Hindutva in the West: mapping the antinomies of diaspora nationalism

This introduction provides a historical background to Hindu nationalism and examines several theoretical and empirical themes that are important for its analysis both in India and the diaspora. It is argued that there has been a relative neglect within the research field of diaspora nationalist movements and the impact they can have on constituting antisecular and absolutist orientations to minorities and majorities both within the diaspora and in the “homeland”. The introduction examines the rise of the Hindutva movement in the 1920s and considers the debates about its relation to ethnic, nationalist, religious, racist and fascist ideologies. We consider how an examination of Hindu nationalism can modify many recent debates on “race” and ethnicity, multiculturalism and “diaspora”. Several themes relating to caste, gender and “Aryanism” are examined. The contents of this Special Issue are contextualized within these debates and a summary of the key themes of the contributions is provided.     

Hindu nationalism in the US: changing configurations of political practice

The meaning and implications of Hindu nationalist expression in the United States are different from those at home, but both are linked through transnational circuits of communication and exchange. In India, the invocation of religion summons up the unresolved debates between nationalism and social reform, and presents Hinduism as an implicitly conservative force. By contrast, in the US, Hindu religion is more self-consciously a medium of cultural reproduction. This article points to the ways in which Hindu nationalism seeks and promotes transnational affiliations even while espousing a rhetoric of insularity, cultural pride and self-sufficiency.     

Small acts,Big Society: sewa and Hindu (nationalist) identity in Britain

This paper examines developing Hindu identity in a British context. It focuses on a recent initiative known as Sewa Day, an annual day dedicated to the provision of sewa, or service, as small-scale social action in local communities. Hindu nationalist organizations such as the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh have been central to promoting and taking part in Sewa Day. The paper asks what purpose is served by the drive to promote social action in this way, arguing that it represents a significant attempt to project Hindus as model citizens, contributors to what the UK government has termed the ‘Big Society’. The paper explores the implications of this project in terms of its ability to re-situate the politics of Hindu nationalism in relation to dominant registers of civic virtue.     

Alt-Right with the Hindu-right: long-distance nationalism and the perfection of Hindutva

In the 2016 US Presidential election, a small but vocal group of Hindu supporters of Donald Trump drew international media attention in India and the US for their political mobilizing for the Republican candidate. In this paper, I examine the political campaigns of “Hindus for Trump” and its affiliated groups to analyse the diverse ways in which these diasporic activists engage in and advance a number of distinct nationalist projects simultaneously. Tracing links between the “Hindus for Trump” platform, Hindutva ideology that seeks to redefine India as a Hindu nation, and the racist “alt-right” movement that forms the political base for President Trump in the US, I argue these diasporic activists enact a synergetic nationalism that has productive effects in both “home” and “host” countries. The result is the perfection of Hindutva on the global stage through the very activities that legitimize the isolationist xenophobia associated with the Trump administration.     

Nationalism as ideological interpellation: The case of Ulster Loyalism

This article aims to explore nationalism, generally, and Ulster Loyalism, specifically, through the use of discourse theory and the Althusserian concept of ideology as interpellation. It suggests that nationalism is best understood as a particular discursive articulation that constructs subjects as being of a particular nation and thereby having certain characteristics and political needs and interests. This entails a larger definition of nationalism which encompasses some phenomena not generally taken to be nationalistic. The method is illustrated by a study of some aspects of the ideological discourse of Ulster Loyalism showing this, contrary to some accounts, to be a kind of nationalism. In the nationalist articulation of Loyalism, religion, democracy and identity are linked together making a unified ideological discourse based around a sense of specificity and difference to Irish nationalism and Roman Catholicism. Special attention is paid to the role of democracy within Loyalist discourse, in particular, and in nationalist discourse generally. The article suggests that this way of thinking about nationalism can avoid functionalist and teleological analyses, allowing us to focus on the specific ways in which a nationalism operates and to stress the centrality of politics in the process.     

As Australia decolonizes: indigenizing settler nationalism and the challenges of settler/indigenous relations

This article explores settler nationalism, focusing in particular upon its relations with indigenous peoples and with ideas of Aboriginality. It is claimed that settler nationalism, as a nationalist form, must be studied in its historical specificity. To this end, the article provides an analysis of historical and contemporary Australian settler nationalism. The central argument is that settler nationalism is driven to give some account of, and to come to terms with, the dispossession of the indigenous. Indigenous claims to land and other indigenous rights in the present undermine, threaten or complicate settler associations with land. The article argues that Aborigines remain as a disturbing problem that settler nationalism must find ways to accommodate. It is argued that a new form of indigenizing settler nationalism provides for one form of such accommodation.     

Presidents,priests, and prophets: covenantal Christian nationalism and the challenge of biblical analogy

This article explores the elaboration and application of the Old Testament idea of ‘covenant’ among Zambian church leaders who are Christian nationalist activists. In this framework, Zambia serves as an analogue of biblical Israel, while contemporary government and church leaders are the analogues of Old Testament kings, priests, and prophets. This covenantal approach presents challenges. On the one hand, government support for Christian nationalism encourages the compliance of church leaders with state-led religious projects; on the other hand, however, the analogical reading of the biblical text on which this support depends casts the church in a prophetic role, which in turn opens the door for criticism of the government. Christian nationalist activists in Zambia therefore find themselves caught in a double-bind that simultaneously encourages submission and critique. An analysis of this process contributes an important non-Western perspective to contemporary discussions of Christian nationalism. It also complicates easy interpretations of Christian nationalism as abetting state power by demonstrating its critical possibilities.     

Immigrants and the Basque nation: diversity as a new marker of identity

Basque nationalism is singled out in the literature as a case of minority nationalism that faces an ongoing struggle between those in support of a liberal-inclusive definition of the nation and those favouring an exclusive-racialist one. Nevertheless, Basque nationalist parties have been welcoming of immigration and have legislated to create a regional citizenship based on residence rather than ethnicity. This article argues that, at least in part, the ‘positive’ response of Basque nationalists to the immigration wave that began in the early 2000s is an attempt to strengthen national solidarity by contrasting Basque values of openness and tolerance against the restrictive nature of the reforms to the immigration law in Spain that were initiated in 2000. This argument challenges the notion that sub-state nationalists are hostile to immigration because of the threat diversity poses to the nationalist project.     

Nationalism remixed? The politics of cultural flows between the South Asian diaspora and ‘homeland’

This article examines ‘Asian electronic music’, a generally progressive diasporic South Asian scene which fuses electronic dance music beats with instruments/sounds traditionally associated with the subcontinent, and how it became embedded into ‘majoritarian’ Indian nationalism. In India, the music's perceived ‘fusion’ aesthetic became emblematic of an emergent India which was economically prosperous while ‘respecting’ its cultural heritage. Using the case of an album which remixed India's national song, Vande Mataram, this article explores the convergences and divergences between Asian electronic musicians in Delhi and Hindu nationalists. The article concludes that the musicians in Delhi did not lend to Hindu nationalism. However, they perhaps gave secular Indian nationalism a ‘cool’ gloss. Ultimately, the production and consumption of Asian electronic music in Delhi raises significant questions regarding the scene's relationship to Indian nationalisms.     

Cultural and instrumental approaches to ethnic nationalism

This article identifies a set of assumptions that underlie culturalist approaches to ethnic nationalism and it assesses these assumptions from a particular instrumentalist point of view ‐ collective‐choice theory. It is argued that cultural approaches are structuralist, leaving little room for intentional explanations and, when agent‐centred explanations are used, they are typically embedded within a moral economic theory of groups. In contrast, collective‐choice theory is intentionalist and political‐economic in orientation. From the perspective of these different approaches, the article examines a common dilemma of mobilization in nationalist movements ‐ how popular support can be mobilized by activists who, for entrepreneurial or ideological reasons, have formed a nationalist organization. Empirical illustrations are drawn from interwar Brittany and contemporary Quebec.     

“The world’s best minority”: Parsis and Hindutva’s ethnic nationalism in India

There is an assumption that nationalist movements which are constituted by an ethnic majority are hostile towards all minorities, so how does one account for such a movement’s affection for one minority and hostility for another? In this paper I explore this question using the case study of a Hindu nationalist movement in India called Hindutva which simultaneously expresses hostility towards Muslims and affection for another minority known as the Parsis. I argue in societies that imagine themselves as plural there is a type of nationalist thought premised upon the existence of both exemplary and threatening minorities. An exemplary minority is imagined as loyal and acculturating, illustrating both how a minority should relate to the majority and why other minorities are threatening. While an historical argument enables the distinction between the majority and minorities, a plural hierarchy of minorities is enabled by mythical stories of coexistence and conflict.     

Aryans reading Adorno: cyber-culture and twenty-firstcentury racism

This article examines the ways in which digital technology is being used in contemporary forms of racist culture within white nationalist movements. It argues that new types of racist culture are made possible in cyberspace. This both challenges popular conceptions of what 'The Racist' is supposed to look like and points the ways in which technological innovation is reinvigorating anti-Semitism and racisms that work in and through the boundaries of nation-states. It is argued that it is possible to situate racism and white nationalism at the centre of the so-called postmodern condition.     

Religion,ethnicity and politics: Hindu and Muslim Indian immigrants in the United States

This article focuses on the political struggles between Hindu and Muslim Indian immigrant groups in the United States over the definition of "Indianness". Hindu Indian American organizations define India as a Hindu society and are strong supporters of the Hindu nationalist movement in India. Muslim Indian American organizations, on the other hand, view India as a multi-religious and multicultural society. They are striving to safeguard India's secularism and towards this end, have entered into coalitional relationships with lower caste groups. Both types of organizations are working to influence American and Indian politics in line with their respective interests, leading to an exacerbation of the conflict between the two immigrant groups. This article examines the reasons for this development and its implications, both for the development of an Indian American community in the United States and for religion and politics in India.     

Dharmo rakshati rakshitah : Hindutva movements in the UK

This article explores the relationship between Hindutva networks in the UK and the growth of Hindu nationalism in India since the 1980s. The article begins with a critique of ethnicity-based paradigms in sociological and anthropological disciplines and argues that they can share much epistemological space with ethnic and religious absolutist tendencies that have arisen in South Asian communities. It explores the ideological orientations that were required in the Hindutva movement to ‘make sense’ of Hindu migration and settlement in the West. Detailed discussions are presented of Hindutva views about the role of Hinduism in the global diaspora. The essay focuses on the structure and ideology of the Hindutva movement in the UK, tracing its origins to the patterns of indenture and early migration to east Africa, and looks at the impact of the Hindutva movement in the reorganization of youth and religious communities in the UK.     

Discarding Park's axiom

Ethnic and racial studies fail to link up well with mainstream sociology if they assume that their subject matter is defined by the social constructs of ethnicity and race. Hindu nationalism cultivates other social constructs, yet recent studies of this movement show that sociologically it has much in common with ethnic and racial movements. The theory of collective action offers the most promising prospect for the analysis of such commonalities on a global scale.     

Defining difference,forging unity: The co‐construction of race,ethnicity and nation in Belize

This article examines competing nationalist projects which compete to constitute a Belizean nation: pluralist nationalism constructs the nation as ethnically diverse; synthetic nationalism attempts to submerge ethnic or racial difference into a shared national identity; hegemonic nationalism works to attach preferentially a single racial identity to the nation and exclude other identities. Within these projects, the homogenizing processes which construct national sameness are integrally related to the individualizing processes which constitute subnational difference: both national sameness and subnational differences are constituted in terms of race, ethnicity, or a conflation of the two. The article explores how the essentialization of racial, ethnic and national identities facilitates their assimilation of one another.     

Great Expectations: Hindu Revival Movements in Java

Based on preliminary ethnographic research in five Javanese communities with major Hindu temples, I explore the political history and social dynamics of Hindu revivalism. I reject formalist approaches to the study of religion, including the notion of ‘syncretism’ and instead, treat the Hindu revival movements as an illustration of how social agents employ religious or secular concepts and values in their strategic responses to the particular challenges and crises they may face in a specific cultural, social, political and historical setting. Expectations of a great crisis at the dawn of a new golden age among followers of the Javanese Hindu revival movement are an expression of utopian prophesies and political hopes more widely shared among contemporary Indonesians. These expectations are set to shape the prospects of Indonesia's fledgling democracy. The paper reflects on the historical conditions under which these and similar utopian expectations and associated social movements may either incite violent conflict or serve a positive role in the creation or maintenance of a fair society.     

What is Spanish nationalism today? From legitimacy crisis to unfulfilled renovation (1975–2000)

The article explores the different discourses on Spanish nationalism and 'patriotic affirmation' existing in contemporary Spain. Since the end of Francoism, Spanish nationalism has existed in a de-articulated and diffuse way, rather as a reaction against the challenge of stateless nationalisms than as a substantive doctrine. However, since the mid-1980s there has been a recovery of Spanish nationalist discourse, often labelled as 'Constitutional patriotism', whose main point is the insistence on History as the founding basis for the legitimation of the present Spanish polity, as well as the vindication of the 1978 Constitution as the end-point of decentralization.     

Motherlands? Some Notes on Women and Nationalism in India and Africa

The relation of women to nationalism is problematic, both in political adjudications of nationalism and in women's status both as subjects and as objects of signification, in narrating the nation. This is nowhere more poignantly patent than in the relation of motherhood and nationalism. This paper compares some recent approaches to representations of ‘mothers of the nation’ in India and South Africa. Three aspects of the problem are highlighted. Firstly, how far images of the mothers of the nation are masculinist creations, rather than ones which women themselves author? Secondly, how does the glorification of the mother in nationalist representations relate to the corporeal experiences of real mothers? Thirdly, how far does such imagery unite or divide women in its rhetorical stress on their identity as mothers?