The reason that explains why the term Hindu cannot be synonymous with Bharatiya or Hindi and mean an Indian only, naturally introduces us to the second essential implication of that term. The Hindus are not merely the citizens of the Indian state because they are united not only by the bonds of the love they bear to a common motherland but also by the bonds of a common blood. They are not only a Nation but also a race-jati. The word jati derived from the root Jan to produce, means a brotherhood, a race determined by a common origin,-possessing a common blood. All Hindus claim to have in their veins the blood of the mighty race incorporated with and descended from the Vedic fathers, the Sindhus. We are well aware of the not unoften interested objection that carpingly questions ‘but are you really a race ? Can you be said to possess a common blood ?’ We can only answer by questioning in return, ‘Are the English a race ? Is there anything as English blood, the French blood, the German blood or the Chinese blood in this world? Do they, who have been freely infusing foreign blood into their race by contracting marriages with other races and peoples possess a common blood and claim to be a race by themselves ?’ If they do, Hindus also can emphatically do so. For the very castes, which you owing to your colossal failure to understand and view them in the right perspective, assert to have barred the common flow of blood into our race, have done so more truly and more effectively as regards the foreign blood than our own. Nay is not the very presence of these present castes a standing testimony to a common flow of blood from a Brahman to a Chandal? Even a cursory glance at any of our Smritis would conclusively prove that the Anuloma and Pratiloma marriage institutions were the order of the day and have given birth to the majority of the castes that obtain amongst us. If a Kshatriya has a son by a Shudra woman, he gives birth to the Ugra caste; again, if the Kshatriya raises an issue on an Ugra he founds a Shvapacha caste while a Brahman mother and a Shudra father beget the caste, Chandal. From the Vedic story of Satyakama Jabali to Mahadaji Shinde every page of our history shows that the ancient Ganges of our blood has come down from the altitudes of the sublime Vedic heights to the plains of our modern history fertilizing much, incorporating many a noble stream and purifying many a lost soul, increasing in volume and richness, defying the danger of being lost in bogs and sands and flows to-day refreshed and reinvigorated more than ever. All that the caste system has done is to regulate its noble bood on lines believed-and on the whole rightly believed-by our saintly and patriotic law-givers and kings to contribute most to fertilize and enrich all that was barren and poor, without famishing and debasing all that was flourishing and nobly endowed. This is true not only in the case of those that are the outcome of the intermarriages between the chief four castes, or between the chief four castes and the cross-born but also in the case of those tribes or races who somewhere in the dimness of the hoary past were leading a separate and self-centred life. Witness the customs prevalent in Malabar or Nepal where a Hindu of the highest caste is allowed to marry a woman of those who are supposed to be the originally alien tribes but who, even if the suggestion be true, have by their brave and loving defence of the Hindu culture have been incorporated with and bound to us by the dearest of ties —the ties of a common blood. Is the Nagavan-sha a Dravidian family ? Well, then who is who now when the youths of Agnivansha have taken to them the daughters of the Nagas and the Chandravansha and the Suryavansha have bestowed their daughters on the youths of both the families? Down to the day of Harsha-not to mention the partial break-down of the caste-system itself in the centuries of Buddhistic sway —intermarriages were the order of the day. Take for example the case of a single family of the Pandawas. The sage Parashar was a Brahman. He fell in love with the fair maid of a fisherman who gave birth to the world-renowned Vyas, who in his turn raised two sons on the Kshatriya princesses Amba and Ambalika;one of these two sons, Pandu allowed his wives to raise issue by resorting to the Niyoga system and they having solicited the love of men of unknown castes, gave birth to the heroes of our great epic. Without mentioning equally distinguished characters of the same period Kama, Babhruwahana, Ghatotkacha, Vidur and others, we beg to point out to the relatively modern cases of Chandragupta said to have married a Brahman girl 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 Bhatta 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).