Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha
Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha ( ABHM , Hindi अखिल भारतीय हिन्दू महासभा akhil Bharatiya the Hindu Mahasabha , "total Indian Hindu Great Meeting"), sometimes referred to as All India Hindu Mahasabha partly sets (AIHM) into English, is a Hindu nationalist party in India . It was founded in 1915.
Colonial history
The first forerunner organizations of ABHM at the local level emerged in connection with the disputes after the partition of Bengal in British India in 1905 . Under the then viceroy Lord Curzon , the province of Bengal was divided into two new provinces, East Bengal and Assam , and Bengal . The new province of Bengal had a Hindu majority, the province of East Bengal and Assam was majority Muslim. The division was justified by the British on administrative grounds. Many nationally minded Indians saw this as an attempt by the British colonial administration to drive a wedge between the Hindus and Muslims and thus to split the burgeoning Indian autonomy movement.
During the emotionally charged debates about the division was established in December 1906 in Dacca , the total Indian Muslim League ( All India Muslim League ) was founded, whose aim was to represent specific Muslim interests. Communalist aspirations also arose on the part of the Hindus, some of which went back to earlier Hindu reform movements. In 1907 a first Hindu association ( Hindu Sabha ) was founded in Punjab with the aim of defending Hindu interests. Similar associations arose in other places and a first congress of the All-Indian Hindu Mahasabha took place in 1915. This can be considered the foundation date of the ABHM.
Initially, the ABHM focused primarily on a kind of rebirth or revitalization of Hinduism and mainly defended itself against Western cultural influences. In her program, announced in 1925, her political goals included the organization of Hindu associations, the support of Hindus who had become victims of communal violence and the conversion of Hindus who had or were forcibly converted to Islam. Hindi should be popularized as a language throughout India, the community feeling of the Hindus as a whole should be promoted and the social position of Hindu women should be strengthened. The ABHM committed to good neighborly coexistence with Muslims and Christians.
In the early years the Hindu Mahasabha was associated with the Indian National Congress , which at that time formed a collective movement of all possible heterogeneous groups whose common goal was the self-government of India. In the 1930s, however, the ways of Congress and ABHM parted ways. The leadership of the Congress forbade simultaneous membership in organizations they considered communalist, such as the ABHM. The ABHM accused Mohandas Gandhi , the leader of the congress, of pursuing a policy of appeasement towards the Muslims. The Muslim League became the main political opponent of the ABHM during this period . From about the second half of the 1930s, especially from 1938, when Vinayak Damodar Savarkar became chairman, the agitation of the ABHM was increasingly directed against the Congress Party. After the Congress Party-led provincial governments resigned in protest against the Viceroy Lord Linlithgow's declaration of British India's participation in the war , the Hindu Mahasabha even formed government coalitions with Muslim communalist parties such as the Muslim League in the provinces of Bengal and Sindh . From 1942 Syama Prasad Mukherjee was party chairman, who pursued a more pragmatic policy, which in many positions came closer to Congress. When Gandhi and the Congress leadership proclaimed the "Quit India" movement in 1942 , with which the British were urged to leave India immediately, the ABHM and the Muslim League opposed it.
The ABHM in the context of other Hindu nationalist organizations
In 1925, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the "National Volunteer Organization", was founded as another Hindu nationalist organization. In contrast to the ABHM, which was more of a loose association, the RSS was tightly organized and disciplined from the start. Initially, there was a lot in common between RSS and ABHM and the two organizations held joint actions. Their organizational structures, however, remained separate. Both organizations were initially strongly fixated on the ideological consolidation and character formation or cultural aspects of Hinduism and were less interested in very concrete policy-making. This changed in the 1930s when ABHM became more politically active and participated in provincial council elections and provincial governments, while the RSS did not do so until the end of the colonial era. Two events led the RSS to turn to concrete politics of the day: the partition and independence of India in 1947 and the murder of Mohandas Gandhi by the Hindu extremist and the Hindu Mahasabha member Nathuram Godse and the subsequent ban on RSS 1948-49. After that, many RSS members turned to active politics.
In 1951 another Hindu nationalist organization was founded, which was explicitly conceived as a political party. This party, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (Jan Sangh for short), was founded by Syama Prasad Mukherjee , a former minister in the Nehru cabinet and a former member of the ABHM. The new party was strongly influenced by RSS members (including Mukherjee himself). After the first Indian parliamentary elections in 1951/52 for the Hindu nationalist parties Jan Sangh and ABHN were disappointing (the Congress party won a two-thirds majority of the constituencies with 45% of the electorate), there were ideas for the unification of both parties, but they were never implemented.
Development since independence
In independent India, ABHM could not gain any major importance. In the 1950s, ABHM won more than 10% of the vote in the regional parliament elections for some northern Indian states. After that, however, it sank into the role of a small splinter party and the leadership role in the Hindu nationalist camp was taken over by the Jan Sangh, or from 1980 their successor party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In the parliamentary elections 1951–52, ABHM won 4 constituencies (out of over 400), one each in 1957 and 1962 , and none in the subsequent elections. It was only successful once in the 1989 election (constituency 38-Gorakhpur , Uttar Pradesh ).
Today the ABHM makes a name for itself as a small, relatively insignificant splinter group with occasional extreme statements and demands. On January 30, 2016, the party celebrated the anniversary of Gandhi's assassination by Nathuram Godse . For a long time she has also been demanding that a memorial be erected for the assassin. In April 2015, the ABHM deputy chairwoman made a name for itself when she called for the forced sterilization of Muslims and Christians in order to curb their faster population growth than that of the Hindus.
The program from 1949
In December 1949 the ABHM assembly in Calcutta adopted its program, which is still valid today. Accordingly, ABHM is striving for a "united Hindustan" ( Akhand Hindustan ) from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean by uniting the present-day states of India (Bharat), Pakistan and Bangladesh . It represents the concept of "Hindu Rashtra", which means that India should be the national home of the Hindus, analogous to how Israel sees itself as the home of all Jews worldwide. The non-Hindus in this state should enjoy the same rights as the Hindus. In relation to other states, the ABHM advocated good relations with the People's Republic of China in its 1948 program (this was before the Indo-Chinese border war of 1962 ), but also the independence of Tibet . She also spoke out for the reunification of Korea , for the "liberation" of the occupied war- losing states Germany and Japan, for good relations with neighboring states and close relations with the State of Israel founded in 1948. With regard to cultural policy, the central Hindu festivals should be given the character of national festivals, the slaughter of cows should be made a criminal offense, Sanskrit should become a compulsory subject in Indian schools and Hindi in Devanagari script should become the lingua franca of the Hindu state. Public order should not only be based on laws and threats of punishment, but special value should also be placed on the spiritual and moral education of people. The Hindu state should be a federal state, with states whose borders were essentially based on linguistic principles.
Web links and literature
- Akhil Bharat Hindumahasabha , the party's website
- Vinayak Damodar Savarkar: History of the Hindu Mahasabha (PDF, English)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Myron Weiner: Party Politics in India . Princeton University Press 1963, 3rd edition. Chapter 8 Background of Hindu Communalism. Pp. 164-176
- ↑ Mani Shankar Aiyar: Confessions of a Secular Fundamentalist. Penguin Books 2006, ISBN 978-0-14-306205-9 . "Cross-communal alliances" p. 81 ff
- ^ Forsaken by history - Fazlul Huq's actions directed history at many levels. The Telegraph (Calcutta), August 26, 2014, accessed April 23, 2016 .
- ↑ Nandini Gondhalekar, Sanjoy Bhattacharya: The All India Hindu Mahasabha and the end of British rule in India, 1939-1947 . In: Social Scientist . tape 27 , no. 7/8 , 1999, p. 48-74 , JSTOR : 3518013 (English).
- ↑ Teesta Setalvad: Beyond Doubt: A Dossier on Gandhi's Assassination. Tulika Books 2015, ISBN 93-8238150-3 . P. 244ff
- ^ Myron Weiner: Party Politics in India . Princeton University Press 1963, 3rd edition. Chapter 9 The Formation of Jan Sangh. Pp. 177-198
- ↑ a b Election Results - Full Statistical Reports. Indian Election Commission, accessed April 23, 2016 .
- ^ Myron Weiner: Party Politics in India . Princeton University Press 1963, 3rd edition. Chapter 10 The unsuccessful merger attempt of Jan Sangh and the Hindu Mahasabha. Pp. 199-222
- ↑ Mohammad Ali: Hindu Mahasabha 'celebrates' Gandhiji's death anniversary. The Hindu, January 30, 2016, accessed April 23, 2016 .
- ^ Muslims, Christians should be forcibly sterilized, says Hindu Mahasabha leader. Deccan Chronicle, April 12, 2015, accessed April 23, 2016 .
- ↑ HINDU MAHASABHA VISION & MISSION. Akhil Bharat Hindumahasabha, accessed April 23, 2016 .