7

Politics of Fear

H indu nationalist politics of imagination geared around

the dangerous Other and an awakened Self facilitates a
number of processes. It allows political mobilization in the
name of cultural defense, promotes a majoritarian nationalism
in the name of challenging “pseudo-secularism,” justifies anti-
minority-violence, promotes homosocial bonding, provides a
vision of India as a Hindu nation purged of minorities, and
legitimizes themselves perpetually in the name of defense of the
Hindu nation (because the reality is that India is not a Hindu
nation).

Mobilizing Desire, Desiring Mobilization

How does a sharing of tacit knowledge about the Other trans-

late into political organization? Can a nationalist movement
be built upon desire alone? The answers to these questions can
never be simple for they will depend on the shifting and con-
testing dynamics within different contexts. As Mines reminds
us, how people appropriate the national for their own place-
making in the local (Mines 2002) is context dependent. In their
research on the Shiva Sena in Maharastra, Katzenstein, Mehta,
and Thakkar argue:

The discourse of religious nationalism derives its power in part

from a transposition of language, ideology, and rhetoric that
heightens the politics of identity. But the power of discourse

D. Anand, Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear

© Dibyesh Anand 2011
152 HINDU NATIONALISM IN INDIA

also depends crucially on the capacity or incapacity of organiza-

tions to make any particular set of competing discursive claims
“stick.” In the case of Shiv Sena, Hindutva, and Maharashtra,
this has everything to do with the Sena’s organizational wiz-
ardry and coercive practices and with the weakened institu-
tional structures in the state of Maharashtra.
(1997: 372)

In this book, I have confined myself to identifying and analyz-

ing the overarching frames of representations that are central to
Hindu nationalism. Using the examples of the destruction of the
Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in 1992 and the anti-Muslim violence
in Gujarat in 2002, I illustrated how the framings translate into
certain types of Hindu nationalist political actions.
Nationalism has typically sprung from masculinized mem-
ory, masculinized humiliation, and masculinized hope (Enloe
1989: 44). Hindu nationalism illustrates this clearly. It fanta-
sizes potency (of a Hindu collective), yet it fears impotency.
Nationalism, for Hindutva, is a politicocultural project to create,
awaken, and strengthen a masculinist-nationalist body (see also
Bacchetta 2004; Banerjee 2005; Gupta 2001; Jayawardena and De
Alwis 1998). I analyzed Hindu nationalism by conceptualizing
it as a porno-nationalism. Hindu nationalism, as a narcissistic
ideology, has at its core a sexualized conception of sometimes
the Self and often the Other; and at the level of nationalized cor-
poreal bodies too, sexual desire and “perversions” play a crucial
role (see Kabbani 1986; Lewis 1996; McClintock 1995; Said 1978;
and Stoler 2002, 1995 on imperialism, nationalism, and sexual-
ity). Jokes, slogans, gossip, and conversations of young male
activists laced with sexual themes are ethnographically relevant.
Such a porno-nationalist imagination of the hypersexualized
Muslim Other convinces the Hindu nationalist Self of its moral
superiority but at the same time instils an anxiety about the
threatening masculine Other. Hindu nationalism, despite claim-
ing to represent the majority Hindu community, has at its core a
deep masculinist anxiety that it claims will be solved through a
masculinist, often bordering on militarized, awakening.
In the case of Hindu nationalists, the porno-nationalist
imagination of the hypersexualized Muslim Other and anxious