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This chapter focuses on a theme implicit in much of the book: the relationship of Hanuman's simian form to the mediatory religious role he assumes and to the “messages” he so effectively delivers. It first considers the preoccupation of some modern Indian authors with the “problem” of Hanuman's monkey form, situating their interventions within colonial and post-colonial debates about history, race, and cultural and biological evolution. For comparative purposes, it surveys a wider range of human responses to anthropoid primates, including the cults of simian deities in Chinese and Japanese religions and the discourse of modern primatology. Returning to India, it considers Hanuman's role in modern Hindu nationalism and in the religious patronage of the emerging middle class. Finally, it examines evidence of Hanuman's continuing rise as a comprehensive and encompassing deity, signaled by new iconography and a proliferating theological discourse. An epilogue speculates on the potential for Hanuman's role in movements promoting ecology and environmental ethics.

Tourists rarely consider Chennai a “temple city”, yet this major commercial center is experiencing a temple building boom. As active in building the economy as in constructing temple, new donors and devotees, who openly describe themselves as “middle class”, hold responsible positions in Chennai's modern technological, scientific, governmental, and business establishments. This chapter introduces the array of temples surveyed in Chennai and the many rituals of consecration (mahakumbhabhisheka) observed. Highlighting three new temples and their urban donors in detail, the chapter reconsiders “religion in the city”/urban religion (post Max Weber); the interplay of “tradition” and “modernity” (post Milton Singer); and old issues of economic development and Hindu religiosity. The chapter argues that significant cultural-religious changes occur in these temples, where donors and devotees reconstruct “tradition” and establish innovations in the context of space not ideology, thus creating an emerging reconfiguration of Hinduism that both rivals and parallels the much-discussed Hindu nationalism.

This final chapter discusses some of the more modern ideological underpinnings of the Indo-Aryan origin debate in India as different forces compete over the construction of national identity. Other concerns motivating some of the participants on both sides of the Indigenous Aryan debate are also considered, showing how the same theme of Aryan origins has been used to support a variety of agendas on the Indian subcontinent. It is suggested that although the promotion of Indigenous Aryanism is undoubtedly extremely important to notions of identity and to the politics of legitimacy among certain Hindu nationalists, such concerns are not representative of all the scholars who have supported this point of view. Unfortunately, however, the whole Indigenous Aryan position is often simplistically stereotyped and conveniently demonized, both in India and in the West, as a discourse exclusively determined by such agendas. This bypasses other concerns also motivating such reconsideration of history: the desire of many Indian scholars to reclaim control over the reconstruction of the religious and cultural history of their country from the legacy of imperial and colonial scholarship. The manifold concerns that the author perceives as motivating Indigenous Aryanists to undertake a reconsideration of this issue are discussed, and it is argued that although there are doubtlessly nationalistic and, in some quarters, communal agendas lurking behind some of this scholarship, a principal feature is anticolonial/imperial.

This chapter explores Gujarat’s nineteenth-century path to Hindu communalism and the shaping of the Hindu nationalist project in the twentieth century. It begins with initiatives for social reform that questioned and sought to change social and religious practices along western liberal and rational lines. It then moves to a more revivalist trend based on an original imagined community that had been sullied by invasions from the West and the East. Next comes the ideological and organizational apparatus of Hindu nationalism that has harnessed history and politics to generate an enduring movement, though not one without ups and downs. The latter undulations are traced against the politics of twentieth-century Gujarat. Events on the national stage form a backdrop to the narrative.

This final chapter makes the case for the retention of certain received categories and approaches in the study of Hindu traditions in response to the recent critiques of several western scholars who argue that terms such as “Hinduism” and “religion” cannot find meaningful analogues in Indian traditions, and that scholars in the history of religions ought to dispense with them. In some instances, utterly dismissive of religious faith, practice, or identity, this deconstruction of widely accepted categories is not without significant political ramifications, as seen in recent literatures of Christian missionaries and Hindu nationalism. In an atmosphere of global religious upheaval and transformation, this attack on these categories promises only to exacerbate the clash of identities and communities with one another and with the secular academy. Europe, North America, and India are all in need of new models for structuring the relationship of religion and citizenship, a task in which Hindu-Christian dialogue can play an important role. The simultaneous estrangement of religious communities from public life and nationalization of religious identity speak to the tensions inherent in the loyalties demanded by religious faith and citizenship. Some trends in religious studies today seem to offer not solutions to this impasse, but rather encouragement to further talking at cross purposes.

This chapter begins with an error in a newspaper clipping, something that came over The Times of India at a most inopportune moment. The error attributed violence to Gandhi, while it placed him in a pantheon of important national leaders, all of whom are said to oppose violence. The thumbnail version of ahimsa (nonviolence) is the seemingly arbitrary addition or subtraction of “non-” to “violence,” the inclusion of the himsa of ahimsa as part of a political movement and its cultural resources. Violence and nonviolence have become that over which one establishes mastery and thus over the appeal and power that a figure like Gandhi carries. In a Hindu nationalist context, ahimsa stands in the service of himsa, the one a sign of strength, the other a sign of cowardice.

The concluding chapter examines how Hindu pilgrimage—and ideas about pilgrimage—have been affected by social change. One such change is the promotion of tourism, which has brought significant economic benefits and pernicious social effects, among them attracting a clientele seeking ease and entertainment. Another is greater literacy and scientific education, which have generated greater skepticism about the literal reality of religious merit (punya). A final factor has been the rise of Hindu nationalism (Hindutva), in which pilgrim crowds can send a political message. These changes have prompted a variety of Hindu responses. Some simply lament how such changes have disrupted traditional religious patterns, and others completely reject these patterns. The most sophisticated and productive responses have sought to reinterpret traditional ideas into a religious paradigm appropriate for contemporary times.

As India’s contemporary growth story occupies the international spotlight, this book sets out to investigate the political, social and developmental complexities of this process. For empirical depth, it focuses on Gujarat in western India, which presents an intriguing combination of economic liberalism and political illiberalism. The introductory chapter sets out the research questions through which Gujarat’s trajectories of liberalization and Hindu nationalism are to be explored. Since the career of the state is at the heart of the investigation, a theoretical map of this entity is laid out. Chapter outlines are then provided and a brief survey of the literature is undertaken.

This essay questions whether economic globalization and global civil society work against each other or in concert. Examining Islamic fundamentalism, Hindu nationalism, and Liberation Theology, it proposes that there are possibilities of synergy and mediation between the two: the exclusivity and intolerance of some religious communities can be moderated by the impact of economic globalization, while economic globalization’s inattentiveness to social justice can be redressed through the moral guidance of religion.

This chapter examines how India's Left assigned the blame for the rise of Hindu nationalism to its rival factions. In particular, it scrutinizes the common accusation that anti-secularism is complicit with Hindu nationalism and questions whether other voices on the Left have been able to answer meaningfully to Hindutva by way of an alternative. The chapter concludes that neither state secularism nor anti-secularism answers meaningfully to Hindu majoritarianism, but that the latter, like Parekh's multiculturalism, moves towards the ‘politically sensitive imagination’ required to rehabilitate the project of Indian democracy.

This book has covered critical themes in the life of twentieth-century Gujarat. It has settled on liberalization and Hindu nationalism as significant motifs in the trajectory of the region today. The concluding chapter brings together explanations for their convergence. It draws on accounts from the history, politics, economics, sociology and leadership base of Gujarat. These explanations are then placed against national and international developments. Next, the third major theme of this work, that is the state, is considered. Based on the findings of this book and cognate literature, the case for a contemporary reinvention rather than recession of the state is underlined. A final statement considers the place of this dynamic state in the liberal-illiberal conjuncture of our time.

The chapter explores the profound strengthening of communal conflicts and ethno-religious politics, particularly in the shape of Hindu nationalism. It is divided into two parts: The first, part explores the evolution of attacks on artists, beginning with the early ones by Hindu nationalists. However, instead of showing this as an unruptured sequence of instances leading to their imminent rise, it underlines their early setbacks and strategic manoeuvres. These initial attempts led to the refinement of the Hindu nationalist techniques for attacking artists, and highlight the relevance of the media’s expansion in the enterprise. Also, the rise in the attacks on artists was not just a sign of the Sangh Parivar’s prowess, but at least partially due to the encouragement provided by the Congress-led government, not just to the Hindu nationalists to continue imposing their rules, but also to similarly self-assigned spokesmen of the Muslim community in India. The second, shorter part of the chapter covers the second half of the 1990s, after the BJP formed its government at the Centre for the first time, and in coalition with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. Here we observe the normalization of the influence wielded by non-state actors, and the consolidation of these attacks from lone random instances into sustained campaigns, but also the limits of such an exercise.

This chapter analyses the Hindu nationalist tradition of political thought, focusing on its assessment of international relations and India’s role in the world. It explores the work of a series of Hindu nationalist ideologues, including – among others – Swami Vivekananda, V. D. Savarkar, and Deendayal Upadhyaya. It argues that although their thought is couched in very different terms to those generally used in Western international relations, they provide accounts of the nature of international relations in the modern age, the place of India and its national destiny, as they perceive it, and the manner in which both economic development and national security ought to be pursued by a state infused with what they argue is a proper Hindu ethos.

This chapter relocates to India, the complementary rise of Hindutva, and neo-liberalism since the early 1990s. It reflects on the Left's struggles to categorise the threat posed by the Sangh Parivar, and why some commentators insisted on representing Hindutva as India's fascism. By relating Hindu nationalism's ascendancy with the growth of ‘Middle India’, the chapter concludes that it is more usefully described by the politics of majoritarianism.

As was the case in the West, there were all sorts of reactions to, and appropriations of, the discovery of a shared Aryan pedigree from the Indian subcontinent in popular, political, and religious discourse. The first section of this chapter briefly touches upon nineteenth- and early twentieth-century nationalistic co-options of the Aryan theory in terms of its applicability for Indian relations with the colonial power and for internal power dynamics among competing sets of interests among Indians themselves. A brief selection of these reactions as exemplified by Hindu nationalist responses is extracted to provide something of a parallel to the Aryan discourse in Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The second section of the chapter describes the first stirrings of opposition to the theory itself, as inaugurated by prominent Hindu religious leaders.

This chapter discusses Hindu nationalism and its outreach to Indians living outside of India, particularly the United States. It describes how the movement has impacted the daily lives of Indian Americans in Muncie, Indiana, through a close reading and discourse analysis of conversations with Indian and other South Asian residents of Muncie. The author uses auto-ethnography to situate the analysis within the context of her experiences and argues that the manner in which South Asian Americans in Muncie of differing religious backgrounds might offer a template for challenging religious discrimination.

This chapter explicates how the affect of disgust relates to violence by focusing on a case study of an upwardly mobile member of what is generally conceived of as a “lower” social category, a proponent of Hindu nationalism who was complicit in the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in the city of Ahmedabad. It sheds light on the unique communicative aspect of meat, which can pose a threat to central Gujarat. It focuses on the role disgust plays in creating new forms of identification by enabling a successful externalization of those aspects of the self that have to be denied. Furthermore, it extends the current paradigms by focusing on processes of identification found to be prevalent in Gujarat during the events of 2002. These processes are, in the literature, insufficiently understood and inadequately taken into account. Finally, it attempts to open up new approaches by shifting the focus onto different intellectual and theoretical grounds.