Cultural Mechanics of Fundamentalism: Religion as Ideology, Divided Identities and Violence in Post-Gandhi India

Abstract

This study analyses the history of Hindu fundamentalism up to the present time, as it developed since India’s independence. In the course of its rise, Hindutva destroyed the Gandhian symbolism of non-violence, reinterpreted cultural symbols to become political signs and prepared the ground for communal violence. Secularists and the religious out-group, Muslims, became targeted as enemies. During the resulting Hindu ethnic dominance, religion was converted from a faith into an ideology. The sequence of events in the development of this movement repeats the common scheme of a religious fundamentalist movement that serves the nationalist goals of political leaders. It is argued that such groups cannot reasonably be conceptualized in terms of an individual psychology or personality, that is, a trait, but as a cultural movement that unites people sharing membership of a social class, that is, a sociocultural state. Such movements, in contrast to Abrahamic religious fundamentalisms, do not form well-established stable groups over time, but are more like a waxing and waning political movement where membership is determined by social class and ethnic identity. Their politics trigger a heightened awareness of ethnic identity, prime a religiously ideological mindset and, as a consequence, release communal violence.