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

For example, the Hindu Universe portal includes a category of content that focuses on the forced conversion of Hindus to Christianity and Islam.⁸ The section on Hindu-Muslim relations intones, “Moslem invasion of India has been one of the most brutal events in the history of mankind. During the Moslem [sic] rule, millions of Hindus were massacred and converted by force.”⁹ There are at least two Web sites, Hindu Holocaust Museum and Online Hindu Holocaust Memorial Museum, dedicated to chronicling the Hindu “holocaust” and “genocide” at the hands of Muslims.¹⁰ The Hindu Universe portal also includes a history section, which contains numerous articles espousing anti-Muslim and anti-Christian sentiments.¹¹ Squarely in keeping with the central premise of Hindutva ideology—the claim that the Indian nation-state is predicated on a Hindu cultural foundation and that Hindu dharma is the overarching and determining structure of identity for all Indians—the articles in the section define Islam and Christianity as alien religions that have been forced on Indian society by Islamic invaders and European colonizers.¹²

In addition to these characteristics, online Hindu nationalism also reflects other tenets of Hindutva ideology. Prime among these is a rejection of the “pseudosecularism” of the Indian state, Congress Party, and Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India. Other targets are socialism, communism, and Marxism and the individuals, groups, and political parties associated with these ideologies in the Indian context. Left ideologies are deemed responsible for contaminating the academic and intellectual culture of Indian universities, which, the Hindu nationalists argue, is patently anti-Hindu and abusive of Indian heritage and culture. Especially virulent are the attacks aimed at the current president of the Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi.¹³

From the content on Web sites sympathetic to Hindu nationalism, we can identify many of the salient characteristics of technocultural Hindu nationalism. These may be summed up as the following: an insistence on the universalism and globality of Hinduism, a focus on the inherent scientificity of Hindu ethos and culture and the technological expertise of Hindus, ambivalence toward the shifting signifier of the “West,” an essentialized interpretation of Hindu and Indian identity accompanied by antiminority prejudice, a rejection of Left ideologies, an embrace of the free market and capitalism, and a rejection of Indian secularism.