Large Sections of Indian Society Today Understand the Essence of 'Hindutva': Ram Madhav at Rising Bharat Summit

Large sections of the Indian society today understand the real meaning and essence of the word ‘Hindutva’, president of the India Foundation and RSS national executive member Ram Madhav said at the CNN-News Rising Bharat Summit on Tuesday.

Contending that misunderstanding in the society on Hindutva has come down to a large extent, Madhav said: “Large sections of our society, the Indian society today, understand the real meaning and essence of this word ‘Hindutva’. There are professional critiques of it. We earlier used to think that probably people are unable to understand, that’s why they are probably talking against it. But over the years, we now realise that it is professional to be anti-Hindutva.”

“You have to be a professionally anti-Hindutva person, so you have to invent certain arguments. ‘Hindutva is different, Hinduism is different’. ‘Hinduism is very liberal, logical, Hindutva is very fundamentalist etc etc’. Hindutva is Hinduism in practice, always updating itself… All other interpretations, negative interpretations about it, are only professional critical analysis… being critical also has a market, that’s all,” he added.

Madhav was speaking at the summit during a session titled ‘The Tva Factor’. Apart from Ram Madhav, the panel included Francois Gautier, journalist and author; Pavan Verma, diplomat and author; and Anand Ranganathan, scientist and author.

“I have nothing against the word ‘Hindutva’. To me, Hindutva, as you define ‘tva’, if it is seen as the essence of Hinduism… I have probably written half a dozen books on Hinduism. I am a great admirer of the profundity of its philosophical wisdom, and an admirer also of its continuous continuity, if I may say, for 5,000 years. And I do believe that somewhere along the line, some of its great wisdoms have been lost, need to be reclaimed,” said Pavan Verma during the session.

“Parts of Hindu civilization, which are an aspect of Hindutva, need to be reappropriated, brought into the mainstream. And therefore, in principle, I am not against the word ‘Hindutva’,” he added.

“India should be spiritual leader of the world and PM Modi is playing a very important role in that. To live in this country is a huge privilege,” François Gautier said during the event.