Technology and Nationalism in India: Cultural Negotiations from C ...

According to one proposition, Hinduism is a religion that is fully compatible with a technologically and economically interconnected globe. The value of Hinduism as a source of economic tools, skills, or solutions is explained in terms of a foundational cultural universalism purportedly found in the Hindu faith. Web sites like Hindu Universe market Hinduism as a globally saleable product. They define the act of economic purchase as a cultural obligation to Hinduism. The activity of consumption, actively encouraged, is itself branded as Hindu. Participation in a chat room discussion about Hindu culture or history on Hindu Universe, followed by the act of purchasing a Hindu-branded calling card or cell phone through the same portal, allows an economic transaction to be recast as a more fundamental act of cultural loyalty or duty. The implication is that Hindus and Indians can participate in the world of today precisely because they are culturally grounded in a universalist Hindu ethos and heritage that is uniquely attuned to a global marketplace. The post-1991 turn of the Indian state to free market economic policies is tacitly, if not explicitly, recognized as the enabling condition of possibility for this aspect of Hinduism and Hindu culture to flourish in its unhindered form.

Yet another proposition found on the site, squarely in keeping with Hindu nationalist ideology, is that “Indic” identity—the sum of religions, sects, and practices rooted in the history of the indigenous Hindu dharma of the subcontinent—equals and exhausts Indian identity, the former granting the latter its essential character, particularity, and unique-ness: in a word, its soul. Consequently, non-Indic identities, such as those of the Indian Muslim or Indian Christian, do not, strictly speaking, count as Indian in the cultural sense, even though they may qualify as Indian in a legal sense by virtue of constitutional citizenship. This narrative of cultural and national identity privileges its narrow interpretation of Hindu identity as the purest and most authentic incarnation of Indian identity. In addition to the exclusion of Islam and Christianity from the category of Indian faiths, strong condemnation is reserved for Indian Muslims and Christians, as seen in the content on Hindu nationalist sites.