Faculty Seminar | Hindu majoritarianism and the construction of “religion”

Prof. Nivedita Menon, Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, will deliver a special faculty seminar on Hindu majoritarianism and the construction of “religion” on July 10, 2024, at 4 pm. NLS Faculty, Dr. Sushmita Pati will be the discussant.

About the Speaker

Nivedita Menon is a Professor at the Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her latest book is Secularism as Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South (Permanent Black and Duke University Press 2023). Apart from research papers in Indian and international journals, her previous books are Seeing like a Feminist(2012/updated 2nd Edition 2022), Recovering Subversion: Feminist Politics Beyond the Law (2004); and (co-written) Power and Contestation: India after 1989 (2007/2nd Edition 2014). She is a regular commentator on contemporary issues on the collective blog kafila.online (of which she is one of the founders). She has translated fiction and non-fiction from Hindi and Malayalam into English, and from Malayalam into Hindi, and received the AK Ramanujan Award for translation instituted by Katha.

Abstract

For the session she has shared two chapters from her book Secularism as Misdirection. Critical Thought from the Global South that focuses specifically on India, hoping to draw out implications for wider contexts. Chapter 2 examines ascendant Hindu supremacism as a state project in India, it tries to understand the ways in which the construction of religion functions under conditions of majoritarianism. In addition, three key elements in the co-construction of religion and the state are considered – the Essential Religious Practices test; the idea of religious institutions/deities as juristic persons; and the state’s role in managing the finances of religious institutions.

Chapter 3 focuses on caste, one of the critical elements in this region, which is obscured by the celebration and practice of secularism. This chapter examines the millennia-old project of Brahminism in this territory, now called India, of producing a community that abides by the caste system and accepts Brahminism as the dominant ideology. The modern project of Hindutva is only the current phase of a process that began with the advent of Vedic people Aryans into this land mass. Here she focuses on Hindutva’s  continuity with the millenia old project rather than the breaks. Rejecting the claim of Hindutva that Hindus are the majority in India requires mainstream Left, secular, and feminist politics to reorient itself through a serious engagement seriously with Dalit Bahujan scholarship and life worlds, and to learn from these.