Understanding Hindutva
The emergence of Hindutva as a political force with the rise of the Narendra Modi-led Bhartiya Janata Party to power has legitimised communal and systemic violence in a regressive manner. How is the violence connected to the idea of Hindutva? What are the discursive foundations of this violence?
Understanding Hindutva course critically examines the colonial and pre-colonial roots of Hindutva. The course investigates how the Hindu elites reimagined the pre-colonial ideas of Hindu religiosity during the colonial period. The objective is to explore the role religion and secularism played in the inception and progression of Hindutva. Although religion and secularism are Western ideas concomitant with colonial modernity, their translation in the Hindu context was not an unfiltered process. The course analyses the role of the Vedic and Vedantic discursive foundations and the cultural currency of the idea of Dharma with close readings of some key Hindu texts such as Dharma-sutras, Dharmaśāstras, and Bhagavad Gita. The course will be divided into three sections: (1) The Hindu Revivalist Movements; (2) the Indian National Congress; and (3) the Sangh Parivar.
Through analyses of primary historical and philosophical sources, the course explores important themes such as translation, hybridity, and the emergence of the postcolonial subject. The course examines the question of space in the context of the emergence of diverse South Asian ethnicities into a Hindu community and the idea of place in the transformation of the South Asian sub-continent into the Indian nation-state.
- What is the source of the Hindu nationalist violence: the Hindu mythology or colonial modernity?
- How did modernity legitimize the cultural hierarchies during the Hindu revivalist movements?
- Hindu religious living and the cultural roots of nationalism
- Secularism as a space for Hindu religious nationalism
- Gandhi’s non-violence as the ground for violent extremism
- The Constitution of India: A fusion of Dharma and the modern laws
- The temple politics and history of revenge in South Asia
- Hindutva and the future of the South Asian sub-continent
Lecturer: Prabhsharandeep Singh
Prabhsharandeep Singh is a Sikh scholar whose research involves areas such Sikh Studies, Study of Religions, Religious Experience, Religion and Literature, Religion and Violence, Postcolonial Theory, Intellectual History, and Continental Philosophy. He has Masters in English (Punjabi University), Masters in Study of Religions (SOAS, University of London), DPhil cand. (University of Oxford). He writes poetry in Punjabi and English. He has recently published a collection of Punjabi poetry titled Des Nikala that has poems on the themes such as exile, memory, trauma, time, and language.
Land Acknowledgment
We acknowledge and respect the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, on which the Vancouver Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies operates. We honour and recognize these nations as the true stewards of this land and are grateful to have the opportunity to work, study, and learn on this territory.