Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear

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 violence engendered within Hindu nationalism. Hindutva in India is a chauvinist and majoritarian political ideology that conjures up the image of a peaceful Hindu Self vis-a-vis the threatening minority Other. It is porno-nationalism in its obsessive preoccupation 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 stereotypes of Islam and putative Muslims to legitimize violence against actual Muslims living in India. Adopting a critical ethnographic approach, this book investigates myriad ways in which the discourses of culture, insecurity, gender, identity, and violence intersect in Hindu nationalism's reactionary and right-wing politics of fear and imagination Front Matter....Pages i-x Hindu Nationalism in India....Pages 1-17 Hindu Nation under Siege....Pages 19-47 Pornosexualizing “The Muslim”....Pages 49-81 The Unawakened India....Pages 83-96 Awakening the Hindu Mind and the Hindu Body....Pages 97-121 The Awakened Hindu India: Ayodhya and Gujarat....Pages 123-150 Politics of Fear....Pages 151-159 Back Matter....Pages 161-197