The transnational routes of white and Hindu nationalisms

ABSTRACT

The targeting of social difference by the extreme right is no longer on the fringes of the nation-state. Instead, the far right provides the contours of national community while also dominating the arena of international politics. This paper traces the transnational dialogue that shapes the far right’s ideologies by examining the interconnections between Hindu and white nationalisms. I argue that their projects of cultural nationalism are not only global in their reach, but that they knit together conceptions of racial and religious difference that initially emerged within the contexts of settler colonialism in the United States, colonial science in India, and the strands of Indian anti-colonialism that fixated on majoritarian rule. I examine this mapping of identity/difference across a spatio-temporal terrain that moves from Aryan racial theory to right wing representations of contemporary protests against systemic racism that pose a challenge to both Hindu and white nationalisms.

KEYWORDS:

• Nation
• race
• colonialism
• Hindu
• white
• far right

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editors of this special issue – Malini Ranganathan, Mabel Gergan, Jesús Chairez, and Pavithra Vasudevan, as well as the comments from three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).