“Self-hating Hindu”. For some time now, one keeps encountering this phrase. It appears in speeches, social media posts, and political arguments. Yet it is rarely defined with any precision. Who exactly is a self-hating Hindu? Is it a Hindu who is ashamed of being Hindu? Someone who despises himself? Someone who experiences embarrassment or guilt merely because he belongs to the Hindu community?

But one sees it used against Hindus who criticise the sectarian tendencies within the Hindu community, the hatred and violence towards others, especially Muslims and Christians. We are told that they are Hindu only in name, or that they are self-hating Hindus.

Looking for a parallel, one finds a similar term: “self-hating Jew". Today, it is often used against those who criticise anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab sentiment within Israeli society, who oppose Zionism, or who object to the acts of the government of Israel. But when the phrase first emerged, it did not carry precisely this meaning.

In his book On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred (2012), Paul Reitter traces the history of the term. As he shows, the concept was coined in interwar Vienna and, in the hands of the writers who formulated and popularised it, carried affirmative, even redemptive connotations rather than its present pejorative ones. The condition of European Jews was, of course, entirely different from that of Hindus in India. Jews were a minority, living under the shadow of a long history of prejudice and hostility. Minority communities often internalise the stereotypes and accusations directed against them. They begin to measure themselves against standards set by the majority and strive to prove that they are worthy of acceptance. In the process, they attempt to assimilate and fulfil the expectations imposed upon them.

The question that gripped the theorists was how to differentiate between self-loathing and self-criticism—after all, a capacity for introspection was, in fact, positive and productive.

Over time, the historical situation of Jews changed dramatically. A state was established in which Jews became the majority. For many, that state came to be seen not merely as a homeland but as divinely ordained. It was imagined as sacred territory, promised to them by history and faith, a land to which they possessed a prior and exclusive claim. In such a worldview, non-Jews living in Israel are often regarded as intrusive or alien elements whose presence pollutes it.

According to this view, Jews are the chosen people, and others are inferior to them. They are also beyond criticism, which borders on blasphemy. The Holocaust has given Zionists a permanent cover to resist scrutiny.

There are Jews who reject this understanding and openly criticise it. They are frequently denounced as “self-hating Jews”. In contemporary political discourse, the label is commonly attached to secular Jews, advocates of Palestinian rights, and those who oppose ethnic or religious privilege for Jews. Within Zionist circles, the phrase functions largely as a term of abuse, intended to delegitimise dissent and silence criticism.

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A similar expression has now entered Indian political vocabulary: “self-hating Hindu”. It is deployed against those who defend equal citizenship for religious minorities in India, who oppose Hindu majoritarianism, and who criticise the ideology of Hindutva.

The so-called self-hating Hindus are often those expressing concern about the growing acceptance of Hindutva within Hindu society. It remains necessary to repeat, despite endless reminders, that Hindutva is not synonymous with Hinduism. It is not simply another name for being Hindu. It is a distinct political and cultural ideology.

Indeed, Hindutva was separated conceptually from the Hindu religion long ago by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. For Savarkar, Hindutva referred to those inhabitants of India for whom this land was both pitribhumi (fatherland) and punyabhumi (holy land). He argued that one should not stretch the meaning of the word “Hindu” so far that it became meaningless. If one did so, he warned, one might end up calling a Muslim a Hindu merely because he happened to live in India. In Savarkar’s formulation, Hindus were only those for whom India was simultaneously the land of ancestry and the land of sacred origin. Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Parsis could not qualify, because although India might be their fatherland, their holy lands lay elsewhere.

According to this conception, these non-Hindu communities could become part of the Hindu nation only by dissolving their separate identities into the larger framework of Hindutva. One of the ideological tasks of Hindutva, therefore, became the cultural absorption of Muslims, Christians, and others into a Hindu collective identity.

Savarkar argued that the arrival of Muslims in India had inaugurated a civilisational struggle for the survival of Hindus. In his telling, this conflict would continue until the complete assimilation of all non-Hindu communities into the Hindu nation.

Gandhi and the genealogy of a slur

Savarkar himself was unable to carry this project into every household. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh undertook that task. In practice, the ideology has often expressed itself through efforts to push Muslims, Christians, and other minorities into a subordinate position; to cultivate suspicion and resentment towards them; and to persuade Hindus that they are surrounded by enemies. Hindus are told that Muslims and Christians have historically wronged them, that Hindus suffered because of their supposedly innate gentleness, and that the time has come to abandon this “weak” nonviolence and cultivate a spirit of hostility towards their adversaries.

The propagation of fear and resentment towards Muslims and other non-Hindus, and the justification of hostility against them, thus becomes central to the political project of Hindutva.

Anyone who opposes this project is accused of weakening Hindu society. Hindus who criticise the spread of these tendencies within their own community are branded “anti-Hindu” or “self-hating Hindus.”

Similar accusations were made in the past against Swami Vivekananda. His teacher, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, also faced hostility from orthodox circles. But opposition to them came from conservative Hindus. As for Mahatma Gandhi, Hindutva ideologues have been contemptuous of him from the very beginning. They have accused him of weakening Hindus and robbing them of masculine vigour. Among figures such as Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, and Sri Aurobindo, it is Gandhi who has attracted the greatest degree of hostility.

There were several attempts on Gandhi’s life before he was finally assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a follower of Savarkar who had also been associated with the RSS. For this reason, many Hindutva supporters describe the event not as Gandhi’s assassination but as Gandhi-vadh—the slaying of Gandhi, a term reserved for the righteous killing of an evil force. The RSS has long denied organisational responsibility for the murder. Yet one is reminded of the observation often attributed to Atal Bihari Vajpayee that once a person becomes a swayamsevak, he remains one for life.

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After Gandhi, the object of perhaps the greatest hostility within Hindutva discourse is Jawaharlal Nehru. Yet many of his critics simply refuse to acknowledge him as a Hindu at all. They cannot do the same with Gandhi. Gandhi openly described himself as a Sanatani Hindu, and the texture of his life and thought makes it difficult to portray him as anything else. Nevertheless, a widespread belief persists that Gandhi instilled a sense of inferiority among Hindus and therefore represented a form of “self-hating Hinduism.”

But those Hindus who warn against growing majoritarianism, contempt for others, and collective self-glorification are not self-hating Hindus. They are self-reflective Hindus. They are Hindus engaged in self-criticism.

Our traditional wisdom tells us that when you look for badness, you should look within. Continuous self-examination, self-scrutiny, is not self-hatred. Self-pity is bad; self-criticism is a sign of strength.

A society that loses the capacity to examine itself gradually loses the capacity to renew itself. When self-criticism disappears, intellectual life begins to decay. A community may continue to proclaim its greatness, but beneath that confidence, something essential has already begun to die.