Revisiting (In)-Security as the Cultural Production of Danger: Nationalism, Xenophobia and the Role of Religious Ideology in the Indian Political Space

Abstract

This article presents an analytical hybrid of realism and critical social constructivism as its theoretical framework and the concept of postcolonial insecurity as an interpretation of politics, to explore the process through which the rise of Hindu nationalism in India may have been utilized by the Indian state, under the recent Hindu Right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, to justify the country's nuclearization. To this extent, I analyse how the ideology of Hindutva, which since its inception has relied on the promotion of hatred towards Islam, has been manipulated by the Hindu government to rebuild India as a Hindu rashtra (nation), and also to utilize a culturally/ideologically constructed Islamic phobia to justify a Pakistan-centric nuclear agenda for India. I argue through the perspective of critical constructivism how the BJP government, despite forwarding a realist logic as a convenient excuse to justify Indian nuclearization, which to a certain extent is valid, has simultaneously utilized Hindutva, a more subjective/intrinsic factor, to legitimize India's nuclear agenda. The theoretical contribution of this study lies in appending realism with critical constructivism, albeit at the margins of the discipline, to study the ongoing nuclear security problematique in India—with broader implications in rereading the role of ideology and security in international relations (IR).