Nation und Religion : die Rolle des politisierten Hinduismus im indischen Nation-building ; koloniale und postkoloniale Diskurse / Clemens Six

• VerfasserIn: Six, Clemens 1975-
• Place / Publishing House: Wien, 2003
• Year of Publication: 2003
• Language: German
• Physical Description: 366 Bl.; 30 cm

eng: The thesis deals with the history of religious nationalism in modern India, that is to say of 20th century British India on the one hand and the independent republic after 1947 on the other. It starts after a short introduction which throws an analytical light on the recent inter-religious riots in Gujarat, Western India, in 2002 with a theoretical chapter on the relation of nationalism and modernity in general and specifically in Asia and asks about the appropriateness of the usual, mainly Western theories of nationalism for the Indian context. Further, the author develops a distinctive ¥Indian ¦ perspective on nation-building not just as a political or structural but also as a mental process by focusing on the ritual aspects of nation-formation which he calls §performative nation-building ¨. The third part concretises this approach by analysing the §Shuddhi ¨-movement of the 1920s which was a campaign for proselytising converted Hindus back into the Hindu fold. For the postcolonial context the author explains in the fourth chapter the recent upcoming of Hindu-nationalism with a historical perspective on the 1980s and 90s and discusses mass campaigns and political rituals in the context of growing internationalisation and structural transformations of the media in India. Finally the conclusion names similarities and continuous motives, i.e. the discursive strategies of Hindu-nationalism and the function of public political action and rituals within this form of religious nationalism. The theoretical summary of the historical examples analysed in the thesis is a theory of nationalism as a discursive field by which the author hopes to open up the academic debate on nationalism in India. Çï.