Though people whom we can identify as Hindus and Muslims did use religious ideas and symbols to mobilize religious identities politically in pre-modern times, the activity of organizing Muslims and Hindus as antagonistic collective identities became widespread only in the 1890s, during the Cow Protection Movement, when Hindu groups attacked Muslims across northern India (Freitag, below). By this time, the Indian National Congress (established 1885) had launched an national movement that embraced all religious, ethnic, and linguistic identities in an over-arching Indian identity. Defined in opposition to "British" identity, this "Indian" identity did carry an ethnic flavor, but its precise cultural characteristics were unspecified. Congress sought to unite all Indians within one Indian national identity whatever their language, religion, or ethnicity. The Muslim League was organized in 1906, to mobilize Muslim identities for increasing collective Muslim representation in British India (Hardy 1972; Jalal 1985). This project involved a logical antagonism to the Congress program that was enacted at various points in the national movement but was also overcome at moments of reconciliation and unity. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was organized in 1925, to define a unified "Hindu" identity and to define India as a Hindu nation. This definition excluded all non-Hindus absolutely; so from the beginning, the RSS and allied organizations opposed efforts by Gandhi and Congress to unify Indians of all religions (T.Basu et al 1993).
Modernity in India has thus entailed many efforts to organize collective identities. Most of these have been regional and minority movements for political representation in the modern state system. In 1947, Partition resulted from regional movements among Muslims in eastern Bengal and western Punjab. In 1956, India's constituent states were reorganized on linguistic lines to respect regional systems that had taken shape since the 1920s. Tamils, Sikhs, and other groups have gained regional power. All these movements mobilized social identities that actually overlap and mix in everyday life -- like most social identities -- to make them politically exclusive and competitive. At their boundaries, these movements often generate antagonism organized around religious, linguistic, and/or ethnic identities. Since 1984, terrible conflict has accompanied regional movements in Punjab and Kashmir, which bear comparison to Palestine, Ulster, and Jaffna.
Regional conflicts that could be embraced by our definition of communalism are not the subject of this book, however, though they do play an important part in our discussion. Because Hindu nationalism defines the Indian nation as a whole, and it is logically antagonistic to all regional and minority movements. In its effort to unify India, its opposition to Islam is top priority. Why this is so preoccupies many essays in this volume. One reason for the persistence of Hindu nationalism as a force in Indian political life during this century is that its basic tenets have been deployed many times to explain why Hindu-Muslim antagonism and thus communalism is morally correct, inevitable, necessary, and progressive. These ideas circulate widely and freely in the public domain. They have acquired a common sense quality by their institutionalized repetition in textbooks, museum exhibitions, scholarship, and other modern media. Their discursive narration that makes India Hindu. They can be summarized as follows:
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dludden/MakingIndiaHindu.htm#intro
Modernity in India has thus entailed many efforts to organize collective identities. Most of these have been regional and minority movements for political representation in the modern state system. In 1947, Partition resulted from regional movements among Muslims in eastern Bengal and western Punjab. In 1956, India's constituent states were reorganized on linguistic lines to respect regional systems that had taken shape since the 1920s. Tamils, Sikhs, and other groups have gained regional power. All these movements mobilized social identities that actually overlap and mix in everyday life -- like most social identities -- to make them politically exclusive and competitive. At their boundaries, these movements often generate antagonism organized around religious, linguistic, and/or ethnic identities. Since 1984, terrible conflict has accompanied regional movements in Punjab and Kashmir, which bear comparison to Palestine, Ulster, and Jaffna.
Regional conflicts that could be embraced by our definition of communalism are not the subject of this book, however, though they do play an important part in our discussion. Because Hindu nationalism defines the Indian nation as a whole, and it is logically antagonistic to all regional and minority movements. In its effort to unify India, its opposition to Islam is top priority. Why this is so preoccupies many essays in this volume. One reason for the persistence of Hindu nationalism as a force in Indian political life during this century is that its basic tenets have been deployed many times to explain why Hindu-Muslim antagonism and thus communalism is morally correct, inevitable, necessary, and progressive. These ideas circulate widely and freely in the public domain. They have acquired a common sense quality by their institutionalized repetition in textbooks, museum exhibitions, scholarship, and other modern media. Their discursive narration that makes India Hindu. They can be summarized as follows:
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dludden/MakingIndiaHindu.htm#intro
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