When Hindutva Betrays Hindus: The Market Mask of Identity

Posted on 24th September, 2025 (GMT 03:30 hrs)

ABSTRACT

This article presents a critical analysis of Hindutva as a political and economic project, arguing that its purported aim of protecting Hindu interests is a façade for market fundamentalism, crony capitalism, and authoritarian consolidation. Using the DHFL financial scandal as a case study, it demonstrates how ordinary Hindu investors and pensioners suffer losses while political insiders and corporate cronies benefit, exposing the betrayal embedded within the saffron narrative. Beyond economic exploitation, the piece highlights the systematic suppression of dissenting Hindu voices—eco-activists, reformist priests, and ascetics—whose advocacy for ecological balance, spiritual pluralism, and resistance to commodification has been marginalized or violently silenced. The article situates communal polarization, Islamophobia, and other engineered religious tensions as deliberate distractions that conceal the underlying agenda of capital extraction and consolidation of power. Through examples from domestic policy, foreign aid, heritage destruction, and environmental mismanagement, it contends that Hindutva endangers Hindu communities from within, revealing a profound contradiction between its rhetoric and its effects. The critique underscores that the issue is not religion per se but the instrumentalization of religious identity for neoliberal and authoritarian ends, culminating in a call for Hindus to recognize and resist Hindutva’s internal threats.

Disclaimer
This article is intended purely as a strategic critique of political economy and ideological structures. Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA) unequivocally upholds the principle of secularism enshrined in the Constitution of India. We firmly believe that communal polarizations—whether expressed as Islamophobia or Hinduphobia—are not organic religious conflicts but engineered tendencies, manufactured and weaponized by the forces of private capital and their political allies. Our critique does not target Hinduism, Islam, or any faith tradition; rather, it exposes the instrumentalization of religion for profiteering, cronyism, and authoritarian consolidation.

The great irony of our times is that Hindutva, which claims to protect Hindu interests, has become a force that endangers Hindus themselves.

The collapse of Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL) reveals this betrayal in brutal clarity. Most DHFL victims—ordinary small investors, pensioners, and middle-class savers—are Hindus, statistically speaking. Their life savings, pensions, and securities now lie shattered—not from some jingoistically framed “external enemy”, but by the corporate-political nexus that marches under the saffron flag. In this tragic drama, Hindutva resembles Saturn devouring its own children.

But DHFL is not just a corporate scandal. It is a symptom of a deeper structural logic. Hindutva does not merely mobilize religious extremism—it hides its real underlying agenda behind it. By inflaming the vicious communal sentiment, it creates a smokescreen for policy moves that consolidate wealth in fewest hands, suppress dissent, and protect crony, oligarchic privileges.

The Double Game: Religion as Cover for Capital

Public records suggest that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accepted donations from companies linked to Iqbal Mirchi—a known “Islamic” underworld figure associated with Dawood Ibrahim, in the context of the DHFL scam itself. Such funding sits uncomfortably next to the party’s aggressive Islamophobic rhetoric. Meanwhile, under its rule, India extended ₹200 crore in “humanitarian aid” to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in 2023-24, and another ₹100 crore in 2025-26.

Instances like this are plenty: the majority of victims of the NRC-CAA process in Assam turned out to be Hindus, particularly Bengali Hindus who filled detention camps in large numbers. In Uttarakhand, Kedarnath priests and ascetics rose in protest against the BJP’s Char Dham Devasthanam Board, accusing the government of handing sacred pilgrimage sites over to Ambani and Adani in the name of “development.” The catastrophic subsidence of Joshimath—accelerated by reckless BJP-driven Char Dham projects—further showed how Hindutva’s pursuit of capital imperils Hindu communities living in fragile Himalayan towns. In Varanasi, the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor destroyed centuries-old Hindu temples and heritage structures in the name of beautification, leaving locals enraged at this “development” that erases their own religious-cultural history.

In Kairana, Hindu families fled en masse between 2014–16, exposing how the BJP failed to ensure their safety while simultaneously exploiting their plight for electoral gain. The Kashmiri Pandits—whose tragedy Hindutva propaganda endlessly milks—have themselves accused the BJP of abandoning them, saying they are used merely as vote-banks while continuing to languish in exile. Even the sacred “gomata” suffers: tens of thousands of cows have died in BJP-ruled states due to official negligence, belying the rhetoric of cow protection. Time and again, it is Hindus who are left vulnerable—displaced, deceived, or destroyed—by a Hindutva regime more interested in profiteering, propaganda, and power than genuine protection.

On one level, fiery public speeches warn that “Hindus are in danger” or “Hindu Khatre Mein Hai”. On another, policies, financial flows, and legal structures strengthen precisely the actors demonized in such rhetoric. Islamophobia thus operates not primarily as ideology, but as manufactured distraction (through hate and intolerance)—concealing a deeper logic of capital extraction, profit maximization, crony capture, and institutional consolidation.

Anatomy of Betrayal: DHFL and its Crony Capture

The DHFL disaster shows how this game plays out on the ground. Alleged crony tycoon Mr. Piramal, reportedly “cordial” with the ruling dispensation, gained from the opaque insolvency process while ordinary investors and pensioners (mostly Hindus) absorbed the loss. The ideal of Gandhian trusteeship—where wealth is held in trust for society—has been inverted: it becomes the capture of wealth by political insiders and corporate cronies.

The irony is deepened when those very cronies like Mr. Piramal invoke religious imagery, spiritual authority, or Gandhian doctrine to cloak their actions, while simultaneously suppressing dissent through litigation, intimidation, or regulatory pressure. In effect, a spiritual mask is worn to disguise acts of economic expropriation.

Mr. Piramal, widely advertised as a Paramavaishnava and disciple of ISKCON’s Radhanath Swami—a figure whose own associations have sparked controversy—presented a public image of spiritual philanthropy and ethical stewardship. Yet, in the DHFL episode, he allegedly expropriated the life savings of ordinary investors, predominantly Hindu pensioners and middle-class savers, through mechanisms that could arguably constitute financial abuse under United Nations frameworks on economic and social rights. The juxtaposition of his projected Vaishnava ideals with these alleged financial maneuvers underscores the dissonance between philanthropic posturing and structural exploitation.

Dissent Silenced: Internal Resistance and Martyrs

Beyond economic betrayal and corporate cronyism, one finds a darker underside—the silencing of dissent within the so-called “Hindu” society itself. Over the past decades, a series of “accidental deaths” and suspicious disappearances of Hindu monks, activists, and environmental defenders has cast a long shadow. Many of these figures were not “anti-Hindu,” but ascetics and reformers deeply rooted in “Hindu” traditions, whose voices challenged the vote-bank oriented commodification of sacred sites, rivers, and forests.

The cases are telling. Mahatma Gandhi, who thought of religion as a pursuit of truth through non-violence, was assassinated in 1948 by Nathuram Godse, a Hindutva ideologue—marking the first great betrayal of Hindu values by Hindutva politics. Decades later, Baba Lal Das, the former chief priest of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple, was murdered in his village in 1993 after openly opposing the nationalization of the Ayodhya dispute and advocating for local, peaceful settlement. Swami Nigamanand Saraswati died in June 2011 after a 115-day fast protesting illegal sand mining along the Ganga, while Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand (G.D. Agrawal) died in October 2018 after a 111-day hunger strike demanding action to save the Ganga from pollution and damming—both ignored until their deaths. Anil Madhav Dave, Union Environment Minister, died suddenly in 2017, just after participating in a controversial meeting on GM crops; colleagues called for a judicial inquiry into the suspicious timing. In Palghar, Kalpavriksha Giri and Sushil Giri, along with their driver Nilesh Telgane, were lynched in 2020, their deaths later politicized but never satisfactorily addressed. In Uttar Pradesh alone, reports suggest that over 42 sadhus were murdered between 2017 and 2021, including the high-profile case of Mahant Narendra Giri, head of the Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad, found dead under mysterious circumstances.

These figures, whether eco-activists, reformist priests, or ascetics, represent a strand of the umbrella of “Hinduism” (an exonym) that affirms ecological balance, spiritual pluralism, and resistance to commodification. Their suppression—through neglect, marginalization, or outright elimination—highlights a stark divide. What is usually de-sign-ated as “Hinduism”, as lived, is plural and polylogical, encompassing diverse sects, lineages, and ecological ethics. Ethnographic Hindutva, by contrast, is a homogenizing political project that imposes boundaries, enforces hierarchies, and weaponizes the Hindu identity for profit and power. Where the roots of what is called as “Hinduism” nurtures ecological reverence and internal critique, Hindutva devours its own dissenters—producing a grim lineage of martyrs whose deaths expose the violence concealed behind the saffron mask.

The Real Agenda: Market Fundamentalism Beneath the Saffron Mask

The evidence across economic catastrophes like DHFL, foreign policy contradictions, the suspicious silencing of dissenters, and the suppression of spiritual-ecological voices reveals a consistent pattern: Hindutva thrives on generating fear and division, but its operative core is economic. Religion is the saffron flag, while market fundamentalism is the hidden engine. By weaponizing communal anxieties, Hindutva manufactures distraction—projecting Muslims, Christians, or “anti-nationals” as enemies—while concealing the internal betrayals that dispossess Hindus themselves.

Under this regime, wealth flows upward to oligarchic corporates, public institutions are hollowed out, and the commons are privatized. Hindu investors lose their savings in scams like DHFL; Hindu taxpayers subsidize contradictory foreign policies, including aid to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan; Hindu ascetics and activists who defend rivers, forests, or temples against commodification are marginalized, silenced, or even eliminated. Even sacred traditions—whether the ecology of the Ganga or the spiritual autonomy of Kedarnath priests—are subordinated to the market logic of “development,” “beautification,” and infrastructure-for-profit.

This trajectory exposes the inner contradiction of Hindutva: while it claims to defend Hindu interests, it steadily erodes Hindu livelihoods, heritages, and ecological foundations. The invocation of “Hindu khatre mein hai” thus operates as a simulated political theatre—a narrative of permanent crisis used to justify neoliberal extraction and crony capture.

It must be underscored that this critique promotes no religion and demotes no religion. The issue is neither Hinduism nor Islam, but the cynical instrumentalization of religious identity as a veil for authoritarian governance, market fundamentalism, and private capital’s domination over public life. Hindutva, far from protecting Hindus, functions as a mask for the dispossession of Hindus themselves.

Conclusion: Hindus Against Hindutva

The narrative that Hindutva protects Hindus collapses under scrutiny. The DHFL scam, the contradictory foreign aid, the funding paradoxes, the suppression of dissent, and the erasure of internal resistance all point to one stark conclusion: Hindutva has endangered Hindus—not from without, but from within.

If history writes honestly, it will note: Hindus were not betrayed by outsiders but in the name of Hindutva itself. And in doing so, it revealed itself not as a protector of Hindu interests, but as their worst internal threat.

Hindus Against Hindutva is not a slogan of division—it is a call for survival, clarity, and resistance. Do not allow the BJP and its crony allies to distract you or sedate you with Islamophobia and manufactured communal fears; the real question transcends identity politics and concerns the survival of human communities, the protection of livelihoods, ecological balance, and the integrity of public institutions. This is a struggle not against fellow citizens of different faiths, but against the internal forces that, under the guise of religious protection, dispossess, endanger, and exploit the very people they claim to defend.

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