Articulating “Indianness”: Woman-Centered Desire and the Parameters for Nationalism (original) (raw)

In the Service of Nationalism: Women in the Hindu Nationalist Paradigm

Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2016

The Hindu nationalism with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as its vanguard, in the recent times, has emerged as dominant creed in the contemporary politico-cultural scenario of India. No walk of society, associated polity as well as their fragments has remained untouched with the nationalist mooring of Hindutva philosophy. This all encompassing and homogenizing doctrine besides other aspects of national life has inadvertently embraced and co-opted the Hindu woman in her different avatars. The gender connotation that is usually ascribed to the nation has unerringly given rise to a situation wherein the women have been consciously intertwined with the nationalist discourse. This phenomenon of co-option by the way of women affiliates of the RSS climaxed particularly during the Ramjanmabhoomi movement in the early 1990s besides at different communal conflagrations. Therefore, the honour of the nation (Hindu Nation) and the honour of the Hindu women is closely linked each other in the Hindu nationalists’ worldview. Hence, within the strong patriarchal system that Hindutva seems to espouse, the women represents both as a flag bearer of family honour (and of the nation) as well as matrishakti, i.e. victim and victor at a same time. This construct of women is highly questioned by the feminists who look at the right-wing tendencies as obscurantist, regressive and totally anti-feminist. This paper deals with the dual imagery that woman seemingly appropriate in the Hindu nationalism espoused by the Sangh Parivar as well as the feminists’ perspectives on such appropriation.

Hindu Nationalism in Theory and Practice

2016

Nationalism suggests that the majority community gains the upper hand in setting the nationalist and patriotic agenda while expecting compliance from the minority groups. In India, Hindu nationalism, also known as Hindutva, seeks to establish a Hindu India (Hindu Rashtra) that visualizes a Hindu-self‖ and the minority (Muslim & Christian) ‗‗other.'' Hindutva is an ideology propagated by the Hindu rightwing elements that aspire to establish India as a Hindu state by uniting the Hindus who are divided along the lines of caste, class, language and other differences. Hindutva is on the ascendance in India in the last 25 years. What strategies and tactics have the adherents of this chauvinistic, sectarian movement employed in order to gain an ideological, cultural, organizational and political foothold in a caste-ridden, multi-religious, multi-linguistic, secular, pluralist and democratic society dependent on coalition politics? This research is an attempt to understand the various facets of Hindutva in India, where violence has become central to India's socio-political order. It will investigate the multiple ways in which the discourses of nationalism, the self and the other, social unity, insecurity, identity, gender and violence manifest in the society. The origins of Hindu nationalism in the socio-political mainstream can be traced back to the pre-independence era struggle. However, in the last two decades or so, the Hindu nationalist movement in India has become a dominant cultural and political movement that on the surface presents itself as v an inclusive and pro-development establishment, but at the core seeks to sustain Hindu upper-class hegemony in a nation with heterogeneous identities not only within the Hindu community but with other minorities such as Muslims, Christians and Sikhs. This project takes the form of an academic essay that relies on secondary sources but also use primary sources. In it, I discuss Hindutva through the various definitions of nationalism and the ways in which majority and minority communities are imagined in a nation-state. This essay assumes a framework in which majoritarian discourse self assigns to one people the authority of the-self‖ and views minorities as the-other.‖ I will examine how the national, religious and cultural symbols are used to mobilize the public opinion and consolidate the self behind a certain agenda where myths form an important factor in the theory and practices of Hindutva establishment. Within this framework, any drive to homogenize the society will result in creating a stigmatized other, whose loyalty is always questioned. This research is a qualitative study with historical orientation, complimented by anthropological, sociological and political science dimensions. It is an attempt to understand the ideology, history, discourse, religion, culture and politics in shaping perceptions about the Self and the other. It focuses on the formative assertions, challenges in its imagination of Hindu vi collective, its discourse on the threatening other and how violence against the other is normalized which requires examining its fascist roots.

Gender and Hindu Nationalism: Understanding Masculine Hegemony

Routledge, 2019

This book presents an innovative approach to gender, nationalism, and the relations between them, and analyses the broader social base of Hindu nationalist organisation to understand the growth of 'Hindutva', or Hindu nationalism, in India. Arguing that Hindu nationalist thought and predilections emerge out of, and, in turn, feed, pre-existing gendered tendencies, the author presents the new concept of 'masculine hegemony', specifically Brahmanical masculine hegemony. The book offers a historical overview of the processes that converge in the making of the identity ‘Hindu’, in the making of the religion ‘Hinduism’, and in the shaping of the movement known as ‘Hindutva’. The impact of colonialism, social reform, and caste movements is explored, as is the role of key figures such as Mohandas Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, and Narendra Modi. The book sheds light on the close, yet uneasy, relations that Hindu nationalist thought and practice have with conceptions of 'modernity', 'development' and women's movements, and politics, and the future of Hindu nationalism in India. A new approach to the study of Hindu nationalism, this book offers a theoretically innovative understanding of Indian history and socio-politics. It will be of interest to academics working in the field of Gender studies and Asian Studies, in particular South Asian history and politics.

Hindutva as a Cultural Nationalism: Indian Origins of a Paradigm

A reflection the origins of the distinction between developmental and cultural nationalism which formed the basis of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) funded multi-disciplinary, collaborative Research Development Initivative which resulted in Developmental And Cultural Nationalisms (Routledge 2009)

Ayodhya - Hand that rocks the cradle: Hindu nationalism and female subjectivity

Within the Hindu nationalist narrative Ayodhya holds a unique symbolic place. It both summarizes and embodies the very essence of the idea around which the Hindu nationalistic discourse came to constructed in the twentieth century. Although Hindu nationalism, like other nationalisms, is constructed from a masculine perspective this paper tries to explore the women’s side of Hindu nationalist narrative, and show how in India nationalism functions as mechanism that reproduces patriarchal structures in approach to gender roles, but at the same time, somewhat surprisingly, also as a platform offering conditioned possibilities for expression of female subjectivity.