Political Hinduism was once considered a sort of fringe ideology, shadowy and even misunderstood. Its ideas and narratives seemed, in popular discourse, to lack analytical rigour and were easily dismissed.
But history shows that political Hinduism as an intellectual Idea was a pioneering theme in India's nationhood. In fact, it precedes the Indian republic and has been one of the most resilient political theories of India, which survived many bans, boycotts and decades out of power to become, in the twenty-first century, the predominant political force of India. The adherents of political Hinduism are as determined as its detractors-one complains about facing relentless prejudice, the other throws accusations of promoting continuous religious strife; one believes that India cannot be saved without decimating political Hinduism, the other is sanguine that only political Hinduism can save the future of India.
Soul and Sword traces the journey of political Hinduism from events that are critical to its self-narration, that is, early Indian resistance to invasions, to intellectual definitions by nineteenth-century littérateurs and contemporary electoral politics. It tries to understand the context and historical sources used to construct and promote political Hinduism's world view.
From award-winning writer Hindol Sengupta, Soul and Sword is absolutely critical reading if you want to understand India's present and future.
HINDOL SENGUPTA is a multiple-award-winning historian and author. He has won the Wilbur Award, given by the Religion Communicators Council of America, for Being Hindu, the Valley of Words prize for The Man Who Saved India, the Kalinga Literature Festival Award for Sing, Dance and Pray, and the PSF prize for public service through writing. He has been shortlisted for the Hayek Prize, given by the Manhattan Institute in memory of the Nobel laureate economist F.A. Hayek, for Recasting India. He has been a Chevening scholar at the University of Oxford, a Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University and has a doctorate from the Geneva School of Diplomacy. He is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. This is his eleventh book.
This book is not about Hinduism, one of the oldest religions in the world. Perhaps the thing to emphasize at the very beginning is that it is a history not of Hinduism, the faith, but of the politics of Hinduism.
This book is an attempt to tell the story of the intellectual history of political Hinduism, or the history of political Hinduism as an idea. Though, history is far from the only thing that is interesting about political Hinduism. I am interested in this topic because it is the defining force of India's present. The world's largest democracy is today ruled by a political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which believes in political Hinduism. India's incumbent, now two-time, and widely predicted to be third time in the next national polls in India in 2024, prime minister, Narendra Modi, is a lifelong disciple of the cause of political Hinduism. The BJP claims to be the world's largest political party, and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the fountainhead of the ideology of political Hinduism, says the RSS is the biggest volunteer body on the planet. While the exact numbers of members are fluid, there is no doubt that these organizations have millions of followers and supporters not only in India but around the world.
If the BJP wins in 2024, Modi will be set to almost equal the term of India's first, and to date, longest-serving prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru was a key member of the Indian National Congress (INC)-popularly 'Congress' which had played the leading role in India's freedom from British rule. India was an impoverished country when Nehru became prime minister after Independence in 1947, and he remained in that chair for seventeen years. In 1950, Nehru and his team, with men like B.R. Ambedkar and Vallabhbhai Patel, led the creation of the Indian Constitution and the modern Indian republic. In 1947, the country emerged from nearly 200 years of British colonial rule. Nehru governed a country where barely 12 per cent of the people could have been called educated and was among the poorest 10 per cent of countries in the world. Modi, on the other hand, runs the world's fifth-largest economy, which is widely predicted to become the third largest within this decade (with the GDP forecast to rise to $7.5 trillion and an equity market cap of $10 trillion). Where Nehru once hoped that India would be the first-status-wise-among post-colonial nations, Modi and his ministers proclaim an ambition to make the country vishwa guru or 'world teacher'.5
Modi governs a country of 1.4 billion, which is said to be gaining from global trends in 'demographics, digitalization, decarbonization and deglobalization', which is growing at a faster pace than both the US and China-in fact, it is the fastest-growing major economy in the world. 'More importantly for investors, MSCI India is among the top ten MSCI country indices in US dollar terms across all these timeframes a position shared only by the US and Denmark."
If India made news two decades ago for offshoring or call centres taking up low-cost information technology jobs, today it is one of the world's biggest iPhone manufacturing hubs and makes some of the most cutting-edge military technology, including hypersonic missiles, anti-satellite weapons and aircraft carriers.
As India rises, so do its geostrategic conflicts. Consistently, as it has always had, not least with neighbour and arch-rival Pakistan, and more importantly, with the only competitor of its size and ambition, China. Political Hinduism has specific strategic thoughts and responses to these challenges, and it has a definitive vision of where India's place in the world should be, how to tackle competition and conflict and what India's agenda in the world ought to be.
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