Savarkar defined Indianness as sacred land of our gods to exclude universal patriots

Evidence

Savarkar moved restlessly from the faith and ritual of Hindus to an essential cultural core that would, hopefully, be common to all Indian patriots. He wanted to marginalize philosophical-mystical-devotional resources of Hinduism, its quietistic and intellectual aspects, as no more than individual quirks that were of little importance to the people as a whole. With what would he replace them? He initiated a two-way process. India becomes the sacred geography of Hindus, while the Hindu faith is overwritten by Indian nationalism. In a penultimate move, he defined both Hindutva and Indianness as an inherited affiliation to the land, a patrimonial inheritance: land of our fathers, land of our action – pitribhu, karmabhu. This, however, would render Hindutva wide open to all who have lived and worked in India. In a final masterstroke, he avoided that peril by making it the land of our gods – punyabhu – and, consequently, of those alone whose places of worship are restricted within its territorial boundaries. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1240

Categorization

• XREF: Key definitional move for the reader’s MOC thread: pitribhu/karmabhu (open to all who lived there) vs punyabhu (restricted to those whose gods’ places of worship sit within territorial borders) is the precise mechanism by which sacralizing territory racializes religion. Directly parallels chapter-1’s theme. — connects to: Hindutva defines Indian citizenship by religion-of-origin within sacred territory — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1158; Savarkar defined Indian identity through both fatherland and holy land being India; RSS founder Savarkar defined Hindu identity as seeing India as holy land — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 399 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Explains the punyabhu concept: making India the land only of those whose worship is territorially contained — a precise grammar of religion-as-racial-marker.

Broader Connections

• Savarkar defined Indian identity through both fatherland and holy land being India #expands (0.95)
• RSS founder Savarkar defined Hindu identity as seeing India as holy land #contradicts (0.90) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 399
• Hindutva reframed Hinduism as a political identity mandating Muslim exclusion from India #corroborates (0.85)