Starting after the 10th century and particularly after the 12th-century Islamic invasion, states
Sheldon Pollock, the political response fused with the Indic religious culture and doctrines. Temples dedicated to deity
Rama were built from north to south India, and textual records as well as hagiographic inscriptions began comparing the Hindu epic of
Ramayana to regional kings and their response to Islamic attacks. The
Yadava king of
Devagiri named
Ramacandra, for example states Pollock, is described in a 13th-century record as, "How is this Rama to be described.. who freed
Varanasi from the
mleccha (barbarian, Turk Muslim) horde, and built there a golden temple of Sarngadhara". Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya has questioned the Pollock theory and presented textual and inscriptional evidence. This emergence of religious with political terminology began with the first Muslim invasion of Sindh in the 8th century CE, and intensified 13th century onwards. The 14th-century Sanskrit text,
Madhuravijayam, a memoir written by
Gangadevi, the wife of Vijayanagara prince, for example describes the consequences of war using religious terms, The Kali age now deserves deepest congratulations for being at the zenith of its power, gone is the sacred learning, hidden is refinement, hushed is the voice of
Dharma. The historiographic writings in Telugu language from the 13th- and 14th-century
Kakatiya dynasty period presents a similar "alien other (Turk)" and "self-identity (Hindu)" contrast. Chattopadhyaya, and other scholars, state that the military and political campaign during the medieval era wars in Deccan peninsula of India, and in the north India, were no longer a quest for sovereignty, they embodied a political and religious animosity against the "otherness of Islam", and this began the historical process of Hindu identity formation.
Hindu identity amidst other Indian religions Scholars state that Hindu, Buddhist and Jain identities are retrospectively-introduced modern constructions. and their collective identities were "multiple, layered and fuzzy". Even among Hinduism denominations such as Shaivism and Vaishnavism, the Hindu identities, states Leslie Orr, lacked "firm definitions and clear boundaries". Beyond India, on Java island of
Indonesia, historical records attest to marriages between Hindus and Buddhists, medieval era temple architecture and sculptures that simultaneously incorporate Hindu and Buddhist themes, where Hinduism and Buddhism merged and functioned as "two separate paths within one overall system", according to Ann Kenney and other scholars. Similarly, there is an organic relation of Sikhs to Hindus, states Zaehner, both in religious thought and their communities, and virtually all Sikhs' ancestors were Hindus. Julius Lipner states that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs is a modern phenomena, but one that is a convenient abstraction. Distinguishing Indian traditions is a fairly recent practice, states Lipner, and is the result of "not only Western preconceptions about the nature of religion in general and of religion in India in particular, but also with the political awareness that has arisen in India" in its people and a result of Western influence during its colonial history. This sacred geography and Shaiva temples with same iconography, shared themes, motifs and embedded legends are found across India, from the
Himalayas to hills of South India, from
Ellora Caves to
Varanasi by about the middle of 1st millennium. Shakti temples, dated to a few centuries later, are verifiable across the subcontinent. Varanasi as a sacred pilgrimage site is documented in the
Varanasimahatmya text embedded inside the
Skanda Purana, and the oldest versions of this text are dated to 6th to 8th-century CE. According to Fleming, those who question whether the term Hindu and Hinduism are a modern construction in a religious context present their arguments based on some texts that have survived into the modern era, either of Islamic courts or of literature published by Western missionaries or colonial-era Indologists aiming for a reasonable construction of history. However, the existence of non-textual evidence such as cave temples separated by thousands of kilometers, as well as lists of medieval era pilgrimage sites, is evidence of a shared sacred geography and existence of a community that was self-aware of shared religious premises and landscape. According to
Diana L. Eck and other Indologists such as André Wink, Muslim invaders were aware of Hindu sacred geography such as Mathura, Ujjain, and Varanasi by the 11th century. These sites became a target of their serial attacks in the centuries that followed.
Hindu persecution The Hindus have been persecuted during the medieval and modern era. The medieval persecution included waves of plunder, killing, destruction of temples and enslavement by Turk-Mongol Muslim armies from central Asia. This is documented in Islamic literature such as those relating to 8th century
Muhammad bin-Qasim, 11th century
Mahmud of Ghazni, the Persian traveler Al Biruni, the 14th century Islamic army invasion led by Timur, and various Sunni Islamic rulers of the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire. and occasional severe persecution such as under
Aurangzeb, who destroyed temples, forcibly converted non-Muslims to Islam and banned the celebration of Hindu festivals such as
Holi and
Diwali. Other recorded persecution of Hindus include those under the reign of 18th century
Tipu Sultan in south India, and during the colonial era. In the modern era, religious persecution of Hindus have been reported outside India in
Pakistan,
Afghanistan,
Bangladesh,
Sri Lanka, and
Myanmar.
Hindu nationalism Christophe Jaffrelot states that modern
Hindu nationalism was born in
Maharashtra, in the 1920s, as a reaction to the Islamic
Khilafat Movement wherein Indian Muslims championed and took the cause of the Turkish Ottoman sultan as the Caliph of all Muslims, at the end of the
World War I. Hindus viewed this development as one of divided loyalties of Indian Muslim population, of pan-Islamic hegemony, and questioned whether Indian Muslims were a part of an inclusive anti-colonial Indian nationalism. Chris Bayly traces the roots of Hindu nationalism to the Hindu identity and political independence achieved by the
Maratha confederacy, that overthrew the Islamic
Mughal empire in large parts of India, allowing Hindus the freedom to pursue any of their diverse religious beliefs and restored Hindu holy places such as Varanasi. A few scholars view Hindu mobilisation and consequent nationalism to have emerged in the 19th century as a response to
British colonialism by Indian nationalists and
neo-Hinduism gurus. Jaffrelot states that the efforts of Christian missionaries and Islamic proselytizers, during the British colonial era, each of whom tried to gain new converts to their own religion, by stereotyping and stigmatising Hindus to an identity of being inferior and superstitious, contributed to Hindus re-asserting their spiritual heritage and counter cross examining Islam and Christianity, forming organisations such as the
Hindu Sabhas (Hindu associations), and ultimately a Hindu-identity driven nationalism in the 1920s. The colonial era Hindu revivalism and mobilisation, along with Hindu nationalism, states Peter van der Veer, was primarily a reaction to and competition with Muslim separatism and Muslim nationalism. In the 20th century, the sense of religious nationalism grew in India, states van der Veer, but only Muslim nationalism succeeded with the formation of the West and East Pakistan (later split into Pakistan and Bangladesh), as "an Islamic state" upon independence. Religious riots and social trauma followed as millions of Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs moved out of the newly created Islamic states and resettled into the Hindu-majority post-British India. After the separation of India and Pakistan in 1947, the Hindu nationalism movement developed the concept of
Hindutva in second half of the 20th century. The
Hindu nationalism movement has sought to reform Indian laws, that critics say attempts to impose Hindu values on India's Islamic minority. Gerald Larson states, for example, that Hindu nationalists have sought a uniform civil code, where all citizens are subject to the same laws, everyone has equal civil rights, and individual rights do not depend on the individual's religion. In contrast, opponents of Hindu nationalists remark that eliminating religious law from India poses a threat to the cultural identity and religious rights of Muslims, and people of Islamic faith have a constitutional right to Islamic
shariah-based personal laws. A specific law, contentious between Hindu nationalists and their opponents in India, relates to the legal age of marriage for girls. Hindu nationalism in India, states Katharine Adeney, is a controversial political subject, with no consensus about what it means or implies in terms of the form of government and religious rights of the minorities. == Demographics ==