The Vishva Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) is one of the offshoots of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Organization—RSS). Founded in 1925, the RSS evolved a nationalist ideology in which the Indian identity was epitomized by Hindu culture: other communities had to be assimilated into it, or lend allegiance to it.
Hindu nationalism (or Hindutva), in fact, borrows a great deal from its enemies, Islam and Christianity. This is especially evident from the modus operandi of the VHP, an organization which had been formed in the 1960s for federating the Hindu sects in order to resist Islam and Christianity more effectively by emulating them, and then got involved in ethno-religious mobilizations with political overtones in the 1980s.
A nationalist attempt to federate the Hindu sects
The first project director of the VHP, Shiv Shankar Apte, a leader of the RSS and a former journalist, published articles on the necessity of bringing together all the currents of Hinduism in order to effectuate a greater coherence in 1961. The same idea was entertained by another former journalist, Swami Chinmay ananda, a sadhu (world renouncer) who had established his ashram in Bombay, gate to Westernized India: Chinmayananda was a modern guru preaching in English for the urban middle class—he was to lecture throughout the world.
Apte and Chinmayananda, who decided to join hands in 1963, exemplified the two groups which were to form the keystone of the VHP: Hindu nationalists and modern gurus. Apte, in effect, undertook to contact the greatest possible number of sect leaders with a view to founding the VHP, in 1964; but he mostly rallied modern gurus and very few leaders of traditional Hindu sampradaya (historical sects).
In August 1964 the Pope announced that the International Eucharistic Conference was to be held in November in Bombay. It had a catalysing effect on the efforts of Apte and Chinmayanana who considered that Christian proselytism constituted a threat to Hinduism, and that it was therefore necessary to endeavour to emulate its techniques so as to offer more effective resistance.
The VHP was created on 29 August 1964. It was then decided to organize a large international conference in Allahabad on the occasion of the Kumbh Mela in 1966, in which ‘the learned of all sects’ were to participate. However, among the 25,000 delegates, at least as many modern gurus were to be found as spiritual masters initiated and invested according to the rules of sects with an ancient tradition. Despite its poor representiveness, the meeting in Allahabad was intended to be a kind of parliament and consistory of Hinduism. It decided to simplify the rites of purification and to elaborate a Hindu code of conduct. In January 1979, a second World Hindu Conference was once again held in Allahabad, under the auspices of the VHP. This time, the different currents of the ‘Hindu nation’ were represented: Buddhism by the Dalai Lama, who inaugurated the conference; the Namdhari Sikhs (see Namdhari) and the Jains by two dignitaries from those communities; the disciples of Shankara by the Shankaracharya of Badrinath; the ‘dualists’ by two Jagadgurus from Udupi; and the Nimbarkhis, the Vallabhis, the different schools and disciples of Ramanuja, the Ramanandis, the disciples of Chaitanya, those of Kabir, the Naths of Gorakhpur, the Arya Samajists (see Arya Samaj), the Ramakrishna Mission and the Divine Life Society, by various personalities.
The VHP again proposed a ‘minimum code of conduct for the daily life of every Hindu’, the objective of which was a unification of religious practices and references. Article 1 called for the veneration by all, morning and evening, of the sun; Article 2, for the systematization of the symbol ‘Om’ (on lockets, visiting cards, etc.); and, Article 3 was yet more explicit since it intended to transform the Bhagavad Gita as the book of the Hindus, regardless of their sect. In 1981, the VHP strengthened its Central Margdarshak Mandal (Central circle of those ‘who show the way’), the members of which were ‘to conduct and guide religious ceremonies, morals and ethics of Hindu society’. The VHP leaders also founded a Sadhu Sansad (Parliament of Sadhus) which became, in 1984, a Dharma Sansad comprising hundreds of participants.
The Hindu nationalist identity which developed according to this logic did not appear to be very loyal to Hinduism, insofar as it borrowed from Christianity attributes which are alien to it, such as a centralized ecclesiastical structure, a uniform catechism or proselytizing practices.
However, the VHP succeeded in implanting its network throughout India. Traditional notables agreed to patronize the organization as they had always done with religious figures. Former Maharajahs and industrialists have often been appointed president of the VHP, for instance, a tradition which served to enhance its respectability.
Ethno-religious mobilization and politicization
The Vishva Hindu Parishad became the spearhead of Hindu nationalism in the early 1980s, primarily because the RSS decided to make it the principal means of action in politics after it had distanced itself from its party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which was too moderate for its taste.
The Allahabad conference, in 1979, inaugurated a long-term strategic reorientation of the RSS. It benefited from the sentiment of Hindu vulnerability resulting from the conversions, in Meenakshipuram (Tamil Nadu) of several hundred Untouchables to Islam in 1981. The VHP sponsored Hindu Solidarity Conferences in order to resist these mass conversions and then organized a panIndian campaign in November 1983, the Ekatmata Yatra (literally, ‘pilgrimage of unity’) consisting of three caravans connecting Kathmandu and Rameshwaram (Tamil Nadu), Gangasagar (Bengal) and Somnath (Gujarat), and Haridwar (Uttar Pradesh), and Kanyakumari (Tamil Nadu). These were joined by sixty-nine other caravans which distributed water from the Ganges and provided everyone with sacred water from local temples or from other sacred rivers encountered on the way. This mingling was intended to symbolize Hindu unity. All the caravans converged, moreover, in Nagpur, centre of the RSS and of India.
This Yatra manipulated symbols very judiciously. The Ganges—river of salvation— constitutes one of the rare symbols venerated by all Hindus. The movement tried to transcend caste and sect divisions by associating with it members from low castes, who were responsible for carrying water just as others did. The movement had considerable success, particularly among women.
The manipulation of religious symbols appeared even more distinctly in the Ayodhya movement. In Ayodhya, the Great Moghol, Babur, had had a mosque built on a site which some Hindus regarded as the birthplace of Ram, the most popular god in North India. In 1984, the VHP started a movement claiming the retrocession of the Ramjanmabhoomi (birthplace of Ram) to the Hindus. In September 1984 the VHP conducted a march, beginning in Sitarmahi (Bihar), in the name of the ‘liberation’ of the Ayodhya temple, which was reached on 7 October. In accordance with this concern to create a pressure group, the march set out to convey a petition to the government in Delhi, which it should have reached in December, shortly before the elections foreseen for January 1985. However, in the meantime, the assassination of Indira Gandhi completely transformed the political atmosphere and led the VHP to change its plans.
The Ayodhya movement experienced a new development before the next elections, in 1989, when the VHP decided to build a temple on Ram’s birthplace. Its Ram Shila Pujans programme consisted in taking the bricks with which this temple was supposed to be built to thousands of towns and villages in order to have them consecrated by sadhus and to collect donations. More importantly, this campaign surcharged the atmosphere with communal feelings which were to influence the results of the late 1989 elections. The BJP joined the Ayodhya movement at that stage, realizing its growing popularity among the Hindus of North India. It registered a significant electoral advance (eighty-eight seats as opposed to only two in 1984), which was further strengthened in 1991 (119 seats, of which six were won by ‘modern gurus’). In 1991 the BJP also won the state elections in Uttar Pradesh. Its government did not attempt to stop VHP and other Hindu nationalist activists when they started to destroy the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992. Subsequently, the party adopted a more moderate attitude, especially after taking over at the Centre in 1998, largely because it needed the support of coalition partners which did not share its Hindu militancy. However, the VHP is still lobbying for the building of a Ram temple at Ayodhya.
Entryism
The strategy of mobilization was accompanied by another mode of action on the part of the VHP, which consisted in infiltrating, on the local level, certain institutions, such as temples and festivals.
One of the departments of the VHP is devoted to the training of priests for whom ritual practice has become routinized, and for whom formulas they pronounce have lost all meaning and they themselves have lost all sense of their role as intermediaries between the devout and god. This development has facilitated VHP entry to the temples.
The VHP also takes measures to strengthen its presence on the occasion of Hindu festivals. Hindu festivals constitute advantageous moments, from the point of view of the VHP, to spread its message as, in most cases, all sects are represented on such occasions. It is thus a question, from its perspective, of preventing the reassertion of differences, or indeed rivalries, between sampradayas in order to promote the notion of Hindu festivals as crucibles of national unity.
The VHP, to this end, developed a department for the coordination of Hindu festivals (Hinduparva samnvaya), the objective of which was ‘awakening the love of Hinduism’. Festivals should be vehicles of national fervour which alone would be able to overcome the weaknesses of Hindu societies which derive from their enslavement (goulabi), from the time of the Muslim conquest to colonization. Its priority is the standardization of festivals in such a way that they become national festivals (rashtriya tyohar). The VHP, therefore, has established societies for the coordination of festivals (hindu samnvaya samiti) in as many places as possible, and foremostly in places of pilgrimage.
Conclusion
The VHP can only be described as Hindu in a limited sense of the term. Its attempt at federating sects in a centralized framework and its desire to standardize religion in line with the Hindutva ideology are clear limitations of Christianity and Islam. The VHP has served the Hindu nationalist strategy above all during such campaigns as the Ektamata Yatra Yagna and the agitation in support of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, where sadhus provide valuable support in the instrumentalization of religious symbols for the purpose of political mobilization. The strategy of infiltration, which consists for the VHP in penetrating temples and festivals, though less visible than strategy of political mobilization the VHP may be more effective in the long run.
