Can the Government Take Away My Indian Citizenship?

 

CONSCIENCE AT CROSSROADS

Can the Government Take Away My Indian Citizenship?

Understanding the Law Behind the Fear

Savio Saldanha SJ

28-06-2026

DOI : 10.5281/zenodo.21010403

 

"If Aadhaar is not proof of citizenship, and even a passport is not considered conclusive proof, then how do I prove that I am an Indian citizen?"

            This question is being asked quietly across the country right now. In June 2026, the Ministry of External Affairs clarified that a passport is a travel document, not a legal certificate of citizenship. This came soon after the Supreme Court, while hearing matters connected to the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls, observed that Aadhaar is also not conclusive proof of citizenship. For most people, these were the only documents they had ever needed. Learning that neither one settles the question of “Are you Indian?” understandably feels unsettling.

            I will not pretend that there is nothing to think about. There is. But I shall attempt to respond to it in a manner that will not feed panic either. My aim for this article is simple: explain what the law actually says, and offer a steadier way to think and act when the subject itself makes people afraid.

1. Who Is an Indian Citizen?

            Citizenship is a legal status, not just a feeling of belonging. It is defined by the Constitution of India and a law called the Citizenship Act, 1955. The law sets out five ways a person becomes a citizen: by birth, by descent, by registration, by naturalisation, or by the incorporation of new territory into India. Most Indians fall into the first category — citizenship by birth — which is the focus of this article.

2. Citizenship by Birth: Why Your Date of Birth Matters

If you were born...	The rule that applies to you
26 January 1950 – 30 June 1987	Citizen by birth, simply by being born in India (a few narrow exceptions, such as children of foreign diplomats)
1 July 1987 – 2 December 2004	Citizen by birth only if at least one parent was an Indian citizen at the time of birth
On or after 3 December 2004	Citizen by birth only if one parent was Indian and the other was not an illegal migrant

            The rules became more detailed over time because the Parliament wanted to stop illegal migration from automatically creating citizenship for the next generation. If you were born in India before 1 July 1987, the law is on your side in the simplest way possible: you do not need to prove anything about your parents at all.

3. What Documents Actually Prove Citizenship?

India does not issue one universal “citizenship card” to every citizen. This surprises many people, but it is true. Recent statements have simply made the legal position explicit:

•         Aadhaar proves identity and residence, not citizenship. It can be issued to non-citizens too.

•    A passport is issued only to citizens and is strong evidence, but it is not treated as final, unchallengeable proof.

•         PAN cards and driving licences say nothing about nationality.

•    Voter ID proves you are registered to vote. By law, only citizens may be registered — but registration is a light-touch process (a household visit, a form, basic supporting ID), not a full citizenship check. That gap is exactly why errors creep into voter rolls, and exactly why correction drives like SIR exist. Because of this, a Voter ID is good supporting evidence, but the law does not treat it as the final, unchallengeable word on citizenship.

            So what actually counts? In practice, authorities look at the complete picture: your birth certificate (usually the strongest single document), school records, passport, Aadhaar, Voter ID, and other long-standing government records, taken together. No single paper is the whole answer. A consistent trail built up over years is what makes a citizenship claim strong.

4. Why Are People Afraid Right Now?

            Three real things have come together. First, recent government clarifications about Aadhaar and passports were technically accurate but landed on the public with little context, after a lifetime of treating these documents as good enough. Second, the SIR exercise — a large voter-list verification drive that began in Bihar in 2025 and has since expanded to many states — has removed names that officials could not verify, even though the Supreme Court ruled in May 2026 that being excluded from a voter list is not the same as being declared a non-citizen. Third, this process has affected some communities more visibly than others — particularly in border states, and among people who, due to poverty or migration history, have a thinner paper trail. This worry is genuine and deserves to be taken seriously, not waved away, even as the next section explains what the law does, and does not, actually allow.

5. Can the Government or a Court Simply Cancel My Citizenship?

            Long before India existed as a republic, philosophers were already asking a related question: what protects a person when there is no organised power to enforce their rights at all? In 1651, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes gave one of history's most famous answers, in his book Leviathan. Hobbes argued that without any government, people live in what he called a “state of nature” — a condition with no laws, no enforced rights, and constant insecurity, where life is, in his own words, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” His solution was the social contract: people agree to give a sovereign authority real power over them, in exchange for protection, order, and the very existence of rights and laws. Before that agreement, Hobbes said, nothing is truly “yours” — not even your safety. Afterward, the state is what makes “citizen,” “right,” and “law” mean anything at all. This is a useful way to understand citizenship itself. It is not simply a feeling — it is a status the state creates and is supposed to protect. That is exactly the kind of thing Hobbes was describing.

            But Hobbes also believed the sovereign needed almost total, unchecked power to keep that order — and this is where his idea becomes a warning rather than a comfort. Critics, starting in his own lifetime, pointed out that this reasoning could justify a government with no real limits on its power over its own people, including the power to decide, without question, who belongs and who doesn't. Hobbes himself wrote a blunt line worth remembering here: “Covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.” His point was that a promise written on paper means nothing unless real power stands behind it to enforce it.

            Indian law took Hobbes's insight about enforcement seriously, while firmly rejecting his comfort with unlimited power. The “sword” that stands behind a citizen's protection in India is not the unchecked will of the government — it is due process. Under Section 10 of the Citizenship Act, the government's power to actively cancel (“deprive”) someone of citizenship is narrow: it applies only to people who became citizens through naturalisation, through registration, or through one very specific constitutional clause — not to the large majority of Indians, who are citizens by birth or descent. Even within that narrow group, the law requires written notice, a clearly stated reason, and — in most cases — a hearing before a Committee of Inquiry led by someone with at least ten years of judicial experience. This is the corrective that Hobbes's own critics asked for: a sovereign that is bound by its own rules, rather than one whose will alone decides who belongs.

            The Supreme Court's 2026 ruling on the SIR exercise reflects exactly this principle. Election officials, the Court said, can decide who appears on a voter list — but that decision is not, and cannot be, a final ruling on a person's citizenship. If citizenship genuinely needs to be determined, that must happen through the Citizenship Act's own process, with notice and a chance to respond — not through an electoral roll.

            To be fair to the real concerns in Section 4: this does not mean disputes never arise, or that the process is always smooth, fast, or evenly experienced by everyone. People with weaker paper trails can find these inquiries slow and stressful. That is a genuine, serious concern. But it exists alongside, not instead of, the legal protections described above. What the law clearly does not allow is for a citizen by birth to be declared a foreigner without notice, without evidence, and without a chance to respond.

            Hobbes's framework explains why a state may hold this kind of power at all — why citizens accept that it can demand documents, run verification drives, and define categories like “citizen” in the first place. But Hobbes has a well-known blind spot: he offers almost no answer to what happens when the power-holder breaks its own promises. He was deeply suspicious of any right to resist a sovereign, fearing it would tip society back into the chaos he spent his book describing. His one real exception was narrow and personal — if the sovereign directly threatened your life, your right to self-preservation never actually left you, so you could resist that one act. That is a right to dodge an executioner, not a right to contest a policy or seek redress through an institution. This gap is not just an academic curiosity. It was tested, in real time, in West Bengal in 2026.

6. When the Safeguards Are Tested: A Case Study from West Bengal

            In 2025 and 2026, the Election Commission carried out the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in many states, including West Bengal, ahead of its April 2026 Assembly election. By the time the rolls were frozen, more than nine million names — roughly 12% of the state's electorate — had been removed. Most fell into the routine category every roll revision produces: voters who had died, moved, or been duplicated. But around three million fell into a newer, more contested category called “Under Adjudication,” covering people flagged for unexplained “logical discrepancies” in their documents.

            Independent data analyses by journalists and researchers found that this contested category landed unevenly. In several Muslim-majority and border-belt constituencies, deletions ran far higher than the local Muslim population share — in one constituency, over 95% of deleted names were Muslim, against a population that was roughly a quarter Muslim. Part of this appears to trace to an identifiable technical cause: automated “discrepancy” checks seem to have misfired on Urdu- and Arabic-origin names when transliterated into Bengali or English script, a flaw that could produce this kind of skew without anyone deliberately aiming for it. Whether the pattern reflects bias in design, a careless side-effect, or both, is genuinely disputed and is the subject of ongoing litigation — not a settled fact in either direction.

            What is well documented, independent of that dispute, is the human cost on the people running the exercise. Booth Level Officers — ordinary government school teachers and anganwadi workers, assigned this duty on top of their regular jobs — were asked to verify a year's worth of records in a matter of weeks. Multiple Indian and international news outlets documented named officers who died by suicide during the exercise, with notes that explicitly cited the Election Commission's pressure; one independent tally put the national death toll, across several states, at over thirty. This has been reported and mourned across the political spectrum, not claimed by only one side.

            An appeals process for deleted voters did exist on paper: nineteen special tribunals, online and offline forms, the right to be heard. In practice, voters described confusion about where to file an appeal, an undisclosed tribunal procedure, and a backlog one senior lawyer told the Supreme Court could take over four years to clear. Two days before the first phase of voting, only 139 of the roughly nine million deleted names nationwide had been restored.

            The BJP went on to win the West Bengal election in a landslide, ending the Trinamool Congress's fifteen-year hold on the state. Lawyers for the opposition have argued before the Supreme Court that, in at least 31 constituencies, the number of disputed deletions exceeded the margin of victory — a serious claim. The Court has treated the question of whether deletions actually changed the result as a separate matter requiring its own evidence, and has not ruled on it. The Election Commission's own counsel has urged the Court not to speculate about why people voted the way they did. So: a documented numerical overlap exists. A proven causal link does not — at least not yet.

            This is precisely the situation Hobbes has no real tools for. If a citizen genuinely believes the sovereign has broken its side of the bargain — used its power to exclude rather than protect — Hobbes offers them almost nothing beyond hoping the next sovereign behaves better. Something more is needed. That something arrived, philosophically, about forty years after Hobbes.

7. Locke's Answer: A Government on Trial, Not Just on Top

            John Locke, writing in the late seventeenth century, accepted Hobbes's basic premise — that people leave a chaotic “state of nature” by forming a government — but rejected his conclusion. For Locke, the agreement that creates government is conditional, not a one-way surrender. People hand over certain powers to a government, but not their fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property, which exist before government and outside its gift. Government holds its power in trust, on behalf of the people. If it breaks that trust — if it turns its power against the very people it was meant to protect, without due process or accountability — Locke argued that the people retain the right to resist, to seek remedy, and ultimately, to “alter or abolish” that government.

            This is the idea modern constitutional democracies are actually built on, including India's. Hobbes explains why a state may hold power over something as personal as citizenship and voter rolls in the first place. Locke explains why that power has a leash, and what a citizen can do when the leash is tested. Both pieces are necessary to understand what happened in West Bengal; neither alone tells the whole story.

            In Locke's terms, here is what “resist and seek remedy” actually looks like inside India's constitutional machinery:

•         Article 32 lets any citizen go directly to the Supreme Court when a fundamental right is at stake. A public interest petition is currently before the Court on behalf of West Bengal voters, demanding transparency in the deletion data and disclosure of the tribunals' own procedures.

•         Article 226 gives the same power to High Courts. The Supreme Court has directed many individual West Bengal grievances to the Calcutta High Court rather than hearing each one itself.

•         Article 142, the Supreme Court's unusual “complete justice” power, was used here to bring in judges from Jharkhand and Odisha to help clear the appeals backlog, and to order supplementary voter rolls so voters cleared by the tribunals could still cast a ballot.

•         Election petitions are the standard statutory route to challenge a result itself, including on the ground that wrongful deletions changed the outcome. The Election Commission's own lawyers pointed petitioners toward exactly this remedy.

•         The basic structure doctrine holds that certain features of the Constitution, including free and fair elections and judicial review, cannot be removed even by a parliamentary supermajority. No government, however large its mandate, can simply legislate these protections away.

•         A free press and civil society surfaced the data in the first place. Without independent analysis and on-the-ground reporting, courts would have had far less evidence to act on at all.

            None of this guarantees a particular outcome. The tribunal backlog is real. The four-year estimate is real. The 139-out-of-nine-million figure is real. Locke's framework does not promise that institutions move quickly or perfectly — only that, unlike in Hobbes's system, the citizen is not left with nothing. The Supreme Court's own posture in this case is itself a small demonstration of the Lockean idea in motion: it upheld the SIR exercise as lawful in principle in May 2026, while separately and repeatedly intervening to correct how it was carried out — validating the power and policing its use, at the same time.

8. A Question of Conscience — and a Lesson in How Not to Decide

            Institutions like these take time, and time is exactly what fear does not respect. A tribunal appeal that may take years to resolve is small comfort to someone who is frightened today. This is where the personal question becomes as important as the constitutional one. Why does even the possibility of this uncertainty unsettle so many people so deeply? Because citizenship is tied to dignity and belonging, not just paperwork, and fear about it can spread further than the legal facts alone would justify.

            There is an old and very practical piece of wisdom that fits this moment well. In the sixteenth century, a teacher of spiritual reflection named Ignatius of Loyola described two opposite inner states: times of fear, restlessness, and inner darkness, which he called “desolation,” and times of calm, clarity, and steadiness, which he called “consolation.” His most famous piece of advice was blunt: never make an important decision, or change an existing one, while you are in a state of desolation. Wait until your mind is calm and clear, and only then decide. Modern decision research says something similar in plainer language: people make their worst choices in “hot,” emotional states, and their best choices once they have cooled down enough to think clearly.

            This rule fits the present moment almost exactly. A person frightened about their citizenship status is, in plain terms, in exactly the state where people make their worst decisions — destroying genuine documents out of panic, paying a tout for a fake “quick fix” paper, signing an unfamiliar form without understanding it, or making a drastic, rushed decision about where to live. None of these actions protect a person. Several of them can make a real, ordinary case look far worse than it is.

            This is, fittingly, a question of conscience at a crossroads — which is exactly what this blog is named for. The wisest step at a crossroads is rarely the fastest one. Pause. Gather your documents. Talk to someone trustworthy — a lawyer, a recognised legal aid clinic, a community elder who has dealt with this before. Decide what to do, if anything, only once your mind is calm and you have real information in front of you.

            A democratic society carries a matching responsibility. It can verify voter rolls and citizenship status without manufacturing unnecessary fear in millions of lawful citizens. Equal treatment before the law is not just a phrase in the Constitution — it is what allows people to trust that a verification drive is about accuracy, not about exclusion.

Conclusion: What You Should Actually Do

1.   Find and preserve your birth certificate. If you don't have one, apply for it now through your local municipal or panchayat office — it is the single strongest document for citizenship by birth. In case you were born after 30^th July 1987, try and get the birth certificates of your parents as well and keep these on record.

2.   Keep certified copies and digital scans of your key documents, stored safely in more than one place.

3.   Build a paper trail over time. School records, old ration cards, and land documents all add weight later.

4.  Get your facts from reliable sources — government notifications, court judgments, established news organisations — not rumours or forwarded messages.

5.   If you are ever asked to verify your status, respond within the given time, keep records of every notice and reply, and get help from a lawyer or legal aid service if the process becomes complicated.

6.   If your name is removed from a voter list, use the appeals process (Forms 6, 6A, or 7, and the tribunal route) rather than assuming the worst, and keep a dated record of every submission — it is what makes escalation to a High Court or the Supreme Court possible later, if needed.

           And above all: do not let fear make your decisions for you. The law, as it stands, protects citizens by birth with real safeguards and requires due process before those protections can be touched — the kind of guardrail that history's critics of unchecked power have long argued every government needs. Your own decisions deserve a similar guardrail: calm before action, facts before fear. A frightened decision and an informed decision can look identical on the surface. Only one of them actually protects you. Informed, steady citizens — not frightened ones — are what keep a democracy honest.

At the crossroads of ancient Indian philosophy and how it has shaped India’s evolving social thought.

-          Savio Saldanha SJ

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18199195

Date: 09-01-2026

 

Ancient Indian Philosophy, Caste, and Conscience at the Crossroads

            As I reflect on my philosophical studies, I often find myself returning to the question of what it means to study Indian philosophy today—both as an academic pursuit and as a personal search within a society undergoing rapid change. Writing for my blog Conscience at Crossroads, I wanted to explore how these ancient schools of wisdom shape my own thinking and continue to influence India’s collective imagination. 

            Reflecting on the Indian philosophical schools and their influence on Indian culture and the collective memory of its people is a complex task. I am also interested to understand how the concept of casteism came into being through this culture and became what it is today. In this regards, I feel blessed to pursue my theological studies in France, as this distance has given me the chance to view these influences from the outside. Philosophically, there are two ways of looking at any system: from within, as one who belongs to it and therefore shares its limits and constraints; and from without, where a certain distance allows greater freedom, neutrality, and critical clarity, since one is not bound by the system’s internal pressures or expectations.

            As I was reflecting on the subject, one of my Jesuit friends, Seby Varghese sent me an article by Tony Joseph on a related topic. Tony Joseph’s article is empirically grounded history of how caste emerged and evolved; while I was reflecting about its normative-philosophical and theological discernment and how to engage that legacy today. This essay grows out of that struggle for clarity. The challenge, as I experience it, is discerning what in this heritage still carries life-giving insight, and what must be critically questioned or left behind. Some elements reveal their value or their harmfulness quite clearly; others are so deeply woven into our cultural habits and shared memory that distinguishing wisdom from distortion becomes far more difficult. The question for me is, ‘How to engage pro-actively with the Indian philosophical schools and the non-negotiable demands of social-justice today?’

 

Classical Indian philosophy and the formation of caste

            The classical darśanas—Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṅkhya–Yoga, Mīmāṃsā, and Vedānta—offered powerful visions of truth and liberation, and they continue to furnish key categories for public moral debate: dharma (interchanged between religion and duty), karma (the fruits of deeds- good or bad), saṃsāra (world), ahiṃsā (non-violence), and mokṣa (liberation). These concepts frame how many Indians still think about responsibility, suffering, and the good life. Yet the metaphysical reflections of classical texts were not socially innocent: Vedic and Dharmaśāstra traditions progressively translated them into a hierarchical order of varṇa and later jātis, sacralizing graded inequality.​

            Tony Joseph’s historical reconstruction clarifies how contingent and contested this development was. He shows that a fully articulated four‑fold hierarchy appears only late in the Ṛgveda (the Puruṣa Sūkta), that varṇa in early Vedic literature is “embryonic,” and that the first clearly definable caste is that of the Brahmins formed around a unified oral canon in the Kuru realm through gotra‑based endogamy. As agriculture expanded and surplus grew, an alliance between priestly and royal power—what Joseph calls the core of the varṇa‑jāti system—proved politically and economically convenient, and later Brāhmaṇa and Dharma texts universalized this hierarchy by mapping it onto the cosmos itself. The result, by the beginning of the Common Era, was an elaborated ideology of varṇāśrama‑dharma that kings across the subcontinent could invoke to legitimise power and extraction.​

            Ambedkar’s insight that caste is a structure of “graded inequality,” an “ascending scale of reverence and descending scale of contempt,” finds here a concrete genealogy. Ancient philosophy did not simply “discover” an eternal order; it helped construct and justify a historically contingent alliance that aligned metaphysics with privilege.​

 

Is “Indian philosophy” really pan‑Indian?

            This raises a disturbing question: whose thought is being presented when we speak of “Indian philosophy”? The classical systems are profound achievements, but they largely emerged within and often reinforced a Brahmanical social order that normalized caste hierarchy and restricted access to learning. Large sections of India’s population—Dalits, tribal communities, women, and other subaltern groups—were excluded from recognised philosophical discourse and often from literacy itself.​

            Joseph’s geography of caste strengthens this critique. He traces how the Brahmanical varṇa project arose in a specific region—Kurukṣetra and later “Āryāvarta”—and met persistent resistance in what Johannes Bronkhorst calls “Greater Magadha,” where Śramaṇa traditions such as Buddhism and Jainism rejected Vedic authority, opposed sacrificial violence, and admitted members regardless of varṇa. Gana‑saṅgha polities like the Śākyas did not easily accommodate the priest‑king alliance; Buddhist texts record Brahmin resentment when their ritual status was not honoured in such settings. Even the semantics of “dharma” became a battleground, with Aśoka’s edicts and Śramaṇa usage pressing a moral meaning centred on compassion, generosity, and non‑violence, while early Dharmasūtras rushed to re‑assert a varṇa‑ordered dharma policed by Brahmins.​

            The classical philosophical schools—Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṅkhya–Yoga, Mīmāṃsā, and Vedānta—are undoubtedly profound intellectual achievements. They have shaped India’s metaphysical vocabulary and ethical imagination for centuries. Yet, it must be acknowledged honestly that these systems largely emerged within, and often reinforced, a Brahmanical social order. Their reflections on liberation, knowledge, and duty were frequently articulated from within a social framework that accepted caste hierarchy as normative, even sacred. As a result, large sections of India’s population—Dalits, tribal communities, women, and other marginalized groups—were excluded not only from philosophical debate but from being recognized as legitimate bearers of wisdom.

            From this perspective, the question is not whether these classical systems are valuable—they clearly are—but whether they can claim to exhaust what counts as “Indian philosophy.” For me, the answer must be no. India has always been home to multiple philosophies, many of which were philosophies of dissent rather than system-building. Dalit philosophies, tribal cosmologies rooted in land and community, women’s embodied wisdom transmitted through oral traditions, and materialist schools such as the Cārvāka tradition represent alternative ways of thinking about life, suffering, freedom, and truth. These traditions were not merely different; they were often actively suppressed because they challenged ritual authority, caste privilege, and metaphysical justifications of inequality.

            The case of the Cārvākas is particularly revealing. As my paper on this subject (2023) shows, Cārvāka philosophy represents one of the earliest traditions of philosophical dissent in India. Rejecting Vedic authority, ritual sacrifice, and the metaphysics of karma and rebirth, the Cārvākas grounded ethics in lived experience, material reality, and human flourishing in this world. Their near-erasure from mainstream philosophical curricula is not accidental; it reflects a long history of privileging metaphysical systems that aligned with Brahmanical power over philosophies that questioned its foundations. Similar dynamics can be observed in the marginalization of Dalit and tribal philosophies, whose critiques of caste and hierarchy were often dismissed as “non-philosophical” precisely because they threatened the dominant order.

            These philosophies are not aligned with the mainstream darśanas—and they do not seek to be. They are philosophies of rebellion, resistance, and survival. Yet they are no less philosophical for that reason. On the contrary, they engage some of the most fundamental philosophical questions: What counts as a good life? Who has the authority to define truth? How should power, suffering, and dignity be understood? In many ways, they speak more directly to the lived reality of the majority of Indian people than the abstract metaphysical systems that dominate textbooks.

 

Contemporary Indian thought: argument, dissent, and liberation

            Among modern thinkers, B. R. Ambedkar engages this legacy with unmatched moral urgency. In Annihilation of Caste, he argues that caste is not an abnormality but a structural outcome of key scriptural and philosophical resources, and that doctrines of divinely sanctioned varṇa‑dharma and ritual purity are incompatible with constitutional ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Any philosophy adequate to a democratic India must therefore be measured by its capacity to dismantle caste rather than sacralise it.​ This is where Hindutva philosophy fails as it struggles to uphold the varna system rather than the ideals of the Indian Constitution, but that is a topic for another discussion.

            Amartya Sen, in The Argumentative Indian, insists that India’s past is not only metaphysical but deeply argumentative: Buddhist councils, epic dialogues, and scholastic disputations embody a tradition of public reasoning that can nourish democratic dissent today. Sen’s retrieval of an indigenous culture of argument complements Ambedkar’s call to annihilate caste: both refuse the image of an inherently “hierarchical” India and highlight counter‑traditions of critique and debate.​ Dialogue and rebellion against injustice are the soul of Indian cultural and philosophical heritage, and not reverence of unjust hierarchies which regard certain class of individuals, castes and groups as superior and others inferior in a societal system.

            Daya Krishna pushes this further by challenging the closure of “Indian philosophy” itself. In Indian Philosophy: A Counter Perspective and The Future of Indian Philosophy, he argues that concepts like dharma, karma, and mokṣa must be reopened to contemporary questioning rather than treated as frozen authorities. In his view, genuine Indian philosophy is not the repetition of classical positions but an ongoing, dialogical interrogation that must make room for subaltern and dissenting voices.​ In other words, these ideas should be revisited and reviewed from the modern perspectives of social justice and humanism.

A Catholic Perspective

            The Catholic social teaching provides a convergent yet distinct critique. Gaudium et Spes insists that every form of discrimination based on “sex, race, color, social condition, language, or religion” contradicts God’s intent, thereby implicitly condemning caste‑based exclusion. Fratelli Tutti calls for social friendship and universal fraternity, offering a theological language for solidarity that resonates with constitutional morality and Ambedkar’s fraternity. In India, the Church’s schools and social apostolates can embody practices of inclusion that challenge caste boundaries, even as the Church must repent of having sometimes mirrored those very hierarchies. In this regard, strict internal assessment of practices which harbor and encourage casteism and other related forms of injustices must be identified and rooted out. Only when this is done can the Church in India truly stand up for the protection of those oppressed for millennia by the unjust social order.

 

Ignatian discernment and the limits of inculturation

            At this stage of my reflection, the question is no longer simply what Indian philosophy offers, but how one should engage it responsibly. Here Ignatian discernment has become an indispensable guide for me—and, I believe, for others who stand at similar crossroads of culture, faith, and conscience. Ignatian spirituality does not ask us to accept traditions wholesale, nor does it encourage a posture of suspicion toward everything inherited. Instead, it invites a disciplined freedom: the freedom to receive with gratitude what leads to life and the courage to refuse what diminishes human dignity, even when such elements come wrapped in the language of tradition, sanctity or inculturation.

            Ignatius of Loyola’s insistence on discernment of spirits—attending carefully to movements that lead towards greater faith, hope, love and justice and resisting those that foster fear, domination, or exclusion—offers a powerful framework for engaging Indian philosophy with partiality. By partiality, I do not mean arbitrariness or cultural disdain, but a morally responsible selectivity. Not every insight that is ancient is therefore liberating; not every cultural form is automatically compatible with the Gospel or with the demands of justice. Ignatian discernment teaches us to “test” traditions by their fruits, especially by how they affect the most vulnerable.

            In this sense, Ignatian discernment resonates strikingly with the Buddha’s advice to the Kālāmas: not to accept teachings merely because they are ancient, authoritative, or widely revered, but to examine whether they lead to compassion, wisdom, and the reduction of suffering. This convergence is significant. It suggests that critical discernment is not a foreign imposition on Indian thought, but a practice deeply consonant with some of its most ethical and emancipatory strands. Both traditions resist blind conformity and invite a reflective, experience-tested commitment to truth.

            This approach also helps clarify the limits of inculturation. Inculturation, when rightly understood, is not the uncritical baptism of cultural practices, but a discerning encounter between faith and culture. History offers sobering lessons here. In the Indian context, the misplaced zeal of certain early missionaries—who equated cultural accommodation with Gospel fidelity—allowed caste distinctions to enter ecclesial life, sometimes even being justified as “Indian” expressions of Christianity. What was presented as inculturation often amounted to the sacralization of social hierarchy. The result was a Church that, at times, mirrored the very structures of exclusion it was called to challenge.

            Ignatian discernment exposes this failure not as a lack of cultural sensitivity, but as a failure of conscience. It reminds us that the ultimate criterion for inculturation is not cultural continuity but the promotion of greater justice, equality, and human dignity. Any philosophical or cultural element—whether Brahmanical metaphysics, ritual purity codes, or inherited social hierarchies—that normalizes exclusion must be subjected to critical scrutiny, regardless of its antiquity or prestige.

            For me, then, Ignatian discernment offers a way of inhabiting Indian philosophy without being captive to it. It allows me to learn from Nyāya’s rigor, Yoga’s discipline, Vedānta’s depth, and Buddhism’s compassion, while simultaneously standing in solidarity with Dalit, tribal, and dissenting traditions that expose the violence hidden beneath certain metaphysical ideals. It resists both romanticization and rejection. Most importantly, it places conscience—not tradition, caste, or cultural pride—at the center of philosophical engagement.

            This discerning posture prepares the ground for the conclusion that follows. If ancient Indian philosophy is to contribute meaningfully to India’s evolving social thought today, it must be approached neither as untouchable scripture nor as a relic to be discarded, but as a field of moral testing. Ignatian discernment equips us for precisely this task: to walk with our traditions, question them honestly, and allow them to be transformed in the light of justice, compassion, and the common good.

 

Conscience at the crossroads

            The distance afforded by studying in France has sharpened, rather than resolved, the tension between reverence and critique. From outside, it becomes clearer that what is presented as “Indian philosophy” is often a curated Brahmanical canon whose transmission has systematically marginalised other voices. From within, as a Jesuit trained in discernment, it becomes impossible to accept any philosophical claim without asking about its ethical and social consequences.

            Ancient Indian philosophy shapes contemporary Indian social thought in an ambivalent way. On the one hand, it offers resources for rational inquiry, inner freedom, ecological sensitivity, and inter‑religious dialogue. On the other hand, it provides narratives that have justified caste hierarchy, gender inequality, and ritualised exclusion, often by presenting a contingent social order as a cosmic necessity. Joseph’s notion of Homo opportunisticus—political and economic actors who build sacralised orders to entrench their power—reminds us that philosophy and theology can become instruments of this opportunism when they lose contact with the victims of the systems they justify.​

            For a society committed to constitutional morality and social justice, nostalgia for a putatively golden past or outright rejection of tradition are equally inadequate. What is needed is discernment. Sen’s “argumentative” heritage, Ambedkar’s uncompromising critique, Daya Krishna’s call to reopen canonical concepts, Śramaṇa and Dalit resistances, and Catholic social teaching on human dignity can together form a kind of ecumenical “school of conscience.”

            Hence for me, my engagement with Indian philosophy is therefore not merely academic but moral and spiritual. It asks which philosophies help me see the human person more fully/completely, and which normalize domination. It asks whose voices have shaped the canon, and whose have been erased. The path forward is not to abandon India’s philosophical past, but to walk with it critically: retrieving what gives life, resisting what dehumanizes, and welcoming suppressed traditions of dissent as equal partners in imagining India’s social future. Only such a discerning engagement can honour both the depth of India’s ancient wisdom and the non‑negotiable demands of social-justice today.

---

Key references

• Ambedkar, B. R. Annihilation of Caste.
• Bronkhorst, Johannes. Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India.​
• Daya Krishna. Indian Philosophy: A Counter Perspective; The Future of Indian Philosophy.
• Gaudium et Spes (1965), Vatican II.​
• Francis, Pope. Fratelli Tutti (2020).​
• Joseph, Tony. “Homo opportunisticus: The contingent, contested evolution of caste.” The Hindu, 2025.​
• Sen, Amartya. The Argumentative Indian.
• Saldanha, S. “Cārvāka philosophy, the first philosophy of dissent.” 2023.​ https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8167185

Christian by Religion, Hindu by Culture: An Ignatian Response to Hindutva from a Dalit Bahujan Lens.

Savio Saldanha SJ

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18089130

Date – 29-12-2025

 

            As I write this article, I am feeling deeply hurt and saddened by the violence against the Christian community in India during the Christmas season. My personal and spiritual philosophy has always been that I am a Christian by religion, Hindu by culture, and opposed to all fundamentalism: this triple self-description grows out of a concrete Maharashtrian childhood, a Dalit‑Bahujan–sensitive reading of Indian history, and a Catholic theological conscience formed in dialogue with the contemporary magisterium and my Jesuit formation with its rich Ignatian spirituality. In writing this essay, I will make use of three primary thought processes: Savarkar’s Hindutva, Tharoor’s “political Hinduism,” and Kancha Ilaiah’s indictment of Brahminism, in order to discern a way of belonging that is faithful to Christ, grateful to Hindu culture, and resistant to militant ideologies in every religion. In retrospect this article can be considered as a continuation of my previous essay on the related topic, ‘At the Crossroads between Ashram and Church: Living Christianity in India’ (5^th December 2025).

         Every Christian festival (Easter and Christmas) bring with them fresh editorials and newspaper/journal articles from leading Christian thinkers and clergy describing how we are Indians. I will not dwell on this topic because my ‘Indian-ness’ is ingrained in my identity as a person. I do not feel the need to prove it to anyone, especially to the progeny of those who have historically supported the colonial powers from being clerks in the Mughal courts to being British spies and confidants. Ironically these are the same who are claiming to be proponents of the Hindutva ideology today! As I stand on this crossroads of conscience, I intend to address this topic with clear mind and speak out about the anguish which is being felt by many individuals of the minority community in India today.

 

My Maharashtrian childhood

            Growing up in coastal Maharashtra, religious difference was not a problem to be solved but a rhythm of everyday life. For me the Ganpati aarti in the neighbour’s house and being an Altar server during Mass in the parish were not rival loyalties; they were two grammars in which the same mystery of God, neighbour and cosmos could be honoured. Among the several Christian inculturation of practices like the aartis and bhajans (devotional songs), the smell of agarbatti (incense-sticks), women wearing traditional sarees and mangalsutra during the wedding ceremony, and a culture that regarded marital fidelity as non‑negotiable, shaped my moral imagination as much as the Catechism.

            This porous world meant that practicing “Christianity” was never a clean break from “Hindu culture” into a sealed Christian ghetto. As Shashi Tharoor notes, Hindu practice in India is often lived as an open, capacious “way of life,” in which multiple paths, rituals and even deities co‑exist without sharp boundaries. That cultural ‘Hindu-ness’ seeped into Christianity through the inculturation methods adopted by the early missionaries with an intention to make Christianity rooted in the Indian soul than a western imposition.

 

Why I remain Christian

            Within this inculturated environment, Christianity became the place where my conscience learned to name grace, sin, cross and resurrection.​ The figure of Jesus — crucified, son of a poor carpenter, worker, forgiving his enemies, refusing violence — offered a concrete face to what Indian philosophy called satya (Truth) and ahimsa (non-violence). The Church’s sacramental life gave language to experiences of forgiveness and vocation that were more than generic “spirituality”.  Indeed, Christianity shaped the ethical and moral concepts into more logical and concrete examples and thus offered a fulfilling way of life. 

            The Catholic Magisterium has explicitly encouraged such inculturation. Vatican II’s Ad Gentes and Gaudium et Spes invite local Churches to assume “the treasures of the nations” as “an offering to God,” not as a threat to the Gospel. Pope John Paul II at Pope Benedict XVI in their teaching on interreligious dialogue affirm that the Spirit is at work in other religiosity, while insisting that Christ remains the definitive revelation. So “Christian by religion, Hindu by culture” is not an inner contradiction but a Catholic way of being Indian: Sacramentally rooted in Christ, historically and culturally rooted in the Ganga‑Godavari civilisational world.

 

Hindu by culture: Phule, Shahu, Ambedkar

            When I say I found satisfaction in certain spiritual and cultural practices of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, I mean the ones which have been properly discerned for their potential to help me grow holistically as a human being. It is not a blind adherence to their exotic nature. Maharashtrian Hindu culture has never come to me “raw.” It has always reached me already questioned, re‑read and re‑imagined through the perspectives of great social and religious reformers like Phule, Shahu, Ambedkar and Prabodhankar.

 

Phule: re‑reading myth from below

            Mahatma Jyotiba Phule treated Brahminical stories not as innocent spirituality but as political tools.​ He accepted the Aryan‑invasion frame only to invert its moral logic: if Aryan Brahmins came from outside, they were not noble bearers of civilisation but conquerors who subdued indigenous Bahujan peoples and then sanctified domination as “dharma.”​ In Gulamgiri and related writings he re‑reads Bali Raja, Vamana, Ram and other figures from the standpoint of Śūdra‑Atiśūdra peasants, presenting Bali as a just Shudra king whose welfare rule was overthrown by Brahminical treachery.​ This reinterpretation of Ramayana‑type myths does two things.

1. It exposes how “Hindu dharma” and Purāṇic stories have been used to sacralise hierarchy of casteism, making upper‑caste rule look divine and Bahujan resistance look demonic.​
2. It creates a counter‑memory in which village deities like Khandoba or Vithoba are re‑located under Bali Raja’s rule, giving Dalit‑Bahujans a theologically honoured place inside “Hindu” culture rather than outside it.​

            So when I say Maharashtrian Hindu culture, I am not speaking of a soft, Brahminical folklore; rather I am speaking of a culture where stories of Bali, Khandoba and Sant‑traditions (saints) already carry Phule’s suspicion of caste power.

 

Shahu: showing caste as material structure

            Rajarshi Shahu Maharaj translated this cultural critique into a state policy.​ As ruler of Kolhapur he made primary education compulsory and free for all, set up hostels for non‑Brahmin and Dalit students, and founded institutions like the Maratha Students’ Institute.​ In 1902 he introduced 50% reservation in state jobs and education for “backward” and non‑Brahmin castes, directly cutting into Brahmin monopolies.​ By appointing non‑Brahmins as priests and opening Vedic/Sanskrit schools to all castes, Shahu attacked the idea that caste was simply a spiritual order.​

            He showed that “varṇa” (caste-system) translated in practice into control over land, offices, schools and temples, and that only structural interventions (quotas, scholarships, appointments) could break that hold.​ In other words, caste is not just a “state of soul” to be purified by piety; it is an economic and political system that allocates opportunities and honours according to birth. This is the atmosphere in which I grew up: reservations, non‑Brahmin political assertion, and everyday conversations about “Brahmin supremacy” and “Bahujan upliftment” were part of what “Hindu culture” meant in Maharashtra.

 

Ambedkar: breaking with Manusmriti, choosing an Indian alternative

            Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar takes Phule’s and Shahu’s questions right into the heart of Hindu śāstra.​ In his writings on Manusmriti he argues that Manu is not just an old text but a living mindset that has legitimised a rigid, birth‑based hierarchy between Brahmin and Shudra, between men and women.​ He shows how Manusmriti institutionalised unequal punishments, excommunication, and control over education and property, making caste both religiously “sacred” and socially inescapable.​

            Finding Hindu attempts at reform insufficient, Ambedkar finally concluded that the struggle for equality required a religious break. In 1956, leading a mass conversion to Buddhism at Nagpur, he presented Buddhism not as Westernisation but as a return to an indigenous, non‑Brahminical, śramaṇa tradition that rejected authority of the Vedas and of Manu.​ For him, embracing Buddhism was a way to reclaim dignity, fraternity and rational morality without remaining under scriptures that canonised graded inequality.​ So “leaving Hinduism” for many Dalit‑Bahujans was a quest for an Indian, not foreign, path to dignity is exactly in line with Ambedkar’s intention.​

 

Kancha Ilaiah: Hinduism as an internal struggle

            Ilaiah’s basic claim is that what is called “Hinduism” is already a contested terrain.​ On one side stand Brahmin–Bania–neo‑Kshatriya gods, scriptures and rituals, which justify caste hierarchy and keep Dalit‑Bahujans at the bottom.​ On the other side stand Dalit‑Bahujan goddesses, gods, stories and practices, which have their own logic and were never really accepted or respected by upper castes.​ So there is no single “Hindu culture” that naturally belongs to everyone; there are at least two religious-cultural formations living uneasily under that label.

 

Dalit‑Bahujan deities: production, protection, procreation

            In Ilaiah’s reading, Dalit‑Bahujan divinities are rooted in everyday work, survival and community, not in ritual purity or world‑denial.​ Goddesses like Pochamma, Kattamaisamma, Polimeramma, Sammakka–Sarakka, Yellamma, and others are linked to agriculture, water management, protection of village boundaries, and defence against invasions.​ Gods like Potaraju, Beerappa, caste‑specific heroes or ancestors are tied to herding, field protection, or particular crafts and occupations.​ These gods/goddesses:

• Do not demand elaborate yagnas, costly offerings or Sanskrit mantras. Their rituals are simple, local, and usually mediated by the people themselves, not by a separate priestly caste.​
• Do not create enemy images inside the village; their concern is prosperity, health, fertility and basic social peace, not war or conquest.​
• Do not enforce rigid gender roles: Pochamma has no husband; Akkamankali in the Beerappa story is central, competent, and unmarried without stigma; many village goddesses are remembered as wise women, not as submissive wives.​

            Ilaiah summarises this by saying that Dalit‑Bahujan religion centres on production, protection and procreation, whereas Brahminical Hinduism centres on leisure, ritual, and other‑worldly purity.​

 

Brahminical gods and Hindutva: from caste theology to majoritarian state

            Against this, Ilaiah places the pantheon of Brahminical Hinduism.​ Gods like Indra, Brahma, Vishnu, Rama and Krishna are presented as weapon‑wielding rulers whose main role in the narratives is to suppress Dalit‑Bahujan kings, tribes and revolts.​ Goddesses like Saraswati, Lakshmi and Sita are used to naturalise a gender order in which upper‑caste women support Brahmin–Kshatriya dominance and remain dependent, even while symbolising “knowledge” or “wealth”.​ In these stories, karma and varṇa are used to turn historical conquest into divine order.

• Varṇa (“Brahmins from the head, Shudras from the feet”) gives a sacred origin story for unequal social roles.​
• Karma makes present poverty or untouchability appear as the just result of past deeds, not of current exploitation.​

            Ilaiah argues that the same upper‑caste forces now weaponise Hindutva. When Mandal reservations threatened Brahmin–Bania dominance, the Hindutva movement mobilised Rama, Krishna and other symbols to rebuild upper‑caste hegemony under the banner of “Hindu unity”.​ Vaishnavite and Shaivite strands that once had tensions are, in his account, welded into a monolithic Hindutva that is as anti‑Dalit‑Bahujan as it is anti‑minority.​

            So Hindutva is not a neutral “Hindu pride”; it is the latest political form of a long Brahminical habit of using religious ideas to stabilise hierarchy.

 

As a Christian: affirming riches, refusing caste theology

From within this diagnosis, I can make two observations:

1. Honouring genuine spiritual riches

            I have experienced real gifts in Hindu (and Dalit‑Bahujan) religiosity: A sense of the sacredness of nature — earth, water, forest, animals — as “aai/mata/janani” (mother) that deepens my own sense of creation as sacrament.​​ Its rich forms of prayer and songs (aartis, bhajans, village festivals) that draw people into gratitude, solidarity and joy often with minimal economic waste or priestly control.​​ Philosophical insights about the mystery of the Absolute, the complexity of desire, and the relativity of human perspectives (as in Advaita or Jain anekāntavāda) that resonate with Christian apophatic and dialogical traditions.​

            I receive these as “seeds of the Word” without accepting the idea that God willed caste hierarchy or that Dalit‑Bahujans are born to serve.​​

 

2. Rejecting Hindutva as betrayal of Hinduism’s best

Because I distinguish between:

• Hindu spiritual traditions that stress plurality, non‑violence, and dignity (Vivekananda, Gandhi, Bhakti, Dalit‑Bahujan religiosity).​​
• Hindutva as a political ideology that fuses Brahminical caste theology with ethnic nationalism, excludes minorities, and romanticises violence. Savarkar and Golwalkar are explicit about common blood, holy land, and the subordination or assimilation of Muslims and Christians.​

            I can say, in good conscience that I stand with Hindu critics — Ambedkarites, Dalit‑Bahujan theologians — who see Hindutva as a malign distortion of their own faith and culture, not its natural flowering.​​ I will not allow ‘Hinduism’ to be equated with either caste oppression or majoritarian aggression, because there are Hindu and Dalit‑Bahujan resources that openly contest both.​​

            These dual observations help me remain grateful for what Hindu and Dalit‑Bahujan traditions have contributed to my understanding of God, nature and humanity. It also becomes sufficiently clear that neither caste theology nor Hindutva can be baptised as compatible with the Gospel of Christ, with Ambedkarite justice, or with the Indian Constitution.

 

What this means for my “Hindu culture”

            When I call myself culturally Hindu, I am not simply affirming the Sanskritic, upper‑caste “Hinduism” that Savarkar and Hindutva claim as the national norm. I instead claim a Maharashtrian Hindu culture in which Phule has already unmasked Brahminical myth, Shahu has already empowered the ‘low-castes’, and Ambedkar has already staged a public break with Manusmriti in the name of an Indian alternative - Buddhism.​ That culture still loves the spiritual practices, but it carries within it a strong, historically formed allergy to sacralised hierarchy.

            This is why for me, being “Hindu by culture” can sit alongside a Christian faith and an Ambedkarite conscience. The “Hinduness” I carry is already shaped by those three figures’ struggle for the Bahujan, not by the Brahminical or Hindutva story of a ‘harmonious’, caste‑ordered Hindu nation, where one caste shall govern everyone else.

 

Hindutva: a militant political project

            The confusion and hurt I describe, arise because “Hindu” has been politically re‑coded by Hindutva.
Savarkar’s Essentials of Hindutva and Golwalkar’s glosses give the key moves. Savarkar defined a Hindu as one who regards the land from Sindhu to the sea as both fatherland (pitribhū) and holy land (puṇyabhū). This definition explicitly excludes Muslims and Christians because their “holy lands” are Mecca and Jerusalem; they may share territory but not the “race‑culture” that, for him, constitutes the nation. Golwalkar radicalised this ethnicism: he praised Nazi Germany’s “race pride” and argued that in Hindusthan “foreign races” must either merge completely into Hindu culture, or live “wholly subordinated” without rights.

            Shashi Tharoor’s reading underlines how far this is from the porous Hinduism of Vivekananda or Gandhi. Vedantic Hinduism, with its stress on plurality and sarva‑dharma‑sambhāva (there is good in all religions), animated an inclusive nationalism that could fight the British together with Muslims, Sikhs and Christians.

            Hindutva, by contrast, is a twentieth‑century attempt to forge a homogeneous Hindu Rashtra by turning faith into ethnocracy, treating Hindu-ness as a racial‑civilisational essence. Kancha Ilaiah shows how, on the ground, this takes a distinctly North‑Indian, upper‑caste, often Hindi‑speaking form. He describes “militant Hindutva” of the 1980s–90s (Ayodhya, BJP) as an alliance of Vaishnavite and Shaivite forces, using Ram and other avatars to mobilise violence and to re‑tighten Brahminical hegemony over Dalit‑Bahujans.

            For Christians and Muslims, this shift is felt as a de‑Indianisation. Savarkar’s logic relegates us to at best “guests” or at worst “hostiles,” because our Faith or śraddhā connect us also to Rome or Mecca.​ Tharoor notes that Hindutva ideologues routinely speak of Muslims and Christians as invaders or “foreign races,” even when their ancestors are as Indian as any other. So the sense of being made a foreigner “in the land of our ancestors” is not paranoia; it is produced by an explicit ideological project that re‑writes who “belongs” to India.

 

Abrahamic missions, violence and caste

            A Christian critique of Hindutva must be honest about wounds inflicted by Christians and Muslims in India. Tharoor and Ilaiah both acknowledge the long memory of:

• Invasions and iconoclasm by some Muslim rulers, and coercive or opportunistic conversions in certain periods.​
• Colonial missions that sometimes despised Indian cultures, and the complicity of churches in European colonial expansion.​

            At the same time, many “atrocity legends” are exaggerated or fabricated to feed Hindutva narratives. Tharoor notes that stories about forced conversions or temple destruction often ignore complex political motives and long histories of coexistence. Ilaiah shows how Brahminical storytellers weaponise myth (Rama vs Ravana, Vamana vs Bali) to code Dalit‑Bahujans as enemies, and how similar myth‑making now targets Christians and Muslims. Dr. Ram Puniyani through his numerous talks and essays has highlighted the political nature of faith by giving an example of how during one of their campaigns the Marathas (a Hindu power) looted a temple during their battle with the Nizam (a Muslim ruler) and how the Nizam restored the temple again after the battle. Hence, we should remember that religion during medieval times was more of a political tool and not the spiritual path of salvation that we think of it today.

            Fundamentalism is not a Hindu monopoly. Protestant and Catholic groups in parts of the global South have preached exclusivist theologies, demonised other religions, and sometimes supported authoritarian regimes.​ Islamist movements have used jihadist readings of Islam to justify terror and majoritarian repression. Tharoor comments that Hindutva mirrors many features of twentieth‑century Islamist and fascist movements: a golden past, a narrative of humiliation, and a will to power.

            Yet caste complicates this picture. Ilaiah insists that a large proportion of converts to Islam and Christianity in India were Dalit‑Bahujans fleeing caste oppression, not seduced foreigners. Ambedkar’s own conversion to Buddhism is an emblem of this: a search for a non‑Brahminical, non‑caste path to fraternity. So the Hindu nationalist story that “foreign religions” broke India’s unity conveniently forgets the internal violence of caste that drove people to seek homes in other religions.​

 

Fundamentalism as a cross‑religious temptation

            Given this history, it would be hypocritical for a Christian to denounce Hindutva while ignoring Christian and Islamic fundamentalists. A fundamentalist style appears when:

• Scripture is read as a flat, inerrant code, detached from context and tradition.
• Religious identity is fused with state power, and dissenters are branded as traitors.
• Violence (symbolic or physical) is justified “for God,” “for the nation,” or “for the poor,” without discernment of spirits.

            Tharoor shows how Hindutva ideologues seek to “Semitise” Hinduism: to reduce its complex, plural heritage to one book (Gita), one god (often Rama), one language (Hindi), one nation (Hindu Rashtra) under the hegemony of one caste (Brahmins).​ This is precisely the kind of narrowing that Catholic theology has learned to critique in itself after the Second Vatican Council, in favour of a richer, sacramental and dialogical vision.​

            My own alignment with Phule–Ambedkarite critiques gives a further reason not to romanticise “Christian fundamentalism”: any church that seeks to re‑create caste‑like hierarchies or patriarchy in the name of Christ betrays both the Gospel of Christ and the Constitution of India.​

 

Hindutva’s use of cultural distrust

            The genius — and danger — of Hindutva lies in its ability to harvest real grievances into a homogenising project. Tharoor shows how Hindutva leaders narrate every policy favouring minorities as “appeasement,” and every constitutional protection as a betrayal of the Hindu majority.​ Ilaiah notes how Brahminical forces repeatedly co‑opt Dalit‑Bahujan leaders and symbols (e.g., using Ram, Krishna, even Ambedkar’s image) to rebuild caste consent under a Hindu banner.​ This politics feeds on:

• Memories of Muslim rule and Partition.
• Stories of “aggressive proselytism” by Christians and Muslims.

            Rather than heal these wounds, Hindutva hardens them into a permanent friend‑enemy map, in which the Christian, Muslim, Dalit, feminist, secularist or “urban Naxal” becomes a convenient internal enemy.​

 

Catholic inculturation and Indian belonging

            In this context, Catholic inculturation is not a cosmetic “Hinduisation” of the liturgy, but a theological and political statement. Missionaries like Roberto de Nobili in Tamil Nadu and Constanzo Beschi (Veeramamunivar) in South India tried, with mixed success, to express the Gospel through local languages, dress and concepts, even as Rome sometimes mistrusted their experiments.​ In the twentieth century, figures like Henri Le Saux (Abhishiktananda) embodied a contemplative encounter between Advaita and Christian mysticism, living as a Christian sanyasi and inviting the Church to learn from Hindu interiority.​

            The contemporary magisterium has slowly endorsed this path. Nostra Aetate and later documents affirm that the Church “rejects nothing that is true and holy” in other religions, and that dialogue and collaboration are intrinsic to her mission.​ Indian episcopal conferences have encouraged aartis, bhajans, Indian musical forms, and architectural symbols in liturgy, so that the Church appears as truly “Indian,” not a foreign transplant.​

            For a Maharashtrian Christian, this means: Participating in Ganpati or Diwali at a cultural level need not threaten baptismal identity; it can be an act of neighbourly solidarity, provided one avoids syncretisms that confuse Christ with any other avatar.​ Keeping distance from Hindutva rallies or hate campaigns is not “anti‑Hindu”; it is fidelity to both Gospel and to the deepest pluralist instincts of Hindu civilisation itself.

​

Ignatian discernment at the crossroads

            Ignatian spirituality offers tools to navigate precisely this kind of interior and social conflict.

Key movements:

• Consolation: where an experience increases faith, hope, love, and solidarity, even if it is demanding. For me, childhood memories of Ganpati aarti and Mass together are consoling; they expanded, not shrank, my heart.​
• Desolation: where a discourse triggers fear, hatred, or contempt for neighbours as such, even if wrapped in religious or patriotic language. Hindutva slogans that make me feel less Indian because I am a Christian are classic desolation.​ ​

Discernment then asks:

• Where does a given “Hindu” practice or discourse come from? From the Spirit of life, or from the “enemy of human nature”?
• Does it lead toward more inclusive justice—especially for the poor and Dalit‑Bahujans—or toward the hardening of caste and communal boundaries?

Ignatian discernment never stops at interior peace; it asks for concrete choices.

• To remain publicly Christian and culturally Hindu while rejecting Hindutva is itself a mission: to embody an alternative nationalism that is both constitutional and spiritual.​
• To engage Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh and secular friends in honest conversation about mutual wounds, privileges and fears is part of that mission.

 

Conscience at the crossroads: toward peace for a wounded nation

            My conscience stands at a crossroads shaped by at least four roads:

1. The plural, porous, Maharashtrian Hindu–Christian world that formed me.
2. The Dalit‑Bahujan critique of Brahminical Hinduism.
3. The Catholic call to inculturation and dialogue.
4. The hardening of Hindutva into state and street violence.

From these sources, certain convictions emerge.

i. Religion cannot be the foundation of the modern nation‑state.

            Tharoor shows that states that sacralise one religion—Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nazi‑inspired projects — slide toward exclusion, internal violence, and international isolation. Hindutva’s explicit admiration, in Golwalkar, for aspects of Nazi race policy is a theological and constitutional alarm bell, not an academic curiosity.

ii. Hinduism’s own best resources resist Hindutva.

            Vivekananda and Gandhi grounded their Hinduism in sarva‑dharma‑sambhāva, ahimsa and satya, not in purity, race or holy land. ​Any project that demands Muslims or Christians erase their distinctiveness in order to belong betrays this deeper Hindu ethos.​

iii. Christian and Islamic fundamentalism must also be resisted.

            A modern India cannot be built by erasing Hindu symbols; it must grow by purifying our own memories, confessing our own complicities, and standing with all victims of violence regardless of religion.

iv. The Constitution is a providential “antidote” to religious and caste stratification.

            Articles 14–18 on equality, and the freedom of religion provisions, function as a secular “grace” that protects Dalits, minorities and dissenters.​ For an Indian citizen, defending the Constitution is not secularism against religion, but the political form of love of neighbour.

From this discernment, a way of being suggests itself:

• To be Christian by religion: centred on the Eucharist, the poor Christ, and the Magisterium’s call to justice and dialogue.
• To be Hindu by culture: fluent in Marathi symbols, at home in aartis and bhajans, grateful for Advaita and Bhakti insights that have deepened my sense of mystery.
• To not become a fundamentalist myself: refusing any ideology — Hindutva, Christian nationalism, Islamist politics — that turns God into a totem and neighbours into enemies.

            Peace for the nation will not come by denying identities, but by weaving them together in a constitutional and spiritual covenant. Hindutva, like Nazi ideology, promises unity through scapegoats; history shows that such unity devours its own children and leaves only ruins. A different path— a “conscience at crossroads” path — seeks unity through truth‑telling about caste and communal wounds, through constitutional fidelity, and through the everyday holiness of neighbours who still share sweets at Diwali, Eid and Christmas.       

 

Bibliography

Primary political and religious texts

Ambedkar, B. R. (1990). Annihilation of caste (2nd ed.). New Delhi, India: Arnold Publishers.

Ambedkar, B. R. (2014). The Buddha and his Dhamma: A critical edition (A. A. Engineer, Ed.). New Delhi, India: Critical Quest.

Ilaiah Shepherd, K. (2009). Why I am not a Hindu: A Sudra critique of Hindutva philosophy, culture and political economy (2nd ed.). New Delhi, India: Samya.

Savarkar, V. D. (1969). Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? Bombay, India: Veer Savarkar Prakashan.

Tharoor, S. (2018). Why I am a Hindu. New Delhi, India: Aleph Book Company.

Golwalkar, M. S. (1980). Bunch of thoughts (12th ed.). Bangalore, India: Sahitya Sindhu.

Dalit‑Bahujan and Maharashtrian reformers

Ambedkar, B. R. (2014). Writings and speeches (Vols. 1–17). Mumbai, India: Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Source Material Publication Committee, Government of Maharashtra.

Omvedt, G. (1994). Dalits and the democratic revolution: Dr Ambedkar and the Dalit movement in colonial India. New Delhi, India: Sage.

Phule, J. (2002). Slavery (Gulamgiri) (P. Kasbe, Trans.). New Delhi, India: Critical Quest. (Original work published 1873)

Teltumbde, A. (2018). Republic of caste: Thinking equality in the time of neoliberal Hindutva. New Delhi, India: Navayana.

Hindutva, nationalism, and contemporary politics

Bhatt, C. (2001). Hindu nationalism: Origins, ideologies and modern myths. New York, NY: Berg.

Jaffrelot, C. (2007). Hindu nationalism: A reader. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Puniyani, R. (2003). Communal politics: Facts versus myths. New Delhi, India: Sage.

Catholic magisterium and inculturation

Second Vatican Council. (1965). Nostra aetate (Declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Second Vatican Council. (1965). Ad gentes (Decree on the Church’s missionary activity). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Second Vatican Council. (1965). Gaudium et spes (Pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

John Paul II. (1990). Redemptoris missio (On the permanent validity of the Church’s missionary mandate). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. (1991). Dialogue and proclamation. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Inculturation and Hindu–Christian encounter

Abhishiktananda (Le Saux, H.). (1974). Saccidānanda: A Christian approach to Advaitic experience. Delhi, India: ISPCK.

Amaladoss, M. (1990). Making all things new: Dialogue, inculturation, and innovation in Christianity. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Clooney, F. X. (2010). Hindu God, Christian God: How reason helps break down the boundaries between religions. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Maraimalai, A. (2013). Roberto de Nobili and the accommodation method in India. Bangalore, India: NBCLC.

Saldanha, S. (2025). At the Crossroads between Ashram and Church: Living Christianity in India. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17762765

Ignatian spirituality

Ganss, G. E. (Trans.). (1991). The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. St. Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources.

O’Collins, G., & Farrugia, E. G. (2013). A concise dictionary of theology (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Paulist Press. (Entries on discernment and Ignatian spirituality)

Indian Constitution and secularism

Austin, G. (1999). Working a democratic constitution: The Indian experience. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.

Baxi, U. (2013). The Indian Constitution: A short introduction. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.

Bhargava, R. (Ed.). (1998). Secularism and its critics. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.