Kashmiris in the Hindu Rashtra

Mridu Rai discusses the location of Kashmiri Muslims in India after the BJP’s electoral win in 2014, identifying how Kashmiri Muslims are made to serve as contrapuntal symbols for constructing a mythical Hindu nation – of terrorist violence, illegitimate religious impulses and sedition. Rai argues that the evocatory purpose Kashmiris serve is so essential to Hindutva that it dissipates the possibility of resolving the Kashmir question under the Modi-led BJP. The preference for militaristic modes of dominance has allowed India to eschew its responsibility of administering Kashmir through democratic engagement and of seeking negotiated settlement with all segments of the public. This governance confines Kashmiris to a reality of daily atrocities, including shootings, mass graves and gendered violence. The study of the mistreatment of Kashmiris by the Indian state and Hindu nationalists is important, as similar repressive strategies are being deployed in the heartland of India against other minority groups.

Dalits In Post-2014 India

The BJP’s 2014 election manifesto outlined the socio-economic elevation of Dalits as a priority by focusing on education and entrepreneurship, strengthening the prevention of atrocities against Scheduled Castes and bridging the human development divide between Scheduled Castes and others. This chapter empirically illustrates the low allocation of funds for many sectors including education, welfare schemes like Special Component Plan for Scheduled Castes (SCP) and the high number of incidents of violence against Dalits in BJP ruled states. As a result, Dalits are largely discontent and insecure, which reflects in voluntary uprisings and protests against policies of the incumbent government. At the political level, Dalit parties are joining hands with secular forces like the Bahujan Samaj Party’s understanding with Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh.

Remaking the Hindu/Nation

Angana P. Chatterji excavates the contemporaneous practices of Hindu majoritarianism in Uttar Pradesh surrounding the 2014 elections. This chapter elaborates on the emergent relations between Hindu cultural dominance and nationalist Hinduism that induce and deepen cultural anxiety, xenophobia, misogyny, as well as hate and violence. This chapter also details select examples of actions to discipline and terrorize religious minority/ othered subjects (including Adivasis and Dalits) undertaken by Sangh Parivar organizations in Uttar Pradesh between January 2014 and September 2018, and those resultant from the undercurrent of hate and estrangement fostered by the majoritarian culture at large. These events pertain to the Ayodhya campaign, forcible conversions to Hinduism, framing ‘love jihad’, opposing reservations and cattle slaughter, and the promotion of hate speech. The everyday and episodic targeting of vulnerable communities is supported by the deeply rooted inequities of caste, class, and hetero/ normative gender, and such targeting, the chapter argues, strengthens cultures of violence and facilitates governance through fear.

‘Belief’ in the Rule of Law and the Hindu Nation and the Rule of Law

Ratna Kapur illustrates how the Indian judiciary, through mobilizing a politics of ‘belief,’ has endorsed the identity of the Indian state as a Hindu nation through the discourse of rights and has underscored such practice through the constructed opposition between Islam and gender equality in the advocacy of the Hindu Right. The article analyses the role of religion in the constitutional discourse of secularism in India and how this has been used as a technique to establish and reinforce Hindu majoritarianism. The article focuses on the relationship between secularism, equality, and religion in law, which is pivotal to the Hindu Right’s project of constructing the Indian Nation as Hindu. Kapur notes that the judiciary has played a central role in legitimizing the Hindutva project, and that this project has gained traction in the legal arena to reshape the meaning of equality, gender equality, and religious freedom.

Hindutva Incorporation and Socioconomic Exclusion

Nandini Sundar examines the conditions and discursive strategies utilized by the BJP to contribute to building an extensive Adivasi (tribal) voter base that continues to support the BJP despite the party’s alignment with industrialists who displace rural and tribal communities, and whose ruling ideology marginalizes and devalues Adivasis. Narendra Modi’s popularity is no more central to this question than in discussions that revolve around the fatal attraction of the BJP holds to Adivasis and Dalits. Why do Adivasis vote in such large numbers for a party which is clearly aligned with the industrialists who want to displace them; why do Dalits align with a party whose ruling ideology is so clearly holds them in contempt? Sundar analyzes several strategies of incorporating Adivasis into the Hindu nation: Sanskritization, modernization (in the form of schooling), the (anti-Christian) conversion debate, service work, and mass violence and small-scale incidents.

Contours of Crony Capitalism in the Modi Raj

This chapter examines crony capitalism in the first four years of the Modi’s premiership. Firstly, it analyses the changing dynamics of crony capitalism in India after independence from the licensed raj to liberalization in 1991 after which it resurfaced in forms of favors to big businesses, such as special economic zones, spectrum allotment and mining contracts. Secondly, the analysis of data under the Modi regime shows that crony capitalism has decreased, but this can be misleading because the evolutionary process of declining dependence on government patronage also contributed to it. Crony capitalism is also the main political issue that catapulted Modi to power in 2014. It is an issue that has often led to political upheavals in independent India. Finally, with the electoral bonds, increasing private investment and sphere of influence, it may not be a surprise if history repeats itself.

Reflections in the Crowd Delegation, Verisimilitude, and the Modi Mask

Fachandi discusses the social mechanism of delegation in connection with the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, and the subsequent popularity of the Modi mask in crowds and rallies in Gujarat and later across India. Fachandi argues that Modi’s public image underwent a remarkable transformation in the early 2000s as he emerged as an icon of ‘Hindu anger’, in effect reversing and reconfiguring the idea of ahimsa (non-violence) that for so long had been touted as a core element of Gujarati culture. After the pogrom in Gujarat in 2002, Modi became the face of this ‘reaction’ (pratikriya) that gave birth to a new and aggressive form of Hindu. The use of the Modi mask, Fachandi argues, signifies this new Hindu self, a self that still sits uneasily with personal dispositions and fears and remains in need of symbolic support in the form of the mask. The mask signifies a form of delegation of power, the projection of Hindu support onto the Hindu majority leader who, in turn, is enabled and empowered to speak and act in the overtly aggressive genre of the ‘angry Hindu’ (krodh Hindu).

Aggressive Hindu Nationalism

This chapter scrutinizes the triple talaq issue in the context of an aggressive Hindu nationalism in India to provide the intersectional and historical context for the overemphasis on triple talaq and the lack of reporting on the progress in Muslim women’s rights, and to challenge popular misconceptions surrounding Muslim personal law. Why is there an overemphasis on triple talaq today to the exclusion of all other gender concerns? Agnes highlights how the discourse around triple talaq has constrained the discussion of abandoned women within the confines of Muslim communities, even while separated and abandoned Hindu women number 2 million out of 2.3 million in India. Through reflecting on the triple talaq issue, she seeks to find effective strategies to secure dignity and economic rights for women in a context where women’s rights are posed as oppositional to (Muslim) community rights.

Sculpting the Saffron Body

Jyoti Puri examines Hindu nationalism’s traffic in a popular strand of yoga, one aimed at enhancing health and wellbeing, which has become popular in India and across the world, and while many ‘yogas’ coexist, this chapter enquires into the Hindu Right’s mobilization of this iteration of yoga in representing India as Hindu, which has gained purchase in India, US, Europe and elsewhere. Puri explores the convergence of support around yoga, raising the question of its political and cultural significance to pro-Hindu forces. Looking at nation branding through the lens of yoga provides an opportunity to consider the image-making that is currently underway, advancing Hindutva’s exclusionary programs at home while navigating imperatives of international politics, business and foreign investment, and other fundamental elements of neoliberal capital.

How the Sangh Parivar Writes and Teaches History

Beginning with the writings on history by Savarkar and Golwalkar, Tanika Sarkar analyses how Hindu nationalists essentially understand Indian history as a Hindu history. She shows how this understanding of history has slowly percolated through the RSS network of schools and institutions. More recently, this version of history has been inserted into official curricula and history textbooks, from English language textbooks at both the national level, to a range of vernacular textbooks at the state level. Sarkar proceeds to demonstrate that an older and less known Hindu nationalist agenda for historical research has gained force across the country since 2014. This agenda consists of three main aims: a) to elevate the vast corpus of Sanskritpuranas (myths, legends, stories) to the status of literal historical sources; b) to refute the so-called ‘Aryan invasion hypothesis’ and to show that Brahmanical Hinduism is the original religion and civilization of the subcontinent; and c) to incorporate vast numbers of local and tribal gods and legends into an overall national and Brahmanical structure of history and sacred geography. All these initiatives are promoted and generated by a vast base of volunteers and RSS activists across India.