"Hindus" are those whose religion is indigenous to India (recently also termed "Indian religionists"). This includes Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs, as well as those who are usually accounted as Hindus.
Hindus have been historically oppressed in their own land by invading forces like the Muslims and the Christians.
Hindutva advances a strong critique of secularism as it is practiced in India, which it dubs pseudo-secularism, because of different standards for Hindus, Muslims and Christians. It rebels against what it sees as an impossible and spurious attempt to create a 'separate-but-equal' system; some even see it as the Indian National Congress party's effort to woo the sizeable minority vote bank at the expense of true equality. The subject of a Uniform Civil Code, which would remove special religiously based provisions for Muslims and Christians from the Indian Constitution, is thus one of the main political planks of Hindutva. Followers contend that in a seculardemocracy it makes little sense to allow Muslims, for example, to marry more than once, but to prosecute Hindus for doing the same. Muslims are also funded for the Hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca, while Hindus are accorded no similar privilege for their own pilgrimages. Christians are also given separate standards for divorce. Furthermore the amendment of the Indian constitution to overturn a Supreme Court judgment under pressure from the Islamic fundamentalists incensed the Hindutva supporters. The amended laws, more in tune with the Shariat, took away whatever rights divorced Muslim women previously had.
Supporters of the separate laws contend that that the Civil Code was fragmented to accommodate the considerable ethnic and religiousdiversity of the Indian people whereas many Hindutvadis and non-Hindutvadis alike contend that the separate codes based on religion further exacerbate disunity among India's major religious creeds. The questions of whether certain citizens, based on cultural background, should be given monetary and civil advantages and how secularism is truly created in governance are contentious issues in India, especially when India's brand is compared to that found, for example, in the United States. In the case of comparable African-American civil rights the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately slammed the idea that a 'separate-but-equal' system was viable and that the means to achieve equality was to expunge race as a criterion for a citizens' rights.
