TY  - BOOK
AU  - Badri Narayan
TI  - Facinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation
SN  - 9788178299068
U1  - 	320.550954 
PY  - 2009///
CY  - New Delhi
PB  - Sage
KW  - India
KW  - Dalits--Political activity
KW  - Bharatiya Janata Party
N1  - In the present socio-political scenario of India, Dalits have emerged as a major force in the electoral arena and politically mobilising them has almost become a compulsion for all political parties.

Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation is a deconstruction of the fascinating tactics used by the Hindutva forces to politically mobilise Dalits. Based on original empirical data from extensive field work in UP and Bihar, the book documents how the Hindutva forces are adept at digging out the myths, memories and legends of Dalit castes that are popular at the local level and reinterpreting them in a Hinduised way. They project the heroes of these myths and popular folk narratives either as brave Indian warriors who protected the Hindu religion and culture from the Muslim invaders of the medieval period, or as reincarnations of Lord Rama, so as to link the myths of these Dalit castes with the unified Hindu meta-narrative. The author has also tried to deconstruct the making of the ‘popular’ in the North Indian rural society and investigate the communal elements induced in it.

Interestingly, the author argues that this reinterpretation of the past serves as a powerful cultural capital for the Dalit communities, who use it, on the one hand, to seek acceptance from the upper caste Hindus by glorifying their caste position and, on the other, to subvert the dominance of the upper castes.

The book will interest a wide readership including students, academicians and researchers in the fields of History, Political Science, Anthropology and South Asian Studies, as well as political activists.; Introduction: Pastness and Politics    Saffron Imagining of the Local: A Communal Map of an Indian Village    Exploring Dalit Militia: Local Cultures and Communal Politics    Making of a Warring Hero: Hindutva Politics of Memory and Forgetting    Creating Popular Politics: Caste Histories and BJP's Electoral Discourse    Legend War: Mapping the Political Mobilisation of the Nishads    The Politics of Cultural Resources: The Mushahars of North India    Saffronisation of a Dalit Hero: The Story of Salhes of North Bihar    The Path Traversed and the Way Ahead    Bibliography    Index
ER  -