ABSTRACT
What are the new characteristics of Hindu nationalism—now in a phase when Hindutva logics are percolating into various local practices, in India and in diaspora, and now that the BJP has assumed electoral office? This short ‘Post Script’ essay uses the cases represented in this special issue on ‘neo-Hindutva’ to think through overarching themes that distinguish present expressions of political Hinduism. I argue that while the vernacularization of Hindutva continues to generate new expressions that variously modulate or adapt classic Sangh Parivar positions in specific local contexts, the wide dispersion of Hindutva logics and the wider tendency to use political frameworks for almost all social affairs is generating other responses. Most notably, Hindutva vernacularization increasingly involves seeking out apolitical forms of politics itself: transcendent logics and neutralizing frameworks that position Hindutva as outside of the usual political corruptions of the modern Indian State. While such forms have a long history in the subcontinent, I argue for greater attentiveness to apolitical aspirations as these coalesce in what are usually politically overdetermined contexts. The pull of the apolitical cannot be cynically dismissed as disingenuous or merely a veiled politics, or we risk fueling rather than addressing the various dimensions of its evolving critique.
