the-roots-of-hindu-nationalism-in-india

Rationalism versus religious dogma as a driver of mobilisation and conflict.
The film opens with the constitutional duty of every Indian citizen to promote scientific temper, then follows Narendra Dabholkar’s anti-superstition committee as it re-creates godmen’s tricks, from a wire through the tongue to a chain conjured out of the air, under the rule that anyone who performs such miracles is a scoundrel, whoever believes him a fool and whoever does not oppose him a coward. After his murder, crowds answer the question of who will complete his unfinished work with a chant of “We will!” The conflict reaches everyday ritual too: rationalists urge clay Ganesh idols instead of plaster of Paris, while a Sanatan Sanstha appeal calls such opponents anti-religious apostates. Anyone who performs such miracles is a scoundrel 00:08:17

Caste as a structural barrier to equality, from Gandhi and Ambedkar to today.
The narration says Gandhi’s campaign against untouchability, including cleaning latrines himself, and the 1932 Poona Pact with Ambedkar, which first secured reservations for Dalits, made orthodox upper castes furious. In the present, Govind Pansare runs a support centre for inter-caste and inter-religious marriages in Kolhapur, Dalits at a rally in Gujarat vow never again to clean gutters or dispose of animal carcasses, and the film follows Rohith Vemula, a Dalit PhD scholar whose group, a fellow student says, was socially boycotted by a new vice chancellor before Rohith took his own life. His mother Radhika Vemula and her son then take Ambedkar’s 22 vows and embrace Buddhism, while student speakers invoke Ambedkar’s call for social, not only political, democracy. The 1932 Poona Pact and the upper-caste backlash 00:12:39

How assassinations and intimidation shape public debate and civic courage.
Dabholkar is shot on his morning walk by two assailants on a motorcycle, and a reporter later presses the Kolhapur police on the same pattern in Pansare’s killing, with no arrests three months on; the narration says police suspected Hindu organisations and that Sanatan Sanstha is implicated in the investigations, which a Sanatan supporter dismisses as charges without concrete evidence. Dabholkar’s widow recalls how shouting a slogan with the crowd outside her door gave her a profound sense of fearlessness, even as a man on camera asks why no one broke the director’s bones after a protest. The film closes on journalist Gauri Lankesh, shot dead in Bengaluru by unknown assailants after constant threats, and on crowds chanting that they are all Gauri. Morning walks, two men on a motorcycle, and no arrests 00:17:38

From colonial-era organisation-building to contemporary majoritarian politics.
A brisk prologue runs from the 1857 rebellion and British divide and rule through the founding of the Congress in 1885 to the Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, which the narration argues all backed the British during the 1942 Quit India Movement and held that Hindus and Muslims could not coexist in a secular nation. Late in the film, the narration traces Savarkar from mercy petitions in Andaman Jail to the idea of Hindutva and the trial over Gandhi’s assassination, in which it says he was acquitted on technical grounds while his disciples Godse and Apte were hanged. It then shows his revival: a portrait installed in Parliament in 2003, BJP president Amit Shah as chief guest at a Savarkar event, and a Savarkar memorial where visitors learn to shoot. Savarkar's mercy petitions and the idea of Hindutva 01:33:52