{"title":"Mapping Hindutva’s coordinates: global formations of nationalist space","authors":"Sitara Thobani","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2023.2208069","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper studies the religious and spatial politics of contemporary Hindu nationalism through an examination of the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, India, and the Swaminarayan Mandir in Neasden, UK. Whereas the Neasden Temple is celebrated as a diasporic accomplishment that testifies to British multiculturalism, the Ayodhya temple has been mired by controversy and marred in violence that has spanned decades. Despite these differences, both temples have acquired their specific symbolic, visual and material salience through a global circulation of ideas, goods, peoples and aesthetics. I trace this circulation to show how these two temples serve to concretize and embody a specific historical narrative of ‘the Hindu nation’ through their shared architectural forms, as well as through the shared processes of their material construction. My argument is that the symbolic, visual and material relationships these temples instantiate across multiple ‘national’ locations can be read as territorializing mythic formations of ‘the Hindu nation’ as a global entity. The transnational crossings that secure the local specificities entailed in the construction of these temples demonstrate how contemporary formations of ‘globality’ are produced by, and in turn become the conditions of possibility for, the transformation of contemporary Hindu nationalism into a global phenomenon.","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Identities","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2208069","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ETHNIC STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper studies the religious and spatial politics of contemporary Hindu nationalism through an examination of the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, India, and the Swaminarayan Mandir in Neasden, UK. Whereas the Neasden Temple is celebrated as a diasporic accomplishment that testifies to British multiculturalism, the Ayodhya temple has been mired by controversy and marred in violence that has spanned decades. Despite these differences, both temples have acquired their specific symbolic, visual and material salience through a global circulation of ideas, goods, peoples and aesthetics. I trace this circulation to show how these two temples serve to concretize and embody a specific historical narrative of ‘the Hindu nation’ through their shared architectural forms, as well as through the shared processes of their material construction. My argument is that the symbolic, visual and material relationships these temples instantiate across multiple ‘national’ locations can be read as territorializing mythic formations of ‘the Hindu nation’ as a global entity. The transnational crossings that secure the local specificities entailed in the construction of these temples demonstrate how contemporary formations of ‘globality’ are produced by, and in turn become the conditions of possibility for, the transformation of contemporary Hindu nationalism into a global phenomenon.
期刊介绍:
Recent years have witnessed considerable worldwide changes concerning social identities such as race, nation and ethnicity, as well as the emergence of new forms of racism and nationalism as discriminatory exclusions. Social Identities aims to furnish an interdisciplinary and international focal point for theorizing issues at the interface of social identities. The journal is especially concerned to address these issues in the context of the transforming political economies and cultures of postmodern and postcolonial conditions. Social Identities is intended as a forum for contesting ideas and debates concerning the formations of, and transformations in, socially significant identities, their attendant forms of material exclusion and power.