The Hindu Nation: A Reconciliation with Modernity

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About The Book

The Hindu Nation begins with an introduction examining nationhood in India and then traces the political conflict to Nehruvian cultural policy after 1947. In today's world, no religion can claim to be superior to any other. But in pursuing 'modernity' and inculcating the 'scientific' and 'secular' outlook, Nehruvian rationalism created an elite liberal class that was sceptical about the majority religion, but this was not extended to other religions because of a misunderstanding of secularism. In promoting Westernised education, the preservation of local knowledge was neglected and Hinduism lost respect among the educated elite born into it. The elite class became the intermediary with the West, which now dominates the academic study of India. Further, prompted by the sceptical attitude of many liberal Indians, Western academics and intellectuals accord Hinduism less respect compared to other religions and treat it as 'superstition'. Traditional Indians who revere Hinduism but are products of the same lopsided system respond by attributing false value to India's prehistory and its past.

Hinduism is not a religion but a collection of practices associated with the space now called India. Author M.K. Raghavendra examines what being a Hindu means and asks whether its practices are reconcilable with global modernity and compatible with justice and egalitarianism. While examining the obstacles a modern Hindu nation faces, including the fixed ways of a large public, this extensively researched book also suggests measures to make India successful as a global power and Hinduism widely respected.

About the Author

M.K. Raghavendra is a writer on culture and politics, specialising in film and its political side. He won the National Award, the Swarna Kamal for Best Film Critic in 1997 and received a Homi Bhabha Fellowship in 2000. Since then, he has authored four volumes of academic scholarship from international publishers, including Locating World Cinema: Interpretations of Film as Culture through Bloomsbury in 2020. Two of his books have been translated into Russian.

Introduction

Meaning and Origins of Nationalism

The political space in India has heated up, and even split down the middle. This book was prompted by the deadlock in India with liberals unwilling to have any truck with the Hindu nationalists whom they dub 'fascists' and Hindu nationalists responding in kind by calling them 'anti-national', each group implacable in its attitudes. The dominant approach of the Anglophone writer is to uphold secular values against Hindu nationalism, but the 'Hindu nation' is an idea that would also have enthused a large number of Indians today, although what that entails may be unclear. England is a Christian nation; a Christian state is one that recognizes a form of Christianity as its official religion and often has a state church, which is a Christian denomination that supports the government and is supported by the government. In India, Hinduism has no single denomination and the definition will hence need thought. The idea of 'Hindu nation' alarms many others, but in a multiparty democracy, all legitimate viewpoints must engage with one another. Evidently, Hindu nationalism in the shape of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is here for the long haul, as are secular democratic principles, given the populations of the religious minorities in India whose cultural needs have to be addressed. Christian and Islamic democracies in the world have been able to conduct themselves fairly vis-à-vis their own minorities and a 'Hindu democracy' is also imaginable, but evidently within certain parameters. But nationalism itself is a politically suspect category to many and it needs to be first understood.

Nationalism as a political ideology became a largely dubious category-especially among the liberal intelligentsia in the latter part of the 20th century because of fascism and World War II, but the moment has perhaps arrived for a re-examination of its importance to India, because of its resurgence in recent years. There are few nations that do not actively promote nationalist sentiments, although some of them like the US and the UK-may prefer to use the term 'patriotism'. Internationalist movements like that of communism have ultimately succeeded only in instituting nationalism as the creed, and wars between revolutionary states-like that between China (PRC) and Vietnam in 1979-underscored the stability of nationalism as a political ideology.