Common institutions and a common law that sanctions and sanctifies them, however they may differ in details are nevertheless both the cause and the effect of the basic unity of our race. The Hindu law with the underlying principles of Hindu jurisprudence whatever the superficial differences be and howsoever contradictory a detail here or an injunction there may seem to be, is too organic a growth to lose its individuality by the manifold changes wrought by times and climes. In spite of the feverish speed with which the law- machines in the different states of America and British Commonwealth keep manufacturing and modelling laws we still acknowledge the principles of jurisprudence and the lines of growth that underlie their code to constitute a single whole. The English law, or the Roman jurisprudence or the American law could not be designated as such if eternal identity or a dead level similarity is expected. The Mohammedan law retains its individuality inspite of such damaging exceptions to it as the Khojas or the Bohras who like some other Mohammedan communities, observe the Hindu law in regulating some departments of their life, notably in matters of inheritance. Some of the Hindu customs in Maharashtra or Panjab may differ from some in Bengal or Sind. But the similarity in all other details is so great that the law of Maharashtra as a whole seems to be an echo of the law-book ruling our brothers in Bengal or Sind and vice versa. When all the rules, customs and laws observed by any given community are collected together it can immediately be found to be nothing but a fitting chapter of the Hindu law while no amount of ingenuity or torture can fit in, say the English or the Mohammedan or the Japanese law-books. We have feasts and festivals in common. We have rites and rituals in common. The Dasara and the Divali the Rakhibandhan and the Holi are welcomed wherever a Hindu breathes, Sikhs and Jains, Brahmans and Panchams alike. You would find the whole Hindu kingdom enfete on the Divali day, not only Hindusthan, but the Greater Hindusthan that is fast growing in all the continents of the world. Not even a cottage in the Tarai forest could be found on that night that has not shown its little light. While the Rakhi day would reveal to you every Hindu soul from the delighted damsel of Punjab to the austere Brahmins of Madras tying the silken tie that, ‘heart to heart and mind to mind, in body and in soul, can bind,’ Yet we have deliberately refrained ourselves from referring to any religious beliefs that we as a race may hold in common. Nor had we referred to any institution or event or custom in its religious aspect or significance, because we wanted to deal with the essentials of Hindutva not in the light of any ‘ism’ but from a racial point of view ; and yet from a national and racial point of view do the different places of pilgrimage constitute, common inheritance of our Hindu race. The Rathayatra festival at Jagannath, the Vaishakhi at Amritsar, the-Kumbha and Ardhakumbha-all these great gatherings had been the real and living congress of our people that kept the current of life and the thought coursing throughout our body politic. The quaint customs and ceremonies and sacraments they involve, observed by some as a religious duty, by others as social amenities, impress upon each individual that he can live best only through the common and corporate life of the Hindu race. These then in short—and the subject in hand does not permit us to be exhaustive on this point —constitute the essence of our civilization and mark us out a cultural unit. We Hindus are not only a Rashtra, a Jati, but as a consequence of being both, own a common Sanskriti expressed, preserved chiefly and originally through Sankrit, the real mother tongue of our race. Everyone who is a Hindu inherits this Sanskriti and owes his spiritual being to it as truly as he owes his physical one to the land and the blood of his forefathers A Hindu then is he who feels attachment to the land that extends from Sindhu to Sindhu as the land of his forefathers—as his Fatherland; who inherits the blood of the great race whose first and discernible source could be traced from the Himalayan altitudes of the Vedic Saptasindhus and which assimilating all that was incorporated and ennobling all that was assimilated has grown into and come to be known as the Hindu people; and who, as a consequence of the foregoing attributes, has inherited and claims as his own the Hindu Sanskriti, the Hindu civilization, as represented in a common history, common heroes, a common literature, common art, a common law and a common jurisprudence, common fairs and festivals, rites and rituals, ceremonies and sacraments. Not that every Hindu has all these details of the Hindu Sanskriti down to each syllable common with other Hindus; but that, he has more of it common with his Hindu brothers than with, say, an Arab or an Englishman. Not that a non-Hindu does not hold any of these details in common with a Hindu but that, he differs more from a Hindu than he agrees with him. That is why Christian and Mohammedan communities, who, were but very recently Hindus and in a majority of cases had been at least in their first generation most unwilling denizens of their new fold, claim though they might have a common Fatherland, and an almost pure Hindu blood and parentage with us, cannot be recognized as Hindus; as since their adoption of the new cult they had ceased to own Hindu civilization (Sanskriti) as a whole. They belong, or feel that they belong, to a cultural unit altogether different from the Hindu one. Their heroes and their hero-worship, their fairs and their festivals, their ideals and their outlook on life, have now ceased to be common with ours. Thus the presence of this third essential of Hindutva which requires of every Hindu uncommon and loving attachment to his racial Sanskriti enables us most perfectly to determine the nature of Hindutva without any danger of using over lapping or exclusive attributes. But take the case of a patriotic Bohra or a Khoja countryman of ours. He loves our land of Hindusthan as his Fatherland which indisputably is the land of his 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.