Chapter 2 delves into the primary actors and socio-historical events that have led to producing Hindu nationalism’s multiple political imaginaries and policy imperatives. It chronologically follows how Hindutva and discourses of economic development have interacted in post-Independence political regimes. I show how the BJP has been able to build multiple narratives, using both technocratic organisations and populist mobilisation, to gain several forms of legitimacy, many of which contradict one another. Scholars have written entire books on Hindutva’s ideological basis and its interaction with economic development. My intention is to give people an overview so they can appreciate how my specific research and argument fits into existing conversations and concerns. This chapter introduces how the BJP adopts two distinct forms of persuasion, making claims about the (sometimes magnificent, sometimes repugnant) past and the future to different degrees: (1) returning to an ancient, mythic, and strategically changing cultural unity; and (2) ‘cleaning up’ persisting economic and moral decadence in pursuit of invulnerable national glory.

Chapter 5 examines the BJP’s attempt to build centres of elite, traditional intellectuals to legitimise its identity politics. While dismantling advisory committees, quashing dissent, and attacking universities and established research institutions, the BJP has built think tanks to bring together stakeholders in government and civil society and give its political ideology a footprint in already established policy networks. Some scholars have characterised the BJP’s think tanks as institutions of ‘soft Hindutva’ (see Anderson 2015), that is, organisations that avoid overt association with the BJP and Hindu-nationalist linkages but pursue a diffuse Hindutva agenda nevertheless. Through an ethnographic study of the BJP’s two most prominent think tanks, this chapter demonstrates how manifestations of Hindutva can be both explicitly political and anti-political at the same time: advocating for political interventionism while eschewing politics and forging an apolitical route towards cultural transformation.

This chapter examines how economic liberalisation and globalisation in India are reframing Sikh nationalism. This is explored by an analysis of Sikh political elites’ record in promoting inclusive regionalism while managing dissent within the ‘Sikh political system’. Such governance has struggled to deliver either rapid economic development or a new social contract between Sikh values and India’s political system; and, paradoxically, while the dominant narrative of Sikh nationalism has become more accommodating of a future within Indian statehood, and of social and political diversity within itself, the rise of Hindu nationalism makes the Sikhs vulnerable to pressures of greater cultural and religious assimilation. We assess the likely consequences of the new phase of ‘hegemonic control’ post-militancy, the impact of social and cultural changes as result of economic liberalisation and globalisation, and how assertive Hindu nationalism poses a major challenge to a separate Sikh identity in contemporary India.

This chapter shows how Hindu nationalist ideology blurs the distinction between religion and state politics. Religious sentiments are subsumed into the national and cultural discourse to the extent that for many contemporary Hindus, nationalism has overtaken the function of faith as a perspective through which to understand the world. The chapter traces the current hospitable space in India for religious nationalism to the cultural nationalism in the late nineteenth century among both Hindus and Muslims that emerged in defense of self and identity against colonial cultural values. However, nationalism and faith have never bifurcated completely, and exclusivity became a defining feature of Hindu nationalism. Further, the chapter traces anti-Muslim violence to “the primary ingredients of the Hindutva ideological apparatus” and describes how the apparatus is used to incite communal violence. The chapter presents a penetrating analysis of how the Hindutva uses religion in intra-Hindu politics and how Hindutva’s accommodation of Hinduism’s diversity insidiously maintains primacy of particular rituals and myths employed to promote the concept of a monolithic nation with a “national soul” and in the service of uniting all Hindus in the name of the “Nation-God,” while leaving the internal inequalities intact.

It is generally acknowledged that Hinduism, as the name of a distinct religion, did not exist before the nineteenth century. Before that, “Hindu” had simply meant “Indian” and encompassed a variety of beliefs and practices (diffuse spirituality). There were also indigenous “Thomas Christians” dating fromthe 1st century CE. When missionaries arrived, lower caste groups found Christianity attractive. A sea-change occurred around the nineteenth century when Westerners found “Hinduism” to be incurably superstitious. Indians responded by reforming their practices (towards concentrated spirituality). Christianity continued to appeal to marginalized groups such as women, untouchables, and aboriginal ethnic groups. Hindu nationalists continue to view Christianity with suspicion.