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Assimilation in a Postcolonial Context: the Hindu Nationalist Discourse on Westernization

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Assimilation in a Postcolonial Context: the Hindu Nationalist Discourse on Westernization Sylvie Guichard Assimilation in a Postcolonial Context: the Hindu Nationalist Discourse on Westernization Just a few days after the brutal rape of a 23 year-old woman in Delhi in December 2012, Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu nationalist outfit at the heart of the Hindu nationalist move- ment declared: „Crimes against women happening in urban India are shame- ful. It is a dangerous trend. But such crimes won’t happen in Bharat or the rural areas of the country. You go to villages and forests of the country and there will be no such incidents of gangrape or sex crimes […]. Where ‚Bharat‘ becomes ‚India‘ with the influence of western culture, these types of incidents happen. The actual Indian values and culture should be established at every stratum of society where women are treated as ‚mother‘.“1 We see here a central theme of the Hindu nationalist discourse: a traditional Bharat (the Sanskrit name for the Indian subcontinent), a Hindu India, en- dangered by westernization and opposed to an already westernized India. This chapter explores this discourse on westernization: What does it mean for the Hindu nationalist movement? How does this movement speaks about west- ernization? And how has this discourse developed over time? The argument put forth has three parts (corresponding to the three sections of this chapter). We will see first that westernization can be considered as a form of feared or felt assimilation to a dominant, hegemonic, non-national cul- ture, or maybe, rather, to an imagined Western way of life (what some authors have called Occidentalism2); second that a form of chosen westernization is practiced in the Hindu nationalist movement as a strategy of „resistance by imitation“ in parallel with a discourse of „feared assimilation“; and third that when this discourse is applied to women and sexuality, it offers a meeting 1 Hindustan Times, „Rapes occur in ‚India‘, not in ‚Bharat‘: RSS chief“, 4 January 2013. Numbers do not corroborate Bhagwat’s assumption that less rapes happen in rural areas: A study cor- relating reported rapes and where they happened showed that rapes are not prevalent in cities despite the fact that probably even more cases go unreported in villages than in cit- ies (Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Shishir Bail and Rohan Kothari, „Urban-Rural Incidence of Rape in India: Myths and Social Science Evidence“, LGDI Working Paper, 2013, http://azimpremji university.edu.in/lgdi/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Urban-Rural-Incidence-of-Rape-in- India.pdf (accessed 20 May 2013).) 2 On Occidentalism, see James C. Carrier, Occidentalism. Images of the West, Oxford, 1996. © wilhelm fink verlag, 2019 | doi:10.30965/9783846759516_021 372 Sylvie Guichard point for positions otherwise opposed that come to briefly share some com- mon ground. 1. Westernization as assimilation in a postcolonial context According to the Hindu nationalist discourse, the Indian nation is a Hindu na- tion. The tenants of this vision put forth that the term Hindu has to be under- stood as designating a way of life rather than a religion. They insist that the movement is cultural and not religious. Yet, they defend a religiously based definition of culture. In effect, according to the Hindu nationalist discourse, belonging to the nation does not depend on residence or birth on a certain ter- ritory but on sharing of a (culture based on) religion – Hinduism – or at least acknowledging its symbols as national symbols. Hindu nationalism is built mainly against the Indian Muslim population but also against the Christian population and – the focus of this chapter – against the westernization of val- ues and way of life. There are different and often dissenting voices in what is called the Hindu nationalist movement or Sangh Parivar. The RSS (the core of the movement) aims at promoting and strengthening the Hindu nation. It defines itself as a socio-cultural and not political organization. Over the years, it created some thirty major satellite organizations associated more or less closely with it.3 These organizations have different modes of functioning; each has its own au- dience, developed a specific area of activities and has a recognizable discourse. Most of these organizations claim to be independent from the RSS, but close links remain.4 In 1951, the RSS instituted its political wing, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which became the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980 (BJP – Party of the Indian People). From 1980 onwards, the BJP won an increasing percentage of votes in the gen- eral elections and in 1998 it could form the government at the federal level. 3 The Sangh Parivar comprises notably a women’s wing, the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti (Patriotic Association of Women Volunteers), a self-help organization, Sewa Bharati (Service of India), several sectorial organizations including a students’ association and a labour union, a ( politico-)religious association, the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP – Universal Hindu Association) and its youth wing, the Bajrang Dal (Hanuman’s Army). These organizations have different modes of functioning, each has its own audience, and each has developed a specific area of activities and has a recognizable discourse. Most of these organizations claim to be independent from the RSS, but a closer look shows that they are not (see Christophe Jaffrelot, The Sangh Parivar. A Reader, New Delhi, 2005). 4 See Christophe Jaffrelot, The Sangh Parivar. A Reader, New Delhi, 2005..
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