Why Hinduism Is Being Molded Into A Monotheistic Religion Like Islam And Christianity
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(OPINION) Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew to the northern city of Ayodhya in October to inspect the construction of a temple devoted to Ram, one of the most prominent deities in Hinduism. This marked Modi’s first visit to Ayodhya since he laid the foundation stone of the temple on Aug. 5, 2020, but it was a key milestone in his party’s efforts to create a version of Hinduism that shares many similarities with Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
Modi offered prayers and performed “Aarti,” a Hindu ritual that involves waving lit lamps before an image of a deity — in this case, Ram — at the river Saryu, amid the ringing of bells and the playing of the religious song “Om Jai Saryu Mata” in the background. Over 1.5 million earthen lamps were lit on the banks of the river, accompanied by a laser show that depicted the life and times of Ram. This purely religious activity, as it may have appeared from the outside, carried a deeper subtext.
The political, cultural and religious symbolism of the occasion, as well as its timing in conjunction with the Hindu festival of lights, Deeputsav, were not lost on the people of India. The event was part of an ongoing, all-encompassing effort to craft and sustain a larger Hindu identity across its diverse traditions and forge Hinduism into a structured faith with Ram as its principal divinity.
Although Ram is one of the most familiar deities in Hinduism, he is not a central figure in all of its various strains, where different deities are worshipped. However, Hindutva — the reigning political ideology of the far-right government led by Modi, which took power in 2014 — has been systematically working to organize Hinduism along the lines of monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Hinduism is otherwise more of a diverse way of life than a formal faith.
Centralizing Ram is part of this ambitious political and cultural enterprise. The ongoing construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya represents a major step in this direction.
The temple, which spans 54,700 square feet, will cost an estimated $220 million to build and will be quake resistant, with a lifespan of 1,000 years. Various Hindu organizations have run donation campaigns for the temple, which has received support from some film stars. It is expected to be ready for worship in 2024, just in time for the Bharatiya Janata Party to use it as an emotive electoral issue in the national elections that year.
The BJP, under Modi’s leadership, has already been in power for eight years, and a likely win in 2024 would extend its rule by another five years.
Civil project
The electoral use of Ram is only tangential to the point being made here: His idolization as the foremost Hindu deity is both a political and a civil project.
Politically, rallying Hindus around one overarching religious figure has been a key component of the BJP’s strategy to create a new pan-Hindu identity that transcends its myriad traditions and caste hierarchies, which are considered a roadblock to Hindu political unity.
In this pursuit, the BJP is supported by its ideological progenitor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or the RSS, a right-wing Hindu paramilitary volunteer organization. Established in 1925, the RSS boasts over 80,000 branches and thousands of schools across India, with membership among nearly three-quarters of government ministers. Its worldview, which posits that India essentially belongs to Hindus and should thus promote a Hindu way of life, informs the BJP, which has zealously set out to realize this vision.
This, in turn, leads to the civil dimension of the project. Though the BJP has been successful in coalescing a Hindu vote bank across its diverse strains, which has enabled the party to dominate politically, its ultimate goal is to create a Hindu nation, or “rashtra,” which could be seen as the Hindu equivalent of a Muslim caliphate. This is where the reorientation of Hinduism as a formal religion, boasting one god, one book and one prophet, becomes an urgent necessity.
This makes the Ram temple project one of the most ambitious scriptural developments of our times. It is an attempt to make Ram a globally recognizable divinity, just like the Prophet Muhammad, Christ and Moses. However, unlike them, historians argue that there is not enough historical or archaeological evidence of Ram’s existence so far, and moreover, he was not a founder of the Hindu religion. Furthermore, unlike the three Abrahamic religions, Hinduism does not have a single sacred text or a single god.
Hindus believe in Brahman, a formless entity and the supreme being who is considered the ultimate reality and omnipresent energy present in the universe. Everything is considered a form of a god or an avatar, including Ram. Hindus also worship nature, with everything from plants to animals being worshipped. Additionally, there are multiple practices and rituals in Hinduism.
The term Hinduism itself has contentious origins. Its etymology reveals that it is a Persian term from the sixth century used to refer to the people living alongside the Sindhu River (now known as the Indus). Because the Persians could not pronounce the “S,” they called these people “Hindus.”
In scholarly discussions concerning the term “Hinduism” in India, it is claimed that the reformist Raja Rammohun Roy first used it to define the Hindu faith in 1816 during the British colonial period. Subsequently, the term was adopted by a section of Indians to identify themselves as a separate community. By the time the British left India in 1947, Hinduism defined a large mass of Indians who were not Muslims or Christians.
However, the sharpening of the Hindu identity clashed with the established Muslim identity, India’s second-largest religious community, leading to the Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan.
Unlike Pakistan, which became an Islamic Republic, India opted for a secular constitution thanks to its founding fathers — such as M.K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Bhim Rao Ambedkar — who led the Constituent Assembly that drafted the constitution. At that time, the RSS and the political parties Hindu Mahasabha and Jana Sangh, the forerunners of the BJP, advocated for a Hindu rashtra, but they operated on the margins of political discourse.
What’s more, the RSS was a political pariah for a long time after being accused of involvement in the assassination of Gandhi on Oct. 2, 1948. For seven decades after independence, India remained steadfast on its secular path, with successive governments generally steering clear of religion.
Modi’s ascension in 2014 changed this. Though the BJP had run a full-term government earlier under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it was a weak coalition and supported by secular parties. But Modi was elected with a full majority, empowering him to implement his party’s longstanding ideological agenda.
Reclaiming India for Hindus
The BJP-RSS worldview is based on the belief that India is the last remaining homeland of the Hindus — ravaged by Muslims who ruled the country for 1,000 years, followed by nearly 100 years of British rule. They believe that the centuries-long “slavery” of the Hindu community was due to its powerlessness and disunity.
Now, the BJP-RSS duo aims to consolidate Hindu power and culture in India, regaining control of what they see as a truncated India that falls short of their idea of “Akhand Bharat” (Unified Greater India), which includes Pakistan, Bangladesh, and even Afghanistan. To achieve this goal, the BJP has undertaken several simultaneous actions, including freezing the existing demographic composition of the country, where Hindus constitute 80% of the population and Muslims around 15%. As such, the BJP seeks to ban religious conversions, with nearly a dozen states already enacting this policy with “anti-conversion” laws.
In addition, the government has sought to increase the Hindu population and roll back that of Muslims by enacting laws such as the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens. According to these laws, non-Muslims from neighboring countries are welcome to obtain Indian citizenship, whereas Indian Muslims have to show proof of citizenship, or else risk being deprived of it.
A part of this project is also changing the demography of the Jammu-Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority region. On Aug. 5, 2019, India revoked the semi-autonomous status of Kashmir, which not only restricted New Delhi’s control of the region but also forbade Indians from buying land and gaining citizenship there. Now, Kashmir has been opened to settlement by outsiders, and with just a population of 13 million, the region faces the prospect of being swamped by people and businesses from across the country.
The project also involves organizing the Hindu religion on the lines of monotheistic faiths, and this is being done by enlisting Ram as the preeminent deity. Ayodhya is on course to become a Hindu Mecca akin to the Vatican, and as the BJP’s continued electoral dominance underlines, it has already been successful in fashioning a rigid Hindu political identity with Hindutva as its political creed.
The party’s civil objectives necessitate an equally stringent religious identity to construct a Hindu rashtra, connecting back to an imagined glorious Hindu civilization in an ancient past when Ram is believed to have lived.
Riyaz Wani is a freelance journalist based in Kashmir. Previously he was a journalist for the Indian Express and Tehelka. He is a recipient of the Ramnath Goenka Award in 2015 and he received a Certificate of Honor at the 2014 Red Ink Awards in India.