Hindutva As Political Monotheism

With Narendra Modi's right-wing anti-Muslim government tightening its control over Kashmir, it is clear that Hindu nationalism, also known as Hindutva, holds immense political importance in India. Anustup Basu traces the genealogy of this ideology, fromits colonial roots to its contemporary form. Prior to colonialism, Hinduism manifested as a constellation of diverse spiritual beliefs and pieties that could co-exist with Christianity or Islam. Basu demonstrates that European thinkers imposed a monotheistic imperative on Hinduism, imagining it as one of a constellation of world religions," a framing that bolstered the Enlightenment ideology of ethnocentric nationhood. HINDUTVA AS POLITICAL MONOTHEISM traces how the idea of a Hindu religion and a Hindu state persisted after formal colonialization ended-taken up by Indian philosophers and nationalists, and then circulated through Bollywood films and other cultural forms as part of a political project to imagine India as modern, secular, and Hindu. In thefirst section of the book, Basu traces the invention of Hinduism as a religion in the minds of European anthropologists starting in the 1920s. Basu demonstrates that the very idea of India as a Hindu nation was inspired by the fascist political theorist Carl Schmitt and his European interlocutors, who sought a monotheme of religiosity that harnessed pluralistic customs into one tradition, called Hinduism, in the model of an Abrahamic religion. Next, Basu turns to the founding of right-wing Hindu organizations and political parties in the 1920s, which suggested that all Indians shared a common spiritual and biological Aryan ancestry, in tension with the ongoing caste system and regional differences. The next sections considers the theology underpinning the idea of Hindu monotheism: the idea that the Brahman is a singular deity, that Krishna is a prophet akin to Christ, and that the Bhagwad Gita is the singular book of Hinduism. Finally, Basu turns to what others have called Hindutva 2.0-the contemporary manifestation of Hinduness that has ushered in a culture of technophilia, Islamophobia, and rigid gender norms. He shows how Indian modernity relies on advertising Hindutva as modern, secular, and entwined with the advance of capitalism-and that Narendra Modi's rise as a media phenomenon merges Hindu pride with the promise of smart cities, military power, and a digital economy"--