Gender in the Hindu Nation
Author: Paola Bacchetta
Publisher:
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 160
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOn the political role and Hindu sentiments of women members of Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, an Indian political party; articles.
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Singing a Hindu Nation
Author: Anna Schultz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013-01-10
Total Pages: 246
ISBN-13: 0199730830
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSinging a Hindu Nation is a study of ranullnullriya kirtan, a western Indian performance medium that combines song, Hindu philosophical discourse, and nationalist storytelling. Beginning during the anti-colonial movement of the late nineteenth-century, performers of ranullnullriya kirtan led masses of Marathi-speaking people in temples and streets, and they have continued to preach and sing nationalism as devotion in the post-colonial era, and into the twenty-first century. In this book, author Anna Schultz demonstrates how, through this particular form of musical performance, the political becomes devotional, and explores why it motivates people to action and violence. Through both historical and ethnographic studies, Schultz shows that ranullnullriya kirtan has been especially successful in combining these two realms because kirtankars perform as representatives of the divine sage Narad, thereby infusing their nationalist messages with ritual weight. By speaking and singing in regional idioms with rich associations for Maharashtrian congregations, they use music to combine political and religious signs in ways that seem natural and desirable, promoting embodied experiences of nationalist devotion. As the first monograph on music and Hindu-nationalism, Singing a Hindu Nation presents a rare glimpse into the lives and performance worlds of nationalists on the margins of all-India political parties and cultural organizations, and is an essential resource for ethnomusicologists, as well as scholars of South Asian studies, religion, and political theory.
Our Hindu Rashtra
Author: Aakar Patel
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2022-10-24
Total Pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9354927963
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIndia has taken so sharp a turn in recent years that the very centre has shifted considerably. What led to this swing? Is it possible to trace the path to this point? Is there a way back to the just, secular, inclusive vision of our Constitution-makers? This country has long been an outlier in its South Asian neighbourhood, with its inclusive Constitution and functioning democracy. The growth of Hindutva, in some sense, brings India in line with the other polities here. In Our Hindu Rashtra, writer and activist Aakar Patel peels back layer after layer of cause and effect through independent India's history to understand how Hindutva came to gain such a hold on the country. He examines what it means for India that its laws and judiciary have been permeated by prejudice and bigotry, what the breach of fundamental rights portends in these circumstances, and what the all-round institutional collapse signifies for the future of Indians. Most importantly, Patel asks and answers that most important of questions: What possibilities exist for a return? Thought-provoking and pulling no punches, this book is an essential read for anyone who wishes to understand the nature of politics in India and, indeed, South Asia.
Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation
Author: Tanika Sarkar
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2001
Total Pages: 316
ISBN-13: 9780253340467
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhat are the major Hindu ideas and traditions of India that have shaped dominant conceptions of womanhood, domesticity, wifeliness, and mothering, and of India as a Hindu nation? Tanika Sarkar analyzes literary and social traditions, the elite voices and popular culture that helped create the lived reality of north India today. She explores the proto-nationalist novels of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya as well as scandal literature, rumors, women's memoirs, and the popular press of colonial times for the subaltern ideas that have shaped contemporary India. Sarkar also examines the way earlier Indian religious traditions of saintliness, sacrifice, heroism, and warfare are being subverted or transformed by militant and fundamentalist forms of Hinduism.
Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear
Author: D. Anand
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2016-04-30
Total Pages: 153
ISBN-13: 0230339549
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe representation of the Muslims as threatening to India's body politic is central to the Hindu nationalist project of organizing a political movement and normalizing anti-minority violence. Adopting a critical ethnographic approach, this book identifies the poetics and politics of fear and violence engendered within Hindu nationalism.
The Saffron Wave
Author: Thomas Blom Hansen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1999-03-23
Total Pages: 300
ISBN-13: 1400823056
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe rise of strong nationalist and religious movements in postcolonial and newly democratic countries alarms many Western observers. In The Saffron Wave, Thomas Hansen turns our attention to recent events in the world's largest democracy, India. Here he analyzes Indian receptivity to the right-wing Hindu nationalist party and its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which claims to create a polity based on "ancient" Hindu culture. Rather than interpreting Hindu nationalism as a mainly religious phenomenon, or a strictly political movement, Hansen places the BJP within the context of the larger transformations of democratic governance in India. Hansen demonstrates that democratic transformation has enabled such developments as political mobilization among the lower castes and civil protections for religious minorities. Against this backdrop, the Hindu nationalist movement has successfully articulated the anxieties and desires of the large and amorphous Indian middle class. A form of conservative populism, the movement has attracted not only privileged groups fearing encroachment on their dominant positions but also "plebeian" and impoverished groups seeking recognition around a majoritarian rhetoric of cultural pride, order, and national strength. Combining political theory, ethnographic material, and sensitivity to colonial and postcolonial history, The Saffron Wave offers fresh insights into Indian politics and, by focusing on the links between democracy and ethnic majoritarianism, advances our understanding of democracy in the postcolonial world.
Hindu Nationalism
Author: Christophe Jaffrelot
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2009-01-10
Total Pages: 405
ISBN-13: 1400828031
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHindu nationalism came to world attention in 1998, when the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won national elections in India. Although the BJP was defeated nationally in 2004, it continues to govern large Indian states, and the movement it represents remains a major force in the world's largest democracy. This book presents the thought of the founding fathers and key intellectual leaders of Hindu nationalism from the time of the British Raj, through the independence period, to the present. Spanning more than 130 years of Indian history and including the writings of both famous and unknown ideologues, this reader reveals how the "Hindutuva" movement approaches key issues of Indian politics. Covering such important topics as secularism, religious conversion, relations with Muslims, education, and Hindu identity in the growing diaspora, this reader will be indispensable for anyone wishing to understand contemporary Indian politics, society, culture, or history.
Hindu Nationalism in India
Author: Tanika Sarkar
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2022-05-01
Total Pages: 266
ISBN-13: 0197654223
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the twenty-first century, there has been a seismic shift in Indian political, religious and social life. The country's guiding spirit was formerly a fusion of the anti-caste worldview of B.R. Ambedkar; the inclusive Hinduism of Mahatma Gandhi; and the agnostic secularism of Jawaharlal Nehru. Today, that fusion has given way to Hindutva. This now-dominant version of Hinduism blends the militant nationalism of V.D. Savarkar; the Brahmanical anti-minorityism of M.S. Golwalkar; and the global Islamophobia of India's ruling regime. It requires deep cultural analysis and historical understanding, as only the sharpest and most profoundly informed historian can provide. For two decades, Tanika Sarkar has forged a path through the alleys and byways of Hindutva. She has trawled through the writing and iconography of its organisations and institutions, including RSS schools and VHP temples. She has visited the offices and homes of Hindutva's votaries, interviewing men and women who believe fervently in their mission of Hinduising India. And she has contextualised this new ferment on the ground with her formidable archival knowledge of Hindutva's origins and development over 150 years, from Bankimchandra to the Babri mosque and beyond. This riveting book connects Hindu religious nationalism with the cultural politics of everyday India.
Changing Homelands
Author: Neeti Nair
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2011-04-01
Total Pages: 356
ISBN-13: 0674061152
DOWNLOAD EBOOKChanging Homelands offers a startling new perspective on what was and was not politically possible in late colonial India. In this highly readable account of the partition in the Punjab, Neeti Nair rejects the idea that essential differences between the Hindu and Muslim communities made political settlement impossible. Far from being an inevitable solution, the idea of partition was a very late, stunning surprise to the majority of Hindus in the region. In tracing the political and social history of the Punjab from the early years of the twentieth century, Nair overturns the entrenched view that Muslims were responsible for the partition of India. Some powerful Punjabi Hindus also preferred partition and contributed to its adoption. Almost no one, however, foresaw the deaths and devastation that would follow in its wake. Though much has been written on the politics of the Muslim and Sikh communities in the Punjab, Nair is the first historian to focus on the Hindu minority, both before and long after the divide of 1947. She engages with politics in post-Partition India by drawing from oral histories that reveal the complex relationship between memory and history—a relationship that continues to inform politics between India and Pakistan.
The Hindu Nation
Author: MK Raghvendra
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-03-18
Total Pages: 218
ISBN-13: 9390358388
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Hindu Nation begins with an introduction examining nationhood in India and then traces the political conflict to Nehruvian cultural policy after 1947. In today's world, no religion can claim to be superior to any other. But in pursuing 'modernity' and inculcating the 'scientific' and 'secular' outlook, Nehruvian rationalism created an elite liberal class that was sceptical about the majority religion, but this was not extended to other religions because of a misunderstanding of secularism. In promoting Westernised education, the preservation of local knowledge was neglected and Hinduism lost respect among the educated elite born into it. The elite class became the intermediary with the West, which now dominates the academic study of India. Further, prompted by the sceptical attitude of many liberal Indians, Western academics and intellectuals accord Hinduism less respect compared to other religions and treat it as 'superstition'. Traditional Indians who revere Hinduism but are products of the same lopsided system respond by attributing false value to India's prehistory and its past. Hinduism is not a religion but a collection of practices associated with the space now called India. Author M.K. Raghavendra examines what being a Hindu means and asks whether its practices are reconcilable with global modernity and compatible with justice and egalitarianism. While examining the obstacles a modern Hindu nation faces, including the fixed ways of a large public, this extensively researched book also suggests measures to make India successful as a global power and Hinduism widely respected.
