Hindu Nationalism Research Articles

RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED POLITICS IN DEMOCRATIC INDIA UNDER THE BJP GOVERNMENT

The prevalence of democracy is contingent upon sustainable peace and good governance, wherein individuals are granted freedom to practice their cultural and religious beliefs. In South Asia, the politicisation of religion has been a vexing issue, with dominant religious groups, both protected and non-protected, threatening democratic ideals. This paper argues that India, which is among the world's largest secular democratic states, has witnessed the emergence of fascist and authoritarian policies and manifestations under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi, allowing extremist Hindutva groups and BJP to promote Hindu nationalism at the expense of other marginalised groups. The paper also highlights that the BJP government has employed religion to manipulate and mobilise individuals against minorities, jeopardising democratic values and undermining state institutions. It concludes that if the Indian government persists in practising fascistic tenets, it will have grave repercussions for regional stability and the democratic rights of minorities at home. Bibliography Entry Qurban, Zara. 2023. "Religiously Motivated Politics in Democratic India Under the BJP Government." Margalla Papers 27 (1): 176-185.

The Ayodhya case, freedom of religion, and the making of modernist ‘Hinduism’

ABSTRACT This article offers a close reading of the 2019 Supreme Court decision in the Ayodhya case supporting the construction of a temple dedicated to Rām, a central deity in the Hindu pantheon. It unpacks the implications of the ruling on the right to freedom of religion and the meaning of religion in juridical discourse. In awarding title over a disputed plot of land that had been the subject of decades of litigation to the ‘Hindu parties,’ the Court sanctioned the development of a narrow, nationalist and modernist understanding of the ‘Hindu’ faith to prevail. The analysis highlights the role of the court and juridical discourses in the formation of Hindu majoritarianism and the making of modernist ‘Hinduism’. The discussion is significant for understanding how Hindu nationalists have mobilized secular institutions, and quite specifically the right to freedom of religion, to pursue their own agenda of establishing India as a monolithic and homogenous Hindu state.

Hindu Milliyetçiliği ve Hindistan’da Yükselen İslam Kaşıtlığı

The weakening of the secular tradition, which has been influential in Indian political life since its inception, and the political rise of the Hindu right culminated in the overwhelming mandate of the Hindu nationalist BJP led by Narendra Modi in the 2014 elections. In 2014, the Hindutva ideology that the BJP was fuelled by had the opportunity to spread to all segments of society. As the BJP consolidated its political support from the community in 2019, it became even more prominent as a widespread worldview in India. Backed by the power of Hindutva supporters, the BJP systematically and deliberately targets the non-Hindu population, especially Muslims. Hindutva ideology, the Hindu right wing's ideology of ethnoreligious exclusion, has begun to affect Muslims through political decisions taken by the government and socially triggered acts of oppression and violence, often with the government's deliberate silence. This study discusses the historical and intellectual origins of the Hindutva ideology to reveal the current trends of the BJP's Islamophobic policies through a literature review. In this study, in which the current tendencies of the BJP's Islamophobic policies are tried to be revealed by reviewing the literature, the historical and intellectual origins of the Hindutva ideology are mentioned. The article also analyses the role of the media, which the Modi government uses for its main interests, in fuelling Islamophobia through misinformation and the discourse of 'corona jihad’, particularly in the aftermath of the global Covid-19 pandemic. Ultimately, it is argued that the anti-Islamic policies in contemporary India - even though they have come to light with the BJP's rule - should be seen as the social and political projections of the Hindutva ideology, which sees India's ethnic and religious diversity as a threat rather than an opportunity and which was 'constructed' long before the BJP.

Crisis as Opportunity: The Politics of ‘Seva’ and the Hindu Nationalist Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Kerala, South India

The paper examines how Hindu nationalist social service organizations, specifically the Deseeya Seva Bharathi (DSB), reconfigured the religious conception of ‘Seva’ to advance the project of constructing a Hindu social identity during the COVID-19 pandemic in the state of Kerala. The southern Indian state of Kerala has remained an exception in the story of the rise of the Hindu nationalist movement in contemporary India, which has repeatedly failed to make any considerable political inroads in the state. However, the disastrous economic consequences and livelihood challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic in the state, which was heavily dependent on foreign remittance and service industries, have opened up new spaces of engagement for Hindu nationalists. Drawing on the fieldwork conducted in central Kerala during the pandemic, this paper will elaborate on how the DSB used the crisis moment of the pandemic to reach out to economically and socially disadvantaged communities using the language of ‘Seva’ to build a Hindu social identity, which imbues the influence of majoritarian Hindu nationalist politics. The paper argues that the DSB’s articulation of ‘Seva’ as a distinct and superior form of social service that is ‘self-less’, ‘non-instrumental’ and ‘non-reciprocal’ is significant in understanding the growing appeal of Hindu nationalist social service in the contested political sphere of Kerala, which is marked by competing social provisions by the state as well as other secular and religious groups. The paper notes that the reconfiguration of ‘Seva’ as a continuous religious concept enables Hindu nationalists to attain greater acceptance and legitimacy that even the secular state welfare could not achieve, while also concealing the inherent instrumental nature of its social service towards the construction of a Hindu social identity in the region.

Gender, Education and Citizenship as Ideological Weapons of an ‘Army of Holy Women’ in Bengal: The Matua Matri Sena

This paper seeks to analyze the recent phenomenon of the development of a Matri Sena (literally, an ‘Army of Holy Women’) among the Matua sect of West Bengal, India. Historically known to have suffered caste-based untouchability and forced migration due to communal conflict, the Matua community’s current political motivations surround the issue of ‘refugeehood’ and Indian citizenship. Given this background, the emergence of the Matri Sena as a complex identity among a religion–caste–gender–nation nexus is oriented towards bipartite objectives: one, to actualize the gender-egalitarian ethos that informs Matua religious foundations, and two, to claim legal citizenship status for its community members precisely through a new gendered ideology. We argue that the women gurus of the Matri Sena are able to realize their religious/political aims by fashioning themselves as mothers of an ideal family, community, and by extension, the nation. In deploying their specific gendered ideological constructions, they enact their new roles as influencers in both private and public Matua lives. In such renderings, the woman guru’s mother-figure emerges as a political subject through crucial engagements with Matua religiosity on one hand, and dominant Hindu nationalist discourses on the other. In this article, we critically analyze ways in which the Matri Sena constructs a new maternal notion of religio-political power, and how such power furthers both collective Matua aspirations and contemporary national imaginations.

The Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism of Lala Lajpat Rai

Lala Lajpat Rai was a prominent figure of the Arya Samaj, the influential nineteenth-century Hindu socio-religious reform movement. He is also seen as having sown the seeds of Hindu nationalism in the first decade of the twentieth century. Exploring Lajpat Rai’s thought between the 1880s and 1915, this article traces how felt imperatives of Hindu nation-building impelled him to regularly re-define Hinduism. These first prompted Rai to articulate a ‘thin’ Hinduism, defined less in terms of an insistence on a complex set of beliefs and more in broad, simple terms. They then induced him to culturalise Hinduism and make a distinction between ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Hindu culture’. The article ends by comparing the Hinduism and Hindu nationalism of Lajpat Rai and V.D. Savarkar, the chief ideologue of the Hindutva ideology, which is considered the main influence on India’s Hindu nationalist movement. It argues that while formulations of a thin and culturalised Hinduism enabled both men to articulate a ‘Hindu nationalism’, their nationalisms in fact remained qualitatively different. By scrutinizing intellectual trends and processes occurring in Rai’s thought, the article demonstrates that the modern ideology of Hindu nationalism impacted how Hindu religion was defined and re-defined and how such re-definitions can still produce distinct forms of Hindu nationalism.

Hindu Nationalism and Right-wing Ecology: RSS, Modi and Motherland Post-2014

This article analyses the environmental politics of Hindu nationalism in India after 2014, which is deeply enmeshed with aggressive nationalism. Taking as its case study articles, newspaper reports and visuals published in the Organiser, a leading magazine of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), it focuses on four ubiquitous environmental themes—imagination of a great Hindu motherland; icons of mother embodied in river and animal; climate change and renewable energy and the idealization of Prime Minister Modi as an environmental saviour—that are visible in its pages. Through these themes, India is projected as a great ancient ecological Hindu nation while hatred and violence are directed against ‘polluted’ Muslims. The ascendancy of Hindu nationalists to power since 2014 has indeed resulted in radical changes which have signalled multiple governmental ‘green’ initiatives and brought climate change and renewable energy to the centre stage. However, and as this article illustrates, these are couched in an optic of purity and pollution, as well as caste and religion, on the one hand, and mobilization of corporations and mega ‘clean’ industrial projects, on the other, which are propagated in the name of people, development and environment.

The Transformation of Secularism and the BJP’s Hindu Nationalism

Since Modi came into power in 2014, secularism has significantly retreated in India’s State machinery, institutions and political discourse. Exploring the history of secularism after India’s independence, it can be concluded that India has never achieved a complete separation between the State and the religion. On the contrary, the State has rebuilt its relationship with religion by social reforms. Secularism advocated by the Indian National Congress was a mixture of both Nehru’s ideal of separation between the State and the religion and Gandhi’s ideal of religious tolerance. On many issues the latter’s stand is similar to what the Hindu nationalists argue for. The opportunistic strategy of the Congress on religion-related issues since the late 1970s further opened the door for Hindu communalism. By stigmatizing and redefining the secularism framed by the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) reconstructed a political discourse about India being a secular State based on Hindu nationalism. At present, the Congress has no intention of reviving the Nehru-style tradition of secularism and other regional parties once advocating secularism have abandoned the ideal. A rightward shift in Indian party politics is inevitable. Under the BJP’s rule, a secular Indian State based on communal (religious) politics is taking shape.

Transgender Rights and Religiosities in India

This article argues that religious mythologies and cultural narratives about the timelessness of gender diversity in South Asia frame the formation of the transgender subject of rights in India. The authors interrogate a verdict issued by the Supreme Court of India in 2014 and the Transgender Person Bill of Rights (2018) to ascertain the frames of recognition accorded diverse transgender communities in India. This is followed by an analysis of the category of eunuch created and criminalized by British colonizers and the present-day category of transgender based on self-affirmation of gender. The conflating of religious mythologies into deliberations about transgender constitutional rights reveals how the supposedly secular rights – based claims of and for transgender communities are mediated through a predominantly Hindu Brahmanical imagination of the rights-bearing transgender subject. The authors examine autobiographical narratives by three prominent transgender rights activists in India: Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, Living Smile Vidya, and A. Revathi, who provide conflicting visions about the role of religion and state recognition of transgender identities. The authors argue the need for theorizing transgender subjectivities from non-Brahman, Dalit, transmasculine, and non – North Indian perspectives. Such theorizations reveal the potential of coalitional transgender activisms that seek to disrupt Hindu-nationalist hailing of the transgender subject of rights in contemporary India. The authors offer new directions in transgender studies by showing how religious narratives, ritual and performance lie at the heart of transgender subject formation while gesturing toward how such formation risks subsuming transgender identities within (Hindu) nationalist projects.

Performing Heroic Laziness

This paper theorizes a concept of performance of everyday life at the intersection of performance theory, history and philosophy to posit the everyday as a world-historical stage on which subjects enact forms of historical consciousness. It takes as its empirical ground two historical iterations of a social club known as Thalua Club (Idlers' Club) that took shape in Banaras (Varanasi) – an ancient commercial and Hindu pilgrimage centre and currently the nerve centre of Hindu nationalist politics in India. The idea of a Thalua Club first finds expression in a satirical work from 1928 of the same name, in which the author, Gulab Rai – through the character of 'Devotee of Laziness' (Alasya-bhakt) – affirms the performance of 'uselessness' as a way to resist the 'tumultuous storm of usefulness' that capitalism augured. The club itself, which Rai is believed to have founded in Banaras in his time, was re-established in 1961 by the next generation of Banarasis on the new world-historical stage of postcoloniality and state-sponsored industrial modernization. However, in its second iteration, Thalua Club captures a particular historical anxiety of the Banarasis that stems from the peripheral role that Banaras is accorded in the project of modernization and nation-building as compared to other metropolitan cities. By analysing the two historical iterations, this paper problematizes extant postmodern theories of everyday life that conceive of performance of everyday life as merely individual, arbitrary acts of a subject imbued with agency, thus failing to grasp the specific ways in which it is shaped by history. In contrast, it calls for theorization of performance of everyday life that is not only deeply rooted in empirical history but is also impelled by an objective, world-historical consciousness that transcends its cultural particularity.

State nationalism or popular nationalism? Analysing media coverage of TikTok ban on mainstream Indian TV news channels

It has been argued that BJP - the current ruling party of India - comprises unapologetic hyper nationalists known as Hindu nationalists. It has also been claimed that the BJP government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a tight grip over the mainstream TV media and non-conformists are finding it increasingly challenging to express their opinion in the world’s largest democracy. If such concerns are true, then support for the nationalist politics of the ruling dispensation must reflect in the mainstream media narratives. To explore, this study conducted a thematic discourse analysis on the media coverage of the TikTok ban in India post Indo-China border conflict. Results revealed a prevalence of media support for state nationalism as interests of the state were conflated with public interest – in contrast with the normative assumptions of objective journalism. However, the study did not find any evidence of popular nationalism on this occasion.

“Virus Jihad”: The (Mis)Representation of Muslims during Covid 19 Outbreak in Indian Media

This study examined the media representations of Muslims during the first wave of Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in India. The study conducted a thematic discourse analysis on TV debates in the aftermath of an Islamic congregation in Delhi whose attendees were tested positive with COVID-19 infection. The study found an overall negative representation of Muslims in the mainstream media which corroborates previous studies, albeit, in different contexts. Three key themes that emerged from media narratives were representing Muslims as: (i) carriers of the virus bomb (ii) ‘super spreaders’ and (iii) the uncivilized ‘Other’ with irreconcilable differences. These findings were situated in the wider (re)emerging field of Hindu nationalism to argue that the unsympathetic representation of Muslims in the media reflected their support for the ethno-nationalist ideology of the current ruling dispensation.

Temple Architecture and Modern Hindu Appropriations of Buddhism

Abstract During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Buddhism became deeply embedded in an array of social and political debates taking place across India. The unique history of Buddhism in India and of its spread across Asia offered a model of ideological and cultural emancipation that was used not only to challenge colonial rule but also to further numerous anti-caste movements against existing Brahmanical institutions and practices. While the history of anti-caste and Dalit engagements with Buddhism has largely been studied through a discussion of the Indian constitutionalist B. R. Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism along with some half million of his followers in 1956, this article addresses the ways in which Buddhism came to be simultaneously seen as a “Hindu sect” and central to Hindu nationalist projects. It does so through a detailed analysis of the planning and construction of several “Hindu-Buddhist” temples constructed in the 1930s by the Birla family that sought to construct a vision of India as a Hindu nation. A close examination of these sites reveals the wider dynamics underlining the transformation of modern Buddhism in India and, by extension, modern Hinduism.

“Hope and grief woven together”: Consolation in a queer reading of Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

This article considers the role of consolation in a biopolitical and queer reading of Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017). As a critique of contemporary Indian politics, Hindu nationalism, casteism, and economic neoliberalism, the novel promises to bring hope to those marginalized and dehumanized in “New India” — the “Unconsoled”. It is argued that Ministry’s liberatory potential is best realized when approached from a combined perspective of biopolitical liminality, that of Agambenian homo sacer and Butlerian precarity, as well as the reformative and reparative practices of queer theory. When viewed through queer readings of failure and non-imperative happiness, the alternative world of Jannat Guest House becomes a queer counterpublic, whereas its inhabitants become agents of subversion, whose mere existence defies the imperative of religious, caste, cisheteronormative and capitalist hegemonies endorsed by the state. The article positively assesses the novel’s ability to bring consolation. However, it indicates that there are also limitations to that and offers suggestions as to how to reaffirm the reformatory potential of the novel.

Hindu-Right Activism in Pandemic: Exploring the Role of Durga Vahini in Covid-19

Women’s activism in the Hindu right has gone through communication and mobilisation shifts in the context of Covid-19. The article traces how the hierarchy and coordination within the Durga Vahini—the women’s wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad facilitate the propagation of two primary goals 1 of seva, and sanskar in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Through semi-structured interviews with the representatives of the organisation, the article focuses on understanding mobilisation strategies like e- satsangs, accommodation of marginalised groups through the distribution of raw food resources, and manipulation of mythological narratives for the recruitment of young girls to propagate Hindu nationalism. The core argument of the article is focused on understanding these mobilisation tactics and changing nature seva in the times of pandemic.

Narendra Modi's ‘Gujarat Model’: re-moulding development in the service of religious nationalism

ABSTRACT Narendra Modi’s national leadership since 2014 is a significant marker of revitalisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Indian politics. This article traces Modi’s association with the idea and rhetoric of development. He presented himself as vikaspurush (development man) and as a leader who would provide strong governance for India when he campaigned in the 2014 general elections. The Gujarat Model was showcased by him as the blueprint for development for the whole of India. However, a closer analysis of the developmental paradigm demonstrates that he has changed secular meanings and connotations of state-initiated development by associating state action with the rituals of pilgrimage used in the yatra (procession) politics of the Hindu nationalist movement. The article highlights the significance of the blurring of the lines between the administrative-bureaucratic process of planning and religio-spatial symbolism.

From Petitions to Demands, Restitution to Representation

From Petitions to Demands, Restitution to Representation

India’s Heritage Conflicts Come to Varanasi

India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party is pursuing a campaign to revise history and remove historic Islamic monuments from cities like Varanasi, known for its multicultural fabric.

Self-Fashioning of a Hindu Political Sanyasi: Muscular Asceticism and Sectarian Freedom in Swami Satyadev Parivrajak’s Autobiography

This essay focuses on the autobiographical writings of Swami Satyadev ‘Parivrajak’ (1879–1961), a prolific Hindi writer, and a charismatic modern-day worldly political ascetic in the early twentieth-century north India. It discusses three central pillars of his ineradicably political autobiography: first, the performance of an exemplary celibate Hindu masculinity; second, the conceptualization of a segmented and exclusionary freedom, unencumbered by the presence of Muslims; and third, his deep antagonism towards Gandhi, and defence of his assassination. Taken together, his autobiography is a critical contribution to the intellectual history and genealogy of sectarian Hindi–Hindu literature, while also showcasing cultivated precursors of a modern, monolithic and militant Hindu nation.

Saffron Republic: Hindu Nationalism and State Power in India. By Thomas Blom Hansen and Srirupa Roy

The growth, consolidation, and seizure of social and political power by majoritarian and populist tendencies in Indian politics have been variously examined, more so by several recent studies on the changing patterns of communal mobilisation. While on-ground, empirical research informs Nalin Mehta’s influential study (The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World’s Largest Political Party, 2021), Amrita Basu and Tanika Sarkar’s edited volume, Women, Gender and Religious Nationalism (2022, ICAS-MP, Cambridge University Press), is an important intervention in the discussion on gender in Hindutva politics. Not only does Blom Hansen and Roy’s volume take the conversation forward—to use a cliché—in a decisive manner, it adds significantly to the already rich body of work on Hindu nationalism and its resultant outgrowths that exists. The volume is noteworthy primarily because of its attempt at interrogating the phenomenon of contemporary Hindu nationalism—or New (or neo) Hindutva—which is significantly different from earlier versions in both form and substance. The discourse has moved from one centred on temple politics to aspiration focused on foreign policy and economic achievements. Also critical to the developing phenomenon of neo-Hindutva is the substantial inroads it is making in regions in the south and east of India, far removed from the conventional understanding of the BJP (and Sangh Parivar, in general) as a cow belt-based political formation. The volume under review also brings to the fore crucial new research on the changing caste dynamics of contemporary Hindutva as caste has emerged as vital to intense Hindu nationalist mobilisation, particularly of the kind that translates into significant gains at the hustings. The volume, therefore, focuses on the reshaping of the Hindutva landscape in India, which now competes with more global forms of democratic authoritarianism or authoritarian populism. Since Hindutva is now widely regarded as an electoral strategy par excellence and mainstreamed in popular discourse, the present volume examines several issues of intense concern, particularly the phenomenon of governmental Hindutva, urban zoning on communal lines, the growing politics of segregation, the minority Hindutva project (in the form of the Muslim Rashtriya Manch) and the momentous rhetoric on development.