ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

HindutvaSubscribe to Hindutva

Ramanuja’s Battle for Bhaktas

The Statue of Equality, which was installed in February 2022 in Hyderabad, is a monumental installation. More than the statue, it also consists of 108 temples dedicated to the various deities of the Vaishnava pantheon. This installation in the context of other large statues being installed in India (like the Statue of Unity), gives rise to the questions “what is all this about?” and “what does it teach us about where Hinduism is headed today?” This photo essay is an attempt to probe these questions along three dimensions: a) the experience of visiting the installation, b) understanding the history of Ramanuja and Vaishnavism in South India, and c) probing the way in which the Statue of Equality plays out in the political iconology of statuary in India, with specific reference to the statues of B R Ambedkar that dot the Indian urban and metropolitan landscape .

What Is New about Contemporary Indian Democracy?

The New Republic: Populism, Power and the Trajectories of Indian Democracy edited by Shray Mehta and Ravi Kumar, New Delhi: Aakar Books, 2022; pp 192, `495.

Inner Contradictions of a Hindu Nationalist

Competing Nationalisms: The Sacred and Political Life of Jagat Narain Lal by Rajshree Chandra, New Delhi: Penguin, 2021; pp xxv + 211, `599.

Theorising Hindutva

Gujarat, Cradle and Harbinger of Identity Politics: India’s Injurious Frame of Communalism by Jan Breman and Ghanshyam Shah, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2022; pp 388, `1,200.

Making Sense of the Manipur Assembly Election Results

It is argued that it would be naïve to explain the Bharatiya Janata Party’s success as a wholehearted endorsement of its Hindutva agenda as there are substantial local reservations on this. Unlike Uttar Pradesh or other parts of North India where it aggressively pushed its Hindutva agenda, the BJP knows the limitation of this agenda and has instead used a combination of strategies like the promise of development and peaceful settlement of armed conflicts. These electoral strategies intersect with and are driven by a set of factors that, in turn, determine the BJP’s success: first, the increasing electoral insignificance of the Congress, and second, the continuing salience of complex and cross-cutting social cleavages.

 

Reflecting on the Past Before Us in an Age of Hindutva

What are the fundamental assumptions that inform Hindutva representations of the past? What might we foreground to change, as Thapar has, the very terms of engagement? What might such a reformulation for our Hindutva present look like?

Rohith Vemula: Foregrounding Caste Oppression in Indian Higher Education Institutions

In April 2021, a professor from the Indian Institute of Technology verbally abused students belonging to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities. The incident brought to the fore conversations around caste and education. One is instantly reminded of how five years before this incident, in 2016, Rohith Vemula, a Dalit PhD scholar at the University of Hyderabad, died by suicide. Between 2016 and 2021 itself, India lost several students belonging to Dalit and Bahujan communities to suicide as a result of caste-based discrimination. That elite Indian higher education institutions practise caste-based discrimination is nothing new. But Vemula’s death sparked a political movement. This reading list attempts to understand how and why this came to be.

Education, Assimilation and Cultural Marginalisation of Tribes in India

The cultural marginalisation of the tribal people in India through the school system in pre- and post-independence India is discussed by drawing parallels with the residential school system that existed in the United States and Canada.

 

Tamil Nadu Assembly Elections 2021: Dravidian Politics at Crossroads

The elections to the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly provide an opportunity to reassess the fault lines in the caste, religious and ethno-geographical identities in the state and their significance in electoral politics.

National Education Policy 2020

Even as the National Education Policy, 2020 talks of accessibility, there are too many visions in the document that would not allow that. It seeks to build skills for traditional vocations and for the global market. This is structured with a vision that deepens the inequalities of caste, class and gender by focusing on two types of citizens. With no vision to sustain the environment, tribal education is also weakened. Accessibility is deeply associated with nature of knowledge. With the pre­dominance of skills, the heavy base on Hindutva, and a lightness of curriculum that is yet to be defined, the NEP cannot enhance the right of citizens to know, to critically reflect and to shape the world.

 

How Has Women’s Participation in the Hindutva Movement Expanded Its Reach?

Women and girls participate in the Hindutva movement, espousing its exclusionary and violent practices, while simultaneously negotiating its patriarchal norms that govern their own lives.

Pages

Back to Top