Hindu politics

Hindu politics refers to the political movements professing to draw inspiration from Hinduism. Hindu nationalism is the numerically most significant among the current political movements claiming to be inspired by Hinduism.

Hindu revivalism started with a reassertion of Hinduism in British India, mainly in its largest province, Bengal. Hindus were trying to incorporate things from the West, but while some were trying to make a clean break from their past, others tried to preserve their heritage in an adopted form.Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Swami Vivekananda were the earliest to formulate a political vision and a social reform program for India on the basis of Hinduism. Later, Aurobindo, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Golwalkar formed much of the political direction of the Hindus in India. Taking into account just how ancient the features of Hinduism were, it is clearly understandable why many maintained a nationalist Hindu mentality.

The revivalism movement from other Hindu groups, however, was brought about in hopes of incorporating Western ideas into their ritualistic political practices.

What revivalists failed to realize though, was that by forcibly impressing the unpracticed thoughts of Western culture into fellow Hindus, it further distanced their potential to achieve what they were ultimately hoping for. Instead of attaining a society that grew in part of Western political processes, what revivalist Hindus contracted was plainly a broadening of their existing culture; Hinduism expanded, and continues to expand, by claiming more and more religions as acceptable, such as Christianity and Buddhism.

By their attempts to christen Hinduism as spiritual, not religious, it severed the possibilities to connect existing traditional Hindu culture to what was being practiced in the West.

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