Recently, Professor Partha S. Ghosh penned an insightful article in The Wire, examining the roots of Hindu nationalism in the political aspirations of the 19th-century Bhadralok. One must, however, exercise caution before conflating Hindutva as an ideology with a broader and more generic form of Hindu communalism rooted in Bengal.Critiques of Hindutva often understate its visible caste and regional roots, thereby allowing it to be framed as a broader Hindu movement than it actually is. This has helped reinforce the claims that Hindutva is an ideology and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as an organisation that represents the interests of all Hindus. Hindu communalism and Hindutva: A necessary distinctionHindu communalism has historically been a heterogeneous phenomenon, shaped by regional, social, and economic contexts. Hindutva, by contrast, represents a specific ideological formation, emerging from early 20th-century Maharashtra and rooted in the political anxieties and aspirations of particular caste and regional networks.Understanding this distinction is critical. Without it, Hindutva is misrepresented as a natural or inevitable expression of all Hindu societies, rather than a historically contingent project that achieved caste dominance through organisation, narrative control, and political consolidation.Hindu communalism did not originate as a unified national ideology. It developed through distinct regional strands, each shaped by its own socio-political conditions.Bengal: Bhadralok communalismIn Bengal, communal mobilisation was closely tied to the political interests and social anxieties of the minuscule but highly educated Bhadralok elite. Operating in a demographic context where Muslims and marginalized Hindu caste groups formed a majority, segments of this elite deployed communal narratives as instruments of political consolidation. It served to counter the influence of the Muslim landed and professional classes, while simultaneously containing the political aspirations of Namasudras and other marginalized caste groups.These narratives often appropriated histories from regions like Punjab and Rajasthan, reinterpreting Sikh and Rajput pasts within a broader Hindu nationalist framework. However, as it often functioned in the form of bureaucratic and clerical lobbies, it still lacked the organisational and ideological framework to implement Bhadralok politics outside the region. Punjab and United Provinces: Arya Samaj mobilisationAs early as 1907, Denzil Ibbetson described the Arya Samaj as a movement with strong political tendencies, rooted in the shared interests of middle-class Brahmins and urban mercantile castes like Banias and Khatris, which aimed at socially engineering rural landed communities that coexisted as both Hindus and Muslims. Operating in the regions of Haryana, Punjab, western UP and eastern Rajasthan, it was an organised movement unlike the diffused Bhadralok strand.It deployed dual strategies to reshape caste-communal relations such as Shuddhi campaigns, which reframed shared caste identities across religious lines into communal divisions and Kshatriyaisation, which reconfigured caste hierarchies and fostered competition among agrarian groups for a Kshatriya identity. Maharashtra: Hindutva and RSSHowever, Arya Samaj, which was inspired by Protestant missionaries, lacked the ideological zeal and organizational depth required for a modern political movement. This explains why it was politically marginalized by the third strand. Inspired by European fascist philosophy and politics, the ideology of Hindutva was articulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in early 1922, while the RSS was established by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in 1925. Both Savarkar and Hedgewar were Maharashtrian Brahmins.Since 1925, the RSS has had six Sarsanghchalaks, five of whom have been Marathi Brahmins, collectively accounting for roughly 94 years of leadership. The only chief from a non-Marathi, non-Brahmin background had the shortest tenure, barely six years, which is often interpreted as an instance of tokenism rather than a substantive shift in leadership diversity.Also read: The Hindutva Playbook: How Neoliberalism Fuels India’s Slide into FascismThe ideological core of Hindutva has long exhibited a strong identification with the Maratha past, particularly the Peshwa period. Writings associated with Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar and Savarkar reflect a clear nostalgia for Maratha political dominance and a desire to symbolically restore it.In a letter to Sardar Patel, former Prime Minister Rajendra Prasad wrote, “Shri Dwarka Prasad’s statement brings out all this except one point, namely, that it is a Maharashtrian Brahmin movement.” He added that “the real motive of RSS was not Hindu Raj, but a Peshwa Raj”.Many historians such as Richard Barnett, C.A. Bayly, Susan Bayly and Amarjit Singh have also highlighted the intertwined relationship between Hindutva, Brahminism and Maratha history.The rise of BJP governments across North Indian states led experts present Hindutva as a North Indian ideology. Similarly, the rise of a BJP government in Bengal has led to a tendency to find roots of Hindutva in Bengal. However, Hindutva’s history, and its own iconography and motifs challenge these assessments.School syllabus and Bollywood illustrate Hindutva’s historical memoryAlthough Hindutva treats North India as a laboratory, leveraging both communal and caste fault lines amid relatively weak regional identities, it simultaneously flattens and sidelines the region’s complex past, its deep religious pluralism, and its historically intertwined social worlds. Contrary to the Brahminical discourse, the Mughals had embraced the North Indian cultural milieu while their relations with the Rajputs were not homogenous, varying from region to region. The Mughal-Jaipur partnership can be categorised as the golden period of economic prosperity and political stability for much of Northern India. The current discourse on Hindutva’s historical distortions and omissions highlight the erasure of Mughal and Muslim history and contributions. However, it largely ignores the erasure of a four-century long period called ‘Rajput Era’, which included several imperial Rajput dynasties like Pratiharas, Chavdas, Paramaras, Chauhans, Katyuris, Chandelas, Gaharwars that gave India many of its UNESCO heritage sites. On the other hand, under recent revisions of NCERT’s eighth standard history textbooks, Maratha history, largely rooted in the Deccan, has been accorded an expansive 22-page treatment. It is presented as a detailed, often celebratory narrative that foregrounds the military exploits of the Maratha confederacy, particularly under the Peshwas in the eighteenth century.A still from ‘Chhaava’.In parallel, Bollywood has, over the past decade, produced numerous films centered on Peshwa-era and other Maratha figures. Films like Bajirao Mastani (2015) and Panipat (2019) recast Marathas as proto-nationalist heroes, while erasing the complex politics of alliances. Tanhaji (2020) and Chhaava (2025) sharpened this formula, and Riteish Deshmukh’s film Raja Shivaji (2026) continues the same trend. Alongside this cultural turn, Maratha figures, especially Maharashtrian Brahmins are increasingly memorialised through statues, institutions, parks, and public infrastructure across states from Rajasthan to Odisha and Ladakh to Bihar – places where they had no historical significance. The deification of Peshwa-Maratha figures is accompanied by not just vilification of Mughals but also by branding North India’s Hindu rulers as “traitors to the Hindu civilisation” for alliances with the Muslim ‘other’. Such exercises play a major role in socially engineering local perceptions and identity. Also read: Hindutva Has Co-opted The Fraternity That Ambedkar Warned India Could Not Survive WithoutFor instance, an average citizen of Delhi is made to feel ashamed of Delhi’s Mughal past notwithstanding the Mughal contributions towards public welfare but is made to find pride in Maratha figures, who actually plundered it. Similarly, the local people of Jaipur are increasingly made to feel ashamed of Jai Singh – the polymath and able general who founded the city and to view the Mughals from the perspective of Shivaji, who was irrelevant to the city’s history. The role of such narratives that instil shame among Hindus for association with Muslims, have also played a role in the disappearance of syncretic spaces in the North. Hence, it would not be a surprise if the Hindutva machinery starts shaming Bengali Hindus of their syncretic past by citing the medieval Maratha state as the Hindu ideal. While Hindu nationalism first developed within the political context of Bengal’s 19th-century Bhadralok elite, Hindutva emerged later as a distinct ideological project rooted in early 20th-century Maharashtra. Therefore, Hindutva’s rise represents the consolidation of one particular regional and caste-based strand of Hindu nationalism that emerged in Maharashtra and later established ideological dominance across India through cultural influence and political expansion. The rise of BJP in West Bengal should be a matter of concern not just for its Muslim citizens, but for its Hindu citizens too. Adityakrishna Deora is a mechanical engineer and social science enthusiast.