The Greater India Experiment: Hindutva and the Northeast

Abstract

because even though Sells does a good job of delving into historical parameters of what constituted sacralised politics of the regime, his analysis seems insufficient regarding how nationalism’s flirt with the religion took place in that context. Partly due to analytical restrictions and shortage of literature on the specific geography being studied, Sells ends up giving a historical account of Wahhabism, pan-Islamism, and Saudi-Western relations. Lastly, analyses throughout the book could have been methodically more diverse so that the societal aspects of some presumptuous arguments like ‘for many contemporary Hindus nationalism has overtaken the function of faith’ (p. 20) would be backed by solid empirical evidence provided by representative surveys, interviews, and whatnot. Setting these details aside, this book’s sophisticated theoretical framework and its richness of cases discussed from various parts of the world are powerful enough to gain novel insights concerning the relations between state, society, communal attachments, and pervasive religious beliefs. Its interdisciplinary investigation of how and to what extent sacralization in the political domain takes place has the potential to open new research interests in the field.