The rough analysis to which the conception of Hindutva was subjected in the foregoing pages has enabled us to frame a working definition embodying or rather indicating the salient essentials of it. It now remains to see how far this general definition can stand a detailed examination that could be best conducted by testing a few typical and some of the most different cases which have in fact made the necessity of a definition so badly felt. While developing it we have tried at each step to free it, so far as it is possible to do so in the case of so comprehensive and elusive a generalization as that, from the defect of being too wide. If we find in testing a few typical cases in the light of this definition that they all fit in well then we may be sure that it is free from the opposite defect of being too narrow. We have seen that it is not open to Ativyapti, it remains to be seen whether it is not open to Avyapti also.
The geographical divisions that obtain amongst the Hindus would, at a glance, be seen to harmonize well with the spirit of our definition. The fundamental basis of it is the land from Sindhu to Sindhu, and although many of our brethren, and especially those who had been the most undoubted descendants of the ancient Sindhus and who besides are the very people that to this day have never changed the ancient name either of their land or of their race, and are called to day as five thousand years ago, Sindhi, the children of Sindhudesha, inhabit the other bank of the Indus; yet, as in the mention of a river the mention of both its banks is implied as a matter of course so that part of Sindh which constitutes the western bank of the Indus is a natural part of Sindhusthan and is covered by our definition. Secondly, accessories to the mainland are always known by the name of the latter. And thirdly, our Hindu people on that side of the Sindhu had throughout history looked upon this land of Bharatvarsha as their real Pitribhu as well as Punyabhu. They had never been guilty of matricide in attempting to set up the patch they inhabit as their only Pitribhu or only Punyabhu. On the other hand their Baharas and Kailas and Gangotri are our Banaras and Kailas and Gangotri. From the Vedic time they are a part integral of Bharatvarsha, Sindhushivisauveers are mentioned in Ramayan and Mahabharat as the rightful constituents of the great Hindu confederacy and commonwealth. They belong to our Rashtra, to our Jati and to our Sanskriti. Therefore they are Hindus and their case is well-covered by our definition. But even if one rejects the contention that the ownership of a river does employ, unless otherwise stated, the ownership of both its banks yet the definition remains as sound as ever and applies to our Sindhi brethren on other grounds. For apart from the special case of our Sindhi brethren that inhabit the other side of the Indus, there are hundreds of thousands of Hindus who have settled in all parts of the world. A time may come when these our Hindu colonists, who even to-day are the dominating factor in trade, numbers, capacity and intellect in their respective lands, may come to own a whold country and form a separate state. But will this simple fact of residence in lands other than Hindusthan render one a non-Hindu ? Certainly not; for the first essential of Hindutva is not that a man must not reside in lands outside India, but that wherever he or his descendants may happen to be he must recognize Sindhusthan as the land of his forefathers. Nay more; it is not a question of recognition either. If his ancestors came from India as Hindus he cannot help recognizing India as his Pitribhu. So this definition of Hindutva is compatibls with any conceivable expansion of our Hindu people. Let our colonists continue unabated their labours of founding a Greater India, a Mahabharat to the best of their capacities and contribute all that is best in our civilization to the upbuilding of humanity. Let them enrich the people that inhabit the earth from Pole to Pole with their virtues and let them in return enrich their own country and race by imbibing all that is healthy and true wherever found. Hindutva does not clip the wings of the Himalayan eagles but only adds to their urge. So long as ye, O Hindus! look upon Hindusthan as the land of your forefathers and as the land of your prophets, and cherish the priceless heritage of their culture and their blood, so long nothing can stand in the way of your desire to expand. The only geographical limits of Hindutva are the limits of our earth! So far as the racial aspect of our definition is concerned we cannot think of any exception that can seriously challenge its validity. Just as in England we find Iberians, Kelts, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Normans now fused, in spite of the racial restrictions on intermarriages into one nation, so the ancient racial distinctions of Aryans, Kolarians, Dravidians and others even if they had ever been keen, can no longer be recognized. We have dealt with the point as exhaustively as necessary in the foregoing pages and pointed out that the Anulom and Pratilom systems recognized in our law-books bear indisputable testimony to the fact that a fusion sufficient to keep the flow of common blood through our body politic vigorous and fresh was even then an accomplished fact. Nature again broke the barriers where custom refused to pull them down in time. Bheemsen was neither the first nor the last of Aryans to make love to a Hidimba, nor the Brahmin lady the mother of Vyadhakarma, to whom we have referred already, wae the only Aryan girl that took a fancy to a Vyadha youth. Out of a dozen Bhils or Kolis or even Santals, a youth or a girl may at times be picked up and dropped in a city school without any fear of being recognized as such either by a physical or by a moral test. The race that is born of the fusion, which on the whole is a healthy one, because gradual, of the Aryans, Kolarians, Dravidians and all those of our ancestors, whose blood we as a race inherit, is rightly called neither an Aryan, nor Kolarian, nor Dravidian—but the Hindu race; that is, that People who live as children of a common motherland, adoring a common holyland— the land that lies between the Sindhus. Therefore the Santals, Kolis, Bhils Panchamas, Namashudras and all other such tribes and classes are Hindus. This Sindhusthan is as emphatically, if not more emphatically, the land of their forefathers as of those of the so- called Aryans; they inherit the Hindu blood and the Hindu culture; and even those of them who have not as yet come fully under the influence of any orthodox Hindu sect, do still worship deities and saints and follow a religion however primitive, are still purely attached to this land, which therefore to them is not only a Fatherland but a Holyland. There would have been no serious objection raised against the cultural aspect of Hindutva too, but for the unfortunate misunderstanding that owes its origin to the confusing similarity between the two terms Hindutva and Hinduism. We have tried already to draw a clear line of demarcation between the two conceptions and protested against the wrong use of the word Hinduism to denote the Sanatan Dharma alone. Hindutva is not indentical with Hindu Dharma; nor is Hindu Dharma indentical with Hinduism. This twofold mistake that indentifies Hindutva with Hindu Dharma and both with Sanatani sect is justly resented by our non-Sanatani sects or religious systems and goads a small section of people amongst them—not to explode this mistaken notion, but unfortunately to commit another grave and suicidal mistake in the opposite direction and disown their Hindutva itself. We hope that our definition will leave no ground for any such bitterness of feelings on either side and based on truth as it is, would be acknowledged by all the fair-minded people throughout our Hindu society. But as in the general treatment of this question we could not take any notice of any special case we shall do so now. Let us first take the case of our Sikh brotherhood. No one could be so silly as to contest the statement that Sindusthan, Asindhu Sindhu Paryanta yasya Bharatbhumika’, is their Fatherland-the land that ever since the first extant records of the Vedic Period has been the land where their forefathers lived and loved and worshipped and prayed. Secondly, they most undoubtedly inherit the Hindu blood in their veins as much as any one in Madras or Bengal does Nay more, while we Hindus in Maharashtra or Bengal inherit the blood of the Aryans as well as of those other ancient people who inhabited this land, the Sikhs are the almost direct descendants of those ancient Sindhus and can claim to have drunk their being at the very fountain of this Ganges of our Hindu life before she had descended down to the plains. Thirdly, they have contributed and to therefore are the rightful copartners in our Hindu culture, For Saraswati was a river in the Punjab before she became the Deified Image of Learning and Art. To this day, do millions of Hindus throughout Hindusthan join in the enchanted chorus ’ with which the Sindhus, your forefathers, oh Sikhs, paid the tribute of a grateful people to, and extolled the glories of the River on whose banks the first seeds of our culture and civilization were sown and catching their Rigvedic accents sing ‘Ambitame, Naditame, Devitame Saraswati; the Vedas are theirs as they are ours, if not as a revelation yet as revered work that sings of the first giant struggles of man to tap the sources of nature. The first giant struggle of Light against the forces of darkness and ignorance, that had stolen and kept imprisoned the spirited waters and refused to allow the rays of Illumination touch man and rouse the soul in him. The story of the Sikhs, like any one of us must begin with the Vedas, pass on through the palaces of Ayodhya, witness the battlefield of Lanka, help Lahu to lay the foundation of Lahore and watch prince Sidhartha leave the confines of Kapilavastu and enter the caves to find some way out to lighten the sorrows of man. The Sikhs along with us bewail the fall of Prithviraj, share the fate of a conquered people and suffer together as Hindus. Millions of Sikh udasis, Nirmalas, the Gahangambhirs and the Sindhi. Sikhs adore the Sanskrit language not only as the language of their ancestors but as the sacred language of their land. While the rest cannot but own it as the tongue of their forefathers and as the Mother of Gurumukhi and Punjabi, which yet in its infancy is still sucking the milk of life at its breast. Lastly the land Asindhu Sindhuparyanta is not only the Pitribhu also the Punyabhu to the Sikhs. The land spread from the river, Sindhu, to the seas is not only the fatherland but also the holyland to the Sikhs. Guru Nanak and Guru Govind, Shri Banda and Ramsing were born and bred in Hindusthan; the lakes of Hindusthan are the lakes of nectar ( Amritsar ) and of freedom—(Muktasar); the land of Hindusthan is the land of prophets and prayer— Gurudvar and Gurughar. Really if any community in India is Hindu beyond cavil or criticism it is our Sikh brotherhood in the Punjab, being almost the autochthonous dwellers of the Saptsindhu land and the direct descendants of the Sindhu or Hindu people. The Sikh of today is the Hindu of yesterday and the Hindu of to-day may be the Sikh of tomorrow. The change of a dress, or a custom, or a detail of daily life cannot change the blood or the seed, nor can efface and blot out history itself. To the millions of our Sikh brethren their Hindutva is self-evident. The Sahajdhari, udasi, Nirmal, Gahangambhir and the Sindhi Sikhs are proud of being Hindus by race and by nationality. As their Gurus themselves had been the children of Hindus they would fail to understand if not resent any such attempt to class them as Non-Hindus. The Gurugrantha is read by the Sanatanis as well as by the Sikhs as a sacred work; both of them have fairs and festivals in common. The Sikhs of the Tatkhalsa sect also so far as the bulk of their population is concerned, are equally attached to their racial appellation and live amongst Hindus as Hindus. It cannot be but shocking to them to be told that they had suddenly ceased to be Hindus. Our racial Unity is so unchallenged and complete that inter-marriages are quite common amongst the Sikhs and Sanatanis.
The fact is that the protest that is at times raised by some leaders of our Sikh brotherhood against their being classed as Hindus would never have been heard if the term Hinduism was not allowed to get identical with Sanatanism. This confusion of ideas and the vagueness of expression resulting therefrom, are at the root of this fatal tendency that mars at time the cordial relations existing between our sister Hindu communities. We have tried to make it clear that Hindutva is not to be determined by any theological tests. Yet we must repeat it once more that the Sikhs are free to reject any or all things they dislike as superstitions in Sanatandharma, even the binding authority of the Vedas as a revelation. They thereby may cease to be Sanatanis, but cannot cease to be Hindus. Sikhs are Hindus in the sense of our definition of Hindutva and not in any religious sense whatever. Religiously they are Sikhs as Jains are Jains, Lingayats are Lingayats, Vaishnavas are Vaishnavas ; but all of us racially and nationally and culturally are a polity and a people, one and indivisible, most fitly and from times immemorial called Hindus. No other word can express our racial oneness—not even Bharatiya can do that for reasons dealt with in the forgoing pages. Bharatiya indicates an Indian and expresses a larger generalization but cannot express racial unity of us Hindus. We are Sikhs, and Hindus and Bharatiyas. We are all three put together and none exclusively. Another reason besides this fear of being indentified with the followers of Sanatanpanth which added to the zeal of some of our Sikh brothers and made them insist on getting classed separately as non-Hindus, was a political one. This is not the place of entering into merits or demerits of special representation. The Sikhs were naturally anxious to guard the special interests of their community and if the Mohammedans could enjoy the privilege of a special and communal .representation, we do not understand why any other important minority in India should not claim similar concession. But we feel that, that claim should not have been backed up by our Sikh brothers by an untenable and suicidal plea of being non-Hindus. Sikhs, to guard their own interests could have pressed for and succeeded in securing special and communal representation on the ground of being an important minority as our non-Brahmins and other communities have done without renouncing their birthright of Hindutva. Our Sikh brotherhood is certainly not a less important community than the Mohammedans —in fact to us Hindus they are more important than any non-Hindu community in India. The harm that a special and communal representation does is never so great as the har done by the attitude of racial aloofness. Let the Sikhs, the Jains, the Lingayats, the non-Brahmins and even, for the matter of that. Brahmins press and fight for the right of special and communal representation, if they honestly look upon it as indispensable for their communal growth. For their growth is the growth of the whole Hindu-society. Even in ancient times our four main castes enjoyed a kind of special representation on communal basis in our councils of State as well as in local bodies. They could do that without refusing to get fused into the larger whole and incorporated into the wider generalization of Hindutva, Let the Sikhs be classed as Sikhs religiously, but as Hindus racially and culturally. The brave people placed their heads by hundreds under the executioner’s axe rather than disown their Guru. Will they disown their seed, forswear their fathers and sell their birthright for a mess of pottage ? God forbid! Let our minorities remember that if strength lies in union, then in Hindutva lies the firmest and yet the dearest bond that can effect a real, lasting and powerful union of our people. You may fancy that it pays you to remain aloof for the passing hour, but it would do incalculable harm to this our ancient race and civilization as a whole —and especially to yourselves. Your interests are indissolubly bound with the interests of your other Hindu brethren. Whenever in the future as in the past a foreigner raises a sword against the Hindu civilization it is sure to strike you as deadly as any other Hindu community. Whenever in future as in the past the Hindus as a people come to their own and under a Shivaji or a Ranjit, a Ramchandra or a Dharma, an Ashoka or an Amoghwarsha feeling the quickening touch of life and activity mount the pinnacles of glory and greatness—that day would shed its lustre on you as well as on any other members of our Hindu commonwealth. So, brothers, be not lured by the immediate gains, partly or otherwise, nor be duped by misreadings and misinterpretations of history. I was once told by one who posing as a Granthi was nevertheless convicted for committing a dacoity in the house of a Brahmin to whom he owed money and whom he consequently murdered, that the Sikhs were not Hindus and that they could incur no guilt by killing a Brahmin as the sons of Govindsing were betrayed by a Brahmin cook. Fortunately there was another Sikh gentleman and a real Granthi and was recognized as such by all learned Sikhs who immediately contradicted and cornered him by several examples of Matidas and others, who had sheltered the Guru and proved true to the Sikhs even unto martyrdom. Was not Shivaji betrayed by his kith and kin and his grandson again by a Pisal who too was a Hindu ? But did Shivaji or his nation disown their race and cease to be Hindus? Many of the Sikhs have acted treacherously first at the time of desertion of the heroic Banda, then again at the time of the last war of the Khalsa forces with the English. Guru Govindsing himself was deserted by a number of Sikhs in the very thick of the fight and it was this act of treacherous cowardice of these Sikhs which by forcing our lion-hearted Guru to try a desperate sortie gave occasion to that cursed Brahmin wretch to betray his two sons. If, therefore, for the crime of the latter we cease to be Hindus, then for the crime of the former we ought to cease to be Sikhs too ! This minority of the Hindus as well as the major communities of them did not fall from the skies as separate creations. They are an organic growth that has its roots embedded deep in a common land and in a common culture. You cannot pick up a lamb and by tying a Kachchha and Kripan on it, make a lion of it! If the Guru succeeded in forming a band of martyrs and warriors he could do so because the race that produced him as well as that band was capable of being moulded thus. The lion’s seed alone can breed lions. The flower cannot say ‘I bloom and smell: surely I came out of the stalk alone — I have nothing to do with the roots!’ No more can we deny our seed or our blood. As soon as you point at a Sikh who was true to his Guru you have automatically pointed at a Hindu who was true to the Guru for before being a Sikh he was, and yet continues to be a Hindu. So long as our Sikh brethren are true to Sikhism they must of necessity continue to be Hindus for so long must this land, this Bharatbhumika from Sindhu to the seas, remain their Fatherland and their Holyland. It is by ceasing to be Sikhs alone that they may, perhaps, cease to be Hindus. We have dealt at some length with this special case of our Sikh brotherhood as all those arguments and remarks would automatically test all similar cases of our other non- Vaidik sects and religions in the light of our definition. The Devsamajis for example are agnostics but Hindutva has little to do with agnosticism, or for the matter of that, atheism. The Devsamajis look on this land as the land of their forefathers, their fatherland as well as their Holyland and are therefore Hindus. Of course, it is superfluous, after all this to refer to our Aryasamaj. All the essentials of Hindutva hold good in their case so eminently that they are Hindus. We, in fact, are unable to hit upon any case that can lay our definition open to the charge of exclusiveness. In one case alone it seems to offer some real difficulty. Is, for example. Sister Nivedita a Hindu ? If ever an exception proves the rule it does so here. Our patriotic and noble- minded sister had adopted our land from Sindu to the seas as her Fatherland. She truly loved it as such, and had our nation been free, we would have been the first to bestow the right of citizenship on such loving souls. So the first essential may, to some extent, be said to hold good in her case. The second essential of common blood of Hindu parentage must, nevertheless and necessarily, be absent in such cases as these. The sacrament of marriage with a Hindu which really fuses and is universally admitted to do so, two beings into one may be said to remove this disqualification. But although this second essential failed, either way to hold good in her case, the third important qualification of Hindutva did entitle her to be recognized as a Hindu. For she had adopted our culture and come to adore our land as her Holyland. She felt, she was a Hindu and that is, apart from all technicalities, the real and the most important test. But we must not forget that we have to determine the essentials of Hindutva in the sense in which the word is actually used by an overwhelming majority of people. And therefore we must say that any convert of non- Hindu parentage to Hindutva can be a Hindu, if bona fide, he or she adopts our land as his or her country and marries a Hindu, thus coming to love our land as a real Fatherland, and adopts our culture and thus adores our land as the Punyabhu. The children of such a union as that would, other things being equal, be most emphatically Hindus. We are not authorized to go further. But by coming to believe into the tenets of any sects of the Hindus a foreign convert may be recognized as a Sanatani, or a Sikh, or a Jain; and as these religions being founded by or revealed to Hindus, go by he name of Hindudharma the convert too, may be religiously called a Hindu. But it must be understood that a religious or cultural convert possesses only one of the three essentials of Hindutva and it is owing to this disqualification that people generally do not recognise as a Hindu any one and every one who subscribes to the religious beliefs of our race. So deep our feeling of gratitude is towards a Sister Nivedita or an Annie Besant for the services they rendered to the cause of our Motherland and our culture, so soft-hearted and sensitive to the touch of love as a race we Hindus are, that Sister Nivedita or a person like her who so completely identifies his or her being with the Being of our people, is almost unconsciously received in the Hindu fold. But it should be done as an exception to the rule. The rule itself must neither be too rigid nor too elastic The several tests to which we have subjected our definition of Hindutva have, we believe, proved that it satisfies both these requirements and involves neither Avyapti nor Ativyapti; neither contraction nor expansion of the exact connotation.