Hinduism in India - Hindu Nationalism

Hindu Nationalism

Hindu nationalism fueled Indian nationalism following partition. Hindu nationalism was aggressively promoted by right wing Hindus like:

1. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar - for the formation of Akhand Bharat
2. Purushottam Das Tandon - promoted Hindi as the national language of India

Others include: Syama Prasad Mookerjee, K.B. Hedgewar.

The 1947 Partition of India gave rise to bloody rioting and indiscriminate inter-communal killing of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Around 7.5 million Muslims were forced out and left for West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now known as Bangladesh) and 7.2 million Hindus moved to India. This was a major factor in fueling Hindu-Muslim animosity. What followed over the years was the laying of secular principles in the Indian Constitution. The last 60 years have been seemingly peaceful in most parts of the country except with the notable exception of communal riots in 1992 and 2002 and the wars fought against Pakistan.

Christian missionary groups from the West seek to convert the populace, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu, to Christianity, often using external aid, education and medical care as an inducement or bribe, and thus have been at loggerheads with right wing Hindu groups.

Kerala, Andhra, and the North East are some of the regions where conversion is prevalent. The Hindus still form the majority community in most regions of the country, except the Valley of Kashmir, Punjab and three states in the North-East - namely Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya. However, when considered as a region the North-East still has a slight Hindu majority. There is even reason to believe that Hinduism is growing through the incorporation of tribal belief-systems in specific areas of the North-East. However, in the Kashmir valley the Hindu population has plummeted as an outcome of the civil unrest when more than 500,000 members of Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) were forced to leave the valley by fanatic muslim terrorists. Pakistan sponsored terrorists attempt to liberate Kashmir from Indian rule in line with presumably the majority Muslim population's desire for independence, which was expressed at independence but overruled by the ruling Hindu Maharajah and the British during partition. In Indian Punjab the Sikhs form the majority population.