Hinduness

English

Alternative forms

• Hindu-ness

Etymology

Calque of Hindi हिंदुत्व (hindutva) / Bengali হিন্দুত্ব (hindutto, literally “Hinduness”): Hindu +‎ ness.

Noun

Hinduness (uncountable)

1. The quality of being Hindu.
   • 2019 May 23, Arun Anand, “Lesson for Rahul Gandhi in 2019: Mocking ‘Hinduness’ won’t work because India is Bharat”, in ThePrint‎^[1]:

     To stand for ‘Hinduness’, which is the soul of this nation and civilisation, was considered ‘communal’ and abused as token ‘Hindu majoritarianism’.

   • 2019 June 6, Rahul Shivshankar, “The age of Hinduness: Modi has disavowed hard Hindutva for the humanism of ‘Hinduness’”, in The Times of India‎^[2]:

     It is Hinduness that has drawn the multitudes – beyond upper castes – to BJP. In its purest form, Hinduness is a dharma different from religion. […] Hinduness doesn’t deny minorities a stake in society, but seeks to empower all on merit, and delink social justice from identity.

   • 1999, Rajmohan Gandhi, Revenge and reconciliation: understanding South Asian history‎^[3], New Delhi: Penguin Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 266, →ISBN:

     Unlike, for example, Tilak and Aurobindo, Gandhi took great care to assure Muslims that they had nothing to fear from his Hinduness.

   • 2014, D. B. Thengadi, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay: Ideology and Preception - Part 1: An Inquest‎^[4], 2nd edition, New Delhi: Suruchi Prakashan, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 34, →ISBN:

     What Param Poojya Guruji intended as the real nature of Hinduness was this fact of its being all-inclusive and all-pervasive.

Proper noun

Hinduness

1. Synonym of Hindutva
   • 2019 May 23, “What you need to know about India’s BJP”, in Al Jazeera‎^[5]:

     The BJP advocates the ideology of Hindutva (or Hinduness), which insists that multireligious and multiethnic India is fundamentally a “Hindu Rashtra” (Hindu Nation).

   • 2007 April 11, Katharine Adeney, Lawrence Saez, editors, Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism‎^[6], Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 44, →ISBN:

     Hindutva? Both Savarkar and Golwalkar locate the idea of Hinduness by reference to history. Even taking into account its diversity, Hinduness is rooted in Aryan civilisation and the establishment of the Vedic tradition.