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’”