Militant Publics in India : Physical Culture and Violence in the Making of a Modern Polity

Offers readers a telling glimpse of the social world in which militants are made, explaining how group physical training and technico-ethical experiments with it have created a powerful religious nationalist movement in Gujarat that has been held responsible for carrying out spectacular episodes of ethnic cleansing against Indian minorities. An historically informed ethnographic study of conceptions, arenas, and practices of physical training and militancy in the context of religious nationalism in twentieth- and twenty-first-century western India. Arafaat A. Valiani offers readers a telling glimpse and a rare insider perspective of the social world in which militants are made, explaining how group physical training and technico-ethical experiments with it have created a powerful religious nationalist movement in the Indian state of Gujarat that has been held responsible for carrying out massive episodes of ethnic cleansing against Indian minorities. A close reading of Mohandas Gandhi's writing on popular mobilization and resistance and a detailed historical investigation of hitherto understudied episodes of satyagraha (Gandhi's celebrated concept of non-violence), this work illuminates debates on politics in South Asian history, anthropology, and sociology. Valiani interprets his own direct observation of Hindu nationalist pogroms in contemporary Gujarat, in addition to testimonies and ethnographic observations of the inner workings of the movement discovered by the author when he immersed himself as a "trainee" within it "An historically informed ethnographic study of conceptions, arenas, and practices of physical training and militancy in the context of religious nationalism in twentieth- and twenty-first-century western India. Arafaat A. Valiani offers readers a telling glimpse and a rare insider perspective of the social world in which militants are made, explaining how group physical training and technico-ethical experiments with it have created a powerful religious nationalist movement in the Indian state of Gujarat that has been held responsible for carrying out massive episodes of ethnic cleansing against Indian minorities. A close reading of Mohandas Gandhi's writing on popular mobilization and resistance and a detailed historical investigation of hitherto understudied episodes of satyagraha (Gandhi's celebrated concept of non-violence), this work illuminates debates on politics in South Asian history, anthropology, and sociology. Valiani interprets his own direct observation of Hindu nationalist pogroms in contemporary Gujarat, in addition to testimonies and ethnographic observations of the inner workings of the movement discovered by the author when he immersed himself as a "trainee" within it"-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-2 Introduction: Worlds of Hindu Nationalism and the Political Sphere....Pages 3-32 Front Matter....Pages 33-33 Efficacies of Political Action: Physical Culture and the Kinesthetic Politics of Gandhian Nationalism....Pages 35-64 Preparatory Training and Disciplined Satyagraha in Bardoli (1928)....Pages 65-106 Militant Peacekeeping and Subterfugic Violence of the Quit India Movement (1942)....Pages 107-136 Front Matter....Pages 137-137 Physical Culture, Civic Activism, and Hindu Nationalism in the City....Pages 139-162 Physical Training, Ethical Discipline, and Creative Violence: Zones of Self-Mastery in the Hindu Nationalist Movement....Pages 163-186 Epilogue....Pages 187-194 Back Matter....Pages 195-266