Memories in the Service of the Hindu Nation: The Afterlife of the Partition of India [Hardcover]

This ethnography connects the memories of the 1947 Partition to Hindu nationalism and the global swing to the right.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 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 201718. 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.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 ContexlÓÙ