Reimagining India: Communal politics and the Hindu right

This thesis sets out to examine some of the philosophical and hermeneutic issues arising from the growth of militant Hindu nationalism by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its subsidiary groups. I argue against the problematic nature of the particular 'Hindu nation' which the Sangh is actively promoting through delineating how it undermines India's historic multiculturalism and seeks to replace a robust and flexible notion of Hinduism with its own monolithic interpretations of 'Hinduness' or Hindutva. I claim that the Sangh's interpretation of Hindu culture is significantly derived from an appropriation of Western categories as contained in a British colonial narrative, especially in its reinterpretations of Indian religious ideas, its concept of nation, and in its calls for Hindu men to shed their effeminacy, defend themselves, and 'become men'. I suggest that this rhetoric has been influential in creating further religious divisions in Indian society and, at its worst, has been instrumental in communal killings across the country.