ABSTRACT Common understandings of what the far-right is revolve around ideological commitments to nativism, anti-democratic sentiment and authoritarianism. However, the assumption that the far-right is best comprehended through ideological positions is undermined by extensive evidence that within far-right mobilisation ideological commitment is uneven, ambiguous, and sometimes absent. In this paper, we argue that this tension presents a fundamental obstacle for the study of the global far-right. We propose instead that ideology must be analytically decentred in the study of the far-right in favour of a materialist study of far-right networks. Such an approach draws our attention to the vast non-ideologically committed apparatuses required to sustain an ideologically committed core at the centre of far-right networks. Using an archival social network analysis tools, we examine the case of the Australian branch of the transnational Hindu far-right, and show that even organisations that do not demonstrate far-right ideological commitment can be key vectors for the production of far-right legitimacy, the movement of far-right funding, and the advancement of far-right agendas. Accordingly, these ideologically tepid organisations are crucial elements of far-right networks, demonstrating that ideology is an unreliable tool to assess the material expansion and mechanisms of far-right networks.

ABSTRACT In recent years, diasporic hindu right has mobilized discourses of indigeneity to forge solidarities with Indigenous peoples across varying white settler colonial contexts of the U.S, Hawaiʻi, Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. These solidarities are not decolonial but are colonial and casted manifestations of hindu nationalism. Rooted in brahminical supremacy, these solidarities are not only fraudulent but also disavow the lives and struggles of Indigenous peoples globally. These solidarities demonstrate how the hindu right works in insidious ways in the disguise of multiculturalism and liberal anti-racism to co-opt and manipulate anti-colonial and decolonial agendas.

Hindu nationalism operates on a global scale today. Evinced by the transnational networks of the Sangh Parivar and the replication of strategies such as amending textbooks and patriotic rewriting of history, politics and discourse of Hindu nationalism are not solely contained to the territorial boundary of the nation. In this globalized battle for and against Hindu nationalism, the United States of America serves as an important site. In light of this, this article puts together existing scholarship on diasporic Hindu nationalism with late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century deterritorial history of Indian nationalism to present a broader framework for historicizing Indian activism in the US. It argues that while long-distance Hindu nationalism in the US cannot be traced before the 1970s, examining the early experiences of Indian activists in the US offers useful insights with which to evaluate the ongoing battles of Hindu nationalism in the US and opens another field of enquiry: Hindutva’s counterpublic.

ABSTRACT In this paper we offer a critical analysis of the media discourse around an anti-sexual violence comic book, Priya’s Shakti (2013), which tells the story of a victim of gang rape who becomes an unlikely “superhero” in a crusade to end sexual violence. The comic was created by an Indian American filmmaker, Ram Devineni, in response to the horrific gang rape and murder of a young woman in New Delhi in 2012 (the Nirbhaya case). Positioning a rape victim from rural India as a protagonist with power, it was widely applauded as a means of changing the disempowering discourse surrounding victim-survivors of sexual violence. However, we argue, the comic does not actually center Priya’s experience, and instead renders Priya as marginal in her own story. Although the comic is marketed as promoting women’s agency, in media coverage, Devineni is foregrounded as the agent of change. He is positioned as the perfect diasporic masculine saviour, both respectful of traditional culture and adequately progressive, educated, and modernized. The media spectacle of Priya’s Shakti thus participates in a discursive move to replace the “White saviour” with a proxy—the diasporic Hindu masculine saviour—whilst keeping the underlying structures of both Hindu patriarchal power and US imperialism in place.

ABSTRACT Thanatology is defined as the interdisciplinary study of death and dying. Religious beliefs, cultural patterns and insights into the spirit or the non-material aspects of our being form a component of thanatological studies and may be designated as ‘cultural thanatology’. This ethnographic study explores the religious, spiritual and existential concerns of a group of elderly, terminally-ill South African Hindus. Using grounded theory, the in-depth interviews, which provided a rich tapestry of participants’ religious and spiritual values and beliefs in the quest to find meaning in the midst of ‘end-of-life’ despair, were thematically analysed. Participants expressed both spiritual relief and spiritual pain based on their individual cultural constructs of religious beliefs and customs. We found that poorly interpreted or dysfunctional aspects of religious belief contributed to psychological disturbances, and that a frustrated existential quest for meaning manifested itself as spiritual distress. However, although they reflected varying levels of pain and suffering, mentally and physically, coping and acceptance were also prevalent among all the participants of this study.

ABSTRACT This article argues that the notion and functions of a Hindu temple, regardless of its shape and size, often reflect the context and engagement of the diasporic Hindus with their political and social realities. By adopting the notion that a sacred place is a designation and, an argument to be made, I present a case of a temporary two-window container Hindu temple that has been managed for two generations by a family in Penang, Malaysia. The authorities initially demolished the temple, and the family subsequently used a two-window container as a temporary place of worship. This case study demonstrates how the family argued and maintained its viability, relevance and religious significance as a sacred place through hosting a Deepavali open house celebration as a political event and organising the Navratri festival as a religious emplacement. Ethnographic data in this article were derived from in-depth interviews, informal conversations and field observations.

The Ganesh festival, or utsav, is relatively new to Trinidad’s landscape as a public performance of Hinduism. Although it has been a very important celebration for over a century within select diasporic Hindu communities in Trinidad, particularly in the southern part of the island where it is said to have begun, the practice has become more widespread since the early 1990s. Many of the villages make their own mūrtis (idols or images). Focusing on the festival’s interpretation within the Caribbean context, this article highlights preliminary findings gathered from fieldwork on the ritual art of mūrti-making and the function of the image within the Hindu festival in Trinidad.

ABSTRACTOver the past two decades, with the explosion of all things yoga, Hindu imagery has become part of an “Indo-chic” marketing trend, which has seen the mass production of henna, bindis, yoga mats, and “sari-esque” merchandise for Western consumption. Lunch boxes, nightlights, and T-shirts with the likeness of Hindu gods are popular sellers. While the appearance of these products is somewhat problematic due to their decontextualized nature, these commodities are not considered inherently disrespectful to the Hindu community. It is the emergence of Hindu imagery on other types of products—objects considered polluting in certain Hindu contexts—that has been significantly more disconcerting. This essay highlights the connection between an asserted globalized Hindu community and Hindu imagery. It further explores how Hindu images are signified through the discourse of protest generated by diasporic Hindus in reaction to the representations of gods and goddesses on commodities—in the North American, European, and Australian context—that are deemed ritually impure. By examining the discourse of protest and the consequent apologies issued by the offending companies, this essay argues that new rituals and regulations for the appropriate usage and placement of divine Hindu images and symbols are established.

The idea of ‘youth’ has emerged as a particularly central, and contested, issue within the shifting cultural politics of diasporic Hinduism. Familiar and longstanding questions about immigration and cultural/religious transmission are transforming into newly articulated political concerns and discourses. This discussion examines some of the ways in which the idea of youth has been invoked and mobilized by different diasporic public Hindu voices, especially in the American context. I examine, for instance, how ‘youth’ has come to preoccupy the protracted debates over academic representations of Hinduism, the public advocacy of newer organizations such as the Hindu American Foundation, as well as American Hindu endorsements of the post-9/11 war on terror. Hindu youth figures centrally here, often wrapped up with intensifying discourses of threat and vulnerability, with the fate and nature of youth emerging as key concerns in the politics of culture, identity, security, and representation.

Globalisation and post-colonialism have created new religio-cultural geographies and articulations in many countries. Many aspects of Hindu religion have been transnationally stretched and (re)enacted within new migrant and diasporic spaces, in turn reshaping and somewhat changing how ritual and religious enactments come to be enunciated. This article focuses on the yajna as a plastic and symbolic resource that is enacted in a transnational context and within new idioms and vocabularies of religious expression. The article engages with Lubin’s (2001) thesis that the ‘public’ and visible aspect of yajna functions as a civic ‘spectacle’ and probes the performance element of this so-called ‘spectacle’, and looks at how it becomes re-ritualised and re-enacted to fit the contemporary needs of transnational and diasporic Hindu communities.

The interpretive research in this article goes beyond considering how diasporic consumers cross borders between home and host cultures, to examine how they cross boundaries within their home culture. In keeping with ethno-consumerism, the authors utilize Hindu meaning categories of sacredness, purity, and auspiciousness to examine the wedding ritual among diasporic Hindus. The authors unpack the transformation of outsider fiancées into insider daughters to show how gold is employed to separate, link, and cross boundaries in extended families. This article demonstrates the agency of the relationships between the gold and its givers, in collectively co-creating an aesthetic subject who is a visual representation of a daughter embedded into the collective self of the extended family. In doing so, the authors demonstrate how diasporic Hindus utilize the cultural code of gold to shape and reaffirm collective identity.

In this essay Rani Moorthy, actor, writer, and artistic director of the theatre company Rasa, draws on her multiple identities as ‘Tamil,’ ‘diasporic,’ and ‘woman’ to reflect on the way ancient and sacred Hindu texts are interpreted to control individuals, particularly women, in diasporic Hindu communities. Her critique of these established orthodoxies is based on her personal journey as an artist who has consistently challenged ascribed identities and gender roles. The essay richly charts her artistic growth through exile, immigration, and censorship to tell an engrossing, politically charged story of personal reinvention as a mode of survival and celebration in constrained cultural contexts.

This paper examines the performance of religion in British Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu communities using ethnographic research to investigate the use of classical dance and trance, or embodied dance, as performative practice. Contemporary U.K. evidence of Tamil Saivite worship shows an affiliation of dance and ritual being articulated and reinvented through the classical dance form of Bharatanatyam and through its transmission in the temple environment in an increasing display of embodied diasporic Hinduism.

The discussion on caste among diasporic Hindus is often phrased in terms of a ‘retention’ versus ‘change’ hypothesis. Based on a review of literature and field observations in Trinidad, this paper argues that such an antithesis distorts our understanding of caste as a diasporic reality and clouds many of its fascinating nuances. The analysis of change that caste as an integral institution of Hinduism has undergone in Trinidad shows the heuristic significance of the concept of metamorphosis as an analytical device for the study of the dynamics of social institutions.

The Hindu diaspora is being written through the lines—the techno-informational lines of electronic bulletin boards. These “nets” provide a space for South Asian Hindus to construct and contest identities that are doubly marked by the nightmare of all the dead generations—what we diasporics remember as India—and by the always deferred promises of this new land of opportunity—what is imagined as America. To be able to annotate this double movement, one must see these subaltern counterspheres (Fraser) as crosshatched by contradictions, by the heterogeneous strands of Third World secularisms and centuries-old yet constantly changing religions, all of which coexist and intermingle “in an apparently eclectic fashion with the original elements of common sense” (Chatteijee, “Caste” 172). This essay interrogates the dynamics of this diasporic public sphere in the context of the events in Ayodhya, India, on 6 December 1992.

The Hindu diaspora is being written through the lines—the techno-informational lines of electronic bulletin boards. These “nets” provide a space for South Asian Hindus to construct and contest iden...