Can Indonesia’s Humanitarian Islam inspire a Hindu nationalist equivalent?

James Dorsey
The writer is an award-winning journalist and scholar, a senior fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and adjunct senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
There is a potential silver lining in Hindu nationalism’s endorsement of Indonesia’s Humanitarian Islam. That is, if the approval produces a Hindu equivalent.اضافة اعلان

At first glance, Hindu nationalist Ram Madhav’s call on Indian Muslims to embrace this, probably the world’s most moderate, expression of Islam, seems patronizing and out of step.

Madhav is a member of the executive of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an almost century-old militant right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organization, former national secretary-general of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and a close associate of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In an essay published by Open, an Indian current affairs weekly, Madhav, widely viewed as a moderate among Hindu nationalists, called on Indian Muslims to adopt a moderate form of Islam propagated and practiced by Nahdlatul Ulama, the world and Indonesia’s largest Muslim civil society movement.

Nahdlatul Ulama advocates reform of what it calls “obsolete” and “problematic” elements of Islamic law, including those that encourage segregation, discrimination, and/or violence toward anyone perceived to be a non-Muslim.

Humanitarian Islam further recognizes equal rights for Muslims and non-Muslims, unrestricted acceptance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and inter-faith relations based on shared common values.

If adopted by  Madhav’s RSS and BJP, it would be an approach that could contribute to the restoration of a semblance of societal harmony in India and help halt the backsliding of the country’s democracy.

Several Nahdlatul Ulama-associated bodies welcomed Madhav’s endorsement “as an opportunity to place humanitarianism at the heart of interaction between different faith groups — regardless of religion and across different sectors of society, ranging from mass organizations to governments — in order to promote peaceful coexistence and enshrine equal rights before the law”.

Madhav’s essay appeared against the backdrop of mounting Hindu-Muslim communal violence that critics believe is fuelled by the BJP and RSS’ anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies. Muslims account for 14 per cent of India’s 1.4 billion population.

Last week, the Delhi working-class neighborhood of Jahangirpuri witnessed some of the latest incidents. Riots erupted when participants in a Hindu procession allegedly brandished weapons and chanted anti-Muslim slogans as they passed through predominantly Muslim areas.

“There was chaos,” said Sudarshan Prasad, a 71-year-old Hindu. I have always lived here in peace. This has not happened in the last 40 years.”

Days later, authorities imposed a curfew and cut off internet connections in an area of Jodhpur, the capital of northern India’s Rajasthan state, following altercations between Hindu and Muslim communities. The crackdown occurred as Muslims celebrated Eid Al Fitr, the holiday at the end of Ramadan, and Hindus commemorated the festival of Parshuram Jayanti.

At about the same time, tension was building in the state of Maharashtra, home to India’s financial capital Mumbai, after Hindu leaders demanded that Muslims remove loudspeakers from their mosques because the call to prayer constitutes noise pollution.

Bucking the trend, one Hindu village in the state gifted a loudspeaker to the mosque in a neighboring Muslim hamlet as a gesture of harmony.

In his essay, Madhav insisted that RSS had distanced itself from “violent language and talk of annihilation of an entire community” that he termed “un-Hindu”.

Madhav went on to say that “the Indian social leadership needs to stand up to the forces of hatred and violence by invoking peace, inclusive and a nation-first narrative. India’s narrative of the decade should be ‘it’s the economy, stupid’. The onus lies on all of us”.

Madhav insisted that Hinduism was ‘”very inclusive and very open”. He asserted that no “ideological or philosophical movement that proclaims exclusivity” exists in Hinduism. He further argued that there was no difference between Hinduism and Hindutava, the Hindu nationalism of the BJP, and the RSS. However, he conceded that “when confronted with very hardline things like Wahhabi Islam, it created some kind of a reaction in some sections, possibly, but Hindutava is not about that. Hindutava is about core Hindu values”.

Madhav acknowledged that Hindu-Muslim tensions would undermine Indian efforts to ensure that the country witnesses the kind of transformative economic growth that China experienced in the 1980s.

Asserting that the leadership of Indian Muslims, the world’s third-largest Muslim community, adhered to Wahhabism, Madhav wrote that violent elements, whether “Muslim or Hindu, do not and should not represent our respective mainstream communities”.

Madhav also suggested that the hijab, the head cover worn by a large number of non-Wahhabi Muslim women, signalled belief in Wahhabism’s purported purpose of pitting Muslims against non-Muslims.

“A more inclusive and humanitarian Islam on the lines of the one promoted by organizations like Nahdlatul Ulama... must be the way forward for them,” Madhav wrote.

Many of Nahdlatul Ulama’s women activists and followers wear hijab while embracing the concept of humanitarian Islam.

Some European and American officials privately hope that increased engagement with India in response to the war in Ukraine and big power rivalry in the Indo-Pacific will strengthen the hand of the more moderate wing of the BJP and the RSS.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz invited Modi to attend a G7 summit in June in the Bavarian Alps. The group includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, and the US.

Madhav’s embrace of Humanitarian Islam and Nahdlatul Ulama’s engagement hark back to notions of an Indianized civilizational sphere that encompassed South and Southeast Asia for nearly fifteen centuries before the arrival of China, Europe, and Islam in the region.

In a gesture at a time when religious and cultural sites have been at the centre of disputes and conflict in India and elsewhere, Indonesia agreed in February to open Prambanan Temple and Borobudur Temple in Java to worship by Hindus and Buddhists. The sites had been mainly closed for decades for worship.

Madhav said he wished to avoid “loaded phrases” like an Indosphere stretching across Asia’s parts. However, “I would say that Eastern civilizations (and) Eastern religions all share the same civilizational value system”.

He referenced Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, and “an Islam with an Eastern value system like Indonesian Islam”.

Madhav suggested that “maybe we all can stand up and talk about these values… commit ourselves to those values, including respect for pluralism, inclusivity, and commitment to the nation-state idea, (and) patriotism. … If something can be worked out jointly, we would be definitely happy to do that.”


James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and scholar, a senior fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and adjunct senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.


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