The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India

Rating:
Summary: Informational but biased
Review:

For the scant amount of literature on the Hindu Nationalist Movement(BJP and RSS) this book should have filled in many gaps, and in some ways it does but in its biased, elitist manner it misses the point. In condemning the destruction of the Babri Masjid this book doesn't seem to point to any of the reasons for it. Not once is one given the context of the rise of Hindu movements. No one is told that millions of Hindus were killed in Genocidal operations in Pakistan in 1948, ethnically cleansed from their ancient homes. Not once are we reminded of the 1000 years of British and Muslim imperial domination and colonialism of India.

Rather this book assumes the Hindu movements and their chauvinist nature came from no where and thus the author takes them to task and skewers them for their militancy. While this book seem to understand and commiserate with Muslim militancy, it never once excuses the same violence in communal riots from the other side, although the statistics are usually shown, giving evidence of the two sided nature of the rioting, where members of both communities are killed.

The tragedy of this book is that it is very detailed but overwhelmingly biased. Many times we hear that the Hindu movements are `elitist, brahmanical' without any correleatons to he reasons why. The book says the movements harked back to a fake `golden age' but doesn't think to describe the reasoning for this. Thus anyone interesting in the BJP and the like will be displeased here unless you are fanantically anti-hindu.

Seth J. Frantzman


Rating:
Summary: Very Informative.
Review: As a muslim whose parents come from india (and now live in Canada) i never really had an interest in my homeland until i decided to take a course in sanskrit at my university (as an elective). During breaks (it was a 2 hour class) our teacher spoke endlessly about how india was a vibrant secular nation that was on the verge of transforming itself from a third world country to a prosperous nation. Naturally, my interest peaked and i started to pay more attention to news coming from india, but my love for india was shortlived. That year a muslim mob set fire to a trainful of indians who were reportedly holding two muslim girls hostage. I was naturally upset about reading this and i prayed the indian government would find the people responsible for the train fire and bring them to justice. I was not prepared however, for what happened next and the wave of hindu nationalist violence that followed. I was thinking surely the government will step in and stop this but then i read a statement from the BJP leader of Gujarat Narendra Modi, who said he was pleased with the way hindu nationalists were handling the situation (while reports were streaming in about gang rapes of women who were then set on fire). I was genuinely disgusted by those comments. Suffice it to say the incident encouraged me to learn more about the darker side of india and this book has helped me learn a great deal. It is very informative and comprehensive. I also recommend a book called "Saffron Wave" which was three years after this book.

Rating:
Summary: Very Informative.
Review: As a muslim whose parents come from india (and now live in Canada) i never really had an interest in my homeland until i decided to take a course in sanskrit at my university (as an elective). During breaks (it was a 2 hour class) our teacher spoke endlessly about how india was a vibrant secular nation that was on the verge of transforming itself from a third world country to a prosperous nation. Naturally, my interest peaked and i started to pay more attention to news coming from india, but my love for india was shortlived. That year a muslim mob set fire to a trainful of indians who were reportedly holding two muslim girls hostage. I was naturally upset about reading this and i prayed the indian government would find the people responsible for the train fire and bring them to justice. I was not prepared however, for what happened next and the wave of hindu nationalist violence that followed. I was thinking surely the government will step in and stop this but then i read a statement from the BJP leader of Gujarat Narendra Modi, who said he was pleased with the way hindu nationalists were handling the situation (while reports were streaming in about gang rapes of women who were then set on fire). I was genuinely disgusted by those comments. Suffice it to say the incident encouraged me to learn more about the darker side of india and this book has helped me learn a great deal. It is very informative and comprehensive. I also recommend a book called "Saffron Wave" which was three years after this book.

Rating:
Summary: A colonialist view
Review: This book is a perfect example of the double standards being used in the narratives on the erstwhile colonies. Indian nationalism is to be termed fascism whether it flies in the face of facts or not. Jaffrelot's scholarship is biased and he is not able to rise above the one-sided Leftist critiques that are to be encountered in the English press in India. This book fails to show the light.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting exploration of nationalism in India
Review: This was part of required readings for one of my university courses on India. It provides a great deal of information for discussion for scholars and those interested in South Asia. The RSS, BJP, Jana Sangh, VHP, and Janata Party are all discussed, as well as key issues such as the temple/mosque contreversy in Ayodhya, and cow protection movement in Madhya Pradesh. Jaffrelot draws upon classic social science literature, including books by Peter van der Veer, Victor Turner, Paul Brass, and Benedict Anderson. In all, a good source for understanding some of the issues surrounding Hindu nationalism in India, but should be placed into a broader context (read some of the books by the authors listed above, for example) for complete understanding.

Rating:
Summary: A corrective to bsastry@ucla
Review: This work is an instrumental and precise review of the rise of fascistic movements in the formation of the Indian state. Groups like the RSS, which can be collectively brought under the umbrella moniker, "Sangh Combine", continue to operate today with the strength of other groups like the VHP ever increasing. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the current Hindu nationalist party in power in India, and represents the kinder, gentler, more compromising face of Hindu nationalism that has fascistic groups like the RSS and VHP controlling them behind the scenes. The particular danger of supporting bsastry's views are that they play into the RSS's hands. The RSS has been particularly effective in states like Maharashtra, and the same involvement in education he is talking about has to do with the manipulation of childrens' educations to raise new Hindu nationalists. These textbooks are particularly instructive in demonstrating how children are brought up to think of Muslims as "others", with word problems and demonstrations often comparing productive people with Hindu names with lazy and slow people with distinctly Muslim names. Poems children recite in school smack of Nazi-type nationalist language that picks out images like "Mother India (Bhaarat Maataa)" as the national goddess (a particularly "Hindu" image). Gandhi has been wiped out of textbooks in this state completely (an RSS member assassinated him for "pandering to Muslims"), and the RSS continues to think that was a good decision. This is a very complicated topic to deal with in a book review, but Dr. Jaffrelot's dissertation is a brilliantly written analysis of how this movement has paced along in the past 75 years. Indeed, Hindu nationalism has been part of the formation of the Indian state from at least the 1870's, and rests heavily on colonialist discourse about Hinduism as a unified tradition, and of "Hindu" scriptures like the Vedas as India's original religion. The search for origins has much more to do with 'othering' minority groups--in this case Muslims--and putting forth a nationalist agenda that attempts to 'protect threatened majorities' from 'unfair' quotas for minorities. Hindutva is not a call to true 'Indian-ness', but rather a particular rhetoric for putting forth fascistic ideas in a democratic state. I encourage anyone looking into this topic seriously to read Achin Vanaik's "The Furies of Indian Communalism" (London: Vasco Inc.(?)), a Marxist critique of the possibilities of Indian fascism and the resetting of a sane picture of Indian politics wrested from these nationalists, traditionalists, and subalternists. Jaffrelot's work is seminal and important for evaluating the history and current development of post-colonial formations of religion in politics in India.