Some readers may already be aware of “Hindu nationalism.” But others, especially Americans or Western Europeans, may recognize Hindu nationalism through a more familiar term: Christian nationalism.
Christian nationalism has become a dominant paradigm for how Western political liberals think about religion and politics. But both Christian nationalism and Hindu nationalism are different types of the same thing: religious nationalism.
First, some cursory definitions.
Nationalism, in the way that “religious nationalism” is discussed, is exclusionary. It sees a nation as home to a usually native-born people group. Indigenous groups (such as Native Americans in the US) or newcomers (such as Arabs in India) are deemed threats or problems to national unity/hegemony. Their existence threatens the nationalist sentiment that to be American or Indian or French, as we saw in last week’s article, is to be collectively the same.
Religious nationalism is nationalism but, well, religious. Christian nationalists see America as a Christian nation. Hindu nationalists see India as a Hindu nation. The political implications for those who are not Christian or Hindu are dim and often violent.
In this article, we will not give a historical account of the rise(s) of religious nationalisms around the world. Rather, we will discuss recent manifestations of Hindu nationalism. These lay down the groundwork for how we, whoever and wherever we are, address that mixture of religion and politics.
The Muzaffarnagar Riots
In 2013, riots broke out between Hindus and Muslims. The violence began when, according to local outlets, a Muslim boy molested a Hindu girl. Her two brothers beat the boy to death. Upon hearing this, a Muslim congregation killed the two brothers.
Politicians and community leaders endorsed and encouraged the violence at once. More violence ensued, along with more sexual assaults and looting. Though military was deployed to restore the peace, little was done on the local level to deescalate. According to The Caravan’s Shivam Mogha, the riots left “62 dead and over fifty thousand displaced—the vast majority of whom were Muslim.”
Muzaffarnagar, according to scholars, had “little history of religious discord.” [1]
The Muzaffarnagar riots were certainly not the only ones. In 2002, there were also riots in Gujarat. [2]
The Love Jihad
We begin with a 2017 case that made its way to the Supreme Court. This case is known as the “Hadiya case.”
The story begins with a 24-year old woman named Hadiya. Born Hindu in the state of Kerala, Hadiya converted to Islam when she moved for college. She married a Muslim man named Shafin Jahan.
Now, interreligious marriages are frowned upon around the world. One finds opposition to it in Israel, India, and America, as evidenced by the suspicion of presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s interfaith marriage with her Jewish husband, Douglas Emhoff.
The Hindu Right saw Hadiya’s marriage as part of what they called the “Love Jihad.” Love Jihad is a Hindu nationalist conspiracy theory that Muslim men come to India to seduce Hindu women. This is all part of a ploy to convert them to Islam. In evangelical parlance, this is a form of “missionary dating.” But it doesn’t stop there—the goal is to recruit these women to become fighters for ISIS, or to sell them to older Muslim men for money. [3]
Hindu Nationalist Indoctrination Camps
If nothing else, history has taught us at least this much. If a political movement creates camps of any kind, run. To perpetuate fear of the Love Jihad, Hindu nationalists created indoctrination camps. These camps target young Hindus. Young men and boys are taught by men, and young women and girls are taught by women. Scholars Aastha Tyagi and Atreyee Sen describe how one such camp taught its members:
a Muslim man, young and attractive, ties a kalava (sacred red thread tied on the wrist among Hindus), wears a teeka (vermillion on the forehead worn by Hindus), buys Hindu girls expensive gifts, and tells her that he does not believe in caste or class. The alleged perpetrator traps the girl, uses marriage for religious conversion, and then sells the victim to an old, Muslim man for a large sum of money. [4]
Hindu nationalists began by identifying an enemy: Muslims. Muslims also doubled as immigrants. Immigrants are often seen as suspect and even dangerous in countries around the world. They provide convenient scapegoats for when things go wrong in a country. So not only are Muslims religious others, they are geographical others.
Then, Hindu nationalists created a myth: Muslims are coming for your women! This elaborate tale of Muslim men seducing and converting women puts Hindu religious identity at risk. Surely, one cannot worship Brahma and Allah at the same time. The Hinduism of Hindu women thus requires protection, whether the women want it or not. And because these women were supposedly being sold to ISIS, the danger took on a political as well as religious dimension. And this danger evoked fear.
Of course, the claim that Muslims were funded added that extra dose of credibility. For some reason, people use money to explain things they don’t like, whether there’s really a money trail or not. It reduces, in this case, interreligious marriage to greedy bad actors, rather than genuine and chosen love.
A Note on Patriarchal Politics
But where do women figure in this story? On one side, there are the valiant Hindu men who seek to protect Hindu women. On the other, there are the sexually corrupted and greedy Muslim men who wish to ruin Hindu women. In neither case are Hindu women themselves actually doing anything. They are either objects to be protected, or objects to be converted.
The only active role women have is to indoctrinate others in camps. But aside from that, Hindu women are primarily receivers—of protection or perversion. [5]
As Radhika Radhakrishnan writes, this conception of woman emerged out of the anti-colonial nationalist movement. Women were relegated to the private sphere so that Hindu men could “assert a coherent, respectable Hindu
identity.” Radhakrishnan continues:
The Hindu woman was considered the essence of the home, which soon became a marker of Hindu identity. The chaste woman, loyal to her endogamous family, emerged as a symbol for maintaining the prestige of the Hindu household, and by extension, the Hindu nation.
This domesticization accompanies the threat of violence that women may face should they exit the home. Thus, women who are raped or assaulted because they went out alone or stayed out too late are blamed for the violence they suffer. Men, the ones who pose this very threat, are at the same time excused. This is precisely what was said of the young student who was raped and murdered in Delhi in December 2012. (Tyagi and Sen, 117-119).
Lessons from Hindu Nationalism
Hindu nationalism, like French nationalism, arguably emerged for a good reason: to gain independence from the British. However, as political theologian Luke Bretherton notes in Christ and the Common Life, “all political formations are provisional and tend toward oppression.” [6]
The core sin of religious nationalism is that it fundamentally misconceives the nation. The nation is not to be a monolithic entity where all are the same. There are many who critique communism and socialism for reducing humans to sameness. Yet, because of their nationalism and fear of difference, they embody what they criticize.
When political movements seek to establish a certain way of being Indian, French, or American, violence ensues. This violence can either be immediate, as in the case of the Muzaffarnagar riots between Hindus and Muslims. Or, this violence can ensue in the form of unjust laws like France’s anti-Muslim laws (St. Thomas Aquinas recognizes unjust laws as acts of violence in his Summa). Or, injustice and dispossession can take place over time, in what Rob Nixon calls “slow violence.” (Quoted in Bretherton 37).
We now know that religious nationalism is a global phenomenon. And we also know that secular versions, such as that of French nationalism, also exist. These nationalisms threaten minorities and outsiders. They even demand unjust sacrifices from those who fit the nationalist bill, such as the burden shouldered by Hindu women. What nations need is not sameness, but a multi-formative theory of citizenship. Two citizens do not belong to the same country because they are the same. They belong to the same country because they commit themselves to the city in which they live, for its welfare is theirs (cf. Jer. 29:7).
References
1. Aastha Tyagi and Atreyee Sen, “Love-Jihad (Muslim Sexual Seduction) and ched-chad (sexual harassment): Hindu nationalist discourses and the Ideal/deviant urban citizen in India.” Gender, Place & Culture 27, no. 1 (2020): 108.
2. Tyagi and Sen, “Love-Jihad,” 113.
3. Tyagi & Sen, “Love-Jihad,” 105 and 114.
4. Tyagi & Sen, “Love-Jihad,” 108.
5. Tyagi & Sen, “Love-Jihad,” 109-119.
6. Luke Bretherton, Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2019), 193.
7. Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), quoted in Bretherton, Christ and the Common Life, 37.
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