An analysis of the current Indian religious situation re- veals that India is plagued with religious fundamentalism and com- munalism. Religion is politicized and is experienced as a diabolic force, rather than a symbolic revelation. The patriarchal paradigm propagated by Hindutva cannot be dismantled without collabora- tion and dialogue. We need both 'sexually awakened' men and women of all religious traditions to join hands in this common war against the enemies of humanity. Together, we people of good will in India, could search for a "new anthropology" - a new way of under standing what it means to be human in an age which is bent on creating a myth of dehumanization.
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.)
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.
A principios de mayo de 2021 se anunciaron los resultados de las elecciones para la Asamblea estatal en Assam. El Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) había repetido la victoria de 2016 y podría nombrar al nuevo gobernador (Chief minister). En las elecciones generales de 2014 y 2019, es decir, para la Lok Sabha, el BJP también había registrado una victoria electoral en el estado. Detrás de estas victorias está un proceso más amplio de expansión de la Hindutva o nacionalismo hindú, una corriente política, social y cultural que define India a partir sólo de esta religión. La Hindutva se ha extendido a lugares nuevos, que habían quedado fuera de su esfera de influencia acostumbrada, tales como el noreste indio. Esta expansión ha hecho que la Hindutva adopte elementos y preocupaciones nuevas y se adapte a las dinámicas de la región. ; In early May 2021, results for the Assam Legislative Assembly elections were announced. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had repeated the 2016 victory and would be allowed to nominate the new Chief minister. In the general elections of 2014 and 2019, i.e., for the Lok Sabha, the BJP had triumphed as well in the state. Behind these victories, there is a wider process of expansion of the Hindutva or Hindu nationalism, a political, social and cultural movement which sees India as primarily a Hindu country. Hindutva has spread to new places, which had remained outside of its usual area of influence, such as the Indian northeast. This expansion has made Hindutva adopt new elements and concerns and adapt to the dynamics of the region.
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.
Leidig's article addresses a theoretical and empirical lacuna by analysing Hindutva using the terminology of right-wing extremism. It situates the origins of Hindutva in colonial India where it emerged through sustained interaction with ideologues in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany who, in turn, engaged with Hindutva to further their own ideological developments. Following India's independence, Hindutva actors played a central role in the violence of nation-building and in creating a majoritarian identity. Yet Hindutva was not truly 'mainstreamed' until the election of the current prime minister, Narendra Modi, in 2014. In order to construct a narrative that furthered Hindu insecurity, Modi mobilized his campaign by appealing to recurring themes of a Muslim 'threat' to the Hindu majority. The result is that Hindutva has become synonymous with Indian nationalism. Leidig seeks to bridge the scholarly divide between, on the one hand, the study of right-wing extremism as a field dominated by western scholars and disciplines and, on the other, the study of Hindutva as a field that is of interest almost exclusively to scholars in South Asian studies. It provides an analytical contribution towards the conceptualization of right-wing extremism as a global phenomenon.
Die Erstürmung und der Abriß der Moschee in Ayodhya im Dezember 1992 durch fanatisierte Hindus sowie die anschließende Errichtung eines provisorischen Rama-Tempels an dieser Stelle erschienen als ein Fanal: Steht Indien vor einer Wende vom "multikulturellen" Staat, von einer funktionierenden säkularen Demokratie zu einem fundamentalistischen Hindustaat, der Muslims wie Christen ausgrenzt? Dazu zu passen scheinen die Wahlerfolge, die die hindunationalistische Bharatiya Janata Partei in den letzten zehn Jahren erringen konnte. Wie ist der Erfolg des Hindunationalismus zu erklären, welches sind seine sozialen Trägergruppen, welche Organisationen instrumentalisieren hier Religion für den Machterwerb? Vor allen Dingen aber: Kann eine solche Bewegung in Indien auf Dauer Erfolg haben? Ist nicht vielmehr der Hinduismus viel zu vielfältig, als daß er zu einer geschlossenen politischen Kraft mit Aussicht auf die Machtübernahme geformt werden könnte? Bislang jedenfalls hat die indische Demokratie sich unter ungünstigsten Voraussetzungen als erstaunlich stabil erwiesen.
This paper explores the interconnections of Hindutva fascist repertoires in India and quasi-orientalist discourses. History and common sense are re-written through audiovisual communications to appeal to one section of a dangerously split Indian public and a neoliberal-touristic sensibility elsewhere. Enlightenment rhetorics of progress, democracy and technological development are apparently embodied by WhatsApp groups, electronic voting machines and laws to protect cows. Voting—as a marker of democratic citizenship—becomes a masquerade protecting a resurgent far right Hindutva (Hindu fascist) regime under the aegis of Narendra Modi and the BJP. Caste Hinduism's association of cows with deities, and the proscription on meat-eating in certain versions of religious practice, are used as pretexts for unimaginable violence against Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and working class/lower caste Hindus. Violence against those who dissent is rationalised as patriotic. Hindutva's banal and spectacular audiovisual discourse overwhelms public communication. Its consequences are a form of vigilante citizenship that is marked on the bodies of dead victims and of vigilante publics ready to be mobilised either in ethno-cultural violence or its defence and disavowal. Meanwhile, attracted to India as an enormous market, Western governments and corporations have colluded with the Hindutva regime's self-promotion as a bastion of development.
Hindutva persigue, mediante la agitación entre hindúes, controlar los resortes del poder e imponer la uniformidad cultural. En parte esta preponderancia de Hindutva se debe al fracaso del "centro-izquierda" para consolidarse como fuerza política en las décadas de 1970 y 1980. A lo largo de este tiempo los gobiernos de turno se proclamaban laicos, pero se inhibían de acometer políticas en ese sentido para no perder apoyo entre los musulmanes, lo que ha permitido que el extremismo hindú capitalizara la oposición. En estos momentos el panorama ha cambiado de forma drástica. ¿Puede una sociedad multirreligiosa y multicultural desarrollarse en un estado en descomposición? ¿El subcontinente se está asimilando al modelo europeo de la nación-estado étnica, apoyada en una religión y una cultura exclusivas? En otras palabras ¿es esto una consecuencia de la Partición? ; Hindutva movement is now actively seeking to capture instruments of state power and trying to impose its cultural hegemony by mobilizing Hindus. In post-Independent India, the Hindutva movement has reached such proportions because the much desired 'left-of-centre' consolidation failed to emerge in the 1970s and 1980s. Over these decades, the governments of the day claimed that India was a secular country but in actual practice, because of the fear of losing Muslim votes, they constantly postponed the implementation of a secular agenda thereby opening the space for the Hindutva forces to rush in. Now the political terrain has changed drastically. Is the belief that a multi-religious and culturally diverse society can wield itself into a nation and democratic polity coming apart? Is the sub-continent returning to the European model of building ethnic nation-states underpinned by the cultural codes of a mono-culture or single religion? In a line, could this be attributed to the 'long shadow' of the Partition of India?
Este artículo reflexiona sobre las ramificaciones ideológicas y políticas de la interpretación histórica india. Examina los prejuicios sectario-religiosos en la historiografía, que las instituciones utilizan para arrojar una representación distorsionada de la realidad, sin dar cabida a otros puntos de vista. Así, estudiamos cómo se promueven determinados libros de texto y suprimen otros en beneficio de posiciones sectarias. A su vez, estos grupos se apropian de las figuras representativas del nacionalismo laico. ; This article discusses the ideological and political ramifications of historical interpretation. It examines the communal perspective on the writing of history to show how it is a distorted representation of reality, so institutions propagate the communal point of view and suppress alternative perspectives. The suppression of the textbooks written from a secular scientific standpoint and the distortions in the textbooks for schools sponsored by the communal groups wielding state power are analysed. This need for legitimacy on the part of the communal forces prompts them to appropriate the icons of the secular nationalist movement —clearly a farcical exercise.
Die Arbeit geht von zwei Kernfragen aus: (1) In empirischer Hinsicht stellt sie sich die Frage nach dem Kern und der Struktur von Savarkars soziopolitischen Denken und Handeln. Die leitende Hypothese hierbei ist, dass es einen umfassenden Ansatz bedarf, der Savarkars gesamtes Leben und Werk in die Analyse miteinbezieht; (2) in theoretischer Hinsicht wird die Frage aufgeworfen inwieweit "westliche Theorien und Konzepte" auf den indischen Kontext anwendbar sind. Die Hypothese hier ist, dass jedes Konzept im Einzelfall überprüft werden muss und Pauschalaussagen hinsichtlich der Anwendbarkeit abzulehnen sind. Angesichts des identifizierten Mangels an wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten zu Savarkar sowie dessen inkohärenten Stellungnahmen besteht die erste wesentliche Leistung darin, zum ersten Mal Savarkars politische, soziale und wirtschaftliche Ideen umfassend und systematisch zu ermitteln sowie deren Kausalität für die Sinnstiftung im Rahmen der Konstruktion einer kollektiven Identität aufzuzeigen. Hier wird aufgezeigt, dass es sich bei Hindutva um ein gesamtgesellschaftliches Konzept handelt, welches es nicht erlaubt einzelne Teilbereiche auszublenden. In der theoretischen Dimension konnte anhand der Anwendung von Bernhard Giesens Konzept der codebasierten kollektiven Identitäten nachgewiesen werden, dass westliche Theorien (bzw. Konzepte) zum einen auf den indischen Kontext übertragbar sind und zum anderen es ermöglicht wird Savarkars identitäre Konstruktionssystematik von Hindutva zu ermitteln. Darüber hinaus konnte das methodische Vorgehen Savarkars nachvollzogen und die sich daraus ergebende Konsequenzen für die Sinnstiftung von Hindutva nachgezeichnet werden. Ausgehend von diesen Leistungen konnte ein weiteres Ergebnis erzielt werden, welches in der Erbringung eines Beitrages zur theoretischen Erforschung des Feldes der kollektiven Identität in Indien durch die Vorbereitung des Feldes für weitere komparative Studien besteht.
A case study of Indian Hindu right-wing icon Rithambara as orator/activist in mobilizing nationalist support for the Ramjanmabhumi movement underpins a discussion of the performative spaces she & others like her occupy & the impact of such discursivity. It is contended that the sexualized & violent speech of such Hindu nationalist public performers is dictated by the role they play in the movement as instigators of emotion & as progenitors of collective identifications. At issue is the challenge to the women-pacifism relationship -- particularly the Ghandhian equation of femininity with nurturance, spiritual strength, & nonviolence -- brought by this exercise of violence. It is contended that the confused narratives of Rithambara's speech might be rehearsed for effect, but the performative space exposes the audience to "queer pleasures" in stark contrast to the pedagogic heteronormative Hindutva discourse. Rithambara's performances dutifully work for the Hindutva; however, they also evidence a hidden rage against the Hindu nationalist male cadre. Formulations of "queer" are scrutinized to illuminate a reading of the "queer body," & context-specific designations of normative sexuality are defined to delineate the queer in Rithambara's performances. Historical aspects of RSS & Samiti gendered & sexed imaginaries are examined to position the local norm against which is pitted the queer bodies of Rithambara's performances as seen in an Apr 1991 speech. Two nodes of queerness are discerned: (1) She evokes the queer unruly body in attempting to establish Hindu normativity. (2) Bigendered Rithambara & her audiences might elicit queer (political) pleasures from consuming queer bodies, landscapes, & her discourse. It is concluded that such a postmodern politics of pleasure might have more staying power in this context than thought by much feminist criticism. J. Zendejas
A case study of Indian Hindu right-wing icon Rithambara as orator/activist in mobilizing nationalist support for the Ramjanmabhumi movement underpins a discussion of the performative spaces she & others like her occupy & the impact of such discursivity. It is contended that the sexualized & violent speech of such Hindu nationalist public performers is dictated by the role they play in the movement as instigators of emotion & as progenitors of collective identifications. At issue is the challenge to the women-pacifism relationship -- particularly the Ghandhian equation of femininity with nurturance, spiritual strength, & nonviolence -- brought by this exercise of violence. It is contended that the confused narratives of Rithambara's speech might be rehearsed for effect, but the performative space exposes the audience to "queer pleasures" in stark contrast to the pedagogic heteronormative Hindutva discourse. Rithambara's performances dutifully work for the Hindutva; however, they also evidence a hidden rage against the Hindu nationalist male cadre. Formulations of "queer" are scrutinized to illuminate a reading of the "queer body," & context-specific designations of normative sexuality are defined to delineate the queer in Rithambara's performances. Historical aspects of RSS & Samiti gendered & sexed imaginaries are examined to position the local norm against which is pitted the queer bodies of Rithambara's performances as seen in an Apr 1991 speech. Two nodes of queerness are discerned: (1) She evokes the queer unruly body in attempting to establish Hindu normativity. (2) Bigendered Rithambara & her audiences might elicit queer (political) pleasures from consuming queer bodies, landscapes, & her discourse. It is concluded that such a postmodern politics of pleasure might have more staying power in this context than thought by much feminist criticism. J. Zendejas
