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

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Pranav Kohli (Maynooth University, Ireland)

Memories in the Service of the Hindu Nation

The Afterlife of the Partition of India

Pranav Kohli (Maynooth University, Ireland)

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English

Cambridge University Press
16 November 2023

Oral history; National liberation & independence, post-colonialism; Conservatism & right-of-centre democratic ideologies; Nationalism; Religious & theocratic ideologies

Series: South Asia in the Social Sciences

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.

By: Pranav Kohli (Maynooth University Ireland)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 237mm, Width: 160mm, Spine: 27mm
Weight: 630g
ISBN: 9781009318686
ISBN 10: 1009318683
Series: South Asia in the Social Sciences
Pages: 300
Publication Date: 16 November 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

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.

Reviews for Memories in the Service of the Hindu Nation: The Afterlife of the Partition of India

'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