Hindutva's Second Coming

July 23, 2019

Hindutva’s Second Coming

Author: Subhas Gatade
Reviewed by: Gargi Chakravartty
Available at: Media House, 375-A, Pocket 2, Mayur Vihar Phase-I, Delhi – 110 091; 2019; pages: 272; Rs 395 (US $ 18). www.amazon.in/
Review:

Return of Hindutva: A Challenge for Secularism (Jul 13, 2019, Mainstream)

The return of Modi to power with a huge margin in this 2019 election is a clear verdict for the Hindutva plank. Why and how it happened leave us, the secular billions, to ponder about the reality and its aftermath. And at that juncture Subhas Gatade’s 272-page analysis titled ‘Hindutva’s Second Coming’ gives us something concrete to think over once again.…

Beginning with the soaring increase of whatsapp in India, the author has substantiated with reports and even quoted data survey to show how the 2019 election can be called a “WhatsApp Election” with its huge network spreading “fake news”. How dangerous it had been, even from the point of view of creating serious violence and therefore the misuse of whatsapp and Twitter with the BJP’s entire strategy of distorting historical facts to intermingle nationalism, religion and patriotism having far-reaching ominous or threatening social consequences.…

The book does not only deal with the emergence of the Hindutva in India; rather it throws light on the majoritarian religious cultural nationalism and its danger in South Asia, for example, in Sri Lanka the Buddhist violence through Bodu Bala Sena’s hate speech against Muslims and Tamil Hindus. The similarity between Sinhala-Buddhist militants and Hindutva supremacists in terms of hate and violence is a widespread South Asian phenomenon. Here comes the role of the state vis-a-vis majoritarian politics.…