Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths

241 Pages·2001·0.67 MB·English

by  Chetan Bhatt

Hindu Nationalism
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Hindu Nationalism
Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths
Chetan Bhatt
Oxford •New York
First published in 2001 by
Berg
Editorial offices:
150 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JJ, UK
838 Broadway, Third Floor, New York, NY 10003-4812, USA
© Chetan Bhatt 2001
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is an imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 1859733433(Cloth)
ISBN 1859733484(Paper)
Typeset by JS Typesetting, Wellingborough, Northants.
Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn.
For Parul, Bina and Steve with love
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
1 Introduction 1
2 The Primordial Nation of the Hindus 7
3 Beyond the Arya Ideal 41
4 From Revolutionary Nationalism to Hindutva 77
5 The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s Ordered Society 113
6 The Sangh Parivar in Politics 149
7 The Authoritarian Landscape of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad 179
8 Conclusion 209
Bibliography 213
Index 227
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following friends and colleagues for their support,
encouragement and discussions during the period of writing: John Solomos, Les
Back, Mariam Fraser, Anton Pozniak, Parita Mukta, Jacqui Fairclough, Stephen
Cowden, Vijay Prashad, Andrew Canessa, Arvind Rajagopal, Shabnam Hashmi,
Fethi Acikel, Hiroki Ogasawara and Lilly Bhatt. I am especially grateful to Jane
Hindley, Neil Washbourne, Kate Nash and Kirsten Campbell for their support and
detailed critical comments. Bina Bhatt’s extensive assistance was invaluable. I
would particularly like to thank Pradip K. Datta and Thomas Blom Hansen for
their important insights and suggestions, and Kathryn Earle for her consideration
and patience. Finally, I would like to thank Robert Mitchell, Parul and Bina for
their considerable support and help, and Stephen Cross for his suggestions for
improvements, critical focus, intellectual acuity, and much more besides.
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Introduction
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Introduction
On 16 May 1998, under the instructions of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Party-led (BJP) government, Indian atomic scientists exploded three nuclear
devices in the Rajasthan desert near Pokharan, and followed this with two further
explosions three days later. The day of the first tests, Buddha Purnima, is
traditionally celebrated as the day of birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha.
This was the second time that India had undertaken nuclear tests (the first was
conducted on 18 May 1974 under the orders of Indira Gandhi’s Congress
government). The first three devices detonated were said to be a fission device
(which India already had the capability of producing), a low-yield weapon that
could be used for India’s short-range Prithvi missiles, and a thermonuclear device
with a destructive power of several kilotons. This third bomb, and its potential
deployment in conjunction with the second stage of India’s proposed development
of its intermediate-range Agni missile (Agni II) would provide India with
intercontinental ballistic missiles with a destructive intensity and spatial reach that
had previously been the preserve of the nuclear superpowers. The tests were
followed by a national-popular resurgence in India in celebration of the country’s
emergence, under a BJP-led government, as a nuclear superpower that had
demonstrated India’s strength and put its chief enemy, Pakistan, ‘in its place’.
If the name of India’s ballistic missile, Agni, the god of fire in the archaic Vedic
texts was an older one, its symbolization in 1998 was novel, reflecting the eruption
of mass social movements and a political party of government that represented a
majoritarian, chauvinistic, anti-minority ideology of ‘Hindu’ supremacism. The
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the organization at the forefront of the upsurge of
militant and violent Hinduism, and having close affinity with the ideological
doctrine of Hindutva that also resulted in the formation of the BJP, called for a
temple dedicated to Shakti (the goddess of power) to be built at Pokharan, some
fifty kilometres from the site of the tests, the fifty-third addition to what it claimed
are similar Shaktipeeths (‘seats of strength’) that symbolize Hindu power. The
idea was mooted that sand from the explosion site be distributed across India in
the ‘tradition’ of a religious offering, though the harmful consequences of
‘radioactive prasad’ resulted in the abandonment of this suggestion. The inevitable
claim surfaced, one of many such enabling fictions, that nuclear weapons were
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