All religious fundamentalisms exhibit certain common traits. Mindful of those commonalities, of which the Chicago University's Fundamentalist Project had done a monumental work in the late 1990's under the tutelage of Professors Martin Marty and Scott Appleby, it is useful to know local characteristics and practices of a particular kind of religious fanaticism.
This book seems like a good study. I like its premise of its attempted stance of being away from the media frenzy and emotionality. I think I once attended a presentation by Subh Mathur at Columbia University while she was still a Graduate Student on poor Muslims being targeted in Rajasthan. I had admired her thoroughness.
Just one quiick point of contrast between the Hindu fundamentalists and their Muslim counterparts: The primary target of everyday violence of Jehadi Islamists is the fellow Muslims of other sects. Look what is happening in Iraq! The wanton attacks on the Shias in Pakistan! Or the Genocide 1971 of Bangladesh!
Farida Majid
=========================================
THE EVERYDAY LIFE OF HINDU NATIONALISM:
An Ethnographic Account
by Shubh Mathur
About the book:
This is an ethnographic account of the rise of
Hindu nationalism in the north Indian state of
Rajasthan during the period 1990-94. It looks at
the transformation of cultural meanings in
everyday life that make possible the political
success and the anti-minority violence of the
Hindu right. Media and academic accounts of the
Hindu right that present images of religious
frenzy and fanaticism are misleading because they
draw attention away from the world of the
everyday and the ordinary, from the homes,
workplaces, schools and communities where the
realities of Hindu nationalism are created and
maintained. This book takes seriously the claims
of RSS activists that theirs is a cultural
organization, and that its main task is
'character-building
central question: How does one comprehend the
selves that are capable of the extraordinary
violence witnessed in India at the turn of the
millennium?
The patterns of anti-minority violence that
accompanies the rise of Hindu nationalism show
that it follows not a political or economic
logic, but a cultural one. The geographic and
demographic distribution of violence maps and
confirms cultural beliefs about the nation and
its enemies. Finally, this book argues that media
and academic discourses on Hindu nationalism
function to produce what has been called
'cultural anesthesia', diffusing and deflecting
questions about agency and accountability while
silencing the experience of the victims and
excluding the cultural idioms which provide them
means of comprehension and healing.
From the blurb:
Shubh Mathur's account of the resistible rise of
Hindu chauvinism in the north Indian state of
Rajasthan is at once a remarkable piece of
contemporary scholarship and a great human
document.
"This is a searingly honest piece of writing,
with an unashamedly partisan position, but
without compromising the demands of theoretical
rigor and empirical depth. Shubh Mathur's book
provides a fine-grained account of the tortured
response of India's Muslims to the emerging
shifts in a social order that has begun to view
them with increasing weariness, impatience and a
hectoring command to 'assimilate'
Raza Mir
"It is an error to read fascism as an
abnormality; one should, in fact, seek the links
between fascism and 'normality'. Shubh Mathur's
work brilliantly shows how 'the cultural logic
and institutional power of Hindutva have become
deeply entrenched in everyday life itself'."
Sadanand Menon
About the author:
Shubh Mathur is an anthropologist whose work
focuses on minorities, violence, human rights,
gender and immigration. She received her
doctorate from the New School for Social
Research, New York. She is at
present Visiting Assistant Professor of
Anthropology at Franklin Pierce University.
1. Introduction: The Everyday Life of Hindu Nationalism
Two stories
Culture and violence: In the light of Gujarat
The ordering of difference
Writing an ethnography of fascism
Hindutva as symbolic capital
2. Mapping the Enemy
"The significant past"
Culture and difference in the nineteenth century
Conquest and conversion
Tolerance, Hindu and Muslim
"Muslim separatism"
3. Administrative and Discursive Hindus
A brief history of Hindu nationalism
Street-fighters and patriots
"A well-disciplined counter-revolutiona
"National thrust to ancient customs"
4. Communities and Power
The scream of Reich
Banswara
Beawar
Seva Bharati: "Giving culture" to the urban poor
Mohalla Khatikan
RSS women
Postscript from Gujarat
5. Violence as Ritual
Stories
Suspect community
The judicial inquiry
Invisible violence
The other point of view
Includes appendices and bibliography
xvi, 224 pages Demy 5.5 x 8.5 in.
ISBN Hardcover 81-88789-43-
ISBN Paperback 81-88789-53-
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Sunday, February 10, 2008
[ALOCHONA] Review: Book on Hindu Nationalism
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