Tanika Sarkar

Hindu Nationalism in India

In the twenty-first century, there has been a seismic shift in Indian political, religious and social life. The country's guiding spirit was formerly a fusion of the anti-caste worldview of B.R. Ambedkar; the inclusive Hinduism of Mahatma Gandhi; and the agnostic secularism of Jawaharlal Nehru. Today, that fusion has given way to Hindutva. This now-dominant version of Hinduism blends the militant nationalism of V.D. Savarkar; the Brahmanical anti-minorityism of M.S. Golwalkar; and the global Islamophobia of India's ruling regime. It requires deep cultural analysis and historical understanding, as only the sharpest and most profoundly informed historian can provide. For two decades, Tanika Sarkar has forged a path through the alleys and byways of Hindutva. She has trawled through the writing and iconography of its organisations and institutions, including RSS schools and VHP temples. She has visited the offices and homes of Hindutva's votaries, interviewing men and women who believe fervently in their mission of Hinduising India. And she has contextualised this new ferment on the ground with her formidable archival knowledge of Hindutva's origins and development over 150 years, from Bankimchandra to the Babri mosque and beyond. This riveting book connects Hindu religious nationalism with the cultural politics of everyday India.

What are the major Hindu ideas and traditions of India that have shaped dominant conceptions of womanhood, domesticity, wifeliness, and mothering, and of India as a Hindu nation? Tanika Sarkar analyzes literary and social traditions, the elite voices and popular culture that helped create the lived reality of north India today. She explores the proto-nationalist novels of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya as well as scandal literature, rumors, women's memoirs, and the popular press of colonial times for the subaltern ideas that have shaped contemporary India. Sarkar also examines the way earlier Indian religious traditions of saintliness, sacrifice, heroism, and warfare are being subverted or transformed by militant and fundamentalist forms of Hinduism.

Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism

Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation

The first autobiography in Bengali was written by an upper-caste rural housewife called Rashundari Debi (1809–1899). Published when she was 88 years old, Amar Jiban (My Life) is a fascinating first-hand account of life for women in Bengal at that time. Mother to eleven children, Debi reflects on her experiences and her spiritual development across almost an entire century. Words to Win incorporates translations of major sections of this remarkable autobiography. Tanika Sarkar studies the making of an early modern subject – the woman who wants to compose a life of her own, who wishes to present it in the public sphere and eventually accomplishes her goal: for it is her words that win out in the end. Published by Zubaan.

The Making of Amar Jiban: A Modern Autobiography

Words to Win

This text discusses the Hindu ideas and traditions that have shaped dominant conceptions of Indian women and the nation as a whole. It examines how these traditions are being subverted or transformed by fundamentalist forms of Hinduism.

In the twenty-first century, there has been a seismic shift in Indian political, religious and social life. The country's guiding spirit was formerly a fusion of the anti-caste worldview of B.R. Ambedkar; the inclusive Hinduism of Mahatma Gandhi; and the agnostic secularism of Jawaharlal Nehru. Today, that fusion has given way to Hindutva. This now-dominant version of Hinduism blends the militant nationalism of V.D. Savarkar; the Brahmanical anti-minorityism of M.S. Golwalkar; and the global Islamophobia of India's ruling regime. This riveting book connects Hindu religious nationalism with the cultural politics of everyday India.

Sumit Sarkar

Contributed articles on social reforms and status of women in 19th and 20th century India.

A Reader

Women and Social Reform in Modern India

Amrita Basu

This book reflects the changing modalities of Hindu nationalist organizing among women and youth. It provides unique insights into how this immensely powerful political formation has been able to preside over a massive network of grassroots organisations among most segments of Indian society and capture national power. Chapters explore the techniques the RSS, VHP and BJP employ and the messages they convey about masculinity, femininity, and LGBTQ communities, and analyze contrasting forms of women's activism in defending and opposing Hindu nationalism. This book contributes to the global literature on the gender dimensions of rightwing politics. By exploring why women advance the agenda of the Hindu Right despite its conservative views on gender and sexuality, the book makes an important intervention in feminist and women's studies scholarship.

Women, Gender and Religious Nationalism

In Rebels, Wives, Saints, acclaimed scholar Tanika Sarkar continues her revolutionary scholarship on women, religion, and nationhood in colonial Bengal. The colonial universe Sarkar describes in Rebels, Wives, Saints centers around symbols of women as both defiled and deified, exemplified in the idea of woman as widow and woman as goddess. The nation, Sarkar explains, is imagined as a woman-goddess within a country comprising plural cultural traditions. Sarkar also broadens the discussion to consider male reformers who battle Hindu conservatives, a Hindu novelist who idealizes nationalism as a means for overcoming Muslim influence, male-dominant social norms, and theatre and censorship. Throughout the book, Sarkar deploys her trademark focus on small, specific, emotional defining moments in order to arrive at a larger, compelling picture that reveals how people actually feel and experience life in Bengal.

Designing Selves and Nations in Colonial Times

Rebels, Wives, Saints

Humeira Iqtidar

Offers fresh perspectives on the relationship between secularization, tolerance and democracy through a theoretically informed look at South Asian politics.

Tanika Sarkar

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