Memories in the Service of the Hindu Nation

This book is based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with Partition survivors from west Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province, in Delhi and its surroundings between 2017-18. It locates the global rise of far-right nationalism within globalisation and memories of victimhood. Focussing on Hindu nationalism in India, this book is an important and timely contribution to the literature on South Asian Partition Studies that shows how tragedy begets tragedy. It tries to answer an urgent, provocative but nevertheless necessary question: 'What does it mean to remember the Partition in the time of fascism?' The author shows what makes up cycles of violence by connecting the reinscription of trauma in Partition memories to the self-serving justifications of the contemporary violence of Hindu nationalism. It analyses how the hegemony of Hindu nationalism has structured the narratives of Hindu Partition survivors and recruited them in service of a putative Hindu nation.

Author: Pranav Kohli
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 11/16/2023
Pages: 300
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 9.29h x 6.22w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781009318686

About the Author
Kohli, Pranav: - Pranav Kohli teaches Sociology at Maynooth University, Ireland. He is a political anthropologist specialising in race, gender, conflict, authoritarianism and memory with an abiding interest in their intersections with the politics of health.