"Memories in the Service of the Hindu Nation is based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Delhi and its surroundings between 2017 and 2018 with Partition survivors from west Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province. It locates the global rise offar-right nationalism within globalisation and memories of victimhood. Focusing on Hindu nationalism in India, this book is an important and timely contribution to the literature on South Asian Partition Studies that shows how tragedy begets tragedy. It tries to answer an urgent, provocative but nevertheless necessary question: What does it mean to remember the Partition in the time of fascism? The author shows what makes up cycles of violence by connecting the reinscription of trauma in Partition memories to the self-serving justifications of the contemporary violence of Hindu nationalism. It analyses how the hegemony of Hindu nationalism has structured the narratives of Hindu Partition survivors and recruited them in the service of a putative Hindu nation"--
This is an ethnographic monograph that studies the memories of the 1947 Partition of India. It examines how survivors use the ideology of Hindu nationalism to rationalise the Partition's death and suffering.
This book is based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with Partition survivors from west Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province, in Delhi and its surroundings between 2017–18. It locates the global rise of far-right nationalism within globalisation and memories of victimhood. Focussing on Hindu nationalism in India, this book is an important and timely contribution to the literature on South Asian Partition Studies that shows how tragedy begets tragedy. It tries to answer an urgent, provocative but nevertheless necessary question: 'What does it mean to remember the Partition in the time of fascism?' The author shows what makes up cycles of violence by connecting the reinscription of trauma in Partition memories to the self-serving justifications of the contemporary violence of Hindu nationalism. It analyses how the hegemony of Hindu nationalism has structured the narratives of Hindu Partition survivors and recruited them in service of a putative Hindu nation.
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'This book's vital focus on the narrated experiences of dislocation and everyday violence stemming from the political policy of Partition is relevant to current global experiences of forcible displacement within and across national borders. Kohli's thoughtful analysis of the redeployment of memory to serve present notions of national belonging and exclusion is an especially germane contribution to understanding the increasing number of multicultural democracies experiencing a rise in xenophobic claims of rightful - more rigidly inscribed - publics within nations as a justification for restricting targeted groups' rights, safety, and sense of belonging. The author considers the mysterious question of how mob violence can be attributed to outsiders by everyone involved without participants' recollection or recognition of their own individual acts of violence, or accountability for them.' Ann E. Kingsolver, University of Kentucky 'This remarkable and elegantly written book is the first systematic effort to link the Partition of India in 1947 and today's homegrown Hindu fascism, by using a novel conceptual lens linking memory, sacrifice and theodicy. It will be of interest to all anthropologists of religion, nationalism and memory, as well as to specialists working on modern Indian cultural politics.' Arjun Appadurai, New York University 'This wonderful book demonstrates with utmost clarity how the suffering of the Partition of the South Asian subcontinent is used to legitimate anti-Muslim violence in contemporary India. Kohli gives us the tales of the victims but goes beyond their narratives to the politics of resentment and retribution that fuels Hindu nationalism today. His book provides a much needed and compelling perspective on the use of the Partition as a political weapon in the present.' Peter van der Veer, author of Religious Nationalism. Hindus and Muslims in India
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This ethnography connects the memories of the 1947 Partition to Hindu nationalism and the global swing to the right.
Acknowledgements; Glossary; Prologue: The Linguistic Setting; Part I. The Past and the Present: Introduction;
1. Listening to Ancestors: Ethnography in a Milieu of Memory; Part II: Sacrifice and Suffering: The Purusharth of Refugees;
2. Stories of Purusharth;
3. A Story Half Told: The Moral and Political Claims of Purusharth;
4. Sacrifice and Hard Work: Martyrdom as Theodicy;
5. The Purusharth of Women; Part III. Remembrance and Healing: Reflections on the Post-Partition Context;
6. The Fractured Nomos;
7. Remembering Violence;
8. Remembering Partition in the Time of Fascism;
9. Healing, Victimhood and Ressentiment; Conclusion: Field Notes on Global Authoritarianism; Works Cited; Index.
Pranav Kohli teaches Sociology at Maynooth University, Ireland. He is a political anthropologist specialising in race, gender, conflict, authoritarianism and memory with an abiding interest in their intersections with the politics of health.
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