Identity Politics and Nationalisms in Colonial India

Abstract

As a form of identity, Hindu nationalism has a significance and meaning which has been ferociously contested in Indian politics. Its exponents often present it as the ‘real’ or ‘true’ form of Indian nationalism, to be contrasted with western-inspired, universalist concepts of ‘pseudo-secularist’ nationalists.² Opponents, on the other hand, present it as the very antithesis of ‘real’ or ‘true’ nationalism. That is, if it is acknowledged as meaningful at all. Some academics have denied its existence altogether, arguing that right-wing Hindu political organisations have successfully ‘appropriat(ed) the uncontested terrain of nationalism’ in order to characterise a political ideology which is manifestly anti-national (Mahajan, 1997: 5). This line of argument states that only communalism — the mutual antagonism of different communities — can adequately describe the projections of religious (or quasi-religious) identity which have come increasingly to dominate the political landscape in India. Hindu communalism, the argument goes, is the most institutionalised and the most powerful form of this identity; it is therefore the greatest threat to the Indian state, and to the very idea of the Indian nation. To characterise such a concept as nationalism, then, does indeed appear paradoxical.

An earlier version of this chapter has previously appeared in Economic and Political Weekly Vol. XXXIV, No. 32 (7 August 1999).