Aravindan Neelakandan

Aravindan Neelakandan (அரவிந்தன் நீலகண்டன்) is an Indian writer. Aravindan belongs to the post-socialist Indian thinkers of cultural evolutionism about Indian ethnogenesis. He is known for the book Breaking India, which he co-wrote with Rajiv Malhotra.

Hindutva: Origin, Evolution, and Future

 * Hindutva: Origin, Evolution, and Future. Aravindan Neelakandan. BluOne Ink. Pages 816. Rs 967.


 * Hindutva is often studied similar to other extreme right-wing ideologies. However, the thesis presented in this book is built on the strong foundation that Hindutva is not an ideology but a process—a historical-civilizational process.


 * One must jettison the usual academic and political frameworks to study Hindutva and Hindutva organizations.


 * With the industrialized high-energy consuming West having to move away from the meat-based diet because of ecological compulsions, the breaking of beef-taboo in Indian food culture can easily make India another South America-like beef exporter to the West. But it will ultimately create ecological disaster for India.
 * (pp. 141).


 * What we witness in Indian civilization is that it never allows religious conflicts to become fully blown religious wars against any religious sect. The basic underlying dictum that has emerged from this understanding is enshrined in the Vedic statement that the one Truth is perceived in various ways.
 * (pp. 485).


 * This is what makes Dara Shukoh important. Had he converted to Hindu Dharma he would have chosen the easier path. But he actually created within Islam a space for the Muslims to understand Hinduism and enrich and deepen their own spirituality through that understanding. In this he made the nondual unity of the Upanishads, which he strove to discover and did discover in diverse traditions, the basis. Thus, one can say Dara Shukoh represents an important civilizational peak for India. And in him there is a model for approaching Theo-diversity for Abrahamic religions—particularly Christianity and Islam.
 * (pp. 524).


 * Thus, the Hindutva engagement with the Muslims and Islam cannot be categorized as monolithic. It has varied frameworks: from that of Savarkar to Sita Ram Goel, Golwalkar to Balraj Madhok to Malkani to Narendra Modi. The approach cannot be negatively labelled as majoritarianism or as totally harmonious.. While in the era of internet, the Hindutva school of Sita Ram Goel got traction, on ground the RSS school has more appeal and practical possibilities. In fact, the success of such an RSS appeal to Indian Muslims will also make the Sita Ram Goel school mellow down. Without expansionism and Islamism, Hindutva has almost neutral or even positive relation to Muslims in India.
 * (pp. 576).


 * Unfortunately, even with the Hindutva sympathizers, the stereotype image of the Swayamsevak as a kind of muscular, non-cerebral automaton persists. A deeper look shows that with no State support or support from extra-territorial agencies, the thinkers from the Sangh, usually spending most of their times sleeping on railway platforms and working among some of the most marginalized sections of the society, evolved an intellectual tradition, unborrowed from Western academia and socio-political philosophies but rooted in Indian soil.


 * The historical roots that lead up to the space for the presence of Hindutva’s own left wing within the Hindutva universe which makes it difficult to classify Hindutva as ‘right-wing’ proper.
 * (pp. 211).