Hindu Governance

Hindu governance refers to those governing practices whose legitimacy derives from Sanskrit texts. Such texts have been understood to describe a social order based on caste, providing each individual with duties whose fulfillment contributes to the fulfillment of the community as a whole. An argument establishing a particularly Hindu type of governance would trace such governing practices throughout history by focusing on the relationships among political, economic, and social forces.

Ancient texts describe a world of chaos in the absence of a king. Such texts were used to legitimate particular forms of rule. The Puranas, for example, celebrate the sanctity of the earlier Vedas and articulate the threat to society posed by those outside the caste system. Some claim that the Ramayana in medieval times was also used to mark outsiders, identifying Muslims with the villain Ravana and Hindus with the hero Rama. Others have stressed the large variety of regional responses to influences originating outside the subcontinent. Both kings and merchants heavily patronized priests in premodern times; such religious leaders in turn provided legitimacy for political and economic undertakings.

During the independence movement from British rule, Mohandas Gandhi mobilized ancient Sanskrit terms such as dharma, swadeshi, and ramarajya (the rule of Rama) for decolonization. He imbued such terms with a sense of self-reliance, self-actualization, and the removal of foreign influence. In 1948, Gandhi was assassinated by a member of a Hindutva organization, the Rakshatriya Swamasevak Sangh (RSS). This left Jawaharlal Nehru to lead the Indian National Congress and push forward policies of political non-alignment, economic socialism, and religious secularism.

In 1980, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was formed, relying for support on organizations like the RSS. The BJP steadily rose to power through coalitional and symbolic politics until forming the national government in 1996. The rise of the BJP was marked by a particular kind of swadeshi—the strength of Hindu India. Such swadeshi allowed the BJP to resist the reservation of jobs for Backward and Untouchable

Castes, drawing the support of high-caste Hindus; to support the destruction in 1992 of the mosque occupying the alleged birthplace of Rama, drawing the support of low-caste Hindus against Muslims; to implement liberalization measures throughout the 1990s, drawing the support of middle-class entrepreneurs; and to stage the 1998 nuclear detonations, uniting Hindus in support of India's military strength. The BJP lost power in 2004.

Nehru's secularism, socialism, and non-alignment seem to deny the existence of any particularly Hindu type of governance. The BJP, however, suggests its persistence by deriving political legitimacy from religious figures like Rama and the sanctity of practices allegedly rooted in Sanskrit sources. Such departures from and returns to the authority of Sanskrit texts punctuate any history of Hindu governance. However, given the contested definitions of Hinduism, as well as the tensions within India along caste, regional, and religious lines, the meaning of Hindu governance is elusive and the phrase rarely used.