The Many Faces of Hindutva

Contemporary South Asia, 2018

The start of this century has seen Hindu nationalism emerge as a more dominant political force than ever before. Hindutva is also evolving and shifting in new, surprising, and significant ways, requiring us to reassess and reframe prevailing understandings. This special issue seeks to identify and understand the ways in which Hindu nationalism increasingly permeates into new spaces: organisational, territorial, conceptual, rhetorical. It develops and expands on the idea of ‘neo-Hindutva’:‘idiosyncratic expressions of Hindu nationalism which operate outside [or on the peripheries] of the institutional and ideological framework of the Sangh Parivar’ (Anderson 2015). The scope of the articles reflects the diversity of contemporary Hindutva, covering a wide range of topics and places in which we can locate new forms of Hindu nationalism: courts of law, the Northeast, the diaspora, Adivasi communities, and the internet. The special issue also includes an in-depth interview with Christophe Jaffrelot and a postscript by Deepa Reddy. These interventions go some way to helping us make sense of contemporary Hindutva, which appears simultaneously brazen but concealed, nebulous and mainstreamed, militant yet normalised.

Southeastern Political Review, 1998

This paper examines the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India within the context of nationalist par@ politics in the sub-continent. This paper analyzes the environment within which the Hindu nationalist message was and is currently being formulated; the organizational structure of the movement; and the symbols and strategies that have helped to popularize the message on Hindutva in recent years. The paper concludes with an analysis of the popular response to Hindutva and the problems facing the BJP and its parent organizations in cartying out the program toward a revolutionized Hindu rashtra. The aim is to provide an understanding of the historical and political forces at work in the recent anti-Muslim violence in India.

KIIR, 2023

The historical relationship between Hindus and Muslims has often been marked by animosity and strain. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has embraced Neo-Hindutva, an ideology rooted in Hinduism, with policies that lean towards populism rather than pluralism. Modi's nationalist approach, aligned with the Hindu nationalist movement, has raised concerns about its potential impact on international relations. The escalating ethno-nationalism advocated by certain factions within Hinduism raises significant risks about aggression, violence, and the potential for both intrastate and global conflicts, thereby endangering Hinduism itself and exacerbating hostilities among religious communities. The manifestation of violence only serves to deepen existing tensions, further jeopardizing the prospects of peaceful coexistence. This radicalism's capacity to transcend borders poses a grave threat to regional and global peace, potentially ushering in a new cycle of violence accompanied by severe humanitarian crises.

2016

Nationalism suggests that the majority community gains the upper hand in setting the nationalist and patriotic agenda while expecting compliance from the minority groups. In India, Hindu nationalism, also known as Hindutva, seeks to establish a Hindu India (Hindu Rashtra) that visualizes a Hindu-self‖ and the minority (Muslim & Christian) ‗‗other.'' Hindutva is an ideology propagated by the Hindu rightwing elements that aspire to establish India as a Hindu state by uniting the Hindus who are divided along the lines of caste, class, language and other differences. Hindutva is on the ascendance in India in the last 25 years. What strategies and tactics have the adherents of this chauvinistic, sectarian movement employed in order to gain an ideological, cultural, organizational and political foothold in a caste-ridden, multi-religious, multi-linguistic, secular, pluralist and democratic society dependent on coalition politics? This research is an attempt to understand the various facets of Hindutva in India, where violence has become central to India's socio-political order. It will investigate the multiple ways in which the discourses of nationalism, the self and the other, social unity, insecurity, identity, gender and violence manifest in the society. The origins of Hindu nationalism in the socio-political mainstream can be traced back to the pre-independence era struggle. However, in the last two decades or so, the Hindu nationalist movement in India has become a dominant cultural and political movement that on the surface presents itself as v an inclusive and pro-development establishment, but at the core seeks to sustain Hindu upper-class hegemony in a nation with heterogeneous identities not only within the Hindu community but with other minorities such as Muslims, Christians and Sikhs. This project takes the form of an academic essay that relies on secondary sources but also use primary sources. In it, I discuss Hindutva through the various definitions of nationalism and the ways in which majority and minority communities are imagined in a nation-state. This essay assumes a framework in which majoritarian discourse self assigns to one people the authority of the-self‖ and views minorities as the-other.‖ I will examine how the national, religious and cultural symbols are used to mobilize the public opinion and consolidate the self behind a certain agenda where myths form an important factor in the theory and practices of Hindutva establishment. Within this framework, any drive to homogenize the society will result in creating a stigmatized other, whose loyalty is always questioned. This research is a qualitative study with historical orientation, complimented by anthropological, sociological and political science dimensions. It is an attempt to understand the ideology, history, discourse, religion, culture and politics in shaping perceptions about the Self and the other. It focuses on the formative assertions, challenges in its imagination of Hindu vi collective, its discourse on the threatening other and how violence against the other is normalized which requires examining its fascist roots.

Economic and Political Weekly, 2023

Book Review Saffron Republic: Hindu Nationalism and State Power in India edited by Thomas Blom Hansen and Srirupa Roy, Cambridge University Press, 2022; pp Xii + 318, `1,295 (hardback).

Religion, State and Society, 2021

This contribution, in answer to the question posed in this collection 'right-wing nationalism, populism, and religion: what are the connections and why?', attempts to account for the development of Hindu nationalism in India as articulated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Hindu nationalism represents a fusion of conservative right-wing nationalism and religion, which has proved highly successful at the ballot box. It aims at the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra or state. Central to Hindu nationalism is the idea of Hindutva, which interpellates all Indians as belonging to a Hindu civilisation based on a common pan-Indian Hindu national identity. Muslims occupy the position of a 'constitutive outside' enabling the construction of a Hindu Rashtra; they remain 'enemies' to be either excluded or assimilated to a Hindu national culture. Consequently, they remain targets of government legislation. This will be illustrated with reference to the recent abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir, the building of a temple to the Hindu God Ram in Ayodhya, the Citizen Amendment Act, and the government of India's responses to COVID-19. India under Modi, it concludes, is on the way to becoming a Hindu Rashtra.

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2018

In the 2016 US Presidential election, a small but vocal group of Hindu supporters of Donald Trump drew international media attention in India and the US for their political mobilizing for the Republican candidate. In this paper, I examine the political campaigns of "Hindus for Trump" and its affiliated groups to analyse the diverse ways in which these diasporic activists engage in and advance a number of distinct nationalist projects simultaneously. Tracing links between the "Hindus for Trump" platform, Hindutva ideology that seeks to redefine India as a Hindu nation, and the racist "alt-right" movement that forms the political base for President Trump in the US, I argue these diasporic activists enact a synergetic nationalism that has productive effects in both "home" and "host" countries. The result is the perfection of Hindutva on the global stage through the very activities that legitimize the isolationist xenophobia associated with the Trump administration.

Convergence to Praxis, Once in a Blue Moon Academia, 2022

2022. License: CC by 4.0; In the course of confronting members of the Hindutvavadins’ ruling party in India, we have faced a great problem while conversing with the members of the Sangh Parivar. We were confused with a paradox: The Hindutvavadins do not know what Hindutva is. What are the distinctive features of the Hindutva as preached by the sangh parivar? This question has haunted us as there are many contradictory features within the exonym (the naming of other community by another other) The ruling party is trying to impose a phantasmic Hindutvavada as a legally codified ruling ideology for governing the nation state of India. It is needless to say that India is nothing more than a geo-political entity with variations or diversities. To legalize all these heterogeneities under one umbrella of “Hindutva” is a difficult task to pursue. Especially, in terms of the legal codification of Hindutva, i.e., it is a cherished (as indoctrinated by Hindutvavadins) yet impossible uniformity when it comes to the decision-making of the lawmakers. This book is an attempt to provide the counter-cultural tool to evolve an art of resistance against the all-pervading Saffron Fascism by exposing its inner contradictions across different modules such as caste, gender, food habits, regionalism, property distribution etc.

International journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR)Review, 2023

India is one of the biggest democratic countries in the world in terms of population, geography and multi-party system in governance. The secular nature of the country keeps united all the citizens of India irrespective of their religious differences. The sovereignty of this country rests in its republic with a constitution that binds all as Indians. But in the resent past after the Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, the secular fabric of India is being distorted. The age old Congress party that stood for secularism is made redundant when the right wing political party (BJP) started asserting its hegemony with its political philosophy of Hindutva. The majority of Indian population though consists of Hindus, the Hindutva ideology is disdained and remains unsavoury. This research article deals with the essence of Hinduism and how the distorted image of Hinduism is projected by Hindutva forces to create a make-believe situation where the secular nature of India is targeted to form one nation, one culture and one people. The unsavoury Hindutva politics indeed undermines democracy and secularism in India.

Journal of People's Studies, 2016

Rohith Vemula's death is not just an institutional murder; rather it is the systemic stratagem of a deadly design. His death has raised eyebrows of the entire world, as it is the continuum of the Hindutva assault on Dalit assertion. In many ways the radical Dalit politics espoused by groups like the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) is diametrically opposite to that of Hindutva. Nothing else punctures the pompous claims about Hindu civilisation, culture and rashtra, as effectively as the radical Dalit politics. Ever since Phule-Ambedkar discourse, the radical Dalits have pointedly questioned the very existence of a Hindu society, culture and civilisation. Examining it from the Dalit-Adivasi viewpoint is crucial since it would unfold the dynamics of the social, religious and politics of communal fascism to the lowest level. In a broader perspective, communalism of polity is preliminary to fascism of polity. In today's context what is going on in India it is not mere communalism of polity, rather it is the politics of fascism under the Hindutva brigade married to the corporate capital. Thus in this paper I engage with a critical outlook of the very political ideology and how would it matter to the Dalits and Adivasis (or Indigenous people). I also engage with the questions of how caste fascism is the political theology of domination? What is the Indian perspective to understand the fascism of caste? What was the ideological upsurge of Hindutva? How did it domineered all aspects of indigenous life?