The university as a site of resistance: identity and student politics
Contemporary South Asia, 2021
India is pursued through a remarkable diversity of approaches of its individual activists. The bo... more India is pursued through a remarkable diversity of approaches of its individual activists. The book delineates Hindutva’s arborescent vision of a superficially diverse yet essentially unified Greater India as an approach towards cultural appropriation of the Northeast. This vision is based on a shared history rooted in the ancient holy-land of India whose territory is shaped as per the Hindu ‘epic-puranic’ traditions. This idea propels strategic historical re-narrativization and place-renaming to reclaim the Northeast as part of akhand bharat (undivided India) lost to Western religious, cultural and political influences. This narrative celebrates Hindutva as an indigenous sub-terrain of the preChristian past of the Northeast. Icons of indigenous nationalisms such as Rani Gaidinliu are appropriated for the Hindu-nationalist cause and celebrated as primary signifiers of Hindutva-indigeneity of the collective Northeast. These ideas have paved way for favorable political alliances of th...
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Papers by Monika Batham