ABSTRACT
Hinduism, Islam and Indian nationalism in the mid-nineteenth century laid some foundations for resistance to British colonialism and the swadeshi movement, which grew in power from the turn of this century and eventually resulted in Indian Independence and the creation of Pakistan. The rise of Hindu-based, as well as secular Indian nationalism in the second part of the last century is more closely associated with movements, riots, “mutinies”, insurrections and war against the British than the post-Gandhi post-Nehru secular and multicultural reading of that history might indicate. During the 1920s a different movement in Hinduism started and bears close comparison with the histories of both the Jamaati-Islami in India and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The Mahasabha’s intellectual founder, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is by far the most important figure in the development of contemporary Hindu nationalism. Savarkar is regarded as one of the heroes of the Indian liberation movement.
