Transnational networks and Hindu nationalism

Abstract

Contemporary Hindu nationalism articulates a genteel multiculturalist presence in the United States that is at odds with militant Hindu supremacism in India. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) of America trumpets Hindu culture as both a contribution to America's multiculturalist experiment and as an example of successful multiculturalism in itself. Indian immigrants who support VHP in the United States think of the largely urban lower-class membership of the VHP in India as a reservoir of Hindu nationalist sentiment—one that legitimizes their identities. But the differences between the members of the two branches of VHP can be enormous. Indian immigrants' assertions of Indian/Hindu identity cannot be dissociated from their negotiation of the experience of racial marginalization in the United States. They may substitute religion for race, but regional and national loyalties are still salient. The politics they espouse centers on concerns that are U.S.-focused even when they look approvingly on Hindu militant activities in their homeland. Second-generation Indian immigrants may assume the political attitudes of the first generation, but they also seek a culturally congenial way of asserting their identities without reference to race. Finally, this article shows that there is a much wider spectrum of people in India, who in spite of their nationalist, anti-U.S. political beliefs, are likely to sense affirmation of their politics in the international support and financial assistance they receive from the members of VHP of America and from other Indians living abroad.

Nine months after the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, India, in December 1992, a conference was held in Washington, D.C., sponsored by VHP of America, the U.S. branch of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Assembly). Despite the fact that VHP (India) had been banned by the Indian governmentt for its role in the destruction of Babri Masjid and in the riots that followed, several VHP leaders were allowed to attend the 1993 conference under the pretext that “Global Vision 2000” was purely a cultural event, marking the centenary anniversary of Swami Vivekananda's 1893 address to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.

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Notes on contributors

Arvind Rajagopal

I wish to acknowledge the assistance of a Research and Writing Grant from the MacArthur Foundation in the writing of this paper. I am also grateful to Sujata Bhatt, Rosemary M. George, Anand Swamy, and Raymond Brady Williams for their help. To Linda Hess, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Anupama Rao and the editors and reviewers of the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, I am indebted for their generous assistance with comments and criticism.