Table Of ContentHindu Nationalism in India
and the Politics of Fear
Hindu Nationalism in India
and the Politics of Fear
Dibyesh Anand
HINDU NATIONALISM IN INDIA AND THE POLITICS OF FEAR
Copyright © Dibyesh Anand, 2011.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011978–0–230–60385–1
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First published in 2011 by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Anand, Dibyesh.
Hindu nationalism in India and the politics of fear / Dibyesh Anand.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. India—Politics and government—1977– 2. Hindus—India—Politics and
government. 3. Hindutva. 4. Hinduism and politics—India. 5. Hinduism
and state—India. I. Title.
DS480.853.A49 2011
320.540954—dc22 2011016913
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by MPS Limited, A Macmillan Company
First edition: November 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The author would like to thank the following for giving the permission to use ideas
and sentences published previously as the following:
Anand, Dibyesh (2009). “Hindutva: A Schizophrenic Nationalism,” Seminar 601.
Available online at http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/601/601_dibyesh_
anand.htm
Anand, Dibyesh (2008). “Porno-Nationalism and the Male Subject: An Ethnography
of Hindu Nationalist Imagination in India,” in Jane Parpart and Marysia Zalewski
(eds.), Rethinking the “Man” Question in International Politics. London: Zed.
Anand, Dibyesh (2007). “Gendered Anxieties: Representing Muslim Masculinity as
a Danger,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 9, 2: 257–269.
Anand, Dibyesh (2005). “Violence of Security: Hindutva in India,” The Roundtable:
The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs 94, 379: 201–213. (Reprinted
by permission of Routledge, Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.informaworld.
com)
To those who struggle for others
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Hindu Nationalism in India 1
2 Hindu Nation under Siege 19
3 Pornosexualizing “The Muslim” 49
4 The Unawakened India 83
5 Awakening the Hindu Mind and the Hindu Body 97
6 The Awakened Hindu India: Ayodhya and
Gujarat 123
7 Politics of Fear 151
Appendix I: Islam X-Rayed 161
References 175
Index 193
Acknowledgments
At various stages I thought of giving up this book. What kept
me going was the continuing challenge posed by rightwing
Hindu nationalists to the very idea and practice of secularism
and democracy in India, the encouragement of colleagues,
friends, and strangers from different parts of the world who
found my ideas interesting, and the discomfort of many “closet”
Hindu nationalists who found the same ideas unduly provoca-
tive and anti-Hindu.
I owe a debt to scholars and intellectuals who have inter-
rogated Hindu nationalism and challenged it for more than a
century now. But this antidemocratic and antisecular move-
ment continues unabated and this is the rationale for my inter-
vention here.
I benefited in more ways that I can remember from my interac-
tions with scholars and students during seminars at various ven-
ues, especially Australian National University (ANU), University
of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley), Cardiff University, the
Central University of Hyderabad (CUH), Jawaharlal Nehru
University (JNU), the National University of Singapore, Oxford
University, and the University of Westminster.
My stay as a Beatrice M. Bain Affiliated Scholar at UC
Berkeley (2008) and as a Freilich Visiting Fellow at the ANU
(2009) were remarkably productive. My gratitude goes to Paola
Bacchetta, Freilich Foundation, and The Research School of
Humanities at ANU. I also appreciate the opportunities afforded
by Jyotirmaya Sharma at CUH and Zoya Hasan at JNU by invit-
ing me as a visiting fellow at their respective institutions.
Nitasha Kaul was generous with her encouragement, ideas,
and questions.
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Palden Wangchuk for his help with
proofreading the manuscript. He performed magic—he made
an otherwise tedious task interesting.
Finally, and most importantly, thank you to Robyn Curtis
and Palgrave Macmillan for your patience and help.
1
Hindu Nationalism in India
Hindutva (“Hindu-ness,” shorthand for Hindu national-
ism) in India is a chauvinist and majoritarian nationalism
that conjures up the image of a peaceful Hindu Self vis-à-vis
the threatening minority Other. Hindu nationalism normalizes
a politics of fear and hatred by representing it as a defensive
reaction to the threats supposedly posed by Muslims to the
security of the individual Hindus as well as of the Hindu col-
lective. Hindutva is porno-nationalism in its obsessive preoc-
cupation with the predatory sexuality of the putative Muslim
figure and the dangers to the integrity of the Hindu bodies. The
proponents of Hindutva mobilize and generate negative stereo-
types of Islam and Muslims to legitimize violence against actual
Muslims living in India. This book investigates myriad ways in
which the discourses of culture, insecurity, nationalism, gender,
identity, and violence intersect in Hindu nationalism’s reac-
tionary and right-wing politics of fear and imagination. While
scholars and commentators have focused on different aspects of
Hindutva in India and within the Indian diaspora, there is no
other book-length ethnographic study of the centrality of fear,
insecurity, and imagination in the Hindu nationalist project.
In this opening chapter, I will introduce the phenomenon of
Hindu nationalism and its significance for understanding the
politics in India, raise ethical dilemmas involved in an ethno-
graphic research of a right-wing movement, and conceptual-
ize Hindutva as a schizophrenic nationalism. This will set the
scene for a more detailed discussion in the rest of the book. The
2 HINDU NATIONALISM IN INDIA
topic of Hindu nationalism has been approached by scholars,
intellectuals, politicians, activists, and ordinary people from
many different angles. I do not offer a comprehensive overview
of these approaches nor do I claim to provide an exhaustive
account of Hindutva. I focus on providing an in-depth analysis
of Hindu nationalist politics of fear and imagination.
What is Hindu Nationalism?
The discourse of Hindu nationalism—Hindutva—is best under-
stood as a collection of eclectic ideas, images, and practices. It
is tempting to reject Hindutva as an intellectually bankrupt
idea, as a collective fantasy of a few delusional individuals, as an
illiberal attack on the secular multiethnic plurality of India, or
as a regressive extremist movement based on a problematic and
empirically flawed category of the “Hindu nation.” For instance,
such rejectionist approaches were evident after the national
elections of 2009 with many commentators discussing the
Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) defeat as a product of, as well as
contributing to, the existential crisis within Hindu n ationalism.
If Hindutva is indeed in crisis, what explains its tenacity and
hold over a significant section of Hindus inside India and in
the diaspora? Could this be a case of political setback without
a serious dent in Hindutva’s cultural project and the long-term
vision for a Hindu India? That Hindu nationalism has so far
failed to provide a stable basis for an ever-expanding political
movement does not challenge its more pernicious project of
shaping a Hindu samaj (society) and sanskriti (culture) into
existence. Hindu nationalism remains a significant force in the
Indian political landscape.
Hindu nationalism is embodied within various political and
cultural organizations, most of which are branded as being
part of the Sangh Parivar (the Sangh family). While the BJP is
the main political party associated with the Sangh family, most
identify the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS or the Sangh)
as the primary ideological source. Other members of the Sangh
family include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal,
Description:The 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 violenc
