Contours Of Hindu Rashtra

The book is a collection of essays and articles written over a period of 5 years. The essays numbering 40 in number have been divided into nine main sections. Section I discusses essays on religion and society, Section II contains articles on Hindutva, Section III has essays on Hindutva and minorities, Section IV selected articles on Hindutva threat protection Islam and terrorism, have been given. Section V has essays on communalism and violence, Section VI has articles on political chess board, Section VII has essays on Hindutva and Dalits, Section VIII discusses women and Hindu right and lastly Section IX contains articles on faith and reason.

Contributed articles on cultural contours of Hindu rashtra.

This book addresses the recent transformations of popular Hinduism by focusing upon the religious cum artistic practice of Ramkatha, staged narratives of the Ramcharitmanas. Focusing on the sensory and media experiences, the author examines the aesthetics and dynamics of the Ramkatha ethnoscape through participant-observation in everyday practices, and how it particularly, translates politics from the realm of religion. Besides being socially constructed, the Ramkatha heavily relies on technologies for its production and continuation. Negotiated through a telling of Hindu religious stories, the mediated voice of Morari Bapu, a former school-teacher turned narrator, is a major medium of performance transposed into multiple media such as theatre, stage, music and spectacle. The book engages with voice as a vehicle of meaning to scrutinize its discursive production, imagination and re-production across mobile contexts. It investigates how the transnationally disseminated practices re-contextualize religious subjectivities of an affective community enmeshed in spatio-sensorial modes. The book will be of interest to academic audiences in the fields of South Asian Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, as well as Performance Studies and Religious Studies.

Investigation into how a shared narrative of law and cinema produces ways of collectively remembering mass violence in postcolonial India.

Conntributors to this volume tackle the question of how to define the contours of current religious fundamentalism, examining the private & public postures of fundamentalist rhetoric, the importance of its regional variants, & the damage it can do to regional & national educaton systems.

Captures the lives of those living close to the border areas of Jammu and their stories of contesting or reinforcing India-Pakistan boundaries.

Why do certain groups and individuals seek to do harm in the name of God? While studies often claim to hold the key to this frightening phenomenon, they seldom account for the crucial role that religious conviction plays, not just in radical Islam, but also in the fundamentalist branches of the world's two other largest religions: Christianity and Hinduism. As the first book to examine violent extremism in all three religions together, Competing Fundamentalisms draws on studies in sociology, psychology, culture, and economicswhile focusing on the central role of religious ideasto paint a richer portrait of this potent force in modern life. Clarke argues that the forces of globalization fuel the aggression of these movements to produce the competing feature of religious fundamentalisms, which have more in common with their counterparts across religious lines than they do with the members of their own religions. He proposes ways to deescalate religious violence in the service of peacemaking. Readers will gain important insights into how violent religious fundamentalism works in the world's three largest religions and learn new strategies for promoting peace in the context of contemporary interreligious conflict.

South Asia is one of the most volatile regions of the world, and India’s complex democratic political system impinges on its relations with its South Asian neighbours. Focusing on this relationship, this book explores the extent to which domestic politics affect a country’s foreign policy. The book argues that particular continuities and disjunctures in Indian foreign policy are linked to the way in which Indian elites articulated Indian identity in response to the needs of domestic politics. The manner in which these state elites conceive India’s region and regional role depends on their need to stay in tune with domestic identity politics. Such exigencies have important implications for Indian foreign policy in South Asia. Analysing India’s foreign policy through the lens of competing domestic visions at three different historical eras in India’s independent history, the book provides a framework for studying India’s developing nationhood on the basis of these idea(s) of ‘India’. This approach allows for a deeper and a more nuanced interpretation of the motives for India’s foreign policy choices than the traditional realist or neo-liberal framework, and provides a useful contribution to South Asian Studies, Politics and International Studies.

August 15, 2022 marked the beginning of India's 75th year of independence. The year was significant in another way too-as the precursor to elections in 2024. With an incumbent government that in the last ten years has undertaken widespread changes, some controversial, how the people will vote in this election points to more than the usual selection of representatives to the Parliament: they would also be showing their approval for the direction some would like the country to take. Is India still a secular, sovereign, democratic country in the same sense as the founding fathers of the republic envisaged? How has the country fared on matters of governance? Do the economic policies assure a secure future for the people? As P. Chidambaram reminds us, democracy is not just voting once every five years. Democracy has to be practised every day, through dialogue, discussion, debate and dissent. His column takes on the issues without flinching or ambiguity. It is an Opposition view, but even discounting party politics, one that provides a valuable perspective. As India prepares for elections, the arguments in The Watershed Year will help clarify the basis for judging which way we want to go.