Savarkar's Hindutva Redefines Hindu as a Political Identity
A prisoner writes a pamphlet arguing Hinduism is not a religion at all, but a nation
Quick facts
- Author
- Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
- Published
- 1923, Bombay
- Core redefinition
- Hindu as ethnic/national identity, not only religious belief
- Organizational outgrowth
- Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, founded 1925, Nagpur
What happened
In 1923, the Indian nationalist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar published a pamphlet in Bombay titled Hindutva, expanding an idea he had begun two years earlier, that recast Hindu identity as an ethnic and political category rather than strictly a religious one. UCLA's South Asia program quotes Savarkar's own reasoning that the word Hinduism itself was, in his view, of alien growth, a foreign import that should not be allowed to confuse Hindu self-understanding, and that Hindus constituted a nation bound together by common blood and a shared civilizational heritage. Savarkar defined a Hindu as whosoever was devoted to Hindustan and considered it his or her holy land, a formula broad enough to include Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists as part of the same civilizational nation, but which excluded Muslims and Christians on the grounds that their religions' holy lands lay elsewhere. Two years later, in 1925, the physician Keshav Baliram Hedgewar founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in Nagpur, an organization built to spread Savarkar's Hindutva ideology through a nationwide volunteer network.
Why it matters
Savarkar's redefinition of Hindu identity as a political and ethnic category, rather than a set of religious beliefs and practices, created a lasting fault line in how Hinduism is understood, as a devotional religion practiced in enormous internal variety, or as the basis of a national political identity, and that distinction continues to shape Indian politics, with organizations descended from Savarkar's ideas remaining a major force in Indian public life a century later.
How we know
Savarkar's own 1923 pamphlet survives as a published primary text, and his specific definitions of Hindu identity are documented and analyzed in university South Asian studies scholarship that quotes his writing directly.
Sources
- UCLA South Asia (MANAS). Veer Savarkar: Ideologue of Hindutva · Reputable sourcesouthasia.ucla.edu · The domain "southasia.ucla.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (Veer Savarkar Prakashan, 1923; Internet Archive). Hindutva · Primary source (author-declared)archive.org · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Related timelines
- History of India → · The History of India timeline covers 20th-century Indian political history including the independence movement and partition.