With the opening of India to the global economy, technology, and culture, questions of national identity are being starkly posed and tested. An attendant rise in militant Hindu nationalism can be seen as a bold strategic response to this question as it attempts to place India among the most powerful nations in global modernity. Analyses of this attempt to fundamentally transform India have tended to be pitched at the institutional levels of economics and politics, yet the Hindu nationalist methodology is essentially a cultural project. This article will examine two forms of embodied cultural practices in India, each offering a contrasting set of cultural meanings and political possibilities and each highlighting the complexities and contradictions of the globalization-nationalism nexus in contemporary India.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Alter, J. (2000). Subaltern bodies and nationalist physiques: Gama the great and the heroics of Indian wrestling. Body and Society, 6(2), 45-72.
2.
Anderson, W. K., & Damle, S. D. (1987). The brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu revivalism. New Delhi, India: Vistaar.
3.
Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. In M. Featherstone (Ed.), Global culture: Nationalism, globalization and modernity (pp. 295-310). London: Sage.
4.
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
5.
Bardhan, A. B. (1992). Sangh Parivar's Hindutva versus the real Hindu ethos. New Delhi, India: Communist Party of India.
6.
Basu, T., Datta, P., Sarkar, S., Sarkar, T., & Sen, S. (1993). Khaki shorts and saffron flags: A critique of the Hindu right. New Delhi, India: Orient Longman.
7.
Bhatia, S. (2002). Even Bollywood. Index on Censorship, 31(4), 172-176.
8.
Bhatt, C. (2001). Hindu nationalism: Origins, ideologies and modern myths. Oxford, UK: Berg.
9.
Casolari, M. (2000, January 22). Hindutva's foreign tie-up in the 1930s. Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai), pp. 218-228.
10.
Chatterjee, P. (1993). The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
11.
Chiriyankandath, J. (1998). Bounded nationalism: Kerala and the social and regional limits of Hindutva. In T. B. Hansen & C. Jaffrelot (Eds.), The BJP and the compulsion of politics in India (pp. 202-227). Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.
Dimeo, P. (2002). Colonial bodies, colonial sport: “Martial” Punjabis: “Effeminate” Bengalis and the development of Indian football. International Journal of the History of Sport, 19(1), 72-90.
14.
Dimeo, P., & Mills, J. (2001). Soccer in South Asia: Empire, nation, diaspora. London: Frank Cass.
15.
Elst, K. (2001). The saffron swastika: The notion of “Hindu fascism”: Volume 1. New Delhi, India: Voice of India.
16.
Featherstone, M. (Ed.). (1990). Global culture: Nationalism, globalization and modernity. London: Sage.
17.
Forgacs, D. (Ed.). (1999). The Antonio Gramsci reader: Selected writings 1916-95. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
18.
Golwaker, M. S. (1996). Bunch of thoughts (3rd ed.). Bangalore, India: Sahitya Sindhu Prakashana.
19.
Guha, R. (1994/1995). The empire plays back. Wissenschaftskolleg—Institute for Advanced Study Berlin—Jahrbuch 1994/5, pp. 253-263.
20.
Gupta, C. (1998, March 28). Articulating Hindu masculinity and femininity: “Shuddhi” and “Sangathan” movements in United Provinces in the 1920s. Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai), 727-735.
21.
Hansen, T. B. (1996, March 9). Globalization and nationalist imagination: Hindutva's promise of equality through difference. Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai), pp. 603-616.
22.
Hansen, T. B. (1999). The saffron wave: Democracy and Hindu nationalism in modern India. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.
23.
Hansen, T. B., & Jaffrelot, C. (Eds.). (1998). The BJP and the compulsion of politics in India. Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.
24.
Hoberman, J. (1984). Sport and political ideology. Austin: University of Texas Press.
25.
Ilaiah, K. (1996). Why I am not a Hindu: A Sudra critique of Hindutva philosophy, culture and political economy. Calcutta, India: Samya.
26.
Jaffrelot, C. (1996). The Hindu nationalist movement and Indian politics: 1925 to the 1990s. London: Hurst & Co.
27.
Kurien, C. T. (1994). Global capitalism and the Indian economy. New Delhi, India: Orient Longman.
28.
Marqusee, M. (1996). War minus the shooting: A journey through South Asia during Cricket's World Cup. London: Heinnemann.
29.
McDonald, I. (1999a). Between Saleem and Shiva: The politics of cricket nationalism in “globalising” India. In J. Sugden & A. Bairner (Eds.), Sport in divided societies (pp. 213-234). Aachen, Germany: Meyer & Meyer.
30.
McDonald, I. (1999b). “Physiological patriots”? The politics of physical culture and Hindu nationalism in India. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 34(4), 343-358.
31.
Nandy, A. (1989). The Tao of cricket: On games of destiny and the destiny of games. Calcutta, India: Viking.
32.
Rajagopal, A. (2001). Politics after television: Hindu nationalism and the reshaping of the public in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
33.
Robertson, R. (1992). Globalization: Social theory and global culture. London: Sage.
34.
Sarkar, S. (1993, January 30). The fascism of the Sangh Parivar. Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai), 163-167.
35.
Ueberhorst, H. (1979). Jahn's historical significance. Canadian Journal of History of Sport and PE, 10(1), 7-14.
36.
Vanaik, A. (1997). Communalism contested: Religion, modernity and secularization. New Delhi, India: Vistaar.
37.
Zarrilli, P. (1998). When the body becomes all eyes: Paradigms, discourses, and practices of power in kalarippayattu, a South Indian martial art. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.
