Memories in the Service of the Hindu Nation

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.

'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

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