Saffron Republic: Hindu Nationalism and State Power in India

Description

This volume examines the phenomenon of contemporary Hindu nationalism or 'new Hindutva' that is presently the dominant ideological and political-electoral formation in India. There is a rich body of work on Hindu nationalism, but its main focus is on an earlier moment of insurgent movement politics in the 1980s and 1990s. In contrast, new Hindutva is a governmental formation that converges with wider global currents and enjoys mainstream acceptance. To understand these new political forms and their implications for democratic futures, a fresh set of reflections is in order. This book approaches contemporary Hindutva as an example of a democratic authoritarianism or an authoritarian populism, a politics that simultaneously advances and violates ideas and practices of popular and constitutional democracy.

Thomas Blom Hansen is the Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. He founded and directed Stanford's Center for South Asia from 2010 to 2017. He is an anthropologist of political life, ethno-religious identities, violence and urban life in South Asia and Southern Africa. He has multiple theoretical and disciplinary interests from political theory and continental philosophy to psychoanalysis, comparative religion and contemporary urbanism. Srirupa Roy heads the research group 'State and Democracy' at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS) at Georg-August-Universitat, Goettingen. She currently serves on the steering committee and advisory board of the Inter-Asia Program at the Social Science Research Council (New York). Her research interests include nationalism and the politics of identity; comparative-historical dynamics of state formation and transformation; and democratic politics and economic liberalization.