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Abstract
This article considers civilizational politics at the interface between nationalism and internationalism. It does this by focusing on some key trends in India's engagements with UNESCO and its flagship conventions for culture. The article builds on existing scholarship regarding the political appropriation of key religious and heritage sites within India by critically examining how Hinduism is presented to UNESCO and other organizations as a religious and civilizational heritage for global recognition and endorsement. We argue that UNESCO's programmes and conventions are being co-opted via a rewriting of history and in the creation of heritage imaginaries of a Hindu nation. From there, the discussion extends previous critiques regarding the conjoining of Hinduism to a Harappan civilization heritage by showing how this geographically extends outwards via a programme of Indian Ocean diplomacy conceived around environmental and historical connectivities. In pulling these various threads together, the article demonstrates the ways in which Hindu civilizational discourses circulate at the international level in seemingly benign and banal ways, and, yet, simultaneously advance the domestic cultural politics now familiar to the Hindutva movement.

This article explores the vast body of English language works on Hinduism published since 1981 by Voice of India—an influential right-wing Hindu publishing house headquartered in New Delhi, but contributed to by Indians at "home" and in diasporic communities, as well as Europeans and North Americans. Focus on the construction of the Hindu "Self" and the non-Hindu "Other" shows the manner in which European thought, primarily represented by the contributions of colonial-era British and German indologists, but bolstered by evangelicals, Utilitarians and Arabo-Islamicists from the same era, has become an important feature of postcolonial forms of Hinduism. In particular, the influence of fin de siècle German indologist Paul Deussen, mediated by such colonial-era Hindu thinkers as Swami Dayananda, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo Ghose and Mahatma Gandhi, not only defines Voice of India's theology, but leads to the construction of a Hindu Self that is the personification of "Aryan godliness" and a non-Hindu Other that is essentialized as a "Semitic Demon." Although closely associated with and often serving the political initiatives of the Sangh Parivar, the authors of this theology have been kept at arm's length by the organization for reasons of political expediency. Both the growing network of contributors to and consumers of this view, and its periodic use by the Sangh Parivar, insure that it represents a significant development in the ideology of Hindutva.

This article analyzes the narratives of Islamophobia in Hindu Nationalism (Hindutva). Specifically, it analyzes how Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), articulates Islamophobia in his speeches, interviews, and podcasts. In total, a discourse analysis of 35 such documents has been conducted. Conceptually, this article applies the notion of language-games to understand how Modi articulates Islamophobia. The article contends that while Modi's Islamophobia is executed subtly, it is nonetheless a function of the way in which Hindutva conceives of Muslims as subordinate to Hindus. Two Islamophobic narratives in Modi's political discourse have been mapped out: (1) the erasure of Indian Muslim histories in Modi's economic development agenda, and (2) the characterization of Hinduism as having a taming effect on Islam in India. The article provides a conceptual overview of language-games and a review of how Hindutva defines Hindus and Muslims, before analyzing how Modi articulates Islamophobia. The article concludes by suggesting that a Hindutva-driven Islamophobia may have permeated into the Hindu mainstream.

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.

AbstractTracing the shifting historical and contemporary discourses of self‐representation among upper caste American Hindu immigrants, this paper reflects upon the rise of diaspora "Hindutva Democrats" in the post‐2020 American political landscape. What makes "Hindutva Democrats" a peculiar political embodiment is their manipulative use of the language of social justice for addressing racism in America while downplaying, if not outright refusing to acknowledge, glaring human rights abuses against minorities (for issues such as casteism and Islamophobia) in India and in the Indian diaspora. Together, these confounding and inconsistent political stances illuminate the problem of the neoliberalization of calls for racial justice, amplified by narratives of American exceptionalism and its favorable capitalist ties to India in the contemporary political landscape. This analysis of the Hindutva Democratic movement illuminates the ways in which performances of race, caste, and racialization are embedded in historical, institutional, and gendered ideological projects across borders. These performances create insidious impediments toward the achievement of the global human rights which are foundational to sustainable peace.