Hindu Militancy Research Articles

Beauty Queens and Hindu Militants: Indian Women’s Negotiation with Neoliberalism and Hindu Nationalism

Through a review of the 2012 documentary film The World before Her directed by Nisha Pahuja, this article provides a critical reflection on how neoliberal governmentality appropriates women’s bodies and subjectivities in two women’s boot camps in India: the Miss India contest and the Hindu militant Durga Vahini camp. Studies on appropriation of women’s bodies in the neoliberal ideology of the market and in varied religious ideologies have generated rich feminist insights into the structures of women’s oppression across the world. Feminist academic research has traditionally looked at market- and religion-based oppressions separately. In this critical reflection we articulate how women’s bodies get incorporated into the service of varied ideologies, namely neoliberal capitalism and religious fundamentalism, through processes of ritualisation, responsibilisation and subjectivation. Drawing on the shared elements of neoliberal (capitalism) and Hindutwa (Hindu fundamentalism) ideological projects, this article proposes a renewed analysis of the location of women in various ideological projects and the nature of women’s negotiation of these power structures or women’s agency within these structures.

The paradox of liberation: secular revolutions and religious counterrevolutions

Many of the successful campaigns for national liberation in the years following World War II were initially based on democratic and secular ideals. Once established, however, the newly independent nations had to deal with entirely unexpected religious fierceness. Michael Walzer, one of America's foremost political thinkers, examines this perplexing trend by studying India, Israel, and Algeria, three nations whose founding principles and institutions have been sharply attacked by three completely different groups of religious revivalists: Hindu militants, ultra-Orthodox Jews and messianic Zionists, and Islamic radicals. In his provocative, well-reasoned discussion, Walzer asks, Why have these secular democratic movements been unable to reproduce their political culture beyond one or two generations? In a postscript, he compares the difficulties of contemporary secularism to the successful establishment of secular politics in the early American republic-thereby making an argument for American exceptionalism but gravely noting that we may be less exceptional today.

Dalit responses to unemployment in contemporary India

Given the rapid rise of unemployment in India, how is this affecting the new generation of college-educated dalits? An earlier paper described the current generation of college-educated dalit students as the ‘breakthrough generation’, because their numbers and educational achievements mark a distinctive break with the past.1 The present paper looks at dalit responses to unemployment. Specifically it examines three different kinds of responses by urban dalits in western India, using in-depth case studies of some young dalit lives. The aspirations of college-educated dalit students are linked to evidence about the rising unemployment in India during the 1990s, and the consequences of the extreme socio-economic pressures that this has exerted on one of India's most significant minorities, currently numbering in excess of 150 million people. The chief causes of unemployment are examined, together with the arguments for affirmative action in the corporate sector. The paper concludes by considering how mass unemployment, especially amongst educated dalits, increases the ability of the sangh parivar2 to recruit young supporters to the cause of Hindu militancy. 1 Marika Vicziany, ‘The Breakthrough Generation: Dalit Youth in Contemporary India’, in Harvard Asia Quarterly, Vol.VI, no.2 (Spring 2002), pp.28–37. Republished in Parimal Roy (ed.), Indian Families and Religious Diversity (Delhi: Sage, 2003). 2 This term is used to describe the broad brotherhood of Hindu militants in India who rally under the ideological leadership of the RSS and the political leadership of the BJP.

Congress Radicals and Hindu Militancy: Sampurnanand and Purushottam Das Tandon in the Politics of the United Provinces, 1930–1947

A recent trend in the historiography of north India has involved analyses of ‘Hindu nationalist’ motifs and ideologies within both mainstream nationalist discourses and subaltern politics. A dense corpus of work has attempted to provide historical explanations for the rise of Hindutva in the subcontinent, and a great deal of debate has surrounded the implications of this development for the fate of secularism in India. Some of this research has examined the wider implications of Hindutva for the Indian state, democracy and civil society and in the process has highlighted, to some degree, the relationship between Hindu nationalism and ‘mainstream’ Indian nationalism. Necessarily, this has involved discussion of the ways in which the Congress, as the predominant vehicle of ‘secular nationalism’ in India, has attempted to contest or accommodate the forces of Hindu nationalist revival and Hindutva. By far the most interesting and illuminating aspect of this research has been the suggestion that Hindu nationalism, operating as an ideology, has manifested itself not only in the institutions of the right-wing Sangh Parivar but has been accommodated, often paradoxically, within political parties and civil institutions hitherto associated with the forces of secularism. An investigation of this phenomenon opens up new possibilities for research into the nature of Hindu nationalism itself, and presents new questions about the ambivalent place of religious politics in institutions such as the Indian National Congress.

Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self: Hindu-Muslim Identities in Pre-Colonial India

The nature of medieval Hindu-Muslim relations is an issue of great relevance in contemporary India. Prior to the 200 years of colonial subjection to the British that ended in 1947, large portions of the Indian subcontinent were under Muslim political control. An upsurge of Hindu nationalism over the past decade has led to demands that the state rectify past wrongs on behalf of India's majority religion.' In the nationalist view, Hindu beliefs were continually suppressed and its institutions repeatedly violated during the many centuries of Muslim rule from 1200 C.E. onward. The focal point of nationalist sentiment is the most visible symbol of Hinduism, its temples. As many as 60,000 Hindu temples are said to have been torn down by Muslim rulers, and mosques built on 3,000 of those temples' foundations. The most famous of these alleged former temple sites is at Ayodhya in North India, long considered the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama. The movement to liberate this sacred spot, supposedly defiled in the sixteenth century when the Babri Masjid mosque was erected on the ruins of a Rama temple, was one of the hottest political issues of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Tensions reached a peak in December 1992, when Hindu militants succeeded in demolishing the mosque.

The Vishva Hindu Parishad and the Roots of Hindu Militancy

The Vishva Hindu Parishad and the Roots of Hindu Militancy James G. Lochtefeld James G. Lochtefeld Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume LXII, Issue 2, Summer 1994, Pages 587–602, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LXII.2.587 Published: 01 July 1994

The Rise of Hindu Militancy: India's Secular Democracy at Risk

The Rise of Hindu Militancy: India's Secular Democracy at Risk

The Rise of Hindu Militancy: India's Secular Democracy at Risk

The Rise of Hindu Militancy: India's Secular Democracy at Risk

The Arya Samaj and Congress Politics in the Punjab, 1894–1908

Indian historians have tended in the past to explain the origins of nationalism and political activity in the subcontinent in terms of all-India organizations such as the Indian National Congress or in terms of the political thought and background of important national figures. As research on modern India accumulates, however, it is becoming apparent that this limited explanation of Indian political history is no longer adequate. The major regions had their own distinct social and political development which molded the response of local politicians to the larger political movements and which in turn had some effect on the speed and direction of the Indian nationalist movement. A fruitful approach to understanding the Congress would thus be to view it as an assembly of politicians who had regional political ties and who were strongly influenced by regional organizations. The significant role of the Arya Samaj in the politics of North India particularly supports such an interpretation. The revivalist Arya Samaj contributed to Hindu militancy and aggravated Hindu-Muslim relations. Although this aspect of Arya activity has yet to receive systematic treatment, the broad outline of the Samaj's part in hardening divisions between Hindus and Muslims is well known. The role of Aryas in provincial and national politics, on the other hand, has received little or no attention.