Anxious Hindu Masculinities in Colonial North India: Shuddhi and Sangathan Movements

Abstract

S tudies on masculinity in India have flowered only recently. 1 The study of men is as vital for gender analysis as that of the ruling classes for class analysis. Religious identities particularly have emerged as a critical arena of masculinity studies, including in India. But the privileging of the heterosexual male occurs in a wide range of caste and ethnic groups in South Asia in diverse forms. Significant works have revealed how the male body was constructed in colonial discourse, contrasting the manly British with the effeminate colonial subject. In present-day India, links have been made between the growth of the Hindu Right, assertions of masculinity and violence. However, contemporary articulations of a militant Hindu masculinity and community have historical roots, especially in the colonial period. This article explores the intermeshing of Hindu religious identities, violence, caste, and assertions of masculinities in colonial north India. It does so by particularly focusing on the shuddhi movement (purification; conversion from other religions to Hinduism and reclamation of lower castes into the Hindu caste hierarchy) and the sangathan movement (organization; community defense) in the United Provinces (present-day Uttar Pradesh, henceforth UP), which were launched by the Arya Samaj, an activist Hindu revivalist and reformist movement founded in 1875. In colonial India, manhood emerged as a national preoccupation. Colonialism justified itself through masculine images, and nationalism