In this article, I suggest that Hindu nationalism, like many other religious extremist ideologies, is a modern discourse rooted in modern categories such as a homogenous national identity, objective science and history, hyper‐masculinity, and secularism. To demonstrate the above claims, I undertake a close analysis of the writings of V.D. Savarkar, a key founder of “Hindutva” or Hindu nationalism. I show how he retools Hinduism by removing all aspects of religiosity/piety while replacing it with a primarily political‐secular identity that places an exclusive Hindu nation at the center.
The two books reviewed here were released within months of each other in mid-2013. This coincidence, combined with the authors' public visibility, generated considerable media interest. Perhaps inevitably, the two books have been held up as competing economic visions for India as it heads towards the 2014 general election.
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