ABSTRACT
Set against the backdrop of India’s deepening engagement with the Indian Ocean region since the 1990s, and domestic debates surrounding the nature of these new commitments, this chapter considers how Hindu nationalists have envisioned India’s role in this region in a way that is consistent with the ideological commitments and goals of the movement. It does so by shining a light on a middlebrow, Anglophone inflection of Hindu nationalist ideology embodied by articles published in the weekly Organiser throughout the period under analysis. Narratives about topical developments along the Indian Ocean littoral in the region are analysed for their ideological import, showing that a constant switching between different geographical scales is central to the articulation of Hindu nationalist ideology in relation to this region. These interpret relatively distant, foreign spaces along the Indian Ocean littoral in terms drawn from the domestic tropes and concerns of the Hindu nationalist movement, thus turning the Indian Ocean littoral into something of an offshore replica of the Hindu India that Organiser and its votaries advocate. In this manner, the chapter shows how the Organiser’s thinking about the international and the foreign – in ways that emphasize social and cultural similarities – shapes perceptions of the domestic, the nation and the self.
