“A Majority with a Minority Complex”: Reorientation of Myths and the Making of Hindu Cadres

Abstract

The study of myths, I claim, must consider ways in which discursive formations inscribe subjects in the material contexts of their experiences. Situated within this larger objective, this essay examines the process by which being a member of any one of the diasporic Hindutva organizations in the US now measures as a subscription to a transnational communication network that identifies itself with a conservative religious revivalist movement. In my reading of the pedagogic materials produced by the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangha—a Hindu religious organization based in North America—I analyze the critical communicative role that lessons in history and myth play in inciting diasporic Hindus to embrace religious nationalism. Essentially, I argue how persuasive methodologies are emplaced to conflate historical and mythical events, dislodging them from their secular domains and recasting them as sacred bodies and narratives. Cloaked in moderate to extreme incendiary rhetoric, these newly minted subjects of transcendental faith stand as representatives and vanguards for all Hindu religious values, censoring slightest indications of disagreement. This project observes how a transnational and homogenous Hindu Indian identity is invoked through a striking linguistic reconstruction in which cultural myths are indexed as historical facts and nationalist histories are calibrated to mythical scales.