The Final Check?

The Pahalgam incident on 22 April 2025 resulting into loss of 26 innocent lives in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) is as condemnable as any other such incident anywhere in the world. New Delhi’s frustration, anger and counter measures are also a predictable outcome, but it doesn’t require a visionary to quickly grasp that what and how Modi’s government is responding to is not mere a spontaneous reaction to a terror incident but is in fact an outcome of a long-ingrained Hindutva ideology. In line with the routine blame-game tradition, Pakistan has been a fall guy for Indian leadership for many decades now, and this time again the quick blame came without any evidence.

However, what is being witnessed inside India and IIOJK against Muslims and Islam adds new dimensions to outcome of this incident. There are highly intensified, deeply rooted and widespread ‘Hate Muslims’ campaigns which are being unleashed at societal and government level under RSS-led BJP government. The phenomena need to be understood holistically and timely countered before it is too late for India and others.



In the aftermath of the incident, Pakistan is not being viewed as another country or nation with divergent national interest vis-à-vis India that needs to be pragmatically resolved and accommodated for lasting peace, rather under the spell of fanatic Hindutva ideology, whole India is clamoring to wipe out the opposing neighboring Muslim nation. Not only Pakistan, but after the Pahalgam incident, Muslims in entire India and IIOJK are being severely targeted. They have become victim of hate and violence in India on the basis of religion, and this is what RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) has always stood for; both as an ideology and organization.

But the important point to note is that the ongoing ‘hate-saga’ wouldn’t stop here as it is an ultimate outcome of a journey on discovery of Hindu Nationalism duly culminating at Hindutva Expansionism. According to Hindutva, it would continue till it subdues all what exists not only in India but in the entire Subcontinent. Where this fanaticism under Hindutva poses challenge to all Muslims living in the Subcontinent, the pragmatist and moderate Hindus in India should also see it as a challenge to their existence.

Spewing hate against Muslims inside India, IIOJK and against Pakistan wouldn’t end as desired by ignorant and arrogant leadership of a fanatic ideology, rather it would trigger a war of all against Hindus inside India, and could put their entire future of everyone in great jeopardy. To properly understand what is going on and what would be likely in the near future, there is a need to quickly review India’s transformation from a traditional Hindu-nation to a Hindutva-nation, and also to grasp this written-on-the-wall reality that it wouldn’t stop here till reaches to a final civilizational clash in the Subcontinent. This clash would also drag other Muslim communities of the world into the conflict.

That would be a situation which every sane Hindu living in India would like to avoid, but for that this is the time to act and stop RSS-led Modi government before it gets too far and too late. India’s discovery on the path of Hindu Nationalism started after the end of rule by the last Mughal Emperor in 1857 and its direct subjugation to the British Crown. With the British as the ruler, came along two prevalent notions of time i.

e., nationalism and democracy. Thus, the territory under the British control became India, and according to democratic norms, the majority was accepted as a nation.

Thus, Hindus who were fast acquiring the modern western education started seeing the entire Subcontinent as a country, all inhabitants as a Hindu-dominated single nation, and gradually aspired for more and more reforms and freedom. The newly educated Hindu lot very quickly realized that Traditional Hinduism professing and practicing the caste system, the untouchability, satti, child marriage, and polytheism wouldn’t stand onslaught of Christian missionaries. Therefore, the first response came as Brahmo Samaj in 1828 under Raja Ram Mohan Roy.

It was an intellectual and progressive movement which professed monotheism and discarded ills of idol worship, satti, child marriage and caste system. After a lapse almost 47 years, a new movement called Arya Samaj was founded by Swami Dayanand Saraswati which moved further and made the Vedas as divine words and also renounced the ills of Traditional Hinduism. This phase can be called as Transformative Hinduism.

To the educated elite and middleclass Hindus, it didn’t take them long to move further after this necessary transformation to aspire for attainment of nationalistic goals. In 1885, came the Indian National Congress, and Hindu polity started professing all those living in India as a single nation, which following the rule of majority, also tantamounted to the reign of Hindus and Hinduism. In its womb, a more aggressive Hindu nationalistic organization took birth in 1915 under the banner of Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha.

Madan Mohan Malviya and the clique profoundly impacted a group of people from Hindus which ultimately led to the creation of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Vinayak Damodar Savarkar from Hindu Mahasabha in 1923 coined the terminology, Hindutva, and in 1925, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar founded RSS and adopted Hindutva as organizational ideology. Hindutva is not Hinduism and calls itself a cultural expression, but it stands for all that is Hinduism, and also goes much beyond where in the name of singleness and national unity it stifles and kills all which is not Hindu.

Tahir Mehmood The writer is an International Relations analyst. He can be reached at [email protected].