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Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism: New Essays in Perspective
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Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism: New Essays in Perspective

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2023) | Viewed by 16273

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Amiya P. Sen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Independent Researcher, Honorary Fellow, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, Oxford, UK
Interests: intellectual and cultural history of colonial India
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

This Special Issue aims to generate new scholarly thinking concerning the deeply intertwined subjects of Hinduism as a long-standing religious and cultural formation, representing a certain weltenschaung and its overt and tendentious political manifestations in recent times. It seeks to more critically understand the evolution of what is somewhat loosely called the ‘Hindu Right’, or, alternatively, ‘Hindu Conservatism’. This is a question that elicits not only historical interest, but a pressing need to interrogate the state of contemporary Indian polity and society. The subject brings forth a broad civilizational approach to the study of this problem, taking into account the abiding values and visions in Indic society as also the use of heuristic tools drawn from multiple modern disciplines. This is a subject that calls forth a humanistic understanding of our past, a serious concern for the present, academic rigor, critical insights, hermeneutic imagination, and a progressive vision of our future. It is my understanding that this is a subject that would be of great interest to students and scholars of history, politics, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, literature, and religious studies.

Contributions to this Special Issue are expected to link an understanding of our historical past to the consolidation of a progressive citizenry in the times to come. This calls for the separation of the enduring and instructive presence of the past in contemporary Indian life from that which must now be cast aside as something barren, obscure, regressive, and redundant. Today, everyday life in India is under the twin duress of material hardships and the erosion of our most cherished values and practices, backed by a constitution. Both these contribute to the weakening of the Indian present and pose threats for our foreseeable future. Additionally, worth interrogating is the growth of diasporic Hindu nationalism and the ways it affects developments in India.

Being numerically the largest religious community in India, a special responsibility devolves upon the Hindus to strengthen the sinews of democracy, promote social consensus and harmony, transform vicious and vacuous debates into constructive dialogues, allay fears in the minds of minorities and other deprived groups, and fight divisive and exclusionary forces, but above all, to respect human dignity and the sanctity of human life. Historically, even though Hindus have been the majority community in India for a long time, they were never majoritarian in their common cultural practice, as threatens to be the position today. Religious identities in India have indeed been the ground of simmering differences or discontent, and yet, the Indic civilization has been especially known to welcome and offer safe refuge to a number of faiths of both Indian and non-Indian origin. We have fought numerous wars but never religious wars. We have creatively borrowed religious and cultural ideas and idioms across traditions, thereby promoting eclecticism, pluralism, and composite cultures. Rarely, if ever, has a king or the ruling class in India imposed their personal faith on common subjects of the state. In running this projected volume, my overall concern has been to ensure that we never lose sight of the possible distinction between formal democracy and true democratization. The very foundations of our polity and culture rest on this.

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to invite you to contribute to the Special Issue of the Religions journal, bearing the above-mentioned title. This will be my second venture as Guest Editor for a Special Issue of Religions on Hinduism. The previous Special Issue, titled “Studies in Hinduism: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Developments”, has now successfully been transformed into a printed edition. I am especially drawn to the idea of editing a Special Issue on the afore-mentioned subject, since the matter in hand is both engaging and topical. It affects both the interested scholar and concerned citizen, and I hope for a good response from willing contributors to this timely and highly relevant enterprise.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  1. Hindu self-understanding in the early modern era;
  2. Evolution of the Hindu political self;
  3. Colonial Hinduism: its cultural and ideological representations;
  4. Hinduism and Hindutva;
  5. Nationalism and the Hindi right;
  6. The future of Indian democracy, pluralism, and secular culture;
  7. Diasporic Hindu nationalism.

I look forward to receiving your valuable contributions.

Prof. Dr. Amiya P. Sen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Hindu
  • Hinduism
  • Hindutva
  • composite
  • plural
  • polity
  • secular
  • democracy
  • eclectic
  • religion

Published Papers (8 papers)

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Editorial

Jump to: Research

6 pages, 143 KiB  
Editorial
Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism: From the Editor’s Desk
by Amiya P. Sen
Religions 2024, 15(2), 196; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15020196 - 5 Feb 2024
Viewed by 805
Abstract
The essays included in this collection critically engage with the vexed question of relating Hinduism to Hindu nationalism [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism: New Essays in Perspective)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

13 pages, 258 KiB  
Article
The Global Turn in Nationalism: The USA as a Battleground for Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism
by Sophie-Jung H. Kim
Religions 2023, 14(10), 1265; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101265 - 5 Oct 2023
Viewed by 1628
Abstract
Hindu nationalism operates on a global scale today. Evinced by the transnational networks of the Sangh Parivar and the replication of strategies such as amending textbooks and patriotic rewriting of history, politics and discourse of Hindu nationalism are not solely contained to the [...] Read more.
Hindu nationalism operates on a global scale today. Evinced by the transnational networks of the Sangh Parivar and the replication of strategies such as amending textbooks and patriotic rewriting of history, politics and discourse of Hindu nationalism are not solely contained to the territorial boundary of the nation. In this globalized battle for and against Hindu nationalism, the United States of America serves as an important site. In light of this, this article puts together existing scholarship on diasporic Hindu nationalism with late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century deterritorial history of Indian nationalism to present a broader framework for historicizing Indian activism in the US. It argues that while long-distance Hindu nationalism in the US cannot be traced before the 1970s, examining the early experiences of Indian activists in the US offers useful insights with which to evaluate the ongoing battles of Hindu nationalism in the US and opens another field of enquiry: Hindutva’s counterpublic. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism: New Essays in Perspective)
14 pages, 287 KiB  
Article
Vivekananda: Indian Swami and Global Guru
by Ruth Harris
Religions 2023, 14(8), 1041; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14081041 - 14 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1120
Abstract
This article seeks to integrate the “Indian swami” with the “global guru” and reflects upon why Vivekananda’s teaching was conveyed so differently to different audiences. It argues that Vivekananda’s distinctive form of “counter-preaching” had its roots in Adhikari-bheda, a tradition that seeks [...] Read more.
This article seeks to integrate the “Indian swami” with the “global guru” and reflects upon why Vivekananda’s teaching was conveyed so differently to different audiences. It argues that Vivekananda’s distinctive form of “counter-preaching” had its roots in Adhikari-bheda, a tradition that seeks to tailor spiritual instruction to the needs and capacities of individual aspirants. I will show how he applied this technique to larger audiences because he believed that “truth” had a relative dimension that had to account for cultural difference. I investigate how instruction in Hindu “man-making” and spiritual democracy in India was matched by lessons designed to counter “muscular Christianity” in Euro-America. Vivekananda wanted both to reinforce a vision of eastern wisdom and counter western (and at times Indian) prejudices, whilst also attempting to shift entrenched but fallacious generalizations in each arena. In working within this seeming contradiction, I will show how his nationalism and universalism were inextricable, and also tied to his innovative formulations of Advaita Vedanta, karma yoga, and especially “practical Vedanta”. I will conclude by explaining how his methods generally sought to pull his audiences away from extremes. The kaleidoscopic qualities of his teachings, I will suggest, explain why his legacy has been so variously deployed by both the right and left in contemporary Indian political culture. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism: New Essays in Perspective)
24 pages, 344 KiB  
Article
Orientalism’s Hinduism, Orientalism’s Islam, and the Twilight of the Subcontinental Imagination
by Anustup Basu
Religions 2023, 14(8), 1034; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14081034 - 11 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1435
Abstract
Using the figure of the ethnic Pathan/Pashtun as a trope in South Asian culture, this essay provides a genealogical account of the modern emergence of Hindu–Muslim “religious” conflicts played along the lines of nation-thinking in the Indian subcontinent. This modern phenomenon begins in [...] Read more.
Using the figure of the ethnic Pathan/Pashtun as a trope in South Asian culture, this essay provides a genealogical account of the modern emergence of Hindu–Muslim “religious” conflicts played along the lines of nation-thinking in the Indian subcontinent. This modern phenomenon begins in the late 18th century, with the orientalist transcriptions of a vast conglomerate of diverse Indic faiths into a Brahminical–Sanskritic Hinduism and a similar telescoping of complex Islamic intellectual traditions into what we can call a “Mohammedanism” overdetermined by Islamic law. As such, both these transcriptions had to fulfill certain Christological expectations of western anthropology in order to emerge as “religions” and “world religions”, that is, when, as Talal Asad has shown, “religion” was constructed as an anthropological category within the parameters of European secular introspection and the modern expansion of empire. Both Hinduism and Islam therefore had to have a book, a prophetic figure, a doctrinal core, and a singular compendium of laws. Upper caste Sanskritic traditions therefore dominated Hinduism, and a legal supremacist position dominated the modern reckoning of Islam at the expense of philosophy, metaphysics, poesis, and varieties of artistic self-making. Together, the two phenomena also created the historical illusion (now industrialized) that Brahminism always defined Hindu societies and the Sharia was always a total fact of Islam. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism: New Essays in Perspective)
18 pages, 296 KiB  
Article
Hindu Civilization and Indian Nationalism: Conceptual Conflicts and Convergences in the Works of Romesh Chunder Dutt, c. 1870–1910
by Arpita Mitra
Religions 2023, 14(8), 983; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14080983 - 30 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1744
Abstract
This paper is about a particular construction of nationalism at the hands of Romesh Chunder Dutt (1848–1909), the well-known exponent of ‘economic nationalism’, in colonial Bengal from 1870 onwards till his death in 1909. In this construction of nationalism, which today scholars would [...] Read more.
This paper is about a particular construction of nationalism at the hands of Romesh Chunder Dutt (1848–1909), the well-known exponent of ‘economic nationalism’, in colonial Bengal from 1870 onwards till his death in 1909. In this construction of nationalism, which today scholars would best describe as ‘cultural nationalism’, the categories ‘Hindu’ and ‘national’ converged and became conflated. Through a discussion of Dutt’s ‘literary patriotism’, the paper seeks to answer why it was so in the case of someone like R C Dutt, and what implications we can draw from this regarding our understanding of colonial Indian nationalism and its origins. With reference to Dutt, Sudhir Chandra pointed out that the neat distinction that we draw between ‘economic nationalism’ and ‘cultural nationalism’ is fallacious. The paper reiterates and reinforces this argument by showing how cultural and political nationalisms were enmeshed together in the case of R C Dutt. Furthermore, the glorious past that Dutt reconstructed through his literary patriotism could not but be a Hindu past; he was not a vilifier of Muslims, but somehow he shelved the question of the place of Muslims in his construction of Indian nationhood. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism: New Essays in Perspective)
15 pages, 298 KiB  
Article
Crisis as Opportunity: The Politics of ‘Seva’ and the Hindu Nationalist Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Kerala, South India
by Dayal Paleri
Religions 2023, 14(6), 799; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060799 - 16 Jun 2023
Viewed by 2395
Abstract
The paper examines how Hindu nationalist social service organizations, specifically the Deseeya Seva Bharathi (DSB), reconfigured the religious conception of ‘Seva’ to advance the project of constructing a Hindu social identity during the COVID-19 pandemic in the state of Kerala. The southern Indian [...] Read more.
The paper examines how Hindu nationalist social service organizations, specifically the Deseeya Seva Bharathi (DSB), reconfigured the religious conception of ‘Seva’ to advance the project of constructing a Hindu social identity during the COVID-19 pandemic in the state of Kerala. The southern Indian state of Kerala has remained an exception in the story of the rise of the Hindu nationalist movement in contemporary India, which has repeatedly failed to make any considerable political inroads in the state. However, the disastrous economic consequences and livelihood challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic in the state, which was heavily dependent on foreign remittance and service industries, have opened up new spaces of engagement for Hindu nationalists. Drawing on the fieldwork conducted in central Kerala during the pandemic, this paper will elaborate on how the DSB used the crisis moment of the pandemic to reach out to economically and socially disadvantaged communities using the language of ‘Seva’ to build a Hindu social identity, which imbues the influence of majoritarian Hindu nationalist politics. The paper argues that the DSB’s articulation of ‘Seva’ as a distinct and superior form of social service that is ‘self-less’, ‘non-instrumental’ and ‘non-reciprocal’ is significant in understanding the growing appeal of Hindu nationalist social service in the contested political sphere of Kerala, which is marked by competing social provisions by the state as well as other secular and religious groups. The paper notes that the reconfiguration of ‘Seva’ as a continuous religious concept enables Hindu nationalists to attain greater acceptance and legitimacy that even the secular state welfare could not achieve, while also concealing the inherent instrumental nature of its social service towards the construction of a Hindu social identity in the region. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism: New Essays in Perspective)
11 pages, 250 KiB  
Article
Through Agnostic Eyes: Representations of Hinduism in the Cinema of Satyajit Ray
by Chandak Sengoopta
Religions 2023, 14(6), 749; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060749 - 5 Jun 2023
Viewed by 2841
Abstract
Examining the filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s engagements with religious questions with reference to his films Devi (The Goddess), Mahapurush (The Holy Man), Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder), Sadgati (Deliverance) and Ganashatru (A Public Enemy), this essay assesses the influence of Ray’s Brahmo inheritance, his personal [...] Read more.
Examining the filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s engagements with religious questions with reference to his films Devi (The Goddess), Mahapurush (The Holy Man), Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder), Sadgati (Deliverance) and Ganashatru (A Public Enemy), this essay assesses the influence of Ray’s Brahmo inheritance, his personal atheism/agnosticism and his cultural fascination with Hinduism in his representations of women’s status and caste discrimination. It concludes that although Ray’s approach to Hinduism was far from one-dimensional or sectarian, its negative social consequences were emphasized more in his work than any positive role it might play in society and culture. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism: New Essays in Perspective)
15 pages, 310 KiB  
Article
The Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism of Lala Lajpat Rai
by Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav
Religions 2023, 14(6), 744; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060744 - 5 Jun 2023
Viewed by 2760
Abstract
Lala Lajpat Rai was a prominent figure of the Arya Samaj, the influential nineteenth-century Hindu socio-religious reform movement. He is also seen as having sown the seeds of Hindu nationalism in the first decade of the twentieth century. Exploring Lajpat Rai’s thought between [...] Read more.
Lala Lajpat Rai was a prominent figure of the Arya Samaj, the influential nineteenth-century Hindu socio-religious reform movement. He is also seen as having sown the seeds of Hindu nationalism in the first decade of the twentieth century. Exploring Lajpat Rai’s thought between the 1880s and 1915, this article traces how felt imperatives of Hindu nation-building impelled him to regularly re-define Hinduism. These first prompted Rai to articulate a ‘thin’ Hinduism, defined less in terms of an insistence on a complex set of beliefs and more in broad, simple terms. They then induced him to culturalise Hinduism and make a distinction between ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Hindu culture’. The article ends by comparing the Hinduism and Hindu nationalism of Lajpat Rai and V.D. Savarkar, the chief ideologue of the Hindutva ideology, which is considered the main influence on India’s Hindu nationalist movement. It argues that while formulations of a thin and culturalised Hinduism enabled both men to articulate a ‘Hindu nationalism’, their nationalisms in fact remained qualitatively different. By scrutinizing intellectual trends and processes occurring in Rai’s thought, the article demonstrates that the modern ideology of Hindu nationalism impacted how Hindu religion was defined and re-defined and how such re-definitions can still produce distinct forms of Hindu nationalism. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism: New Essays in Perspective)
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