Taking the example of recent educational reform movements in India, we identify in an exemplary way nationalization tendencies in the education sector. Thereby, we stress the sociocultural embedding in the present as context of the emergence of these nationalist future visions. In the education sector, likewise as in other sectors, the past is a point of reference to legitimate and enforce specific futures. Following Appadurai, we define future as well as the past as cultural fact. Focusing upon India and the development of a new National Education Policy (NEP) as the field of study, we show exemplarily how an imagined past is used to promote the implementation of Hindu-fundamentalist educational reforms or a sanskritization of education in the present time. Finally, we discuss some possible consequences. (DIPF/Orig.)
A monumental intellectual history of the pivotal figure of Hindu nationalismVinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966) was an intellectual, ideologue, and anticolonial nationalist leader in India s struggle for independence from British colonial rule, one whose anti-Muslim writings exploited India s tensions in pursuit of Hindu majority rule. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva is the first comprehensive intellectual history of one of the most contentious political thinkers of the twentieth century.Janaki Bakhle examines the full range of Savarkar s voluminous writings in his native language of Marathi, from political and historical works to poetry, essays, and speeches. She reveals the complexities in the various positions he took as a champion of the beleaguered Hindu community, an anticaste progressive, an erudite if polemical historian, a pioneering advocate for women s dignity, and a patriotic poet. This critical examination of Savarkar s thought shows that Hindutva is as much about the aesthetic experiences that have been attached to the idea of India itself as it is a militant political program that has targeted the Muslim community in pursuit of power in postcolonial India.By bringing to light the many legends surrounding Savarkar, Bakhle shows how this figure from a provincial locality in colonial India rose to world-historical importance. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva also uncovers the vast hagiographic literature that has kept alive the myth of Savarkar as a uniquely brave, brilliant, and learned revolutionary leader of the Hindu nation
Hindutva, the ideology of militant Hindu nationalism, has precipitated violent hatreds between the Hindus and Muslims of India, as was evidenced in the recent rioting in the State of Gujarat, which was unprecedented in history. The factors which led to the emergence of Hindutva are reviewed and the hollowness of the ideology exposed. It is imperative to critique Hindutva's communalist approach and make concrete efforts to debunk it, it is argued.
Abstract. The 2014 parliamentary election in India reduced Congress party to merely 44 seats in the lower house, big blow for a party whose history is integral the country's founding narrative. In the last parliamentary election the Congress party polled only 19.3% of the votes declining from 28.6% in 2009, while on the other hand the main right wing party i.e. BJP won 282 parliamentary seats and 31% of the national votes. The extreme right-wing organisations have undoubtedly become the central pole of Indian politics. Moreover, its recent success in Uttar Pradesh provincial election, which is one of the most populated province with 215 million inhabitants, is the strongest evidence yet of the broader shift to the right and the BJP's victory in UP state strengthens this shift. This paper intends to study the recent rise of extreme right-wing Hindu organisations in India. Most prominent among these organisations are RSS, BJP, VHP, Bajang Dal and Shiv Sena. However, all of them work together under the philosophy of Hindutva (i.e. Hindu-ness) and are rabidly anti-minority in their stance. The aim of this study is to highlight the recent rise in extreme right-wing Hindu organisations and to examine their ideas and philosophy regarding Indian history and culture. It is also useful to set this against a global context in which divisive and ultra-nationalist forces are on the rise within Europe and Donald Trump has assumed the US presidency. The study argues that the adoption of neoliberal economic policy in 1991 has increased GDP, but hardly any expansion in employment, which is known as 'jobless growth'. The study also finds the far right encroachment into India's liberal institutions and it seems that Indian polity is undergoing a historically unprecedented change with extreme-right to dominance into vast areas of ideology, economy and culture.Keywords: India, Hindutva, Neo-liberalism, Secularism and minorities.JEL. N30, N35, N40.
