ABSTRACT

The movement to centre stage in contemporary Indian politics of what was in the 1920s a tiny northwest Indian cult obsessed with Hindu supremacism, order, conformity and obedience raises theoretical and political issues of considerable complexity. The persistence of Hindu nationalism also poses sharp questions about the understanding of religious and cultural politics that informed the national, anticolonial movement of Gandhi and Nehru. The major problem that has faced Hindu nationalism since its inception is that its ideology has never been equivalent to the expression of national identity of India or Indians. It is for such reasons that the recent efforts of the Hindutva movement have been directed to both appropriating for itself the memory of Indian anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian struggles, and attempting to make its parochial concerns grandly stand in for the totality of Indian nationalism.