This content downloaded from 98.164.221.200 on Fri, 17 Jul 2020 16:26:54 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Feminist technosciences Rebecca Herzig and Banu Subramaniam, Series Editors This content downloaded from 98.164.221.200 on Fri, 17 Jul 2020 16:26:54 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms This content downloaded from 98.164.221.200 on Fri, 17 Jul 2020 16:26:54 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms HOLY SCIENCE THE BIOPOLITICS OF HINDU NATIONALISM Banu suBramaniam university oF Washington Press Seattle This content downloaded from 98.164.221.200 on Fri, 17 Jul 2020 16:26:54 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Financial support for the publication of Holy Science was provided by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Copyright © 2019 by the University of Washington Press Printed and bound in the United States of America Interior design by Katrina Noble Composed in Iowan Old Style, typeface designed by John Downer 23 22 21 20 19 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. university oF Washington Press www.washington.edu/uwpress LiBrary oF congress cataLoging-in-Publication Data Names: Subramaniam, Banu, 1966- author. Title: Holy science : the biopolitics of Hindu nationalism / Banu Subramaniam. Description: Seattle : University of Washington Press, [2019] | Series: Feminist technosciences | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018048245 (print) | LCCN 2019002318 (ebook) | ISBn 9780295745602 (ebook) | ISBn 9780295745589 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBn 9780295745596 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Biopolitics—India. | Hinduism and science—India. | Hinduism and politics—India. | Nationalism and science—India. | Postcolonialism—India. | India—Politics and government—1947 Classification: Lcc JA80 (ebook) | Lcc JA80 .S87 2019 (print) | DDc 320.540954—dc23 Lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048245 Chapter 1 appeared in a different form as “Development Nationalism: Science, Reli- gion, and the Quest for a Modern India,” in Feminist Futures: Re-Imagining Women, Cul- ture and Development, edited by Priya Kurian, Kum-Kum Bhavnani, and John Foran (London: Zed Books, 2016). Cover illustration: Based on image of holy trishul, DigitalSoul/iStock The paper used in this publication is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48–1984.∞ This content downloaded from 98.164.221.200 on Fri, 17 Jul 2020 16:26:54 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Caminante, no hay puentes, se hace puentes al andar. Voyager, there are no bridges, one builds them as one walks. Gloria e. anzaldúa, This Bridge Called My Back हाँ कहूँ तोई है नाही ना भी कहियो नाही जावे हाँ और ना के बीच में मोरा सदगुरु रहा समाये If I say Yes, it isn’t so And yet I cannot say it’s No That’s where my guru resides Between that Yes and No. KaBir This content downloaded from 98.164.221.200 on Fri, 17 Jul 2020 16:26:54 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms This content downloaded from 98.164.221.200 on Fri, 17 Jul 2020 16:26:54 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms AVATARS FOR LOST DREAMS The Land of Lost Dreams Planet Kari is entering a new century, and feverish activity envelops the nearby Avatara Lokam, or Land of Lost Dreams. The Avatars in the Land of Lost Dreams watch nervously as life unfolds on Kari. Destruction, degradation, and decay are everywhere on Kari. The doomsday callers sound their alarms. The lands, oceans, and skies are heavily polluted. Indeed, some earthly creatures can scarcely live—eat, drink, breathe, or sleep. Kari seems to be radiating waves of pain from its many denizens. Alongside the dystopic visions of doomsday, the saviors and utopic callers herald the possibility of new beginnings through radical change of life on the planet. Will the planetary inhabitants figure out the secret of viable life, or will they destroy the planet? Those in Avatara Lokam who believed that the horrors of colonialism, enslavement, genocide, and dehumaniza- tion would usher in a future of remorse, humility, cooperation, and benev- olence have been thoroughly discredited. Instead, the elite of the planet have grown more daring, more rapacious, more ravenous in their greed. Epochs ago, the Kankavars, the omniscient architects of galaxies, began experiments on Earth, a planet they nicknamed Kari for its complex combinations. The Kankavars, as their name suggests, are a spectacular species. Technologically sophisticated and deeply empathic, they are capable of infinitely morphing and mutating their capabilities. Their bodies trans- form to take on diverse morphologies, pigmentation, and sensory capabili- ties. Their enhanced sensoria are endlessly attuned and receptive to varied stimuli in the galaxies—to new visual, olfactory, sonic, lingual, haptic, xv This content downloaded from 98.164.221.200 on Fri, 17 Jul 2020 16:15:36 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms hypnotic, gustatory, alimental, and phonic clues. Kari has been to date their most ambitious and beloved project. Here, they are attempting to create beings in their own image, acutely sensitive, infinitely inventive, eternally playful, and continually striving for reflexivity and justice. Since they began the experiment, many iterations have been initiated and failed. In each turn, the Kankavars have learned the unique secrets of carbon- based life and its evolution. In their inimitable fashion, they have gently directed life on earth. For this experiment, they have invented ava tars, each endowed with unique capabilities and bestowed with particular responsibilities for evolution of life on Kari. The grand avatars and their majestic personae follow Kari with care, precision, and responsibility. After all, it is their vision and intelligence that help craft the evolutionary possibilities on the planet. Currently, the experimental iteration #1728 is unfolding on Kari. After beginning their new iteration, tens of millions years ago in current earthly time, and planting secrets in the geological, biological, and atmospheric layers of the planet, the avatars of the Kankavars restarted the theater of life on Kari. However, thousands of generations later, trouble seems afoot. The avatars are furiously consulting each other. It is increasingly clear that Kari is on a path of reckoning. Will the Kankavars be compelled to initiate a new iteration? An Avatara Lokam, or Land of Lost Dreams, lies beyond the strato- sphere, nestled in the rarified outer folds of the integuments of each “ele- mental” planet. The architects seeded each planet with a different primary set of chemical elements; on Kari it was a carbon-based evolutionary scheme. Each Avatara Lokam is command central for the Kan kavars’ experiments with elements. As the flows of history meander through the ecstatic and horrific, through war and peace, through the tranquil and turbulent, the lost dreams of generations ride the grooves of billowing clouds to their new abode up in the skies. When souls are lost, relin- quished to the invisible, forgotten in the annals of history or in the memo- ries of those who live on, these souls float up to their new abode above the clouds. In an Avatara Lokam, there is no distinction between the material and immaterial, body and soul, deeds and thoughts. All things on their way to oblivion become liminal entities and ascend to their xvi Avatars For Lost Dreams This content downloaded from 98.164.221.200 on Fri, 17 Jul 2020 16:15:36 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms supraplanetary abode. Forgotten or discarded thoughts, theories, ideas, memories, and knowledges find new homes in the outer reaches of the planet. In an Avatara Lokam they are all transformed into souls. The lost denizens wander the skies. From time to time, these lost souls are rediscovered, summoned back to Earth as they find a new lease on life in new bodies or to newly found acclaim and cultural revivals. Some descend in new forms or avatars; resurrected souls once again inhabit worldly lives to exult in their recent stardom, or suffer a dreaded infamy. Some rejoice, but others descend unwillingly to face the music of a new generation of earthly theater. The rest explore their new abode, perched among the nooks and crannies between the planets, stars, and clouds to follow the dreams and nightmares of earthly dramas. For some, this is heaven—the immortal television of the afterlife, a device with infinite channels. In their everyday lives, earthlings have free will, and events unfold through the worlds they create. Periodically, the inhabitants dis- cover the “secrets” embedded in their world and learn to enjoy the imagi- native potential that the Kankavars had introduced. It was only occasionally, in moments earthlings experience as the “unexpected,” that the Kankavars intervened to recalibrate or reroute their experiments. Of late, the Kankavars are watching Earth with particular care. The experiments on Kari were undertaken to explore whether carbon-based biological evolution of life might engender complex ways of life and ways of collective living. The Kankavars were interested in producing life that pre- served harmonious coexistence, alongside a passion for dynamism, diver- sity, and change. Driven by an ethics of play, justice, joy, and invention, the Kankavars were fascinated with cycles and cyclical life. On Kari, they built a recursive world—one that repeated, restored, recycled, reincar- nated, re-engineered, and reanimated life continually in cycles of birth and death, creation and destruction.