In popular imagination, Lala Lajpat Rai is frequently associated with Bhagat Singh, who, by assassinating J.P. Saunders, avenged Rai's death, caused by a police lathi charge, and was hanged for it. Lajpat Rai is also remembered for his fervent opposition to British rule.

In recent decades, however, historians have converged with the Hindu Right in rediscovering Lajpat Rai as an ideological ancestor of Hindutva. But what then explains Rai's wholehearted approval of Congress- Muslim League cooperation, and attempt to endow Hindus and Muslims with bonds of common belonging? Why did he reinterpret India's medieval history to highlight peaceful coexistence between Hindus and Muslims? Have our hasty conclusions about Lajpat Rai's nationalist thought concealed its complexities and distorted our understanding of nationalism in general?

Meticulously researched and eloquently written, Being Hindu, Being Indian offers the first comprehensive examination of Lajpat Rai's nationalist thought. By revealing the complexities of Rai's thinking, it provokes us to think more deeply about broader questions relevant to present-day politics: Are all expressions of 'Hindu nationalism' the same as Hindutva? What are the similarities and differences between 'Hindu' and 'Indian' nationalism? Can communalism and secularism be expressed together? How should we understand fluidity in politics?

This book invites readers to treat Lajpat Rai's ideas as a gateway to think more deeply about history, politics, religious identity and nationhood.

VANYA VAIDEHI BHARGAV is an intellectual historian of modern South Asia. She completed her DPhil in history at St Antony's College, University of Oxford. Her research has been published in leading peer-reviewed academic journals, such as the Journal of Asian Studies, Global Intellectual History, Studies in Indian Politics and Religions. She has been a research fellow at the M.S. Merian - R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies 'Metamorphosis of the Political: Comparative Perspectives on the Long Twentieth Century' (ICAS: M.P.), New Delhi, India, and a senior research fellow with Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe 'Multiple Secularities Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities', Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Leipzig, Germany. Committed to engaging with the public, Bhargav has written for the Indian Express, The Hindu and The Wire.

In popular imagination, Lajpat Rai, one of the giants of the anti- colonial struggle, is always linked to Bhagat Singh. It was to avenge his death that Bhagat Singh assassinated Saunders, an act for which he was hanged. Lajpat Rai, in the mind of the public, is almost always remembered as a great leader who sacrificed his life for the nation, falling victim as he did to a brutal assault by lathi-wielding agents of the British colonial state. Indeed, Hindi films such as the many Bhagat Singh movies and that contemporary classic of youth disaffection, Rang De Basanti, all correctly portray Lajpat Rai as a stalwart against British imperialism. Many Indians will also recall that Lajpat Rai, along with Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal, was part of the 'Lal-Bal-Pal' triumvirate of 'extremist' leaders who, as opposed to 'moderates' like Gopal Krishna Gokhale, advocated more radical methods to achieve India's freedom. Lajpat Rai's standing as a fervent freedom fighter is attested to by the tributes paid to him annually on 28 January, his birth anniversary, by politicians across the spectrum.

But Lajpat Rai is also known in another avatar: as an ideological ancestor of Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist ideology first elaborated properly by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in his 1923 tract Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? Proponents of Hindutva today make a clear and assertive claim on Lajpat Rai as one of their own.