Lessons From the Past for the Future: The Definition and Mobilisation of Hindu Nationhood by the Hindu Nationalist Movement of India

Guided by a self-categorisation and social-identity framework of identity entrepreneurship (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001), and social representations theory of history (Liu & Hilton, 2005), this paper examines how the Hindu nationalist movement of India defines Hindu nationhood by embedding it in an essentialising historical narrative. The heart of the paper consists of a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of the ideological manifestos of the Hindu nationalist movement in India, “Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?” (1928) and “We, or Our Nationhood Defined” (1939), written by two of its founding leaders – Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, respectively. The texts constitute authoritative attempts to define Hindu nationhood that continue to guide the Hindu nationalist movement today. The derived themes and sub-themes indicate that the definition of Hindu nationhood largely was embedded in a narrative about its historical origins and trajectory, but also its future. More specifically, a ‘golden age’ was invoked to define the origins of Hindu nationhood, whereas a dark age in its historical trajectory was invoked to identify peoples considered to be enemies of Hindu nationhood, and thereby to legitimise their exclusion. Through its selective account of past events and its efforts to utilise this as a cohesive mobilising factor, the emergence and rise of the Hindu nationalist movement elucidate lessons that further our understanding of the rise of right-wing movements around the world today.

involves persuading target audiences that they are acting in the best interests of the nation when acting in accordance with the agenda being propagated, while at the same time rejecting rivalling agendas. Most importantly, identity entrepreneurs are motivated to present themselves as representative, or prototypical (Reicher, 1982), of the group that they intend to mobilise so as to have the legitimacy to define the group agenda. This is because only those viewed as prototypical of the group are accorded the legitimacy to define who belongs and what it means to belong to the group. However, like social categories and social identities, prototypicality is socially constructed and the legitimacy to lead and mobilise a group and agenda is determined by the verisimilitude that the identity entrepreneurship embodies (Reicher, Haslam, & Hopkins, 2005).
However, in order for identity entrepreneurs to convincingly define and mobilise a target audience as a national category, they must embed their definitions of the boundaries, content, and prototypes of the national category in widely shared understandings of the national category. History has been argued to provide such understandings and therefore to be an essential ingredient in the construction of nationhood and national identity (e.g., Anderson, 1983;Gellner, 1983;Hobsbawm, 1990;Liu & Hilton, 2005;Reicher & Hopkins, 2001;Smith, 1991Smith, , 2003Suny, 2001). This is because history can be descriptive in that it can provide a people with an understanding of their origins and identity. On the other hand, it can be prescriptive by instilling a frame of reference for the future. According to Liu and Hilton (2005), the descriptive and prescriptive elements of history are embodied in historical charters, or foundational myths, that serve as warrants for social and political arrangements in the present and future. While there generally tends to be consensus about the episodes, events, and figures that are important in the history of a nation (Liu et al., 2005), their meaning and relevance for present states of affairs are often contested (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001). Historical charters tend to be communicated in narrative forms (Liu & László, 2007).
This allows identity entrepreneurs to represent the historical trajectory of a nation and its people in a story-like structure (Liu & Khan, 2014) that legitimises lessons for the present and future by establishing temporal continuity with its past (Sani et al., 2007) i . Like the boundaries, content, and prototypes of social categories, historical charters can be invoked to legitimise, i.e., confirm, the validity of the agendas mobilised by identity entrepreneurs.
As Liu and Hilton (2005) put it: "A great advantage of history for politicians is that most of the participants are dead, and while immortal as symbols, can speak only through the tongues of present day interpreters" (pp. 539-540).
Taken together, the tenets of Reicher and Hopkins's (2001) self-categorisation and social-identity framework of identity entrepreneurship and Liu and Hilton's (2005) social representations theory of history propose that there are two components central to the rhetorical construction of nationhood: identity and history. Both are highly interrelated in that one arguably cannot be invoked without the other in defining a nation and its people. Specifically, constructing nationhood on the basis of self-categorisation and social-identity processes requires category boundaries, content, and prototypes to be embedded within a historical narrative so as to render them coherent with existing, but also past and future, understandings of the nation. This proposition echoes Reicher and Hopkins's (2001, p. 51) statement: "…if national mobilisation depends upon national identity, then establishing identity depends upon embedding it within an essentialising historical narrative". Equally, history would not have the mobilising capacity that it has if it was not being invoked to define the essences of identities; as Liu et al. (1999) state: history "is the story of the making of an ingroup" (p. 1023).
The founding fathers of the Hindu nationalism movement worked in an era where favourable social comparisons against the British were all but impossible. Unlike Europe, history-writing and historical sense as an aspect of nation building had not received extensive attention in the Indian subcontinent ii . Distraught over the seeming ab-definition of the premises of Hindu nationhood and identity. The draft of his work was first published under the title Essentials of Hindutva (Savarkar, 1923), whereas the complete version of Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? was first published in 1928.
However, while Savarkar's 'Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?' provided the philosophical underpinnings of the Hindu nationalist movement, Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar (hereafter Hedgewar) founded the organisation most central to interpreting and implementing Savarkar's vision of Hindu nationhood in Indian society in 1925 -the RSS.
Hedgewar consulted extensively with Savarkar before finalising the organisational structure and mission of the RSS, which was founded with the aim of strengthening Hindu society and reviving Hindu national consciousness (as articulated by Savarkar); Hedgewar's goal was never to acquire state power, but to reform Hindus and Hindu culture from the grassroots in the face of rising Muslim nationalism across India. The key concept underpinning the organisation's structure was that of congregated prayer. Hedgewar believed that Hindu society could become invincible if it congregated and prayed together for fifteen minutes every day and developed this belief into the most basic unit of the RSS, the shakha. The shakha ("branch" in Sanskrit) is both a social group and physical location where RSS members meet daily to engage in a program of physical exercises and ideological sermons.
Even though the format and content of the shakha have been developed over years, its physical and ideological components have remained the same (Basu et al., 1993;Bhatt, 2001;Islam, 2006b;Jaffrelot, 1996) iv . Membership in the RSS tends to last for a lifetime but the main target group for recruitment has always been adolescents.
Hedgewar believed that bringing together and organising adolescents in the early stages of their lives would foster relationships amongst them that would last for a lifetime, but also an unquestioning allegiance to the ideology and leaders of the organisation. While the RSS established a woman's wing in in 1936 -Rashtriya Sevika Samitimembership in the RSS continues to be exclusively male.
From its inception, Hedgewar prioritised the expansion of the shakha network and following a merger with the youth-wing of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha in 1931 (hereafter ABHM; All-Indian Hindu Assembly; an independent Hindu nationalist political party), the RSS grew rapidly, establishing itself in more than ten Indian states.
By 1938, the RSS consisted of approximately 60,000 swayamsevaks (volunteers) divided between 500 shakhas; these figures doubled between 1940 and 1947 (Jaffrelot, 1996). However, the growth and expansion of the RSS came to an abrupt halt on the 30th of January, 1948, when Gandhi was shot at point-blank range by Nathuram Vinayak Godse (hereafter Godse), a former member of the RSS. Godse had become increasingly disenchanted by Gandhi's anti-violence and pro-Muslim policies, which he believed perpetuated subordination and humiliation of the Hindu community. His frustration culminated when Gandhi initiated a hunger-strike in response to the Indian government's decision to withhold the transfer of 550 million rupees to Pakistan as part of the partition agreements.
Fearing Gandhi's fast would result in his death, the Indian government made the transfer.
Godse's association with the RSS had serious repercussions for the Hindu nationalist movement and triggered a nationwide ban and anti-RSS riots. Despite the ban eventually being lifted, it had left the organisation with a significant decrease in membership numbers. Internal differences about the future direction of the organisation also came to the fore as there for a long time had been an ambition to establish a more political orientation for the organisation among younger leaders (e.g., Basu et al., 1993;Bhatt, 2001). Golwalkar who had served as Sarsanghchalak (Supreme Leader) of the RSS since Hedgewar's death in 1940, managed to steer the organisation away from further decline and internal conflicts by implementing the principle of Saravangeena Unnati (All-Round-Development of India). What the principle came to entail was the establishment of a network of affiliate Hindu nationalist organisations -the Sangh Parivar.
Golwalkar became a member of the RSS in Varanasi during his studies at Benares Hindu University and very quickly moved up the ranks of the organisation. He wrote We, or Our Nationhood Defined (1939) under expectations of him from within the RSS to take the organisation forward and expand it both ideologically and geographically.
While Hindu nationalists had been inspired by Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1928), it was believed that Savarkar's ideas required elaboration and adaptation to the work of the RSS.
The importance of the works Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1928) andWe, or Our Nationhood Defined (1939) within the RSS and Sangh Parivar is best understood by separating the ideology from the operations of the movement.
While the two works define the premises of Hindu nationhood and identity, the Sangh Parivar operates with the purpose of implementing this understanding of Hindu nationhood. The BJP and its pursuit of state power is thus only one of many means that the Hindu nationalist movement employ to establish Hindu nationhood in India.
As for the works, neither Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1928) nor We, or Our Nationhood Defined (1939 have served as literal operating manuals in the organisations that comprise the Sangh Parivar. For example, the manifesto of the BJP does not consist of extracts from the two works but rather a wide range of policies and standpoints that balance the party's ideological roots with its political strategies aimed at achieving political success (i.e., gaining support and votes). Similarly, even though many components of the curriculum of the education provider of the RSS, Vidya Bharati, are influenced by Savarkar's and Golwalkar's writings (Jaffrelot, 2005a;Sundar, 2004;Thapar, 2009), other components comprise materials, resources, and processes aimed at achieving set educational standards. This process of ideological appropriation applies to every organisation that makes up the Sangh Parivar and enables them to function successfully in their respective domains of operation (Basu et al., 1993;Bhatt, 2001;Jaffrelot, 1996Jaffrelot, , 2005aLudden, 2005).
However, what makes the vision of Hindu nationhood proposed by Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) central to the Sangh Parivar is that it continues to constitute the main component of the RSS's ideological curriculum (Basu et al., 1993;Baxter, 1969;Bhatt, 2001;Curran, 1951;Jaffrelot, 1996Jaffrelot, , 2005a. This is important, as most leaders of the organisations that comprise the Sangh Parivar have been members of the RSS since early adolescence and have previously held leadership positions within the RSS (Islam, 2006b;Jaffrelot, 1996Jaffrelot, , 2005aMcGuire & Copland, 2007). For example, every president of the BJP, including its current president, Amit Shah, has served as an RSS swayamsevak before joining the political party. In addition, both BJP's first Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and its present Prime Minister, Modi, were leading RSS activists in their youth.
The leaders in the RSS and its affiliate organisations are as a result indoctrinated in Hindu nationalist ideology before assuming positions in the upper ranks of the Sangh Parivar. However, it has not always been unproblematic for the Sangh Parivar to balance their ideological loyalties with the situational demands of their respective domains of operation. The BJP has in many instances had to downplay its Hindu nationalist agenda and distance itself from the RSS in order to be perceived as a legitimate democratic party (McGuire & Copland, 2007;Noorani, 2000). The affiliation between the BJP and the Sangh Parivar has arguably, for a long time, also been strategically concealed so as to bring audiences who are not necessarily sympathetic of the RSS into its fold (Jaffrelot, 1996(Jaffrelot, , 2005a. When the BJP was in power in 1998, the party even denied that We, or Our Nationhood Defined (1939) had been written by Golwalkar (see Islam, 2006b for an overview of the episode) v . In light of the recent electoral success of the BJP, the party's close links to the RSS, and the consequent apprehension of intensified Hindu majoritarianism (Adeney, 2015), there are concerns about the extent to which the BJP is inclined and capable to fully act on its "ideological foundation" (Varshney, 2014 (Bandow, 2014). A seeming shift has, however, occurred lately as regards the publicity of BJP's relation to the Sangh Parivar, exemplified by how leading BJP figures openly attended an RSS-organised "coordination meeting" in September, 2015(PTI, 2015. Other than educating its leadership in the writings of Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) and establishing a network of operations to propagate their vision of Hindu nationhood, the Hindu nationalist movement has relied heavily upon the orchestration of campaigns to instil, uphold and reinforce Savarkar's and Golwalkar's vision of Hindu nationhood. Many of the most influential of these campaigns, such as the Ekatmata Yatra (Pilgrimage of Unity) and Ramjanmabhoomi (Birthplace of Lord Ram) campaign (to be described in the discussion), have been directly inspired by themes from Savarkar's and Golwalkar's writings, including the indigeneity of Hindu people, religion and culture and the historical and contemporary threat of Islam and Christianity (and thereby Muslims and Christians) in the subcontinent. Many of these views have gained significant support in mainstream Indian society in the last three decades (Basu et al., 1993;Bhatt, 2001;Jaffrelot, 1996Jaffrelot, , 2005aLudden, 2005), which has been concurrent with a process of conceiving Indian history in Hindu-centric terms (Thapar, 2005;Trivedi, 2014;Visweswaran et al., 2009), and efforts to assimilate the history, myths and symbols of Dalit (ex-Untouchable) communities into a unified Hindu past and present (Narayan, 2009). Recent controversies relating to the consumption of beef and to the prohibition of cow slaughter in a majority of Indian states and union territories (Bukhari, 2015;Punwani, 2015;Teltumbde, 2015) might also be seen to fit into such a wider pattern of 'Hinduising' Indian society.
Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1928) and We, or Our Nationhood Defined (1939) thus continue to constitute the backbone of the ideology and operations of the Hindu nationalist movement. Given the centrality of Hindu nationalism and the Hindu nationalist movement in contemporary Indian politics, scrutiny of the guiding tenets of Hindu nationhood represents an imperative undertaking.

The Current Study
This study examines the theory of Hindu nationhood formulated and propagated by the ideologues of the Hindu nationalist movement at a critical moment in time -the Indian independence movement. Two frameworks guided this examination: the self-categorisation and social-identity framework of identity entrepreneurship (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001), and the social representations theory of history (Liu & Hilton, 2005). The two frameworks are integrated so as to elucidate the rhetorical strategies by which (a) the ideologues of the Hindu nationalist movement constructed and mobilised an account of Hindu nationhood, and (b) invoked history in so doing. While Reicher and Hopkins (2001) have highlighted the importance of history in the construction and mobilisation of identities, they, nor others applying their framework, have explicitly delineated how history -in terms of both structure and content -is invoked. Similarly, Liu and Hilton (2005), and others applying their framework, have emphasised the significance of identity entrepreneurs in the construction and mobilisation of identities on the basis of history without delineating the specific self-categorisation and social-identity processes employed by identity entrepreneurs in constructing and mobilising identities on the basis of history.
The primary contribution of the paper to social psychology thus lies in its demonstration of the applicability and compatibility of two theoretical frameworks, emanating from two distinct yet related theoretical traditions within social psychology, to the analysis of the rhetorical construction of nationhood, at a critical point in time, in India (for other examples of theorising and research combining the two traditions see Elcheroth, Doise, & Reicher, 2011;Klein & Licata, 2003;Zouhri & Rateau, 2015). However, it should be stressed that the findings of our analysis, and the conclusions drawn from them, are context-specific; although parallels can be drawn to processes operating in other contexts in which nationalist identity projects have been or are being mobilised, such inferences are secondary to our endeavour.
The secondary contribution of the paper is to the interdisciplinary field of nationalism studies, and lies in the illustration of the applicability of social psychological theory for understanding the strategies underpinning the rhetorical construction of nationhood, or to employ the interdisciplinary terminology denoting the phenomenon: the imagining of national communities (Anderson, 1983). It also constitutes a particularly important contribution to the interdisciplinary literature on Indian nationalism, and Hindu nationalism in particular, by being one of the only indepth and systematic analyses of the theory of Hindu nationhood formulated by the ideologues of Hindu nationalist movement in its entirety. Although Hindu nationalist sentiments first were articulated by Hindu revivalists in the 19 th century (see Zavos, 2000), the theory of Hindu nationhood professed and propagated by the Hindu nationalist movement today was formulated by Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) in the pre-independence era. However, despite the centrality of these ideological manifestos for the movement, the interdisciplinary literature on Hindu nationalism has generally tended to dedicate more attention to its modus operandi. Extracts from Savarkar's (1928) and Golwalkar's (1939) writings have only been cited intermittently so as to illustrate the movement's ideological foundations. These citations have often only consisted of extracts in which Savarkar and Golwalkar rationalise the exclusion of religious minorities from Hindu nationhood (for examples, see Basu et al., 1993;Jaffrelot, 1996Jaffrelot, , 2005aNussbaum, 2007;van der Veer, 1994). The most extensive systematic study of the Hindu nationalist theory of nationhood to date can arguably be found in Flåten's (2017) analysis of Hindu nationalist textbooks, but this undertaking focused upon secondary narrations of the theory of Hindu nationhood originally put forward by Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939). The selective focus on components of historical narratives has parallels in social psychology, wherein research tends to expose and examine specific elements of history (e.g., understandings of specific historical events) and their implications for identity constructions and intergroup relations (e.g., Liu, Sibley, & Huang, 2014;Smeekes, Verkuyten, & Poppe, 2012), as opposed to how identities and intergroup relations are constructed and embedded within foundational myths about the origins of nations and peoples.

Method Corpus
The corpus consisted of the texts Hindutva: Who is a Hindu (Savarkar, 1928) and We, or Our Nationhood Defined (Golwalkar, 1939 (Islam, 2006a). The first edition of We, or Our Nationhood Defined (Golwalkar, 1939) was used in the present analysis and consists of 83 pages of text organised under seven chapters. The foreword and appendices were excluded from the analysis because they were not written by Golwalkar.
The two editions of the booklets used for the present analysis were published in the English language.

Analytical Strategy
The texts were analysed using thematic analysis, which has been described by Braun and Clarke (2006) as "a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) from within data" (p.79). The main reason for employing this method was because of its flexibility in that it was not bound to any particular theoretical or epistemological framework. The epistemological position of this study is thus neither exclusively essentialist nor constructionist, but positioned between the two epistemologies. The writings of Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) are argued to reflect their construction of the foundations of Hindu nationhood, and this construction was situated in a greater discourse about the foundations of the impending independence of the Indian nation that was at the forefront of debates in the era of their writings. Braun and Clarke (2006) have described such intermediate epistemological positions as being contextualist.
The thematic analysis followed a six-step process proposed by Braun and Clarke (2006). The first author (SK) led the analysis through the six-steps, and two of the co-authors (TS & YJ) contributed to the last three steps.
The six-steps are as follows: (1) Familiarisation with the data was achieved by reading and entering the texts into QSR NVivo, the software used to analyse the text.
(2) Generation of initial codes involved coding extracts in the texts pertaining to the definition of Hindu nationhood.
(3) Searching for themes involved classifying the initial codes under broader themes that captured their content. Themes were derived on the basis of recurrence, repetition and emphasis, but also their relevance to the research aims, which was to examine the structure and content of the Hindu nationalist ideology. Themes were for the most part identified on the semantic level. This means that the themes were identified within the explicit meanings of the texts. However, in the process of refining, defining, and interconnecting themes, the analysis was also interpretative in that inferences were made about the broader meanings, interconnections, and implications of the themes. (4) Reviewing themes involved refining and defining the themes derived during the third step. The principles of internal homogeneity and external heterogeneity (Patton, 1990) ensured coherence within and discreetness between the themes. The texts were also re-read at this step to ascertain that no themes had been overlooked in the previous steps. (5) Defining themes involved naming the themes and corroborating their definitions. This step also required identifying extracts most representative of the themes -that is, the extracts presented in this article. (6) Producing theory and report involved interpreting and reporting the final themes while also describing interconnections between the themes. We present the sixth and final step in the following section.

Themes
We identified three main themes composed of ten distinct and coherent sub-themes. These are presented in the Appendix. In addition, a more elaborate outline of the eleven sub-themes can be found in Khan (2011). The current paper primarily focuses upon the three main themes, which encapsulate the strategies employed by Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) in invoking history to define Hindu nationhood. The first theme concerns the ideologues' definition of the historical origins of Hindu nationhood in order to define who belonged to and in the Hindu nation.
The second theme pertains to the ideologues' definition of the historical trajectory of Hindu nationhood so as to define who did not belong to and in the Hindu nation. Finally, the third theme captures the lessons that the ideologues' historical representation Hindu nationhood carried for the present and future of nationhood in the Indian subcontinent.

Theme 1: Defining the Origins of Hindu Nationhood -Who is a Hindu?
The definition of who belongs to and in Hindu nationhood, but also who does not belong, are central to Savarkar's (1928) and Golwalkar's (1939) texts and also to understanding how they proceed to define the historical origins and trajectory of Hindu nationhood. However, the first sub-theme extracted from the analysis pertains to Savarkar's (1928) and Golwalkar's (1939) demarcation of the Indian subcontinent as the homeland of the Hindu nation and refers to it as "Hindusthan" (literally the land of the Indus). Given that both texts were written before the partition and independence of India, the geographical territory of the subcontinent was demarcated by geographical markers as opposed to its current national borders; many of these markers included places and territories currently located in Pakistan.

Extract 1
The first image that it rouses in the mind is unmistakably of our motherland and by an express appeal to its geographical and physical features it vivifies it into a living Being. Hindusthan meaning the land of the Hindus, the first essential of Hindutva must necessarily be the geographical one. (Savarkar, 1928, p. 82)

Extract 2
Here is our vast country, Hindusthan, the land of the Hindus, hereditary territory, a definite geographical unity, delimited naturally by the sublime Himalayas on the North and the limitless ocean on the other three sides, an ideal place of land, deserving in every respect to be called Country, fulfilling all that the word should imply in the Nation idea. (Golwalkar, 1939, p. 40) However, while both ideologues demarcated the Indian subcontinent as the geographical territory of Hindu nationhood, they neither explained why it was considered to be a definite geographical entity or why the people living within the entity represented a nation. It is only when Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) begin to unfold more elaborate propositions about the history of the geographical territory that this comes to light -this is described in the forthcoming themes. The below extracts broadly illustrate the peoples that the ideologues considered to belong to Hindu nationhood, and thereby the target group of their mobilisation project. It is by ceasing to be Sikhs alone that they may, perhaps cease to be Hindus. (Savarkar, 1928, p. 129) This all-encompassing definition of Hindu people highlights how the term Hindu not only denoted religious faith and practice for Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) viii but a homogenous cultural entity. According to the ideologues, it was this cultural homogeneity that constituted the foundation of the Hindu people. What is most remarkable about their representation of Hindus is that they classify religious faiths, such as Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, together with religious traditions, such as Lingayatism and Vaishnavism, as Hindu (for differing versions of "Hindu diversity", see Doniger, 2014). With this amalgamation of religious faiths and traditions, Hindus were distinguished from non-Hindus on the basis of historical and geographical origins in the Indian subcontinent, and thereby by whether or not they considered the Indian subcontinent to be their father-as well as holy-land. For Savarkar, fatherland denoted ancestry, whereas holy-land denoted origins. This distinction becomes even more relevant when the ideologues identify who does not belong to the Hindu nation, which will be presented further on in this analysis. First the bases for Savarkar's (1928) proposition of common cultural origins are outlined in more detail in the following extracts.

Extract 5
We can well understand the divine love and homage that they bore to these seven Rivers presided over by the River, "the Sindhu", which to them were but a visible symbol of the common nationality and culture. (Savarkar, 1928, p. 5)

Extract 6
Out of the heap of hypotheses we reject all and positively maintain that we Hindus came into this land from nowhere, but are indigenous children of the soil always, from times immemorial and are the natural masters of the country. (Golwalkar, 1939, pp. 8-9) Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) both claimed that Hindu nationhood had its foundation in the Indus Valley civilisation (3300-1300 BCE). According to the ideologues, the civilisation had been a distinguishable nation within which people shared a common culture and nationality. Golwalkar (1939)  Definition and Mobilisation of Hindu Nationhood 488 the Indian subcontinent, and thus that Sanskrit also originated in these cultures; instead he argued for what has come to be known as the Out-of-India Theory (OIT; see Elst, 1999;von Schlegel, 1808von Schlegel, /2014, which proposes that the Aryan race and Sanskrit language are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. The designation of the Indus Valley civilisation as the first manifestation of Hindu nationhood arguably explains why the Hindu people, as defined by Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939), also were referred to as a race. If Aryan people are a race originating in the Indus Valley civilisation, and the Indus Valley civilisation was the first manifestation of Hindu nationhood, then it would also be logical to assume that the people of the Hindu nation constituted a race. However, this line of reasoning introduces an ideological dilemma. If Aryans belong to the same race, do not Aryans in other parts of the world also share the same origins as the Hindu race? Savarkar arguably resolved this dilemma by stating that only those who considered the Indian subcontinent to be both their father-and holy-land belonged to the Hindu nation.
However, according to Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) the Indus Valley civilisation only symbolised the first manifestation of Hindu nationhood and not the specific constituents underpinning the cultural homogeneity that they claimed that Hindu nationhood embodies. These constituents were attributed to the Vedas and Sanskrit.

Extract 7
It begins with the Vedas which are the first extant chapter of the story of our race. (Savarkar, 1928, p. 93)

Extract 8
And we were one Nation -"Over all the land from sea to sea one kingdom!" is the trumpet cry of the Ancient Vedas! (Golwalkar, 1939, p. 9) While neither Savarkar nor Golwalkar elaborated upon the specific contents of the Vedas, both invoked the texts as a manifestation of the antiquity of the Hindu nation. Apart from ongoing debates about the era in which the Vedas were composed (Bryant, 2001;Bryant & Patton, 2005;Raychaudhuri, 2000), the fact remains that the Vedas are the most ancient religious texts read in the present day (Flood, 2003;Wolpert, 2008). Thus, in addition to supporting claims concerning the antiquity of Hindu nationhood, the Vedas could be employed as evidence, albeit disputable, for an underpinning commonality among Hindu people, as defined by the ideologues. However, by proposing that the Vedas were the first authoritative religious texts of the Hindu people, Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) introduced another ideological dilemma. While the Vedas may be the oldest religious texts to have emanated from the Indian subcontinent, they are not considered to be authoritative among, for example, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs (Hatcher, 1999), whom they also proposed were part of the Hindu nation. Savarkar and Golwalkar resolved this dilemma by proposing that Sanskrit, the language of the Vedas, was the national language of the ancient Hindu nation, which originated in the Indus Valley civilisation. Given that the vast majority of languages and dialects in the Indian subcontinent have been influenced by Sanskrit, Savarkar and Golwalkar claimed that it was through the language of the Vedas and not by the Vedas per se that the national culture spread across the subcontinent. The authoritative texts of Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism were in fact originally written in either Sanskrit, a hybrid of Sanskrit, or in a language and script influenced by Sanskrit (see Flood, 2003;Pollock, 2009

Extract 9
We Hindus are not only a Rashtra ix , Jati, but a consequence of being both, own a common Sanskriti expressed, preserved chiefly and originally through Sanskrit, the real mother tongue of our race. (Savarkar, 1928, p. 100)

Extract 10
There is but one language, Sanskrit, of which these many "languages" are mere offshoots, the children of the mother language Sanskrit, the dialect of the Gods, is common to all from the Himalayas to the ocean in the South, from East to West and all the modern sister languages are through it so much interrelated as to be practically one. (Golwalkar, 1939, p. 43) The above extracts capture Savarkar's (1928) and Golwalkar's (1939) definition of Sanskrit as the authoritative language of Hindu nationhood and the embodiment of its national culture. However, it is important to note the difference between the terms Sanskriti and Sanskrit used by Savarkar in the first extract. The difference between the two terms is that Sanskrit was used to denote the language of the Hindu people, whereas Sanskriti was used to denote the national culture produced by the language. Savarkar, in particular, placed emphasis on Sanskrit, as opposed to the Indus Valley civilisation and Vedas, as being the foundation for the racial and cultural homogeneity of the Hindu nation and people. Golwalkar, on the other hand, emphasised the influence of Sanskrit upon other languages and dialects as a manifestation of the inherent homogeneity of the Hindu nation and people.
Sanskrit was thus not only proposed to be the hereditary language of the Hindu nation and people, but also the basis for its cultural homogeneity.
Another important element in the above extracts is the reference to Jati. From a sociological perspective, Jatis are small, endogamous social groups that designate one's location in the ritual hierarchy. These are often highly cohesive groups tied to a specific geographical location bound by strict regulations regarding food, settlement, marriage, occupation and jurisdiction (for a contemporary understanding of caste in Indian society see Jogdand, Khan, & Mishra, 2016). However, as elaborated in the next sub-theme, this reference to Jati has little to do with the caste identity among Hindus.

Sub-Theme 6: Jati: Bonds of common blood
Jati is referred to on multiple occasions in the texts. Devare (2011) notes that Savarkar was not referring to caste identity among Hindus in using the term Jati, but instead used Jati to denote identity in terms of racial characteristics. It might be relevant to mention that colonial scholars initially equated caste with race as they observed distinctions between castes on the basis of occupation, cultural beliefs, symbols, settlements and jurisdiction, and endogamy, which at the time were associated with race distinctions in other parts of the world. However, this understanding of caste was recanted towards the end of the nineteenth century (see Bayly, 2001). Why did Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) refer to caste in racial terms when such a reference to caste was already obsolete?
This needs to be understood in the context of Dalit mobilisation under the leadership of B. R. Ambedkar who also raised the question of "who is a Hindu?" in the early decades of the twentieth century (for details, see Ambedkar, 2002;Jaffrelot, 2005b).
Hindu nationalists were aware of caste's function as a primary source of social categorisation in Indian society that could impede the formation of a singular Hindu identity. However, their treatment of the matter differs signifi- Definition and Mobilisation of Hindu Nationhood 490 cantly. Savarkar was clearly opposed to caste practices and mobilised his followers to transgress all caste rules as far as possible, as indicated in the extract below.

Extract 11
[P]ull down the barriers that have survived their utility, of castes and customs, of sects and sections: What of interdining? But intermarriages between provinces and provinces, castes and castes, be encouraged where they do not exist … till at last the Hindu people get fused and welded into an indivisible whole, till our race gets consolidated and strong sharp as steel. (Savarkar, 1928, p. 138) This emphasis on transgressing caste rules and practices is seemingly consonant with Ambedkar's call for the annihilation of caste. However, their goals were entirely different. For Ambedkar, the annihilation of caste meant challenging oppression within Hindu society and constructing a new social order based on the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. For Savarkar (1928), it meant removing an obstacle for the construction of a singular Hindu identity. Savarkar (1928) thus held an instrumental rather than a principled stand regarding the annihilation of caste (see Ambedkar, 2002;Devare, 2011). Golwalkar, on the other hand, did not elaborate much on caste, but refers to it in defending against the perceived defects of Hindu society. Golwalkar (1939, p. 61) argued that "persons interested in calumniating Hindus, make much of the caste system,… and all sorts of true or untrue flaws in the Hindu Cultural Organisation,… and point out that the weakness of the Hindus lies solely in these" and defends it by pointing out that "no society is entirely free from defects". Golwalkar's position might, in part, be attributed to the rise of Dalit mobilisation as well as Gandhian anti-untouchability campaigns in the 1930s.
Finally, having defined the Hindu people as a race in terms of shared geographical, civilizational, textual, and lingual commonality, Savarkar goes on to define Hindu people in biological terms, thereby resolving the predicament presented by caste divisions.

Extract 12
The Hindus are not merely the citizens of the Indian state because they are united not only by the bonds of the love they bear to a common motherland but also by the bonds of a common blood. (Savarkar, 1928, p. 84)

Extract 13
We are not only a nation but a Jati, a born brotherhood. Nothing else counts, it is after all a question of heart. We feel that the same ancient blood that coursed through the veins of Ram and Krishna, Buddha and Mahavir, Nanak and Chaitanya, Basava and Madhava, of Rohidas and Tiruvelluvar courses throughout Hindudom from vein to vein, pulsates from heart to heart. We feel we are a JATI, a race bound together by the dearest ties of blood and therefore it must be so. (Savarkar, 1928, p. 89) The above extract illustrates Savarkar's (1928) specification of blood ties as a criterion for belongingness in Hindu nationhood. Not only did invoking common blood strengthen the ideologues' claim that the Hindu people in fact constituted a race, it also served to strengthen the representation that the Hindu nation and people constituted an essence (see Wagner, Holtz, & Kashima, 2009).

Summary of Theme 1 (Sub-Themes 1-6)
Taken together, the first theme and corresponding sub-themes highlight an attempt by Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) to outline a myth of origin of the Hindu nation and people (Malinowski, 1926 craft a narrative delineating shared geography, ancestry, religion, language, and culture as the basis of Hindu nationhood.
In terms of the descriptive content of the narrative, two additional important aspects should be noted. First, the ideologues did not articulate the central tenets of their narrative in a vacuum, they had their basis in the Hindu reform movement and neo-Vedanta philosophy, which emerged in the late 19th century, spearheaded by leaders such as Swami Vivekananda, Dayananda Saraswati, and Aurobindo Ghose, and organisations such as the Arya Samaj and Ramakrishna Mission. The goal of the movement was to consolidate, modernise and mobilise Hindu traditions and beliefs, vis-à-vis the proselytising forces of Islam and Christianity, and hence appropriating Hinduism to the challenges brought about by almost a century of conquests and colonialisation in the subcontinent. One of the movement's main tenets, but also legacies, was its definition of Dharmic faiths, and their distinction from Abrahamic religions. That is, the distinction between religious faiths with a basis in the divine and natural laws of the Vedas, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism, and monotheistic religions that trace their origins to the prophecy of Abraham and the Middle-East. The ideologues clearly draw upon and mobilise this definition (and later distinction) in articulating the origins and basis, and arguably identity, of the Hindu nation and people.
These broad boundaries of inclusion regarding the identity and criteria for belongingness strategically serve to maximise the mobilisation capacity of the Hindu nationalist project, as it makes no critical distinction between the many peoples and faiths indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. This is consistent with the first strategy of identity entrepreneurship (Reicher, Haslam, & Hopkins, 2005;Reicher & Hopkins, 2001), which involves including as many people as possible within the category boundaries of the group being mobilised (i.e., ingroup relative to outgroup members) in an effort to maximise the mobilising capacity of their project. However, it should be reiterated that the enactment of this rhetorical strategy was not uncomplicated, but required skilful witcraft (Billig, 1987) on behalf of the ideologues so as to circumnavigate the many dilemmas inherent to their historical representation of a homogenous racial and cultural Hindu entity.
Second, the ideologues' fascination with Nazism is evident in their insistence on representing Hindus as a race, and with regard to their proposed strategies for managing peoples not belonging to it. The racial underpinnings and homogeneity of the peoples that Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) define as Hindus are emphasised throughout the first theme. Golwalkar in fact explicates that "race is by far the most important ingredient of a Nation" (p. 21). However, Elst (2001) has argued that at the time that the two works were written race was commonly used to denote nation, and thus not intended to specify peoples as biological species. Regardless of Elst's inter- The speeches were well-received in India and also Germany where they were circulated in newspapers, and even featured in the Völkischer Beobachter, the mouthpiece of the German National Socialist Party (e.g., Bhatt, 2001;Casolari, 2000;Jaffrelot, 1996). Golwalkar makes explicit reference and expresses reverence to Hitler and Nazi Germany's ideology and strategy to maintain racial purity in his We, Or Our Nationhood Defined (1939); parts of these references are outlined under the proceeding themes. However, with the end of the Second World War, the term became unpopular and the Hindu nationalist movement started emphasising the cultural as opposed to racial basis of Hindutva. This cultural nationalist account of the essence of 'Hinduness' does not differ from the account originally put forward Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939), and presented in this analysis. The main difference is that contemporary accounts do not proclaim that the origins and homogeneity of Hindu culture has Definition and Mobilisation of Hindu Nationhood a racial basis. However, with the propagation of OIT amongst Hindu nationalist scholars and sympathisers, the racial basis of Hindutva subtly subsists (see Bryant & Patton, 2005;Trautmann, 2005).

Theme 2: Defining the Historical Trajectory of Hindu Nationhood -Who is not a Hindu?
Having established who belonged in and to Hindu nationhood by delineating the origins of Hindu nationhood, Savarkar and Golwalkar proceed to narrating the historical trajectory of Hindu nationhood. Their description of the historical trajectory of Hindu nationhood serves to justify their designation of those who do not belong to and in the Hindu nation. The ideologues' narration of the historical trajectory begins at a juncture where Hindu nationhood transitions from a golden into a dark age.

Extract 14
But as it often happens in history this very undisturbed enjoyment of peace and plenty lulled our Sindhus-

than, in a sense of false security and bred a habit of living in the land of dreams. At last she was rudely awakened on the day when Mohammad of Gazni crossed the Indus, the frontier line of Sindhusthan and invaded her. That day the conflict of life and death began. Nothing makes Self conscious of itself so much
as a conflict with non-self. (Savarkar, 1928, p. 43)

The Race Spirit is too tenacious to be dead so easily. And when the first real invasions of murdering hordes of mussalman free-booters occurred, they indeed found the nation divided against itself and incapable of stemming the tide of devastation they brought in their wake… Then came the glorious period of Hindu revival under the Great Shiwaji and the whole illustrious line of Hindu warriors, who overthrew the
Moslem domination right upto the Sindhu river, and shattered the throne of the 'Great Moghul', the emblem of Muslim Victory. (Golwalkar, 1939, p. 10)

Extract 16
But before the fruits of the great victory were gathered, before the Nation had even breathing space to  (Golwalkar, 1939, p. 11) The above extracts exemplify Savarkar's (1928) and Golwalkar's (1939) descriptions of the periods of Islamic conquest and British colonialism as having suppressed Hindu nationhood. The two episodes tended to be presented alongside each other as part of an account of decisive events that hindered the integrity and progression of Hindu nationhood. The exact timings of the two episodes were not specified by the ideologues; neither were any distinguishable eras within the two episodes, such as the different origins and eras of the Muslim invaders and conquests, nor differences in the modes of governance between the East India Company and British Raj. The main difference in describing the two historical episodes and their implications was that the Hindu nation and people's encounter with Muslims and Islam were mainly described in terms of resistance and war, while its encounter with the British Empire predominantly was described in terms of systematic oppression. What is remarkable is the way in which Savarkar (1928) describes one of the first significant "Muslim" conquests of the Indian Subcontinent, and encounter between Hindu nationhood and Muslim invaders (in Extract 10), as a conflict between the "self" and "non-self".
From a social psychological perspective, it is almost like Savarkar is invoking the metacontrast principle rhetorically (Turner, 1985), i.e., emphasising intergroup differences and intragroup similarities, and ascribing the distinction between Hindus and Muslim as stemming from the level of the self, and thereby as being immutable. The basis of the distinction between the communities is further elaborated in other parts of their works and will be presented in subsequent sections.
Furthermore, in describing the two historical episodes, both Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939)  Having defined who was and was not a Hindu by distinguishing between a golden vis-à-vis a dark age in the historical trajectory of Hindu nationhood, the ideologues explicated the implications of their historical narrative for the future of Hindu nationhood. The first implication involved justifications of the exclusion and subjugation of Muslim and Christian communities, or non-Hindu minorities, from and in relation to Hindu nationhood.

Extract 17
For though Hindusthan to them is Fatherland as to any other Hindu yet it is not to them a holy land too.  (Golwalkar, 1939, pp. 47-48) The above extracts illustrate the bases by which Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) justified the exclusion and subjugation of the Muslim and Christian communities, or non-Hindus as defined by the ideologues, from and within the Hindu nation. While Savarkar made explicit reference to the Muslim and Christian communities of the Indian subcontinent, Golwalkar referred to these simply as minorities. Savarkar (1928) claimed that the Muslims and Christians in India, even those originally converted from Hinduism, no longer could be considered to be Hindus because of their adoption of religious faiths foreign to the Indian subcontinent. While he admitted that the Indian subcontinent could be the fatherland of some Muslims and Christians, he argued that it never could be their holy-land. The Muslim and Christian communities were in extension disloyal to the Hindu nation and could not be trusted. Building upon Savarkar's reasoning, Golwalkar (1939) argued for the assimilation of minority communities. Like Savarkar, he questioned the loyalties of the religious minority communities and proposed their exclusion or assimilation in order to prevent separatism. He also ascertained that minorities had to be denied special rights or status upon assimilation. While not representative of this theme and strategy, it is worth noting that Golwalkar went as far as claiming that the German instance of maintaining racial purity was "a good lesson for use in Hindusthan to learn and profit by" (p. 56) in discussing the assimilation of religious minorities in and to the Hindu nation.
What is most remarkable about the theme and strategy is the ideologues' ambivalence in defining the status and rights of religious minority communities. On the one hand, they acknowledged that some Muslims and Christians shared the same origins as Hindus. Likewise, they proposed that Muslims and Christians could be assimilated into the Hindu nation if they adopted the ways of the Hindu nation and people. According to this definition, the boundaries for inclusion in the Hindu nation were permeable. On the other hand, their proposed criteria for inclusion in the Hindu nation made the boundaries entirely impermeable if the Muslims and Christians continued to adhere to their respective religious faiths. Savarkar and Golwalkar thus proposed an all or nothing criteria for inclusion in the Hindu nation; one either was or had to become a Hindu, or otherwise be excluded from the Hindu -and effectively Indian -nation. It needs to be stressed here that there is no such thing as a pre-existing "Hindu fold" (see Doniger, 2010Doniger, , 2014, and that the exclusion of Muslims and Christians is hence bound up with what remains the core undertaking of the Hindu nationalist movement -i.e., the effort to induce and achieve "internal" unity and cohesion, by way of downplaying the manifold and often incongruous ways of narrating the specific pasts of what is taken to be its constituent parts. The second implication of Savarkar's (1928) and Golwalkar's (1939) definition of Hindu nationhood involved calls by the ideologues for the re-vitalisation of Hindu national consciousness and re-establishment of Hindu nationhood so as to restore it to its former glory. The two abstracts below capture their proclamations.

So long as ye, O Hindus! Look upon Hindusthan as the land of your forefathers and as the land of your
prophets, and cherish the priceless heritage of their culture and their blood, so long nothing can stand in the way of your desire to expand. The only geographical limits of Hindutva are the limits of our earth! (Savarkar, 1928, p. 119)

Extract 20
Only those movements are truly "National" as aim at re-building, re-vitalizing and emancipating from its present stupor, the Hindu Nation. Those only are nationalist patriots, who, with the aspiration to glorify the Hindu race and Nation next to their heart, are prompted into activity and strive to achieve that goal.
All others are either traitors and enemies to the national cause, or to take a charitable view, idiots. (Golwalkar, 1939, p. 44) As a baseline, Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) argued that the agenda entailed recognition of Hindusthan as the ancestral homeland of the Hindu people and reverence of the traditions and culture that it had produced.
Furthermore, in an effort to dismiss rival agendas, Golwalkar denounced those not dedicated to the agenda by referring to them as "traitors", "enemies", or "idiots". This declaration of the agenda of the Hindu nationalist movement, and dismissal of rivalling agendas, is in line with the second rhetorical strategy employed by entrepreneurs of identity (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001). Furthermore, given that the ideologues, and the Hindu nationalist movement, were the main actors professing and propagating this agenda at the time, they managed to present themselves and their movement as prototypical of the social category that they were mobilising -consistent with the third strategy of identity entrepreneurship (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001).
However, while both ideologues called for the re-vitalisation of Hindu national consciousness and re-establishment of Hindu nationhood, neither specified a concrete strategy for realising this mission. This could arguably have to do with the fact that the RSS was one of few organisations that propagated Hindu nationalism at the time of its inception. The RSS had in fact not even been founded at the time of Savarkar's (1928) publication, whereas it had only established one of its affiliate organisations, its women's association, when Golwalkar's (1939) text was published (Jaffrelot, 1996). It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that the RSS completely adopted and implemented Definition and Mobilisation of Hindu Nationhood the strategy of Saravangeena Unnati, which entailed the above-mentioned establishment of the Sangh Parivar, and thereby a concrete strategy for re-vitalising Hindu national consciousness and re-establishing Hindu nationhood.

Discussion
The thematic analysis of Savarkar's Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1928) and Golwalkar's We, or Our Nationhood Defined (1939) resulted in the identification of three main themes and eleven sub-themes on the basis of recurrence, repetition and emphasis. While the themes and sub-themes were coherent and discrete, they were also interconnected and presented as part of a narrative about the historical origins and trajectory of Hindu nationhood. In line with a self-categorisation and social-identity framework of identity entrepreneurship (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001), and social representations theory of history (Liu & Hilton, 2005) this narration of history defined who belonged, who did not belong and what it meant to belong to Hindu nationhood.
Taken together, the themes and sub-themes can, as above, be encapsulated in three broader strategies as to how Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) invoked history to define the boundaries, content and prototypes of Hindu nationhood. The first of these strategies involved narrating a foundational myth of the Hindu nation and people. This foundational myth represented the religious traditions and peoples indigenous to the Indian subcontinent as sharing the same ancestral origins stemming from the Vedic civilisation. This shared ancestry was in turn argued to justify that those indigenous to the Indian subcontinent constituted a race sharing the same ancient culture and ancestral blood lines. The most important aspect in narrating a foundational myth of Hindu nationhood thus involved representing the Hindu nation and people as a homogenous entity. This not only required the ideologues to undermine heterogeneity in the peoples and faiths indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, but more importantly, emphasise commonalities in their historical origins, whether based on fact or fiction. Not only did this strategy enable Savarkar and Golwalkar to define the boundaries of Hindu nationhood as inclusively as possible so as to maximise the mobilising capacity of their agenda, it also served to delineate the bases of belongingness in their theory of Hindu nationhood (see Reicher & Hopkins, 2001).
The second strategy involved narrating the historical trajectory of Hindu nationhood so as to define who did not belong to and in the Hindu nation. This component of Savarkar's (1928) and Golwalkar's (1939) historical narrative emphasised conflicts in the historical trajectory of Hindu nationhood to identify its enemies. According to the ideologues, Islamic and British, and as a consequence Christian, influxes had compromised the primacy and inviolability of Hindu nationhood; these 'late' arrivals are narrated as critical junctures in the historical trajectory of the Hindu nation, serving as prototypical outgroup members in the historical narrative of the ingroup at different moments in time (see Liu & Khan, 2014). This temporal ordering further emphasised the indigeneity, or autochthony (see Geschiere, 2009;Elden 2013), of the Hindu nation and people. On the other hand, the Islamic and British influx was emphasised as being antagonistic to Hindu nationhood by representing these historical encounters as equalling a dark age, which was juxtaposed against the positive valorisation of the Vedic civilisation as a golden age. This strategy arguably also enabled Savarkar and Golwalkar to undermine the legitimacy of the secular nationalist agenda of the Indian National Congress (INC) by contesting the historical bases for including Muslims and Christians in their definition of peoples and cultures comprising Indian nationhood (see Nehru, 1946, for an overview of the INC's historical representation of Indian nationhood; Liu & Khan, 2014, for an analysis of this and Gandhi's writings). Taken together, the strategy of narrating a dark age that elucidates ingroup vis-à-vis outgroup boundaries is congruent with the second strategy of identity entrepreneurship, in that it served to represent rival agendas as conflicting with the agenda being mobilised (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001).
Finally, compared to the first two strategies, the third strategy was prescriptive in that it involved explicating the lessons that Savarkar's (1928) and Golwalkar's (1939) theory of Hindu nationhood carried for the future. Like the preceding strategies, the definition of the mission of Hindu nationhood was also embedded in and justified by history. The ideologues drew implicit parallels between their own agenda and that of Shivaji's resistance against the Mughal Empire and the supposedly Hindu resistance against the British in 1857. These historical events were invoked to exemplify the Hindu national consciousness and anchor its resolve to defend and uphold Hindu nationhood in an historical analogy. Savarkar's and Golwalkar's definition of what it meant to re-vitalise Hindu national consciousness and re-establish Hindu nationhood was thus legitimised in and by the history that they invoked to define the boundaries of inclusion in, and exclusion from, Hindu nationhood. This strategy allowed Savarkar and Golwalkar to represent themselves, and the Hindu nationalist movement, as prototypical as they were the main actors spearheading the purported agenda of the Hindu people -the restoration of Hindu nationhood to its former glory; this strategy is consistent with the third strategy of identity entrepreneurship (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001).

Contributions
This analysis of the theory of Hindu nationhood put forward by Savarkar's (1928) and Golwalkar's (1939) texts during the Indian independence movement seems to have two contributions to make to the literature. First and foremost, the examination demonstrated the utility of combining a self-categorisation and social-identity framework of identity entrepreneurship (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001), with a social representations theory of history (Liu & Hilton, 2005), to systematically elucidate the rhetorical strategies by which Hindu nationalists constructed Hindu nationhood by invoking history during the Indian independence movement.
Narrative theorists, such as László (1997) and Wertsch (2002), have proposed that the narrative form of history invoked in the construction of identities is contingent on standard narrative features, such as plots, characters and events, so as to convey authenticity. Furthermore, they argue that narratives of history invoked by identity entrepreneurs transform into schematic narrative templates through repetition via institutions utilised for their dissemination, such as schools and media in the case of nation states, and eventually form collective memories. Wertsch's (2002) work in the former Soviet Union shows that such schematic narrative templates followed a standard narrative structure. They began with a peaceful era, which came to be disturbed by the agitation and aggression of an outside force that in turn led to an era of oppression and suffering, ultimately overcome through the collective and heroic actions of the people. It is clear that the narrative structure delineated by Savarkar and Golwalkar with regard to the origins, trajectory, and future of Hindu nationhood followed an identical structure.
The reason why such a narrative structure is particularly compelling in the mobilisation of identity projects, and in the construction of collective memories, is because historical narratives are structured along the same lines as the cognitive-motivational categorisation of groups. Beginning a narrative of the identity category being mobilised with a foundational myth, or so called golden age, lends itself to establishing the normative fit (see Turner, Oakes, Definition and Mobilisation of Hindu Nationhood 498 Haslam, & McGarty, 1994) of the social category being mobilised. That is, the definition of the essence of the social category, i.e., the normative meaning of belonging to that category. This distinction, however, becomes significant, and has implications for the way in which the identity project comes to perceive itself, and its standing in relation to, and relations with, other categories when the comparative fit (see Turner et al., 1994) of the category is invoked, which takes place at a critical juncture in the narrative of the history (see Liu & Khan, 2014) -specifically at the point that an antagonist is introduced. In the case of the narrative of the Hindu nation's encounter with Islam and the British, both Savarkar and Golwakar represent the juncture in a manner that accentuates differences between the Hindu nation and people and its antagonists, portraying differences between them as fundamentally irreconcilable. This process of accentuating intergroup differences simultaneously also involves accentuation of intragroup similarities. This means that groups traditionally viewed as different become viewed as more similar when the comparative context is widened to include groups that on average are more different to the intragroup category than the average difference between groups comprising the intragroup category. While Savarkar's and Golwalkar's theory of a homogenous Hindu nation and people is falsifiable on basis of a wealth of historical evidence (see Ambedkar, 2008;Kasbe, 1978), there is no question that their historical narrative is crafted as persuasively as possible by structuring it on the basis of basic principles of intergroup differentiation. Thus, what constitutes an "essentialising historical narrative" (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, p. 51) is one that follows a standard narrative template that communicates a credible representation of who and who does not belong, and what it means to belong, to a social category being mobilised.

The (re)Enactment of Hindu Nationalism in Modern India
What is most remarkable about the writings of Savarkar and Golwalkar is the fact that their narrative did not include a concluding episode in which the antagonist was defeated, but only hints at the victory and glory that could be Why neither Savarkar (1928) nor Golwalkar (1939) elaborated upon exactly how the Hindu nation and people could re-vitalise the Hindu national consciousness and re-establishing Hindu nationhood might be attributed to the pre-independence context of their writings. While the secular nationalist and Muslim nationalist movement were being mobilised in the late 19 th and early 20 th century, notions of Hindu nationhood were only being expressed as views and sentiments before the publication of Savarkar's and Golwalkar's texts (see Zavos, 2000). However, given that the Hindu nationalist movement was marginalised for almost 60 years after its inception, Savarkar's  (Jaffrelot, 1996;Katju, 2003).
Around the same time the state-owned Indian television station Doordarshan began screening a 78-episode weekly Ramayana television series, which reinforced the view that the town of Ayodhya was Lord Ram's birthplace (see Rajagopal, 2001). The movement was further reinvigorated in 1989 when the BJP passed a resolution making the Ramjanmabhoomi its main campaign issue in the lead up to the elections (Jaffrelot, 1996;Katju, 2003).
The BJP resolution was followed by Lal Krishna Advani's (then president of the BJP; hereafter Advani) notorious Rath Yatra (Chariot March) in 1990. A truck that had been decorated to resemble an ancient Indian chariot (portrayed in the screening of the Ramayana) -from which Advani, standing on a platform behind the driver's cab, addressed the public through loudspeakers -led the Rath Yatra. In total, the procession covered 10,000 miles and 10 states across India and along its course almost 300 interreligious riots erupted, the most since partition (Jaffrelot, 1996;Katju, 2003).
The agitations of the Hindu nationalist movement culminated on the 6 th of December, 1992, when an estimated 150,000 Hindu nationalist activists gathered for a rally outside the mosque. While the crowd was being addressed by prominent Hindu nationalist leaders, a small group of activists managed to break through the barricades protecting the mosque. Thousands of other activists followed suit and, within minutes, activists shouting Hindu nationalist slogans and hurling stones at the police surrounded the mosque. The police eventually retreated and thousands of activists began climbing the mosque using sledge hammers and iron rods to destroy the structure. Within hours large parts of the mosque were razed to the ground. Interreligious riots erupted in most major northern Indian cities in the aftermath of the demolition (Jaffrelot, 1996;Katju, 2003).
While there is agreement about the role that wider political and economic factors played in the mobilisation of the Ramjanmabhoomi movement (see Kinnvall, 2004;Varshney, 1993), there is also consensus that the combination of Hindu mythology and Hindu-Muslim history in the same campaign proved to be a compelling recipe for its success (Jaffrelot, 1996;Katju, 2003). Not only did widely shared understandings of the Ramayana enable the Vedic civilisation to be portrayed and mobilised as a golden age for the Hindu people, the historical encounter between Hindu and Muslim civilisations, embodied in the conquests of Babur, was also completely consistent with Savarkar's (1928) and Golwalkar's (1939) narration of this as a historical juncture characterised by the subjugation and humiliation of Hindu nationhood. The campaign to "liberate" the site did thus not only come to symbolise Hindu resistance against the enduring oppression of Islam in the subcontinent but also the mission of restoring Hindu nationhood to its former glory.

Ideological Flexibility and Political Mobilisation
There is no doubt that the Ramjanmabhoomi movement was pivotal in bringing the message of the Hindu nationalist movement to the fore in mainstream Indian society. This can be inferred on the basis of the results of the Indian general elections that followed the event. While the BJP only managed to secure two out of the 544 seats in the Lok Sabha after their first run in the general elections of 1984, the party gained 254 seats in 1998 (McGuire & Copland, 2007). This enabled the BJP and its National Democratic Alliance to lead India until it was defeated by the INC-dominated United Progressive Alliance in the general elections of both 2004 and 2009. As noted in the introduction, the BJP has once more, after the 2014 general elections, been elevated into the position of India's most influential party.
However, the quantum leap of the BJP to power in 2014 was achieved by downplaying the Ramjanmabhoomi agenda while strategically co-opting neoliberal issues of material prosperity and economic growth. George (2014) terms this new mobilisation strategy as "Hindutva 2.0" which promises a "Hindutva rate of growth" -a model of economic rejuvenation and prosperity along with Hindu assertion -against the "Hindu rate of growth" which is a derisive description of a crippled economy. Indeed, as George (2014) further notes, this strategy helped the BJP to overcome its traditional weaknesses in terms of connecting with an estranged propertied class, and addressing the political and economic aspirations of erstwhile excluded middle and lower castes. Several commentators have noted a rather unsurprising connection between Hindu nationalist movement and neoliberalism. For example, drawing upon Marxist philosopher Nicos Poulantzas' (1978 analysis of the relationship between capitalist states and 'individualisation', and the Gramscian concept of "hegemony": (Gramsci, 1971), Gopalakrishnan (2006Gopalakrishnan ( , 2008 traces the parallel growth of Indian neoliberalism and Hindu nationalism to the 1990s. He argues that although there are core differences around the concept of choice and freedom, Hindu nationalism and neoliberalism share "similar visions of relationship between the state, society and the individual" and a common movement towards "individualisation" which reduces social processes to the level of individual choices (Gopalakrishnan 2006(Gopalakrishnan , p. 2805). Gopalakrishnan emphatically brings out how both Hindu nationalism and neoliberalism propose similar (and somewhat parallel) rhetoric of transformation and a political project of "new society". While a "utility maximising" individual is a seat of rationality and choice for neoliberalism, Hindu nationalism too emphasises the sovereignty of individuals as long as it is as a "good Hindu" whose primary affiliation is to the Hindu nation. In this sense, Gopalakrishnan argues that both Hindu nationalism and neoliberalism reify collective social activity in the form of the Hindu nation and the market respectively. While one may not agree with Gopalakrishnan's analysis in toto, it is clear that religion is not the sole mobilisation element of the Hindu nationalist movement.
One, however, needs to be careful in assessing the impact of Hindu nationalism on Hindu society, as the election results of the BJP only serve as a proxy of the wider success of the Hindu nationalist movement. As described in the introduction, the agenda of the RSS has never been to acquire state power. In fact, it took the RSS almost 30 years to establish a political wing to directly challenge the INC hegemony to state power through electoral politics and this division of labour continues to be a source of tension within the Hindu nationalist movement (see Noorani, 2000). From this perspective, the success of the Hindu nationalist movement should not only be assessed by counting the votes that its political wing has gained over the last decades, but by assessing the success that the movement has had in implanting its vision of Hindu nationhood in modern day India. Especially in relation to the continued political and societal salience of attributing fixity and essence to Hindu -and by extension, Indianidentity, but also by engaging the current hegemonic position of Hindu nationalist narrations of an Indian past and present as equalling, to reconnect with the opening part of this article, a critical moment in time.
Given the exponential growth of the Sangh Parivar -and of the RSS in particular -since the Ramjanmabhoomi campaign xi in order to assess the success of right-wing movements around the world today, researchers, observers and commentators alike need to give more attention to a) if, and if so, how, right-wing movements are operating and mobilising on the basis of essentialising historical narratives and construals of nationhood and national identity; and b) the extent to which such essentialised histories of nationhood and national identity have been implanted and accepted in the societies in which they are being mobilised. Research into the rise of right-wing movements around the world, particularly in Europe, has dedicated more attention to why people vote for right-wing political parties (e.g., Arzheimer, 2009;Ivarsflaten, 2008;Lucassen & Lubbers, 2012;Rydgren, 2008) than to the consequences that the mobilisation of right-wing movements may have for the way in which people come to view the foundations of their respective nationhoods and national identities. Following research on "the rhetorical pressures" contained in forceful attempts to combine ideas 'of authentic identity with certain ways of thinking and behaving', the present article emphasises the need to attend to the manner whereby essentialised identities, on the basis of notions of enmity, threat and dissent, turn into 'background, common-sense categories' (Finlay, 2007, pp. 324, 334; see also Finlay, 2005;Jaspal & Coyle, 2014).

Limitations and Future Directions
The present study is not without its limitations. Two distinct yet related questions emerge from the study, which propose avenues for future research: (1) To what extent are the writings of Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) relevant to the mobilisation Hindu nationalist movement today; (2) To what extent is the structure and content of the Hindu nationalist theory of Hindu nationhood put forward by Savarkar and Golwalkar understood and endorsed amongst members of the general public?
The first question, we believe, has to some extent been addressed. That is, the writings of Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939) are by no means operating manuals of the Hindu nationalist movement, but rather the theory of nationhood underpinning its activities. Even though the theory was formulated so as to counter competing theories of nationhood propagated during the independence movement, the narrative of the origins of Indian (i.e., Hindu) nationhood, its historical trajectory, golden-versus dark-ages, protagonists and antagonists, continues to be propagated by the Hindu nationalist movement in contemporary Indian society. This was most evident in Ramjanmabhoomi campaign discussed above, which continues to be spearheaded by the Sangh Parivar, albeit not the BJP but the VHP. It was also evident in 2002 when the BJP led-government systematically changed the history curriculum and textbooks of the leading government education institution, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), so as to reflect the Hindu origins of the Indian community and nation (Delhi Historians' Group J. N. U., 2001;Kamala, Witzel, Manjrenkar, Bhog, & Chakravarti, 2009;Thapar, 2009).
Although the INC began a process of 're-secularising' the history curriculum and textbooks after the BJP was defeated, the 'saffronisation' of history has continued since the BJP led government swept into power in 2014; alongside a series of appointments of RSS affiliates and Hindutva sympathisers to top government and ministry positions, Modi also appointed a relatively unknown historian, with established ties to the RSS, as chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), who after his appointment proposed that the Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, be viewed as historical fact (Mohanty, 2014). These are just two examples.
Moreover, even though the RSS remains secretive about its inner workings, and its affiliates underplay their relationship to the RSS (particularly the BJP), there exists no reason to believe that previous research into the ideology of the RSS and the Sangh Parivar -ranging in publication dates from 1950 to 2005 (e.g., Curran, 1951;Jaffrelot, 2005a) -has changed, nor that the Sangh Parivar has ceased the practice of appointing RSS leaders to top leadership positions within the organisational network. Although the mobilisation strategies of the movement may change, and should be continuously scrutinised by academics, political commentators, and journalists alike xii , the political project of consolidating Hindu nationhood will remain the same; what is striking is the fact that this flexibility was accorded by the inbuilt prescriptive ambivalence in Hindu nationalist ideology, which also applies to the expansion strategy that the RSS embarked upon in the 1940s.
We cannot claim to have addressed the second question in this paper, as the data that we have analysed does not enable us to make any statements about how the theory of Hindu nationhood is understood amongst members of the general public, nor about the attitudinal and behavioural implications of endorsing the ideology. Findings from qualitative research conducted by Sen and Wagner (2005) in Dharavi, Asia's largest slum located in Mumbai, with both Hindu and Muslim participants, suggested that the participants had an understanding of the central themes in the historical narrative put forward by Savarkar (1928) and Golwalkar (1939), mediated via their understandings of the premises of the Ramjanmabhoomi campaign. Similar findings were identified by Tripathi (2005) in his interviews with apolitical students and VHP rallyists in Allahabad; unsurprisingly, understandings of Hindu nationalist ideology were more sophisticated amongst Hindu nationalist activists than apolitical students. However, other than the above two studies, empirical research into lay understandings and the endorsement of Hindu nationalist ideology, and its implications for intergroup relations, is non-existent. This lacuna is paralleled with a general lack of social and political psychological research addressing pertinent societal issues in India. For example, research into the culture-specific context and nature of ideology along the political spectrum in India does not exist, and with the exception of only very few studies, research into intergroup relations tends to be decontextualised (for an overview, see Khan & Sen, 2009). This signals significant scope for social and political psychology to make There are multiple avenues that lend themselves to social and political psychological research -the greater point being made here is that the discipline(s) is theoretically and methodologically equipped to make important contributions towards better understanding political, identity, and intergroup dynamics in India, insofar as it takes into account the context of these dynamics in calibrating its research questions. The present paper is just one example of such an approach to social and political psychology in India.

Notes
i) Such emphasis on story-like structure connects this theoretical reasoning with a broader accentuation of the centrality of narratives, advocated by, among others, Andrews (2014) and Nesbitt-Larking (2014).
ii) This means that there was a lack of a modern notion of history in the Indian context where there at the time only existed an 'embedded' historical consciousness in the form of chronicles, legends, and royal genealogies; indeed, no civilisation can exist without a sense of past (see, Thapar, 2000).
iii) Savarkar was also inspired by the writings of 19th century European nationalists, Johann Kaspar Bluntschli and Giuseppe Mazzini; Bluntschli's book Theory of the State (Bluntschli, 1895) is acknowledged by both Golwalkar and Savarkar as a source of inspiration for their respective works. iv) As an indication of how the daily activities, even though based on a consistent ideational foundation, are adjusted to the embedding social and political context, it has recently been noted how the RSS was directly involved in campaigning for Modi in the 2014 general elections (Narayan, 2014).
v) More recently Golwalkar's Bunch of Thoughts (Golwalkar, 1966), which is a compilation of his speeches and writings, has gained increased popularity in India and is more readily available than We, or Our Nationhood Defined (1939). This later work excludes passages that glorify the Nazi strategy for maintaining racial purity, which was one of the main reasons for why the BJP denied Golwalkar's authorship of We, or Our Nationhood Defined in 1998. However, the Hindu nationalist movement's (including the RSS's) connections with the Italian Fascist and German Nazi movements are well documented (Casolari, 2000;Jaffrelot, 1996) -see pages 27-28. In an intelligence report published in 1933, entitled Note on the Rashtryia Swayam Sewak Sangh, the British colonial administration warned that the RSS wanted to be in India what the Nazis were to Germany and Fascists were to Italy (Casolari, 2000).
vi) Bharatyia or Bharatiya iterally means a person belonging to or identified with 'Bharata', i.e., India.
vii) Bharatbhumika is composed of two words 'Bharata' and 'Bhumika'. It loosely translates to perspective/imagination of India in English.
viii) While Savarkar explicates this definition of Hindu people, Golwalkar (1939) takes it for granted in his text.
ix) Rashtra means nation in English.
x) Lord Ram is one of the most significant deities in Hindu mythology and is the principal character and hero of the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana, widely known by the greater Hindu community.
xi) Today the RSS runs approximately 65,000 shakhas and has approximately six million members active in 40,000 locations across all Indian states (Jaffrelot, 1996(Jaffrelot, , 2005a. xii) The last comprehensive account of the Hindu nationalist movement was published in 1996 (Jaffrelot, 1996), and hence a second updated edition or new book that covers Hindu nationalist activities up to, and post the, 2014 general elections would represent an important contribution to the literature.