‘What Kind of Hindu Are You?’ Muscular Hinduism and the Making of Majorities and Minorities

Abstract

Abstract Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) is often interpreted as the perversion of religion for politics. However, this idea can confound rather than clarify the question of religion (and politics) in India because it is based on the idea that religion is a fixed and immutable theory about the world rather than a form of being in the world. Rather than assume that Hindu supremacy is a perversion of religion, the chapter suggests that Hindu supremacy as performed by Bajrang Dal activists in Ahmedabad, Gujarat is based on crafting a particular kind of everyday religion in public within secular states like India that reinforces and establishes majorities and minorities. Here, religion is not a fixed set of rules but deeply implicated in the genealogy of religion as a form of life in postcolonial states and as a resource for making permanent majorities and minorities in the public sphere, which are recognized as such by the state and the wider public.