Hindutva Research Articles

“A Victory for Secular India”? Hindu Nationalism in the 2004 Election

AbstractAt least since the last decade of the 20th century, there has been strong scholarly interest in a perceived global wave of religious nationalism. Critical to that movement was the most important recent development in Indian politics, the rise of the Hindu right. Commentators lamented a fundamental change in the Indian body politic, the demise of India's celebrated secularism. However, others predicted that the Hindu nationalists would be forced to move to the center to gain votes, jettisoning much of their peculiar ideology in the process. The 2004 national parliamentary election was a crucial test of these contending interpretations. Would the Bharatiya Janata Party rely on its established arsenal of communally controversial issues? Would it emphasize themes designed to appeal to a broader audience? Analyzing reports published in national newspapers and news magazines, I will reach the surprising conclusion that the answer to both of these questions is yes.

Gender, Religion and Democratic Politics in India

This article examines the impact of identity politics on gender equality. More specifically it explores the paradoxical and complex relationship of religion and politics in a multi-religious society and the complicated ways in which women's activism has both reinforced and challenged their gender identities. Contrary to the argument that religious politics does not always negate gender equality, the article argues that the Hindu religious politics and women's activism associated with it provides a compelling example of the instrumentalisation of women to accomplish the political goals of the Hindu right. It also examines the approach and strategies of influential political parties, women's organisations and Muslim women's groups towards legal reform and the contested issue of a uniform civil code. Against those who argue that, in the current communal conjuncture, reform within Muslim personal laws or Islamic feminism is the best strategy for enhancing the scope of Muslim women's rights, the article argues that such an approach tends to freeze identities within religious boundaries. It shows how women's and minority rights are used within the politics of religion to sideline the agenda of women's rights.

“Political Volcano” in 12th Malaysian General Election: Makkal Sakhti (People Power) Against Communal Politics, “3Cs” and Marginalization of Malaysian Indian

Malaysian politic has been overwhelmingly dominated by the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition since 1969. In the 12th Malaysian General Election, the ruling coalition suffered a shocking moral defeat. This paper argue that the 12th Malaysian General Election is metaphorically a political volcano eruption, witnessing the rise of People Power against suppression of dissatisfactions over communal politics, deteriorating social-economic conditions (dubbed the “3Cs” factors) and continues marginalization of Indian community in Malaysia. Aspects of communal politics include (1) the issues of NEP, Ketuanan Melayu, racism and “second-class citizen” treatment to the Malaysian non-bumiputera, and (2) the issues of UMNO-putra politicizing the NEP and Malay poverty. The “3Cs” refers to dissatisfaction over increasing (1) cost of living, (2) crime and (3) corruption, taking the first letter of each to form the acronym. Meanwhile, the revolution by the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) highlighted the marginalization of Indian. Indeed, the Hindraf revolution popularized the Makkal Sakhti that means “People Power” in Tamil.

The clash within: democracy, religious violence, and India's future

While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Martha Nussbaum reveals in this penetrating look at India today, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and secular state. Since long before the 2002 Gujarat riots - in which nearly two thousand Muslims were killed by Hindu extremists - the power of the Hindu right has been growing, threatening India's hard-won constitutional practices of democracy, tolerance, and religious pluralism. Led politically by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu right has sought the subordination of other religious groups and has directed particular vitriol against Muslims, who are cast as devils in need of purging. The Hindu right seeks to return to a pure India, unsullied by alien polluters of other faiths, yet the BJP's defeat in recent elections demonstrates the power that India's pluralism continues to wield. The future, however, is far from secure, and Hindu extremism and exclusivity remain a troubling obstacle to harmony in South Asia. Nussbaum's long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history. Ultimately, she argues that the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilizations, as some believe, but from a clash within each of us, as we oscillate between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others. India's story is a cautionary political tale for all democratic states striving to act responsibly in an increasingly dangerous world.

Making India Hindu and Male

Speaking in the discourse of a culture and tradition in which the notion of the ‘national’ is equal to ‘hindu’, articulated to jargons of authenticity, foreignness and ‘sons of the soil’ criteria of citizenship, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its base community of the hindu right in India hope to hegemonize the Indian political terrain. This article revisits Marx’s and Gramsci’s notions and critiques of civil society, ideology and hegemony to analyse the cultural politics of the hindu right, which through an aggressive masculinity and organized violence attempts to erase muslims from the national space.

Sahmat, 1989 – 2004

The article looks at the career trajectory of an anti-sectarian, nationwide, artists’ platform in India, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (Sahmat), since its inception in 1989. Sahmat's foundation parallels significant changes in India polity: the neo-liberalization of state economic and cultural policy, the rise of the Hindu right, the emergence of a new consumerist class, and significant political fragmentation. The article traces different schisms in Sahmat's history, both internal and external, superimposed onto these larger, structural changes within society. In doing so, it examines the particular convergence of aesthetic and political strategies employed by this unique organization.

The public face of Hindu nationalism

This article maps some of the salient ways in which the tenets of Hindu nationalism are being disseminated and made acceptable within British politics and within the core of social living among various communities in Britain. It examines specific institutional sites through which a politicized Hindutva community is forged: the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (UK), the vernacular press, and the Swaminarayan temple in north London. It argues that the “familiar-familial” space occupied by religious preachers draws large numbers of believers into the Hindutva fold. The article demonstrates the role of the vernacular press in constructing an articulate political community in Britain which silences criticisms of Hindu nationalist aggression in India. It draws out the connections between violence against religious minorities in India with the assertion of a global Hindu pride, and argues that the latter is founded upon a curious anti-racist and anti-imperialist discourse. It concludes that the intellectual project of the Hindu right is to shift the basis of ethical judgements, insert the trope of “Hindu hurt” within British politics and reconfigure the nature of political identities.

Sacred Space in Conflict in India: The Babri Masjid Affair

The focus of this paper is on the demolition of a sacred space, the Babri Masjid, a sixteenth century mosque, in Ayodhya, India, in December 1992, an illegal albeit well‐organized act by the Hindu right. Drawing on postcolonial theory, and feminist geographical theory, and using a discourse analysis primarily of Hindu nationalist texts, and of significant action as text, the author examines the strategic construction and deployment of cultural meanings pertaining to space, and the engagement of social actors on that basis, towards political, violent ends. The author argues, firstly, that Hindu nationalist ideologues, notwithstanding pretensions to Hindu ‘authenticity,’ make use of Western thought to rewrite Hindu‐Muslim relations in antagonistic terms, and to signify these oppositional relations through sacred spatialities (mosque, temple, and Motherland as the body of the mother goddess Bharatmata). Secondly, in this framework, the Babri Masjid, one particular mosque, became a site of conflict because Hindu nationalists were able to transform it into a symbol of Muslim military invasions and Muslim male sexual aggression against Hindu femininity (as Motherland and Hindu women's bodies). Thirdly, Hindu nationalists, through a well‐orchestrated campaign, were able to convince a wider audience that these violations could only be avenged by the demolition of the Babri mosque (while also unofficially and inadvertently targeting Muslim women's bodies for sexual violation). Finally, this analysis should have wider implications for understanding the place of space, gender, sexuality, and sexual violation, in religio‐political and ethnic conflicts elsewhere.

Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race

Introduction Ruth Roach Pierson Chapter One Maori Agriculturalists and Aboriginal Hunter-Gatherers: Women and Colonial Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Aotearoa/New Zealand and Southeastern Australia Patricia Grimshaw Chapter Two Enfranchising Women of Color: Suffragists as Agents of Imperialism Rosalyn Terborg-Penn Chapter Three Gendered Colonialism: The Woman Question in Settler Society Dolores E. Janiewski Chapter Four Actions Louder than Words: The Historical Task of Defining Feminist Consciousness in Colonial West Africa Cheryl Johnson-Odim Chapter Five Frontier Feminism and the Marauding White Man: Australia, 1890s to 1940s Marilyn Lake Chapter Six The Porfiriato and the Mexican Revolution: Constructions of Feminism and Nationalism Gabriela Cano Chapter Seven The Politics of Irish Identity and the Interconnections between Feminism, Nationhood and Colonialism Breda Gray and Louise Ryan Chapter Eight Cohabiting and Conflicting Identities: Women and Nationalisms in Twentieth-Century Iran Joanna de Groot Chapter Nine Orthodoxy, Cultural Nationalism and Hindutva Violence: An Overview of the Gender Ideology of the Hindu Right Tanika Sarkar Chapter Ten Surviving Absence: Jewishness and Femininity in Liberation France, 1944-45 Karen Adler Chapter Eleven Men, Women and the Community Borders: German-Nationalist and National Socialist Discourses on Gender, and National Identity in Austria, 1918-1938 Johanna Gehmacher Chapter Twelve Images of Sara Bartman: Sexuality, Race and Gender in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain Yvette Abrahams Chapter Thirteen Sexual and Racial Discrimination: An Historical Inquiry into the Japanese Military's Comfort Women System of Enforced Prostitution Sayoko Yoneda Chapter Fourteen Vacations in the Contact Zone: Race, Gender and the Traveller at Niagara Falls Karen Dubinsky Chapter Fifteen Uprooted Women: Partition of Punjab, 1947 Aparna Basu Chapter Sixteen Politics and the Writing of History Himani Bannerji Gabriela Cano Chapter Seven The Politics of Irish Identity and the Interconnections between Feminism, Nationhood and Colonialism Breda Gray and Louise Ryan Chapter Eight Cohabiting and Conflicting Identities: Women and Nationalisms in Twentieth-Century Iran Joanna de Groot Chapter Nine Orthodoxy, Cultural Nationalism and Hindutva Violence: An Overview of the Gender Ideology of the Hindu Right Tanika Sarkar Chapter Ten Surviving Absence: Jewishness and Femininity in Liberation France, 1944-45 Karen Adler Chapter Eleven Men, Women and the Community Borders: German-Nationalist and National Socialist Discourses on Gender, and National Identity in Austria, 1918-1938 Johanna Gehmacher Chapter Twelve Images of Sara Bartman: Sexuality, Race and Gender in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain Yvette Abrahams Chapter Thirteen Sexual and Racial Discrimination: An Historical Inquiry into the Japanese Military's Comfort Women System of Enforced Prostitution Sayoko Yoneda Chapter Fourteen Vacations in the Contact Zone: Race, Gender and the Traveller at Niagara Falls Karen Dubinsky Chapter Fifteen Uprooted Women: Partition of Punjab, 1947 Aparna Basu Chapter Sixteen Politics and the Writing of History Himani Bannerji

Indian security policy and the rise of the Hindu right

Indian security policy and the rise of the Hindu right