Bengal's past and present: Hindu nationalist contestations of history and regional identity

Abstract

This paper examines the deployment and symbolic appropriation of popular history and nationalist iconography within the campaigns and discourse of Hindu nationalist organisations in India. It examines how Hindu nationalists have deployed these themes over several decades in the east Indian state of West Bengal. This paper notes that the Hindu nationalist attempt to re-construct popular history and regional identity was contested. Specifically, it considers the political response of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the pre-eminent leftist party in India, within the public sphere at a national and regional level. In so doing, the paper attempts to delineate the varied ways in which the Hindu nationalist deployment of iconic figures from the past are simultaneously articulated and, paradoxically, anomalous, to the regional specificity of political culture and the social construction of historical memory and identity.