Researching Hindu Nationalism as a Paradigm for Multidisciplinary Political Science Hindutva as Political Monotheism , by Anustup Basu, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020, 296 pp., $27.95 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-478-01094-4. Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy , by Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019, 656 pp., $35.00 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-691-20680-6. Hindu Nationalism in India , by Tanika Sarkar, …

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1 Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996).2 Jaffrelot, Modi’s India, 157.3 Ibid., 311.4 Ibid., 71.5 Ibid., 253–308.6 Ibid., 170–82.7 Ibid., 399.8 Ibid., 240.9 Ibid., 453.10 Ibid., 99.11 Ibid., 98.12 Ibid., 114–56.13 Tariq Thachil, Elite Parties, Poor Voters: How Social Services Win Votes in India (London: Cambridge University Press, 2014).14 Basu, Hindutva, 163.15 Ibid., 270.16 See Arkotong Longkumer, The Greater India Experiment: Hindutva and the Northeast (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020) for a detailed account of similar processes of cooptation and flexibility by the RSS / BJP in Northeastern India.17 Basu, Hindutva, 259.18 Ibid., 256.19 Ibid., 242.20 See Jairus Banaji, ed., Fascism: Essays on Europe and India (New Delhi: Three Essays Collective, 2016).21 Basu, Hindutva, 15122 Ibid., 4.23 Ibid., 33.24 Ibid., 158.25 Ibid., 158.26 Ibid., 163.27 Ibid., 162.28 Basu also draws on Spivak’s concept of “parabasis” (10), referring to the chorus in Greek tragedy as a metaphor for an order imposed on ambiguous and multiple discourses.29 Vijayan, Gender and Hindu Nationalism, 61.30 Ibid., 72.31 Ibid., 80.32 He is building on Partha Chatterjee’s famous argument in The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).33 Vijayan, Gender and Hindu Nationalism, 113–4.34 Ibid., 143.35 Ibid., 157.36 Ibid., 182.37 Ibid., 176.38 Ibid., 207.39 Ibid., 173–5.40 An attempt that seems to have finally succeeded under Modi’s government with a Supreme Court decision in 2019 to hand the land over to a Hindu trust.41 Vijayan, Gender and Hindu Nationalism, 99.42 Sarkar, Hindu Nationalism, 164.43 Ibid., 199.44 Sarkar explores the politics of this seminal novel in detail showing how it shifts blame for the Bengal famine of 1770 to Muslim elites, rather than the British administration, setting a pattern for future Hindutva historiography.45 Sarkar, Hindu Nationalism, 229.46 Ibid., 93.47 For example, the work of Robin Horton, including Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West: Essays on Magic, Religion and Science (London: Cambridge University Press, 1993).48 Sumantra Bose, Secular States, Religious Politics: India, Turkey and the Future of the Secular State (London: Cambridge University Press, 2018), covers mainly the superstructural elements of religious politics and has less content on social movements or grassroots sociology of religion.49 For example, Wael B Hallaq, The Impossible State: Islam, Politics and Modernity’s Moral Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).50 But see a very recent volume, which came out after this review was already written: Aravindan Neelakandan, Hindutva: Origin, Evolution and Future (Noida, Uttar Pradesh: BlueInk Press, 2022). This is a comprehensive emic defense of Hindutva addressed to a “Western” or “secular” audience.51 Although permission for overseas scholars to research these topics is unlikely to be forthcoming.52 Rosana Pinheiro-Machado & Tatiana Vargas-Maria (eds), The Rise of the Radical Right in the Global South (London: Routledge, 2023).