Hindu normalization, nationalism and consumer mobilization

This book has sought to map some of the relationships between religion, the state and advanced capitalism in different political and social arenas across the globe. In India, accelerated and uneven modernization following the nation’s economic liberalization in the early 1990s provides an interesting context to examine these relationships, specifically given the significant rise of Hindu nationalism in this period. Hindutva (loosely “Hindu-ness”), an ideology advocated by Hindu nationalist movements, exerts significant influence in parliamentary politics and arguably more insidiously, in social life in contemporary India. Although it has been argued that modernization and associated secular practices have repressed religion from public life, since the 1980s we have seen a deprivatization process of religion in many places in the world (Casanova, 2006). This chapter follows on this perspective and discusses the ways religious expression may adapt to and diffuse through public spaces and practices of modernity with regards to the political projects of Hindutva and consumer mobilization more specifically. We consider the ways Hindu assertion diffuses through the consumption of information, images, sounds and goods. The saturation of popular media and consumer practices with Hindu cultural markers has in many ways constructed forms of “Hinduness” as “Indianess,” particularly among the urban middle classes. Through the construction of a Hindu normalcy, the operation of power with nonhegemonic and non-Hindu groups is made less visible and thus unchallenged. In the second half of the chapter we take up this concern in the context of development activities in India, particularly fundraising efforts that have involved Indian diasporic networks. We explore how Hindu nationalism has emerged in some philanthropic efforts with disturbing consequences. We also consider the ways philanthropies appeal to the diasporic “donor-consumer” by constructing a homogenous, culturally unified Indian nation, making religion (and Hindu dominance) less explicit. Through this imagination of India and its “development,” the relations of power, particularly around religion, caste and class, once again risk being unchallenged.