Racialization and ethnicization: Hindutva hegemony and caste

This paper views Hindutva hegemony in India today as authoritarian populism. Its focus is Hindutva’s cultural-ideological work to make “peoples” by “fixing” meanings around socially constructed identities. Dalits and Muslims pose serious challenges to Hindutva’s project of a Hindu rashtra (Hindu nation). Whereas Dalit presence questions the existence of a “Hindu”, Muslim presence questions the existence of the “Rashtra”. Consequently, Hindutva constructs Muslims as an “external” Other (to be excised) and Dalits as an “internal” Other (to be incorporated). It does this through two processes – “racialization” of Muslims and “ethnicization” of Dalits. While the former emphasizes “difference” of Muslims to show them as permanent outsiders to a Hindu Rashtra, the latter represses the radical difference of Dalits to incorporate them within a Hindu multi-caste and patriarchal family. Yet, this “fixing” is unstable, rife with contradictions and tensions, that threaten the discursive suturing of a Hindu Rashtra.