by rapine and rapine serves as a handmaid to religion, the propelling force that is generated by these together is only equalled by the profoundity of human misery and devastation they leave behind them in their march. Heaven and hell making a common cause-such were the forces, overwhelmingly furious, that took India surprise the day Mohammad crossed the Indus and invaded her. Day after day, decade after decade, century after century, the ghastly conflict continued and India single-handed kept up the fight morally and militarily. The moral victory was won when Akbar came to the throne and Darashukoh was born. The frantic efforts of Aurangzeb to retrieve their fortunes lost in the moral field only hastened the loss of the military fortunes on the battlefield as well. At last Bhau, as if symbolically, hammered the ceiling of the Imperial Seat of the Moghals to pieces. The day of Panipat rose, the Hindus lost the battle, but won the war. Never again had an Afgan dared to penetrate to Delhi. While the triumphant Hindu banner that our Marathas had carried to Attock was taken up by our Sikhs and carried across the Indus to the banks of the Kabul..

General

Hindutva at work

In this prolonged furious conflict our people became intensely conscious of ourselves as Hindus and were welded into a nation to an extent unknown in our history. It must not be forgotten that we have all along referred to the progress of the Hindu movement as a whole and not to that of any particular creed or religious section thereof—of Hindutva and not Hinduism only. Sanatanists, Satnamis, Sikhs, Aryas, Anaryas, Marathas and Madrasis, Brahmins and Panchamas—all suffered as Hindus and triumphed as Hindus.

Both friends and foes contributed equally to enable the words Hindu and Hindusthan to supersede all other designations of our land and our people. Aryavarta and Daxinapatha, Jambudweep and Bharatvarsha none could give so eloquent an expression to the main political and cultural point at issue as the word, Hindusthan could do. All those on this side of the Indus who claimed the land from Sindhu to Sindhu, from the Indus to the seas, as the land of their birth, felt that they were directly mentioned by that one single expression, Hindusthan. The enemies hated us as Hindus and the whole family of peoples and races, of sects and creeds that flourished from Attock to Cuttack was suddenly individualised into a single Being. We cannot help dropping the remark that no one has up to this time taken the whole field of Hindu activities from A.D. 1300 to 1800 into survey from this point of view, mastering the details of the various now parallel, now correlated movements from Kashmir to Ceylon and from Sindh to Bengal and yet rising higher above them all to visualise the whole scene in its proportion as an integral whole. For it was the one great issue to defend the honour and independence of Hindusthan and maintain the cultural unity and civic life of Hindutva and not Hinduism alone, but Hindutva. -i. e. Hindudharma that was being fought out on the hundred fields of battle as well as on the floor of the chambers of diplomacy. This one word, Hindutva, ran like a vital spinal cord through our whole body politic and made the Nayars of Malabar weep over the sufferings of the Brahmins of Kashmir. Our bards bewailed the fall of Hindus, our seers roused the feelings of Hindus, our heroes fought the battles of Hindus, our saints blessed the efforts of Hindus, our statesmen moulded the fate of Hindus, our mothers wept over the wounds and gloried over the triumphs of Hindus.

It would require a volume if we were to substantiate these remarks by quoting all the words and writings of our forefathers that bear on the point. But the argument in hand does not allow us to be drawn aside even by so alluring a task as that. Consequently we must content ourselves with quoting a few eloquent lines either from the lips or the pen of some of the foremost representatives of our Hindu race.

Of all the works written in the Hindi language, old and new, the great epic Prithviraj Raso by Chand Bardai is, so far as present researches go, admittedly the most ancient and authoritative one. There is only one solitary verse which claims to be an earlier composition. But luckily and strangely enough this very first composition in our northern vernacular literature refers to the word Hindusthan, in terms full of pride and patriotic fervour. The poet, Ven, father of Chand Baradai addresses the Raja of Ajmer, the father of Prithviraj—

Chand Baradai who may justly be called the first poet of Hindi literature, uses the words Hindi, Hindawan, Hind so often and so naturally as to leave no doubt of their being quite common and accepted terms as far back as the eleventh century, when the Mohammedans had not secured any permanent footing even in Punjab and therefore could not have influenced the independent and proud Rajputs to adopt a degrading nickname invented by their foes and make it their national and proud appellation.

Describing how Shahabuddin taken prisoner by the Hindus, was let go by the noble Prithviraj on condition that he would not again attack the 'Hindus'. Chand says—

But Shahabuddin was not a man to be won over by Hindu chivalry. Again and again he sallies forth and a fierce fight ensues to the boundless joy of that divine cynic Narada :—

and again till at last

But in spite of his efforts to crush the Hindus Shahabuddin lost the day and the triumphant news sent Delhi mad with joy that Pajjunrai had once more taken Shahabuddin a prisoner. The populace greeted their king Prithviraj :—

Further pledges solemnly entered by the man who had broken his former pledges as solemnly given, succeeded in securing the release of the Shah once more and once more, but now for the last time, did he invade Hindusthan and by a fell swoop was almost at the gate of Delhi. The council of war is summoned by the Hindapati Prithviraj, insolent challenge is sent by Shahabuddin, the Rawals and Samantas are aflame when Chamundrai tells the Mohammedan messenger to remind Shah of the dust he had licked and adds :—

The fatal day drew near and both the sides knew it was a desparate game.

Chandbaradai almost on the eve of the defection of Hameer, approaches the Goddess Durga and opens his prayer so pathetic and so patriotic thus —

After having narrated the fateful results of the battle and the consequent plot that enabled Shahabuddin to strike Prithviraj dead, the poem ends with paying a last touching tribute to the fallen Hindu Emperor—

It is remarkable that although the word Bharat appears often in the Raso in the sense of Mahabharat, yet it seldom if ever, is used in the sense of Bharatvarsha. What we find in this earliest of our northern vernacular composition holds good in the latter

development of our vernacular literature down to the day of the great Hindu revival and the war of Hindu liberation. Ramadas, the high priest and prophet of that movement, in one of his mystical and prophetic utterances sings of the vision he has seen and triumphantly but thankfully asserts that much of what he has seen in his vision has already come to be true —

* In utter darkness I dreamt: behold, the dreams are realised. Hindusthan is up, has come by her own, and those that hated her and sinned against God are put down with a strong hand! Verily it is a holy land and happy! For, God has made her cause his own and Aurangzeb is down! The dethroned are enthroned and the enthroned is dethroned.

Actions speak better than words! Verily Hindusthan is a holy land and happy : Now that Dharma is backed up by Rajadharma, Right by might, the waters of Hind, no longer defiled, can enable us once more to perform our ablutions and austerities. Let come what may: Rama has made this land holy and happy!

Bhushana, the Hindu poet who was one of the most prominent of our national bards that went up and down the country and roused 'Hindawan' to action and achievement in those days of the war of Hindu liberation, challenged Aurangzeb —

Again at another place Bhooshan says :—

'Thou art so busy in winning easy victories over the poor Hindu friars and beggars there. Why dust thou fight so shy to face the Hindpati himself ? Thou hast lost fort after fort in the fair field here: that is perhaps why thou art distinguishing thyself by pulling down unoffending convents, churches and chapels there! Art thou not ashamed to call thyself Alamgir, conqueror of the world, when thyself standest vanquished by the Hindu Emperor Shivaji ?

Speaking of things that Shivaji achieved Bhooshan says:—

It was in this light that the achievements of Shivaji and his compatriots were viewed by his race through-out Hindusthan. Bhushan though not a Maratha felt as proud of the victorious march of the Maratha warriors from Shivaji to Bajirao (Vide Bhushan Granthavali) as they themselves did. He was Hindu of Hindus and till the last day of his life he kept on singing his stirring songs, emphasizing the national and pan-Hindu aspect of the movement and impressing it on the minds of its great leaders. Amongst these Chhatrasal, the brave Bundela king, was his second favourite:—

Nor was this tribute paid to Chhatrasal undeservedly. Chhatrasal was truly like Shivaji, Rajsinha, Guru Govindsinha, the 'Dhala Hindavaneki.' He Looked upon himself as the champion of 'Hindutva'. Says Chhatrasal:-

After his historical visit paid by Chhatrasal to Shivaji the great Bundela leader, greatly encouraged by the latter met Sujansinha who was a powerful Rajput chief in Bundelkhand. In the conversation that followed Sujan sinha draws a moving picture of the political situation of the country —

Sujansinha, the old Raja, saying thus offered his sword and heart to Chhatrasal and blessed him and his mission —

Tegbahadur, the Great Guru, who not only championed the cause of this war of Hindu liberation in Punjab but laid down his life for it, is reported to have advised the Brahmans of Kashmir, who oppressed and threatened with 'Islam or death' solicited his help —

And when he was challenged by the foes of the race and religion he boldly answered :—

His illustrious son. Guru Govindsinha, at once the poet, prophet and warrior of our Hindu race and our Hindu culture, exclaims in a moment of inspiration —

The chronicler of Shivaji in the old work '

But the shrewd and trusted Dadaji advised : —

And yet Dadaji was the guiding hand of the whole movement. The youthful Shivaji writes in 1646 A. D. to one of his young compatriots- '

Mr. Rajvade has the original copy of this letter which reveals, as it were, the soul of the great Hindu movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was no parochial movement—it was Hindavi Swarajya the Hindu Empire—that was the great ideal which had fired the imagination and goaded the actions of Shivaji while he was but in his teens. We have his own word for it.

But when Jaysingh—a Rajput prince—came to subdue Shivaji and his movement, the edge of Shivaji's power of resistance became very naturally blunted. It was disheartening in the extreme to find the Rajputs— the ancient shield of Hindutva—shedding their blood and the blood of their co-religionists and brother Hindus that the Mohammedans might win ! Says Shivaji to Jaysingh —

Jaysingh was doubtless touched and replied-'

The rise of Hindu power under Shivaji had electrified the Hindu mind all over India. The oppressed looked upon him as an Avatar and a Saviour. Thus we find that the people of the Savnoor district groaning under the Mohammedan yoke appeal to him :—

Again after Shivaji had restored the Jagir to his brother Vyankoji at Tanjore on condition that he should cease to recognize the sovereignty of the Mohammedan sway. Shivaji writes:—

Rajaram in order to express his sense of appreciation of the national services of Santaji and his brothers in the war of independence, conferred on Bahiroji the high and proud appellation 'Hindurav'. When the siege at Jinji was pressing the Maratha forces to try their best to break through it an attempt was made to win over the Marathas in the services of the Moghal commander:—

Shahu had once entered into a controversy with Jayasinha (Sawai) on the point ' What have I done and what you have done to protect the Hindu Religion !'

The same spirit animated the generations of Bajirao and Nanasaheb.' Says the historian: -

Brahmendra Swami was the central figure of the intellectuals of the period. Mathurabai writes to this Swami :—

The letters sent by this brave lady, Mathurabai Angre, are all so full of patriotic fervour and force that they deserve a perusal by all those who want to catch the real spirit of the great Hindu revival.

(Dhondo Govind's letters to Bajirao)

But as Vasai was still holding out Bajirao could not go in time. He was chafing under his inabilities. He writes:—

But his indomitable spirit rose triumphant over all obstacles. He writes again :— ( Bajirao's letter)

Sawai Jaysinha was as intensely proud of his Hindutva as any one else of the great leaders of the Hindu movement. It was he who directed the people -the oppressed Hindus—in Malva to request Bajirao to extend the war of Hindu liberation to Malva and thus to take a further important step towards the realization of the mission of the generation of the followers of the Shivaji cult all over India—the mission of Hindupadpadshahi. In one of his letters the enlightened and patriotic Rajput prince writes :—

Again he writes : '

(Jaysingh's letters 26-10-1721 A. D.)

Nanasaheb the son of Bajirao was in fact the greatest leader of men that the great movement of Hindu liberation and Hindupadpadshahi brought to the front. His correspondence is a study by itself.

Wherever we find him, we find him the champion of Hindutva. To Tarabai he writes :— (Nanasaheb's letters)

Though much was lost on the field of Panipat, yet all was not lost. For two men survived the battle and saved the cause. Nana Farnavis and Mahadaji Shinde—the brain, the sword, the shield of the Hindu Power—thought and worked and fought for 40 years or so—in spite of the disastrous defeat at Panipat or rather in virtue of it—for that defeat was the greatest blow that the victors had ever received and succeeded in making the Hindus the de facto Rulers of Hindusthan. How conscious the national mind had grown of the triumphant turn events had taken and how intensely proud had they been of

Hindutva and the Hindu Empire all but established can best be seen in the letters of the most talented diplomatic writers of that period. Govindrao Kale writes to Nana Fadnavis from the capital of the Nizam on learning the news that gladdened the Marathas from end to end of Maharashtra that the misunderstanding growing between the two men Nana and Mahadaji had disappeared :—

This one single letter penned with such ease and grace gives a truer expression to the spirit of our history than many a dull volume had done. How spontaneously it hits on the right derivation of the epithets Hindu and Hindusthan and how completely our ancestors down to the last generation loved and reverenced and identified themselves with these epithets is so eloquently illustrated in this letter as to render it superfluous to cite any more....

.23

Essential implications of Hindutva

But throughout our inquiry we have been concerning ourselves more with what would have been or what should be. Not that to paint what should be is not a legitimate pursuit; nay, it is as necessary and at times more stimulating; but even that could be better done by first getting a firm hold of what actually is. We must try, therefore, to be on our guard so that in our attempt to determine the essentials of Hindutva we be guided entirely by the actual contents of the word as it stands at present. So although the root-meaning of the word Hindu like the sister epithet Hindi may mean only an Indian, yet as it is we would be straining the usage of words too much—we fear, to the point of breaking-if we call a Mohammedan a Hindu because of his being a resident of India. It may be that at some future time the word Hindu may come to indicate a citizen of Hindusthan and nothing else; that day can only rise when all cultural and religious bigotry has disbanded its forces pledged to aggressive egoism, and religions cease to be 'isms' and become merely the common fund of eternal principles that lie at the root of all that are a common foundation on which the Human State majestically and firmly rests. But as even the first streaks of this consummation, so devoutly to be wished for, are scarcely discernible on the horizon, it would be folly for us to ignore stern realities. As long as every other 'ism' has not disowned its special dogmas, whichever tend into dangerous war cries, so long no cultural or national unit can afford to loosen the bonds, especially those of a common

name and a common banner, that are the mighty sources of organic cohesion and strength. An American may become a citizen of India. He would certainly be entitled, if bona fide, to be 'treated as our Bharatiya or Hindi, a countryman and a fellow citizen of ours. But as long as in addition to our country, he has not adopted our culture and our history, inherited our blood and has come to look upon our land not only as the land of his love but even of his worship, he cannot get himself incorporated into the Hindu fold. For although the first requisite of Hindutva is that he be a citizen of Hindusthan either by himself or through his forefathers, yet it is not the only requisite qualification of it, as the term Hindu has come to mean much more than its geographical significance.

who gave birth to the father of Ashok; Ashok who had as a prince married a Vaishya maid; Harsha who being a Vaishya gave his daughter in marriage to a Kshatriya prince ; Vyadhakarma who is said to be the son of a Vyadha with whom his mother, a Brahman girl, had fallen in love and who grew to be the ' Yajnacharya of Vikramaditya,

Surdas; Krishna Bhakta who being a Brahman fell so desperately in love with a Chandala girl as to lead an open married life with her and subsequently became the founder of the religious sect Matangi Pantha; who nevertheless call themselves and are perfectly entitled to be recognized as Hindus.

This is not all. An individual at times by his or her own actions may lose his or her first caste and

be relegated to another.

A Shudra can become a Brahman and Brahman become a Shudra.

The injunction

[The family is not really called a family; it is the practices and customs that are called a family. One that does his duties is praised on earth and in heaven.]

was not always an empty threat. Many a Kshatriya has by taking to agriculture and other occupations of life lost the respect due to a Kshatriya and were classed with some of the other castes; while many a brave man, in cases whole tribes, raised themselves to the position, the rights and titles of the Kshatriyas and were recognized as such. Being outcast from a caste, which is an event of daily occurrence, is only getting incorporated with some other.

Not only is this true so far as those Hindus only who believe in the caste system based on the Vedic tenets, are concerned, but even in the case of Avaidik sects of the Hindu people. As it was true in the Buddhistic period that a Buddhist father, a Vaidik mother, a Jain son, could be found in a single joint family, so even to-day Jains and Vaishnavas intermarry in Gujarat, Sikhs and Sanatanis in Punjab and Sind. Moreover, today's Manbhav or Lingayat or Sikh or Satnami is yesterday's Hindu and to-day's Hindu may be tomorrow's Lingayat or Bramho or Sikh.

And no word can give full expression to this racial unity of our people as the epithet, Hindu, does.

Some of us were Aryans and some Anaryans; but Ayars and Nayars—we were all Hindus and own a common blood.

Some of us are Brahmans and some Namashudras or Panchamas; but Brahmans or Chandalas—we are all Hindus and own a common blood.

Some of us are Daxinatyas and some Gauds; but Gauds or Saraswatas— we are all Hindus and own a common blood

. Some of us were Rakhasas and some Yakshas; but Rakshasas or Yakshas—we are all Hindus and own a common blood.

Some of us were Vanaras and some Kinnaras ; but Vanaras or Naras—we are all Hindus and own a common blood.

Some of us are Jains and some Jangamas; but Jains or Jangamas— we are all Hindus and own a common blood.

Some of us are monists, some, pantheists; some theists and some atheists. But monotheists or atheists-we are all Hindus and own a common blood.

We are not only a nation but a Jati, a born brotherhood.

Nothing else counts, it is after all a question of heart.

We feel that the same ancient blood that coursed through the veins of Ram and Krishna, Buddha and Mahavir, Nanak and Chaitanya, Basava and Madhava, of Rohidas and Tiruvelluvar courses throughout Hindudom from vein to vein, pulsates from heart to heart.

We feel we are a JATI, a race bound together by the dearest ties of blood and therefore it must be so.

After all there is throughout this world so far as man is concerned but a single race— the human race kept alive by one common blood, the human blood. All other talk is at best provisional, a makeshift and only relatively true. Nature is constantly trying to overthrow the artificial barriers you raise between race and race. To try to prevent the commingling of blood is to build on sand. Sexual attraction has proved more powerful than all the commands of all the prophets put together. Even as it is, not even the aborigines of the Andamans are without some sprinkling of the so-called Aryan blood in their veins and vice versa Truly speaking all that any one of us can claim, all that history entitles one to claim, is that one has the blood of all mankind in one's veins. The fundamental unity of man from pole to pole is true, all else only relatively so.

And speaking relatively alone, no people in the world can more justly claim to get recognized as a racial unit than the Hindus and perhaps the Jews. A Hindu marrying a Hindu may lose his caste but not his Hindutva. A Hindu believing in any theoretical or philosophical or social system, orthodox or heterodox, provided it is unquestionably indigenous and founded by a Hindu may lose his sect but not his Hindutva-his Hinduness—because the most important essential which determines it is the inheritance of the Hindu blood. Therefore all those who love the land that stretches from Sindhu to Sindhu from the Indus to the Seas, as their fatherland consequently claim to inherit the blood of the race that has evolved, by incorporation and adaptation, from the ancient Saptasindhus can be said to possess two of the most essential requisites of Hindutva.

Common culture

But only two; because a moment's consideration would show that these two qualifications of one nation and one race—of a common fatherland and therefore of a common blood— cannot exhaust all the requisites of Hindutva.

The majority of the Indian Mohammedans may, if free from the prejudices born of ignorance, come to love our land as their fatherland, as the patriotic and noble-minded amongst them have always been doing.

The story of their conversions, forcible in millions of cases, is too recent to make them forget, even if they like to do so, that they inherit Hindu blood in their veins.

But can we, who here are concerned with investigating into facts as they are and not as they should be, recognize these Mohammedans as Hindus?

Many a Mohammedan community in Kashmir and other parts of India as well as the Christians in South India observe our caste rules to such an extent as to marry generally within the pale of their castes alone; yet, it is clear that though their original Hindu blood is thus almost unaffected by an alien adulteration, yet they cannot be called Hindus in the sense in which that term is actually understood, because, 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, 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).

story of the thought of our race.

Thought, they say, is inseparable from our common tongue, Sanskrit. Verily it is our mother-tongue—the tongue in which the mothers of our race spoke and which has given birth to all our present tongues. Our gods spoke in Sanskrit, our sages thought in Sanskrit, our poets wrote in Sanskrit. All that is best in us —the best thoughts, the best ideas, the best lines—seeks instinctively to clothe itself in Sanskrit. To millions- it is still the language of their gods; to others it is the language of their ancestors; to all it is the language par excellence; a common inheritance, a common treasure, that enriches all the family of our sister languages.

Gujarati and Gurumukhi, Sindhi and Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu, Maharastra and Malyalam, Bengali and Singali constitute the vital nerve-thread that runs through us all vivifying and toning our feelings and aspirations into a harmonious whole. It is not a language alone; to many Hindus, it is a Mantra, to all it is a music. The Vedas do not constitute an authority for all Jains. But the Vedas as the most ancient work and the history of their race belong to Jains as much as to any of us.

Adipuran was not written by a Sanatani, yet the Adipuran is the common inheritance of the Sanatanis and the Jains.

The Basavapurana is the Bible of the Lingayats; but it belongs to Lingayat and non- Lingayat Hindus alike, as one of the foremost and historical Kanarese work extant.

Vichitranatak of Guru Govind is as truly the property of a Hindu in Bengal as the Chaitanyacharitramrit is of a Sikh

. Kalidas and Bhavbhuti, Charak and Sushrut, Aryabhatt and Varahamihita, Bhasa and Ashvaghosha, Jayadev and Jagannath wrote for us all, appeal to us all, are the cherished possession of us all.

Let the work of Kamban, the Tamil poet and say, a copy of Hafiz be kept before a Hindu in Bengal and if he be asked 'Which of these belongs to you?' He would instinctively say, 'Kamba is mine!'

Let a copy of the work of Ravindranath and that of Shakespeare be kept before a Hindu in Maharashtra, he would claim 'Ravindra ! Ravindra is mine.'

The works of art and architecture are also a common inheritance of our race, whether they be representative of Vaidik or Avaidik school of thought.

For all the labourers who wrought them, the masters who guided them, the tax-papers who financed them and the

kings who organised them, whether Vaidik or Avaidik belonged to the great race that inhabits and owns this land from Sindhu to Sindhu—the Hindu race.

Those who are Sanatanis today have contributed and laboured for the Buddhistic monuments of art and architecture then, while those who were Buddhistic then have contributed to and laboured for the monuments, of the Sanatani art and architecture now.

forefathers. He possesses—in certain cases they do— pure Hindu blood; especially if he is the first convert to Mohammedanism he must be allowed to claim to inherit the blood of Hindu parents. He is an intelligent and reasonable man, loves our history and our heroes; in fact the Bohras and the Khojas as a community, worship as heroes our great ten Avatars only adding Mohammad as the eleventh. He is actually, along with his community subject to the Hindu law—the law of his forefathers. He is, so far as the three essentials of nation

( Rashtra), race (Jati) and civilization ( Sanskriti) are concerned, a Hindu. He may differ

as regards a few festivals or may add a few more heroes to the pantheon of his supermen or demigods. But we have repeatedly said that difference in details here or emphasis there, does not throw us outside the pale of Hindu Sanskriti. The sub-communities amongst the Hindus observe many a custom, not only contradictory but even, conflicting with the customs of other Hindu communities. Yet both of them are Hindus. So also in the above cases of patriotic Bohra or a Christian or a Khoja, who could satisfy the required qualifications of Hindutva to such a degree as that, why should he not be recognized as a Hindu ?

He would certainly have been recognized as such but for his attitude towards a single detail, which, though it is covered by the words, Sanskriti or culture, is yet too important to be lost in the multitude of other attributes, and therefore deserves a special treatment and analysis, which again brings us face to face with the question which, involving as it does the religious aspect of Hindutva, had often been avoided by us, not because we fight shy of it, but on account of our wish to fight it out all the more thoroughly and effectively. For, we are now better equipped to determine the significance and attempt an analysis of the two terms Hinduism and Hindutva.

.distinct social type of polity or organize a new one ?

Verily whatever, could be found in the world is found here too. And if anything is not found here it could be found nowhere.

Ye, who by race, by blood, by culture, by nationality possess almost all the essentials of Hindutva and had been forcibly snatched out of our ancestral home by the hand of violence—ye, have only to render wholehearted love to our common Mother and recognize her not only as Fatherland (Pitribhu) but even as a Holyland (punyabhu); and ye would be most welcome to the Hindu fold.

This is a choice which our countrymen and our old kith and kin, the Bohras, Khojas, Memons and other Mohammedan and Christian communities are free to make —a choice again which must be a choice of love. But as long as they are not minded thus, so long they cannot be recognized as Hindus. We are, it must be remembered, trying to analyse and determine the essentials of Hindutva as that word is actually understood to signify and would not be justified in straining it in its application to suit any pre-conceived notions or party convenience.

A Hindu, therefore, to sum up the conclusions arrived at, is he who looks upon the land that extends from Sindu to Sindu-from the Indus to the Seas,-as the land of his forefathers —his Fatherland (Pitribhu), who inherits the blood of that race whose first discernible source could be traced to the Vedic Saptasindhus and which on its onward

march, assimilating much that was incorporated and ennobling much that was assimilated, has come to be known as the Hindu people, who has inherited and claims as his own the

culture of that race as expressed chiefly in their common classical language Sanskrit and represented by a common history, a common literature, art and architecture, law and jurisprudence, rites and rituals, ceremonies and sacraments, fairs and festivals; and who above all, addresses this land, this Sindhusthan as his Holyland (Punyabhu), as the land of his prophets and seers, of his godmen and gurus, the land of piety and pilgrimage.

These are the essentials of Hindutva—a common nation (Rashtra) a common race (Jati) and a common civilization (Sanskriti). All these essentials could best be summed up by stating in brief that he is a Hindu to whom Sindhusthan is not only a Pitribhu but also a Punyabhu. For the first two essentials of Hindutva—nation and Jati—are clearly denoted and connoted by the word Pitrubhu while the third essential of Sanskriti is. pre-eminently implied by the word Punyabhu, as it is precisely Sanskriti including sanskaras i. e. rites and rituals, ceremonies and sacraments, that makes a land a Holyland. To make the definition more handy, we may be allowed to compress it in a couplet —

A Sindu Sindhu paryanta, Yasya Bharatbhumika Pitribhuh Punyabhushchaiva sa vai Hinduriti smritah

race gets consolidated and strong sharp as steel.

Just cast a glance at the past, then at the present :

Pan-Islamism in Asia, the political Leagues in Europe, the Pan-Ethiopic movement in Africa and America- and then see, O Hindus, if your future is not entirely bound up with the future of India and the future of India is bound up in the last resort, with Hindu strength.

We are trying our best, as we ought to do, to develop the consciousness of and a sense of attachment to the greater whole, whereby Hindus, Mohammedans, Parsis Christians, and Jews would feel as Indians first an

d every other thing afterwards

. But whatever progress India may have made to that goal one thing remains almost axiomatically true- not only in India but everywhere in the world-that a nation requires a foundation to stand upon and the essence of the life of a nation is the life of that portion of its citizens whose interests and history and aspirations are most closely bound up with the land and who thus provide the real foundation to the structure of their national state.

Take the case of Turkey. The young Turks after the revolution had to open their Parliament and military institutions to Armenians and Christians on a non-religious and secular basis. But when the war with Servia came the Christians and Armenians first wavered and then many a regiment consisting of them went bodily over to the Servians, who politically and racially and religiously were more closely bound up with them.

Take the case of America: when the German war broke out she suddenly had to face danger of desertions of her German citizens; while the Negro citizens there sympathise more with their brethren in Africa than with their white countrymen.

American State, in the last resort, must stand or fall with the fortunes of its Anglo-Saxon constituents.

So with the Hindus, they being the people, whose past,present and future are most closely bound with the soil of Hindusthan as Pitribhu, as Punyabhu, they constitute the foundation, the bedrock, the reserved forces of the Indian state. Therefore even from the point of Indian nationality, must ye,

O Hindus, consolidate and strengthen Hindu nationality ; not to give wanton offence to any of our non-Hindu compatriots, in fact to any one in the world but in just and urgent defence of our race and land ; to render it impossible for others to betray her or to subject her to unprovoked attack by any of those 'Pan-isms' that are struggling forth from continent to continent.

As long as other communities in India or in the world are not respectively planning India first or mankind first, but all are busy in organizing offensive and defensive alliances and combinations on entirely narrow racial or religious or national basis, so long, at least, so long O Hindus, strengthen if you can those subtle bonds that like nerve threads bind you in one organic social being. Those of you who in a fit suicidal try to cut off the most vital of those ties and dare to disown the name Hindu will find to their cost that in doing so they have cut themselves off from the very source of our racial life and strength.

The presence of only a few of these essentials of nationality which we have found to constitute Hindutva enabled little nations like Spain or Portugal to get themselves lionized in the world.

But when all of those ideal conditions obtain here what is there in the human world that the Hindus cannot accomplish ?

Thirty crores of people, with India for their basis of operation, for their Fatherland and for their Holyland with such a history behind them, bound together by ties of a common blood and common culture can dictate their terms to the whole world.

A day will come when mankind will have to face the force.

Equally certain it is that whenever the Hindus come to hold such a position whence they could dictate terms to the whole world — those terms cannot be very different from the terms which Gita dictates or the Buddha lays down.

A Hindu is most intensely so, when he ceases to be Hindu; and with a Shankara claims the whole earth for a Benares ' Waranasi Medini !' or with a Tukaram exclaims

'my country! Oh brothers, 'the limits of the Universe — there the frontiers of my country lie ?'

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