Some Notes on the Nature of Ethnic Politics in India

THE ethnic carnages of 1990 tempt one to sacrifice the long view of the Indian nation-state for a compelling short term one where the supposed religious mentality has prevail-ed over all else. In keeping with this percep-tion there is a marked tendency among many to view the Hindu consciousness now being very aggressively asserted in the country as a fundamentalist surge. In this paper, I shall argue that this is an unfortunate terminolo-gical obfuscation because it does not ad-vance our understanding of the prevailing religious prejudices and their political opera-tionalisations in post-independent India.