ABSTRACT
In this paper, I try to posit the semantic and symbolic meaningsof the term syncretism-culturally and linguistically defined withparticular reference to the category of ‘Hindustani’—as it was constructed historically within the nationalist discourse in the early twentieth century colonial north India.* As a theoretical construct, linguistic-cultural syncretism indicates a process of staging, mediating and intervening with social and cultural pluralities moving beyond straight-jacketed binarism and exclusivism. In this manner, a syncretic position defies given structures and processes, and can at times be located in a collectivity having multiple roles and characteristics. Being something more than either this or that, the metaphor of syncretism can help us in understanding the dynamics of cultural and political mobilization and politicization of collective identities broadly typified under the categories of religion, language, caste, class, race and region, etc.
