Hindu Nationalism in India

by Tanika Sarkar

In the twenty-first century, there has been a seismic shift in Indian political, religious and social life. The country's guiding spirit was formerly a fusion of the anti-caste worldview of B.R. Ambedkar; the inclusive Hinduism of Mahatma Gandhi; and the agnostic secularism of Jawaharlal
Nehru. Today, that fusion has given way to Hindutva.

This now-dominant version of Hinduism blends the militant nationalism of V.D. Savarkar; the Brahmanical anti-minorityism of M.S. Golwalkar; and the global Islamophobia of India's ruling regime. It requires deep cultural analysis and historical understanding, as only the sharpest and most profoundly
informed historian can provide.

For two decades, Tanika Sarkar has forged a path through the alleys and byways of Hindutva. She has trawled through the writing and iconography of its organisations and institutions, including RSS schools and VHP temples. She has visited the offices and homes of Hindutva's votaries, interviewing men
and women who believe fervently in their mission of Hinduising India. And she has contextualised this new ferment on the ground with her formidable archival knowledge of Hindutva's origins and development over 150 years, from Bankimchandra to the Babri mosque and beyond. This riveting book connects
Hindu religious nationalism with the cultural politics of everyday India.

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

Published May 1, 2022

Reviews

[Aarish Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is primarily a collection of the author’s previously published essays on the subject. Only the last chapter is previously unpublished, while the rest were published over a long period of time with some in the 1990s and the latest one in 2019. Having said that, however, it does shed light on some continuing and recurring themes of Hindu nationalism in India spearheaded by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). So, it was not a bad idea to publish the book as a collection on a subject. The main theme of the book is how Hindutva has conflated religion and nationalism in Indian politics with implications not only for patriotism but also for religiosity. She discusses how this has fed on and has led to further otherization of non-Hindus, especially Muslims. The author explains how the subservient roles of women and lower castes are co-opted into this larger superstructure of extremist patriotism fuelled by hatred towards and fear of the “aggressive other.” Fear, she argues, is used as a ploy by the minority upper-caste and middle-class base of the RSS to masterfully rally the majority lower-caste and underserved rural Hindu populations to their cause. The author maintains that the RSS succeeded in creating what she calls a “moral economy of communalism” through manipulation and at times creation of its own history. “What the ‘science’ of race difference was to Nazi ideology, the discipline of History is to Hindutva: a claim to ‘formal knowledge’ which exalts political mission as accredited Truth,” she writes on p.179 of the book.