Mother India - Constructing Hindutava Nationalism in Post-Colonial India

• In Event: Problematic Resistances: Re-Examining Postcolonial Imaginations in India and Russia

Abstract

Hindutava nationalism for a Hindu Nation in India is propagated by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideologue of the current political regime, and is based on the construction of a demonized and feared other. The Other here (Muslim, Dalit, Tribal) is constructed by defining the borders of this Hindu nation on the body of women in the community. I argue that the construction of ‘Mother India’ requires religious and capitalist market fundamentalism pushing back against secular and democratic India. I map the rise of gendered nationalism in post-colonial India and its connections to the neoliberal turn of Indian economy since 1990s.

Presenter

• Shruti Mukherjee, Stony Brook University