Abstract This article examines the ideological and organizational evolution of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the world’s largest Hindu Nationalist organization, in response to the challenges posed by the anti-caste politics in post-Independent India. Focusing on the leadership of Balasaheb Deoras (1915–1996), the third sarsańghacālak of the RSS, it situates the period between 1973 and 1990 as a critical yet understudied period in the history of the Sangh, marked by a significant departure from the organization’s earlier defence of caste hierarchy. Unlike his predecessors, Deoras publicly rejected the caste system in the early 1970s and paved the way for the Sangh to adopt the rhetoric of Sāmājik Samarastā (Social Harmony), which became the central pillar of the Sangh’s engagement with the question of caste in its bid to create a wider Hindu community which posed itself as caste-neutral and caste-assimilative. The article argues that the Sangh’s engagement with caste was neither superficial nor a new feature of its post-2014 avatar. S amarastā helped the Sangh develop a conservative model of caste reform, one that invoked the language of social change without challenging the Brahmanical ideas inherent to its Hindu Nationalism.

Taslima Nasrin, a Bangladeshi author and former physician, is renowned for her powerful writings on women’s rights and religious intolerance. One of her most famous works, Lajja (Shame), delves into the sensitive and explosive issue of religious conflicts in Bangladesh. The novel, set against the backdrop of the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition in India in 1992, is a poignant and scathing critique of the communal violence and religious bigotry that ensued in Bangladesh. Hindu nationalists demolished the Babri Masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya, India, on December 6, 1992. This act led to widespread communal riots in India, resulting in significant loss of life and property. The reverberations of this event were felt across the border in Bangladesh, where Hindu minorities faced brutal reprisals. Lajja tells the harrowing story of a Hindu family in Bangladesh that faces extreme persecution in a country where they are a minority. The story revolves around the Dutta family: Sudhamoy, his wife Kironmoyee, their son Suronjon, and daughter Maya. The family, despite being Hindu, has always considered Bangladesh their home. Through her characters and their experiences, Nasrin exposes the deep-seated prejudices and systemic discrimination faced by Hindus in a predominantly Muslim society. It explores the various dimensions of religious conflict analyzing the historical context, character dynamics and themes. The writer does not shy away from depicting the brutal realities of religious persecution. The constant threat of violence looms over the characters, affecting their psychological well-being. Lajja is a powerful and thought-provoking novel that delves deep into the heart of religious conflict in Bangladesh. Religious minorities in nearby Bangladesh were disproportionately affected by the massive communal conflicts that resulted from the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. Hindu minorities experienced violence, prejudice, and social exclusion despite the nation’s secular aspirations. This circumstance begs the important question of whether religion serves as a catalyst for social division or as a force for unification. This study explores how religious intolerance, communal violence, and systematic prejudice undermine societal harmony and jeopardize minority identity and security via the story of the Dutta family in Lajja .

The article revisits the concept of violence against women in everyday life to examine the impact of the Hindu nationalist movement on the constitutional rights of women in India. The article focuses on how women's sexuality has remained a core concern for Hindu nationalists or any right-wing movement, especially when their focus is on their community's racial/blood purity, culture, and population. I demonstrate that such movements make women's sexual and marital choices a matter of social and national concern through propaganda that demands social surveillance, violent measures, and legal provisions to control their romantic choices by curtailing their individual rights.

India’s eight north-eastern states — Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura — constitute one of the most complex democratic laboratories in Asia. Situated at the intersection of ethnic heterogeneity, contested territorial sovereignty, colonial border legacies, and developmental asymmetry, these states present singular challenges to the theory and practice of liberal democratic governance. This paper undertakes a systematic analysis of the principal challenges confronting democratic consolidation in northeastern India. It identifies and examines six interlocking challenge domains: the persistence of armed insurgency and counter-insurgency, the politics of ethnic identity and territorial recognition, the structural democratic deficit embedded in institutional arrangements such as the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), migration and demographic anxiety, the crisis of developmental democracy and resource governance, and the emerging pressures of Hindu nationalist politics. Drawing on political science theory, historical sociology, and empirical case material, the paper argues that democratic challenges in the region cannot be reduced to a single explanatory variable but must be understood as a co-constitutive set of structural, institutional, and conjunctural factors. The paper concludes with a reform outlook that maps pathways toward deeper democratic consolidation.

The present study interrogates the multiple meanings of cultural heritage in UNESCO instruments, emphasizing its distinction from—yet partial convergence with—cultural property. Tracing the saree’s historical trajectory—from ancient handloom traditions to its modern design iterations—the analysis shows how the saree is not a simple clothing but a contested cultural terrain where global heritage narratives intersect with indigenous artisan knowledge, gendered subjectivities, and contemporary political dynamics. Employing an interdisciplinary approach—spanning epistemology, gender studies, societal analysis, and critiques of modernity—the present study confronts the core issues of cultural appropriation, intellectual property vulnerabilities, and indigenous rights in South Asian material culture. By analyzing the metamorphosis of the garment into a potent signifier of identity, belonging, and cultural heritage within South Asian fashion, the research advances scholarship on decolonizing fashion, sustainable heritage preservation, and gendered cultural politics in the region. The present study examines the ways in which the concept of nationhood is articulated and manifested in linguistic forms, clothing, signifiers, textual elements and rhetorical devices also probes into the connections between the post-2014 surge in Hindu nationalism and the saree’s aesthetic refiguration in modern India.

This study analyzes how state-level anti-conversion laws in India—ostensibly enacted to protect the religious freedom of vulnerable communities—can structurally generate minority–minority conflicts within Adivasi (tribal) populations. Similar patterns have surfaced across multiple regions. This study examines cases from Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Jharkhand as illustrative modalities of this broader pattern: spectacular violence, everyday exclusion, and legal weaponization. The analysis identifies three mechanisms that produce these conflicts. Firstly, the “Hindu-plus” classificatory framework incorporates diverse indigenous traditions into an expanded Hindu category while positioning non-Indic religions as external. Secondly, anti-conversion laws frame religious change as a threat to indigenous cultural identity, and the state delegates enforcement to village councils, customary authorities, and judicial–administrative institutions. Thirdly, the politics of belonging translates these classificatory and enforcement practices into membership boundaries that operate through territorial control and cultural claims to authenticity, producing inclusion and exclusion. The findings suggest that anti-conversion laws operate as a political technology of protection, generating minority–minority conflicts while channeling disputes over rights into nationalist boundary-making over minority identity and belonging.

This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of Hindu nationalism and Swami Vivekananda's nationalist thought, examining the conceptual divergences between the two despite their frequent association in political discourse. The central inquiry revolves around the contested usage of the term 'Hindu' in the context of Indian nationalism — whether it denotes an inclusive civilizational identity or a narrowly defined religious-cultural exclusivism. The paper begins by situating Indian nationalism within the broader theoretical framework of nationalism as articulated by scholars such as Hans Kohn and C. J. H. Hayes, before tracing the historical emergence of Hindu nationalism in colonial India. It then systematically examines the major strands of Hindu nationalist thought — from Vinayak Damodar Savarkar's concept of Hindutva, grounded in territorial, racial, and cultural unity, to M. S. Golwalkar's vision of a Hindu Rashtra that marginalizes religious minorities, to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS) organizational ideology, and finally to Deendayal Upadhyaya's Integral Humanism, which became the philosophical foundation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In contrast, the paper evaluates Swami Vivekananda's nationalist philosophy, which, while deeply rooted in Hindu spiritual traditions, was fundamentally universalist in character. For Vivekananda, 'Hindu' represented a vast, all-encompassing civilization that embraced Muslims, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, and all other communities without compulsion or exclusion. His nationalism was built upon the principles of Vedanta — the oneness of all existence — universal tolerance, social equality, and the upliftment of the marginalized masses. He envisioned nation-building not through religious consolidation but through manav dharma — the religion of humanity. The comparative analysis reveals that while Hindu nationalists frequently invoke Vivekananda's name as ideological inspiration, their core doctrines — emphasizing ethnic-cultural exclusivity, minority subordination, and religious-political consolidation — stand in fundamental contradiction to his universalist and inclusive vision. The paper concludes that a genuine nationalism rooted in Vivekananda's thought must be India-building in character — broad, inclusive, and humanistic — rather than centered on narrow religious or cultural supremacy.

The review paper explores the ways in which the politics of Dravidianism in Tamil Nadu has transformed the relationship between caste, development, political communication, and urbanization from the mid-twentieth century to the contemporary digital age. Through the use of literature pertaining to the politics of the Dravidian parties, the world of Tamil cinema, caste-based politics, and welfare-based development, the review argues that the “Dravidian model” of development in Tamil Nadu, which combines identity-based politics and welfarebased development, has led to a more inclusive model of human development and a dispersed model of urbanisation that is spread out across the state and is not restricted to a single metropolitan centre. It demonstrates how cinema, and later television and digital media, serve as a key site of political communication that helps to embed the ideology of Dravidianism, normalise populist welfare, and create a new Tamil identity, while also creating new forms of fragmentation and division based on caste, gender, and region. It also explores the economic impact of caste-based politics and mobilisation on issues of social exclusion, poverty alleviation, and employment, and how this has led to a new kind of empowerment through reservations and welfare, but also to a new kind of discrimination and patronage. Lastly, the review argues that contemporary trends such as the rise of Hindu nationalist politics, the use of digital media in political communication, and the aspirations of youth and the urban electorate represent a new challenge to the sustainability and adaptability of the Dravidian model of development and its capacity to deliver a new kind of social justice and deepened democracy.

University for Industry and Finance “Synergy”, PhD (History), Associate Professor The article examines the nature and features of the Indian party system and the factors influencing it. India has a multiparty system with a two-block character. The main parties are the right-wing Bharata Janata Party, which defends the ideas of Hindu nationalist ideology and expresses the interests of the Hindu majority of the population, and the Indian National Congress, a center-left social democratic party focused primarily on supporting the poor strata of Indian society, representatives of lower castes and former untouchables, national minorities (tribes), as well as religious minorities of India.

This article argues that seemingly secular expressions of postcolonial nuclear nationalism in India actually reflect a Hindu nationalist understanding of India as a civilisational entity with a moral claim to nuclear power. Such an understanding echoes American invocations of Christian mythology to justify its divine right to nuclear power and global dominance. This intervention operationalises the above through analysing Anushakthi Amma (Atomic Mother, 2004), a protest play by anti-nuclear activist S.P. Udayakumar, written during the anti-nuclear protests at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in southern India. By examining how this play reveals the fundamentalist Hindu religious foundations beneath the outwardly secular pursuit of a ‘United States of India’ by Indian nuclear scientists, this article highlights the play’s emphasis on the experiences of irradiated populations, underscoring the urgent need to acknowledge the severe human costs and the potential disintegration of the nation’s social and democratic fabric that such a pursuit entails.

ABSTRACT Changing names of streets, institutions and even cities in post‐colonial India has been a political project signalling shifts in power and ideology. In one such example, the district of Faizabad in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh was renamed Ayodhya in 2018. This was accompanied by reorganisation of governance structures to affect land acquisitions, displacement and ‘developmental’ demolitions. The new Ayodhya, which lies at the heart of the Hindu nationalist ( Hindutva ) project, can arguably stand in as a metaphor for the project of transforming the secular Indian state into a Hindu nation ( Hindu Rashtra ). This article presents the narrative of legal‐administrative erasure of Faizabad as a template for the effaced cultural history of Muslim urbanisms in India and as a parable of Indian citizenship. It shows that neoliberalism, reinforced by Hindutva , did not dispossess only Muslims, but potently neutralised all resistance to destructive nationalist urbanisation. This is evidenced through a narrative of diminished belonging, intense irrelevance and powerlessness experienced by poets, teachers, journalists, activists and common residents of Ayodhya‐Faizabad. The article draws its theoretical framing from Urdu literary topos, Shehr Ashob , which has been used to produce socio‐literary biographies of ‘troubled’ or ‘disturbed’ cities in India.

ABSTRACT As an exploratory and critical study examining what seems to have been overlooked regarding the Chalo India diaspora campaign’s roots and characteristics, the article highlights the campaign’s potent formation within the populist nationalist habitus of Hindutva politics. Put it differently, the article casts light on the granularity of the ways in which the populist Hindu nationalist politics has shaped and been embedded in the campaign. It contends that the Chalo India campaign must be understood as an assemblage within the practice of the spatialization of the Hindutva narrative, a practice for which India’s tourism and cultural landscapes have recently become a key site. In doing so, the article contributes to the body of work on right-wing populism by analyzing how regimes employ diaspora, tourism, and heritage collectively to govern and manage the inclusion and exclusion of ‘others’ based on cultural, religious, and ethnic markers as part of their populist political projects. It also contributes to the literature on right-wing heritage policy that remains largely underexplored.

A ective Liberty and Fascist Joy 2The authoritarian turn we observe all over the world affectively operates with the promise to 'liberate': to liberate speech from the fetters of so-called cancel culture; to liberate majorities from the fetters of minority rights; to liberate (national) economies from the burdens of redistribution to the allegedly 'non-deserving' (Tosic/Streinzer 2022); to liberate knowledge from the fetters of scientific standards; to liberate "us" from "them".Not only do these orders promise to liberate, they remove the constraints on (some) affects wherever they come to dominate.They provide affective liberty.My argument will be that this affective liberty is central to the offers and attractions of fascism.Affective liberty comes to mean impunity for deeds of hatred, contempt, and greed.It makes for both empowerment and joy thereof.And more: Joyful affective liberty, while being affectively anti-institutional, prefigures institutions of supremacy. PogromsIn 2002 when more than 1000 Muslims were killed by Hindu nationalists in Gujarat in western India, their shops and homes looted by Hindu rioters, ordinary people participated in a mode, or rather, a mood that resembled the run on summer sales, carefree and thrilled.Something had evidently changed.After the so-called "Bombay-riots" in 1992/93 that had followed the destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya by Hindu

ABSTRACT The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has achieved unprecedented success in three successive Indian general elections. However, in 2024, despite winning, in conjunction with its allies, the highest number of seats and staying in power at the center, the party experienced a considerable setback, which was a surprise to almost everyone. This paper explores the difficulties that the BJP experienced in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and contrasts UP with Gujarat, where BJP dominance remains unchallenged. The BJP’s strategy for winning in UP depends on a combination of its core Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) message with ‘social engineering’, i.e., seeking to include formerly subordinate social groups, politically, socially, and economically, within the larger Hindu tent. There are historic tensions in this attempt to combine social justice messages (‘Mandal’) with Hindu nationalist positions (‘Mandir’). We argue that the Samajwadi Party (SP) learned how to counter the BJP’s social engineering strategy. Thanks also to BJP mis-steps, the SP and its allies managed to win more seats in UP than the NDA (the BJP plus small allied parties), even though they received fewer votes.

Abstract Anandamath (1882), authored by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, occupies a foundational position in the intellectual history of Indian nationalism. Set against the historical backdrop of the late eighteenth-century Sannyasi Rebellion and the Bengal famine, the novel fuses militant nationalism with Hindu religious revivalism through epic narrative strategies and powerful ideological symbols, most notably Vande Mataram. This paper offers an interdisciplinary analysis of Anandamath using close textual reading of the Chatterjee (1882/2016) English translation alongside a systematic synthesis of scholarship. The study examines how the novel constructs a spiritually sanctioned model of militant Hindu nationalism while simultaneously engaging in revisionist practices that reshape historical memory. Particular attention is paid to the ethical framing of violence, the sacralisation of the nation as Mother Goddess, and gender ambivalence through the character of Shanti. The paper argues that while Anandamath functioned as a powerful mobilising text within anti-colonial nationalist consciousness, it also embedded enduring ideological tensions related to gender, secularism, and communal identity that continue to shape contemporary debates in India. Keywords: Anandamath, gender, Hindu nationalism, historical memory, Vande Mataram

This paper offers a culturalist-constructionist approach to anti-corruptionism in India, examining its entanglement with the rise of illiberalism under the Bharatiya Janata Party. By tracing anti-corruption discourses alongside the ascent of Hindu nationalism since the late 1980s, I show how the meaning of corruption has shifted, from rent-seeking to crony capitalism, in ways that align with Hindu-nationalist politics. Two cases illustrate the link between anti-corruptionism and illiberal practices: the deployment of anti-corruption rhetoric to centralize campaign finance through the Electoral Bonds scheme; and the instrumentalization of anti-corruption bodies to weaken and suppress opposition parties. I argue that the Hindu Right has been present at each major mobilization of anti-corruption in Indian democracy, consistently leveraging it as a political tactic. And thus the Bharatiya Janata Party has achieved near-total capture of the state’s anti-corruption apparatus while sustaining a public discourse that casts the party as uniquely “non-corrupt” in the eyes of its supporters. The Indian case shows how anti-corruptionism can serve as a vehicle for illiberalism, with implications far beyond India.

ABSTRACT How do we understand dissent of subordinate groups on the right? This paper explores this question through an analysis of the farmer’s wing of India’s Hindu nationalist movement, the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) in the western Indian state of Gujarat. Building on scholarship that investigates the political economy in the current moment of Hindu nationalist rule, I focus on the tensions that emerge when shared associational linkages within the Hindu nationalist movement collide with gaping material inequalities. Drawing on newspaper reports and secondary sources on the BKS, I show that contrary to prevailing wisdom that right-wing civil society groups enable and even extend the longevity of right-wing power, these groups not only reveal critical fault lines but may also contribute to the destabilization and possible denouement of right-wing hegemonic projects.

Considering the pacifist and pragmatic tradition of Indian Foreign Policy, the rise of Hindutva and, consequently, Indo-Pakistani tensions, this paper aims to examine whether, from 2014 onwards, it is possible to identify changes in Indian Foreign Policy toward Pakistan under the Modi government. The hypothesis is that Hindu nationalists, representing a significant portion of the government’s support base, were able to influence the direction of foreign policy by increasing rigidity toward Muslims and Pakistan. Using a theoretical framework of Foreign Policy Change and a hypothetico-deductive methodology, the findings indicate that Indian Foreign Policy did not experience major ruptures in comparison to previous governments.

This research analyses the creation of Pakistan as a result of a profound civilizational conflict rather than a mere political shift. For centuries, the Indian subcontinent hosted two distinct social orders—Islamic and Hindu—which maintained divergent beliefs, languages, and worldviews. The study employs a qualitative historical method to examine how the erosion of Muslim political power under British rule and the subsequent rise of Hindu nationalism catalysed the "Two-Nation Theory." Key findings highlight that the ideological rift was rooted in fundamental contradictions: Islamic egalitarianism versus the Hindu caste system. Significant cultural triggers, such as the Urdu-Hindi controversy and the forced imposition of non-Islamic symbols, intensified the struggle for a separate identity. Furthermore, the paper examines the 1947 partition as a "humanitarian catastrophe," where moral values collapsed into communal violence and mass displacement. This era of "civilizational conflict" (Tehzeebi Awaizish) not only defined the struggle for independence but also shaped the post-partition challenges regarding national language and regional identities. The study concludes that Pakistan’s inception was an act of civilizational survival, aiming to preserve the religious, linguistic, and cultural heritage of the Muslims of the subcontinent against assimilation.

Christian Development Organizations (CDOs) in India face increasing constraints as Hindu nationalism, anti-conversion laws, and restrictions on foreign funding limit their work. This article examines how CDOs can adapt to such pressures by analyzing three key expressions of Christian development: secular organizations, faith-based organizations, and local churches. Secular CDOs maintain a non-confessional public identity while embodying Christian values through service and integrity; faith-based organizations openly integrate faith with legal compliance to enable public witness; and local churches leverage relational networks for holistic community engagement. Drawing on literature, policy analysis, and case studies, the article highlights how these strategies allow CDOs to sustain development efforts despite growing regulatory and ideological challenges. The study argues that strategic ecumenical cooperation and global solidarity are essential for protecting religious freedom, pooling resources, and strengthening resilience. From a missiological perspective, the article contributes by connecting CDO practices to theological witness, showing how mission can be faithfully embodied even in constrained and hostile contexts. By exploring the tensions between faith, development, and political restrictions in India, this article advances discussions on contextual theology, organizational hybridity, and mission practice in restrictive settings.