Globalisation and Nationalist Imaginations Hindutva's Promise of Equality through Difference Thomas Blom Hansen Anti-colonial nationalisms and post-colonial projects of nation building are premised on a tension between the desire to be integrated on an equal basis into globalised modernity and the desire to assert national sovereignty and cultural difference. By promising to recuperate an allegedly suppressed cultural authenticity, they attempt to control fragmentation of their social world brought about by industrialisation and urbanisation. Hindutva, similarly, aims to arrive at a state of plenty, strength and purity removing Islamic impurities and thereby to gain recognition from the west as a proper nation.
