Islamophobia in India: The Orientalist Reformulation of Tipu Sultan— The Tiger of Mysore

Abstract

Islamophobia in India, with the coming to power of BJP, a Hindutva (Indian nationalist) party, is on the increase. To understand Islamophobia in India, the approach in this article diverts from studies that focus on empirical data of incidence and discriminatory legislation to the construct of the figure of the Muslim as the Other. My approach focuses on Hindutvaism and the British Orientalist construction of the 18th-century figure of Tipu Sultan as a signifier in the marking of Muslims as the Other. British Orientalists during colonialism and Hindutvaism in post-colonial India both construct Tipu as the figure of the Muslim. This brings the Orientalist discursive practice, which constructed the figure of Muslim as an obstruction to imperial British national imagination, in dialogue with the Hindutva Islamophobic narrative. To show that the Hindutva construction of the figure of Muslim has echoes of Orientalism, I adopt a decolonial approach of “coloniality,” as a continuation of Westerncentric global political dominance, and “colonial situation,” as the perpetuation of discrimination against a marked identity in post-colonial nations. Contrasting the construction of Tipu in Orientalism and Hindutvaism situates Islamophobia as a repertoire of problematizing the figure of the Muslim in Orientalism. The approach challenges the view that the colonialist discursive practice that marked Muslims as Other is the preserve of Orientalism, highlighting the influence of Orientalism, as a way of thinking, in post-colonial nations and the unfinished business of decolonisation.