The Rhetoric of Hindu India : Language and Urban Nationalism

This book examines the late twentieth-century rise of the urban, right-wing Hindu nationalist ideology known as metropolitan Hindutva. This ideology, the book assesses, aspires to be a pan-Indian, urban form that is home to the emerging, digitally enabled, technocratic middle classes of the nation. Through close analyses of the writings of a range of self-styled public intellectuals, from Arun Shourie and Swapan Dasgupta to Chetan Bhagat and Amish Tripathi, this book maps this new avatar of Hindutva. Finally, in analyzing the language of metropolitan Hindutva, it arrives at an emerging idea of India as part of what Amitav Ghosh has called a contemporary Anglophone empire. This is the first extended scholarly effort to theorize a politics of language in relation to the dangers of such an imperializing Hindutva. Cover -- The Rhetoric of Hindu India -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Introductory Matters: The Strange Case of Secular India -- Orientalism, Philology and the Idiom of Secularity -- The Languages of Hindu Nationalism in Anglophone India -- A Post-political Story of Journalism -- Notes on Method -- Endnotes -- 2 Time's Victims in a Second Republic: New Histories, New Temporalities -- The Political Resurrection of Hindus -- Seizing a Hindu History -- Theories of Sovereignty and Temporal Power in Metropolitan Hindutva -- Metropolitan Hindutva as an Event of Language -- Endnotes -- 3 To Make Free and Let Die: The Economics of Metropolitan Hindutva -- A Hindu Ontology for the Free Market -- The Time-capsules of Memoryless Development -- Hinduness and Bio-power -- Endnotes -- 4 A Power over Life and Rebirth: V.D. Savarkar and the Essentials of Hindutva -- History-writing as Ritualistic Reiteration -- A Rationalization of Competing Mythologies -- The Reserved Forces of Hindudom -- Endnotes -- 5 Between Death and Redemption: Hindu India and its Antique Others -- Journalism, Arrested Time and the Mathematics of Metropolitan Hindutva -- Other Styles, Other Forms -- The Restlessness of Radical Dissent -- Endnotes -- 6 The After-Life of Indian Writing in English: Telematic Managers, Journalistic Mantras -- The Works of Chetan Bhagat in Hindu India -- Post-political Hinduization and the Woman Question -- Millennial Hindutva, Amish Tripathi-Style -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Films -- Online Documentation -- Index Dedication 6 Contents 8 Preface 10 1. Introductory Matters: The Strange Case of Secular India 16 2. Time’s Victims in a Second Republic: New Histories, New Temporalities 50 3. To Make Free and Let Die: The Economics of Metropolitan Hindutva 84 4. A Power over Life and Rebirth: V. D. Savarkar and the Essentials of Hindutva 116 5. Between Death and Redemption: Hindu India and its Antique Others 148 6. The After-Life of Indian Writing in English: Telematic Managers, Journalistic Mantras 181 Bibliography 214 Index 230 "Examines the rise of the urban right-wing Hindu nationalist ideology in India called Hindutva between 1984 and 2004"-- Provided by publisher