In Cleansing the Nation, Raka Shome explores the logics of governmentality of contemporary Hindu Nationalism in India by advancing the concept “Hindu Modern.” Analyzing a national cleanliness program and other development projects, Shome shows how the Hindu Modern—a form of national governmentality that disciplines and regulates individual subjects to create desirable “clean” citizens—inscribes Hindu nationalism in India. Focused on security, progress, and development while celebrating and protecting the figure of the upper caste Hindu woman, the Hindu Modern works toward a religious and casteist cleansing of the nation that rewrites Indian modernity as a purified and cleansed Hindu modernity. It shores up caste and religious inequalities around who is authentically Indian, reproducing historical violence and exclusions of caste, gender, and religious minorities, especially toward Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis. By outlining how the Hindu Modern sutures Hindu-ness to the contemporary Indian national project of modernity, Shome helps further understand projects of national purification and cleanliness within global populist authoritarian movements.
By:
Raka Shome
Imprint: Duke University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 445g
ISBN: 9781478032755
ISBN 10: 1478032758
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 11 November 2025
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Preface xi Acknowledgments xv 1. Cleansing the Nation: Hindu Nationalism, the Hindu Modern, and Gender 1 2. Purifying Bharat Mata 57 3. “Women’s Empowerment” Through Toilet Modernity: The No Toilet, No Bride Campaign 107 4. Swachh Violence: The Will to Punish 158 5. From Cleansing to Cleaning: An Alternative (Clean) India 205 Notes 221 References 231 Index
Raka Shome is The Harron Family Endowed Chair and Professor of Communication at Villanova University and author of Diana and Beyond: White Femininity, National Identity, and Contemporary Media Culture.
Reviews for Cleansing the Nation: India, the Hindu Modern, and Mediations of Gender
“Raka Shome’s formative account details the violent apparatus of erasure that is normalized, castefied, and minoritized by the Hindu nationalist state and movement through a national cleanliness program, a pervasive vehicle to gender and racialize Hindu modernity.” - Angana P. Chatterji, author of Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India’s Present
