A number of far-right extremists have recently taken to social media platforms to spread conspiratorial content about COVID-19. Such conspiracy theories range from the virus being a biological weapon created by the Chinese government, to the predictable anti-Semitic tropes of ‘globalism’ claiming it was developed by the tech philanthropist Bill Gates in collaboration with the Jewish investor George… Continue reading ““#CoronaJihad”: How the Far-Right in India is Responding to the Pandemic”
Last week brought news of a tragic event in Germany with a right-wing terrorist attack in the city of Hanau. Much media coverage and scholarly commentary has been devoted towards focusing on the motives of the perpetrator and in particular, highlighting that the shooter uploaded a video onto YouTube shortly before the incident took place.… Continue reading “Far-Right Terrorism is Global, but Coverage is Not: Hindu Nationalist Violence in India”
Last month saw more than 900 million eligible voters at the ballot box in the world’s largest democracy. India’s national election once again resulted in the landslide victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). When visiting the UK last year, Modi stated that Brexit offers opportunities to increase… Continue reading “Why are British Indians more likely than other ethnic minority group to support Brexit?”
The movement to change India’s national symbolism under the BJP deliberately targets the principal ideas underpinning the vision of India as a secular state. On October 16, 2018, Swami Adityanand, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and well known Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Hindu-right hardliner, announced a change of name of one of north India’s… Continue reading “What Is Behind India’s Politics of Renaming?”
The right-wing promise to protect “Hindu traditions” offers shelter to male constituencies troubled by the apparent threat of women’s professional and sexual independence in modern India. In his savage book, Capital: The Eruption of Delhi, on the nature of India’s capital’s transformation as a global metropolis, Rana Dasgupta describes the besieged forms of Indian patriarchy in the modern city… Continue reading “The Hindu Right’s War on Women”
It is possible for one to accept the scientific benefits of cow-dung as an alternative energy source in agricultural communities. But, when one hears a self-styled cow protector proudly say, ‘‘cow’s one gram ghee [clarified butter], if we were to light it in front of God [during a prayer], it would produce 100 kilograms of… Continue reading “Scientifically Protecting Cows: Hindutva’s Fascination With Cattle Science”
In the late evening of 28 September 2015, in Bisara village near the town of Dadri, just 50 kilometres from Delhi, an angry mob of over 100 people, approached the house of 50 year-old farm worker, Mohammed Ikhlaq. The mob demanded to see the contents of his refrigerator and the family insisted that the meat… Continue reading “The Hindu Right in India, Lynchings and ‘Alternative Truth’”