The forms of knowledge and beliefs authorized by the colonial discourses and uncritically assimilated by the Indic scholars have come under interrogation through what has been called as the postcolonial studies. This does not mean that these imperial discourses were not questioned by nationalist and Marxist thinkers in India. But these critiques operated within the master-narratives of the West. Likewise the postcolonial critic, examine and scrutinize the afterlife of colonialism but remains aware that it inhabits the territory that it investigates and shuns the master-narratives of the West that informed our Indic thought. Thus, its critic occupies an enunciatory space that is neither completely inside nor outside the discourses that evolved from Eurocentric modes of domination. This position becomes an in-between location indentified as hybrid position of practice and negotiation by Homi Bhabha. One might also refer to it as catachresis, a term popularized by Gayatri Spivak, which meant ‘reversing, displacing and seizing the apparatus of value coding’.[1] Within this critic, it would be illuminative how what has passed off as Hindu nationalism has incarnated and enfleshed the colonial modes of domination while encoding them and thus concealing them in the Hindu religious and cultural modes. It might even be of great importance to study how the colonial modes of domination have led to the evolution of modern Hinduism. This might assist us to understand the relations of the colonization with Modern Hinduism. This study is vital and in understands and generates an integral Indic response to a narrow nationalism that is meshed in modern Hinduism. Therefore, with profound humility and deep admiration and respect to the Hindu faith I attempt to work with the conceptual power of the term catachresis and explore how what has been called as ‘Hindutva’ migrates between Hinduism and Nationalism and effectively erases its fundamentalist fangs and legitimates its militant and even violent modus operandi. Catachresis is employed consciously as well as unconsciously by those who are divided and joined by lines of oppression and urge for freedom from colonial trauma in post-colonial India. The call for proper citizenship but use of the improper and misnaming of what is essencialized as authentically Indian demonstrates how catachresis is at work in our society. While the study aims to remain within the conceptual fecundity of catachresis, it also employs the semiotics of the empire of signs following the work of Roland Bathes[2] to widen and deepen our analysis enabled by catachresis.
Understanding Catachresis
Catachresis brings about a shift in meaning. In fact, we say it brings forth an erosion of meaning. This erosion of meaning displaces and replaces one meaning with another while part of the original meaning continues to slip in the new meaning. Catachresis is political and therefore can be liberatively or oppressively used. Here we shall try to understand its exploitation by the power elite to churn out a reductive Hindu Nationalism in our country. While I attempt to demonstrate the above catachresis, I remain vulnerable to someone saying this study is also catachreting from another point of view.
Catachresis and Social Engineering of power equations
The term Catachresis is derived from the Greek katakheresis meaning misuse. Kata carries the strong sense of perversion and khresthai means to use or to need. Thus, catachresis means misuse of a term. It stands for an imposition of a sign on a meaning which has not yet its proper sign in a language. This happens often when we extend the meaning of sign to an idea that in no way has direct links with it. Thus, by means of catechresis, there is a engineering of twisting of the meaning to suit the interest of one’s community by inserting a new meaning that simultaneously places and displaces the original meaning and occupies its locus with a pretentious secondary original. This means the original meaning of a sign is lost and instead a reconstructed sense puts on the mask of originality. Thus, by exposing the employment of catachresis in the nationalist discourse, particularly one that attacks the secular and plural fabric of our country, we might be enabled to discern how its hegemony is steadily constructed and maintained so that we can bring about realignment of power knowledge equations in our society. This can be achieved by the unsettling of the epistemic practices of the powerful elite whose position of domination is constructed and legitimated through a normative knowledge tradition that often enjoys religious sanction. Hence, an attempt has to be made to redraw the boundaries of power by unmasking and unthinking the power strategies that serve the interest of the powerful elite. This means by bringing to light how the operation of catachresis as an epistemic tool that seizes the apparatus of value coding of our society and puts on a nationalist posture that hides its imperialist intent, we can unveil the apparent mask that offers natural ladder to a construction of a triumphant subject who derives his/her patriotism to India by a way of allegiance to a religion. Through this a crass majoritarianism has risen under complex conditions. One of the main reasons for its rise is the mechanism of catachresis which is employed to code values in favour of the power elite in our country. Hence, opening of the mechanism of catachresis can dismantle the normative pretentious self appointed neo-civilizing mission that is forced upon the minorities, women and the tribals in India. With deep admiration of the all embracing ethos of authentic Hinduism, we have to contest the all hating neo face of Hinduism championed by its circus tamed masters to save the plural ethos of our great civilization.
Catachresis and consensus building
Catachresis is the creation of a new meaning through slight deviation from the original meaning.[3] But the fact that the new meanings are often encoded within the legacy of imperialist narrative and are scripted and coded in native frameworks that then go on to put on a nationalist, normative, religious and righteous face make them acceptable to an unsuspecting majority. Hence, the mechanism of catechresis is often used to build consensus, hegemony and a civilizing discourse. As a result the uncritical masses are sucked into a captive thinking and colonization of the minds (which becomes an attack on the agency of the people) is accomplished. Not everyone is bought into the framework of a designer mechanism of catachresis. There are those who interrogate and question the motive of the nuanced content imposed on them. Hence, there is complexity and resistance that inhibits a total capture of the agency of the people yet the fact that it does have its success cannot be denied. We can trace this complexity in the response to nationalism with foundational religious tilt as it clearly shows the place of every citizen of our country. This attempt to fix social boundaries is linked to the mechanism of catachresis that tries to fixate its twisted meanings and represent them as fitting in the original order of things but what really happens is that the original order of things becomes relativized and subdued in the imperial order of things championed by the power elite. Thus, the mechanism of catachresis craftily leads a migration into a social space imagined and assigned by the power elite. This means while some of our brethren are led to embrace a religious nationalism yet are sadly assigned a lower space in the scheme of things in the promise of the imagined nation while others like the minorities, tribals and women seem to have no room in the progressive march of same nation envisaged by the crassly religious nationalist discourse.
Catachresis and othering of the other
Catachresis converts the other as an alter-ego and becomes all that one is not and is narcissistically othered as less than oneself. Although, there is a marked difference among everyone in our society in India, a majoritarian identity is construed on some maze of sameness while the differences of the religious other are highlighted. This intertwining of the self and its other is profoundly political and deeply entrenched in the nationalist discourse with a religious tilt. Hence, marking of the space of the self and the other has evolved as disciplinary practices that always keep the other under its gaze and finds ways how the other does not fit into an imaginary of India. These practices enforce a view that sees the other as de-national or denationalized based on an identification of self with what is thought to be national. Thus, the other is othered and demonized within the discursive field of the self and the other which in turns provides a protective cover for the churning of hate and intolerance in our society. Since meaning exists in an inter-subjectively held chain, the mechanism of catachresis becomes a tool of naming the self and it’s other. But the politics of naming fails to capture the surplus in the self and its other in the name. Hence, the self as well its other remains unnameable yet reductively named by employing the mechanism of catachresis. Hence, the politics of naming leaves something more within the named and unnameable void it retains by the very act of naming the self and its other. The surplus that remains unnamed can become a resource that can enable us to reflexively reflect on the politics of naming the self and its other in our society and discern the fault lines of the crass religious nationalism that is facing us today.
(Dis)locating the Politics in the term Hindu
The term Hindu was a geographical ascription and did not have a religious connotation for a long time.[4] Today it has come embrace a religious meaning. This means it has certainly undergone and evolution and embellishment over period of time. It only means it has also undergone catachresis. Hence, it is both possible and important to trace its complex ancestry. This might open a window on how it has been used through a mechanism of catachresis to mobilize an Identity that inhabits the political, social, legal, religious and national boundaries and unify, homogenize and name a large section of our country.
Ancestry of Hinduism as a Religious Term
Scholars agree that it was in the fourteenth century that one finds the term Hindu being ascribed a religious connotation. It was a catch all term used by Islamic rulers to their subjects other than Muslims in India. We cannot trace any religious overtones to the term Hindu before this in India. The Vedas, the Dharma Shastras and other sacred books do not mention the term Hindu, although Arabs are said to have been calling all the people who live across the river Indus as Hindus. The geographical identity of the term is said to have remained current till fourteenth century. Even in the fourteenth century, it was a term that others the Muslims from the rest and hence as such remains a descriptive term for the diverse religious orientations of the non-Muslims in India. The term Hindu later will still undergo an evolution to reach a self conscious acceptance by majority of Indians. The edicts of the Mauryan emperor Asoka of the third century BC mentions diverse religious sects while indentifying two broad groups bramanashramanam (brahmanas) and the shramanas (Buddhist and Jain monks, Ajivakas and others sects which had renunciatory orders and lay followers).[5] The Greek Megasthenes also refers to the Mauryan India as composed of Brachmanes and the Sarmanes.[6] In later days, we can trace the same two groups and their conflict being mentioned in the grammar of Patanjali.[7] The Chinese visitor, HsoeanTang covering a period of thousand years also refer the above to main religious categories.[8] Al-Biruni’s writings of the eleventh century also cite the two groups Brahmans and the Shamaniyas.[9] This twofold religious division of the Indian people begin to fade after the fourteenth century rulers of India classified the entire range of non-Muslims as Hindu and new binary Hindu/ Muslim was born.[10] British colonizers continued with the broad dual classification of the Indian people as Muslims and Hindus and steadily the religious imbrications of Hinduism reaches full circle. Earlier Portuguese used the term gentoos to refer to complex diverse groups other than Christians, Muslims and the Jews. Yet it is not until the nineteenth century that we can trace the use of the term Hindu as an all embracing signifier standing for a religious entity in both Indian and western academic circles.[11] Thus, the complex migration of the term Hindu does that it too underwent a catachresis under the force of History.
Inscribing Indian National Character into Hinduism
Hindu was already a geographical term and hence it naturally imbricated the land of India. It steadily acquired tones of nationalism by way of largely nationalising of the orientalist position. Romila Thapar succinctly makes this point when she says, “Since it was easy to recognize other communities on the basis of religion, such as Muslims and Christians, an effort was made to consolidate a parallel Hindu community… in Gramci’s terms, the class that wishes to become hegemonic has to nationalize itself and the ‘nationalist’ Hinduism comes from the middle class”.[12] Others assert that it is Brahmanism that became more expansive under the garb of Hindu nationalism. The rise of Hindu nationalism has a complex ancestry and has to be viewed in relation to the political alignments of the Muslim and the mobilization of the Dalits, the communist movement within the power apparatus of British colonization. It was within these inter-locked identities and desire for hegemony that a national Hindu identity was imagined and came into being. Hence, divergent histories and different selves merged into some kind of monolithic form to allow an imagination of a Hindu nation. But this Hindu nationalism was contested by Muslim nationalism and interrogated by the Dalit aspiration for liberation from caste oppression. Dalits leaders like Ambedkar and Periyar always upheld liberation of the Dalits in comparison to mere political freedom from the colonizers. The Hindu nationalism singularized and identified a golden past that it wished to resurrect and reclaim into a future while the Dalits saw the past as an unmitigated enslavement and repression and held that the future could never be left to lapse into the past.[13] Thus, we have anxieties where by the upper caste saw the past as eternal and yet paradoxically felt the fear of its loss in the present and future while the Dalits detested the past as an dark era of oppression and feared its emergence into the future.
Hindutva hybridizing Hinduism
There is an essential ambiguity of the term Hinduism. This ambiguity is exploited by the coinage of the term Hindutva. With the construction of the term Hindutva, V. D Savarkar[14] and his followers took control consciously or unconsciously of the value coding apparatus of Hinduism to a large extent and Hindutva steadily came to claim that it represents the essence of Hinduism. It has to be noted that term Hindutva does not encode Hinduism as a religion yet it does not exclude it and extends it to Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism. Without leaving out the religious aspects it then crafts a Hindu nationality. Depending on the context, the meanings, text and subtext of Hindutva has evolved and continuously hybridized through multiple intersecting hierarchies of domination and subordination. The semantic axis of the term Hindutva dynamically grows in the context of its imagined demonic other. That is Hindutva being a political practice rather than mere set of ideas and concepts, essentially hybridizes to claim and maintain its hegemony. That is why Hindutva may be called as hyphenated Hinduism and may be regarded as a hegemonic strategy of invention of a tradition. It uses an intricate a complex process to identify and construct its other and by doing so legitimates itself. Within this hybridising process one may locate mimicry of the colonizers. Indeed, the followers of Hindutva are mimic men of the colonisers. We may view them as edited versions of the colonial masters and as such are carrying forward their civilizing mission. Thus, in a profound sense Hindutva has seized the value coding apparatus in our society and enforced Hinduness as the only source of the Indian self. Drawing from within the ruptures of colonial times, Hindutva offer a space for making of a neo-Hindu self and legitimates it as authentically national. Hindutva craftily opens up an interruptive time lag in the progressive myth of Hindu self as the only Indian self and pushes its subjects to actualize the myth.
The Empire of signs and Hindutva construction of self
In order to understand how Hindutva Nationalism and the politics flowing from it is perpetuating its values though the seizure of the value coding apparatus of society, we have to understand how signs operate as signification system. The value coding apparatus runs the empire of signs. This brings us to an imminent analysis of the place of production of meaning, which is also the plane of enunciation and symbolization which subjugates and undoes us as a true Indian.
Hindutva and the loss of self
Hindutva was born as a result of a sense of loss of self that was felt under the British colonization. It is indeed a response of recovery of a (dis)located self. The culture that emanates from the Hindutva ideology places the innocent Indian subjects into a sub-culture that brings to them a heightened awareness of possible threats to loss or disappearance of what is deemed as authentic Indian-ness. This felt sense of loss produces a sense of déjà vu (jouissance) bringing in cultivation of a self in lines with the Hindutva ideology. But unfortunately, this new self remain displaced from the authentic self of Indians. Hence, paradoxically the frantic search for a lost self pushes the self to another spiral of loss of self. Hence, in the very act of mimesis which is consciously thought to be authentically Indian, one is somehow lost, displaced and pushed away from the very ethos of our country which is tolerant of diversity and plurality. A person driven to the Hindutva self is certainly an Indian and yet paradoxically through a level of indulgence into the project of cultivation of a self that revolts against the plural ethos of our civilization while at the same time claiming to stand within it is rendered (un)Indian. Although, such a person remains under a delusion, a critical reflection with a focus on an imminent analysis of his/her very being (becoming) an Indian opens us to the paradox of estrangement from India. This stitching of a self under the driving pull of Hindutva may also be seen as de-nationalisation as well as a kind of de-hinduization and has been already questioned by those who strictly separate Hinduism and Hindutva and resist their identification. Hence, the death of an authentic Indian in the rise of self driven by Hindutva nationalism is a hard truth that might astonish several among us. It is death of authentic Indian from the point of view of the plural Indian ethos. The self driven by Hindutva hybridizes some layers of Indian-ness and bring them into a new level of signification with a dash of passion and patriotism.
Hindutva and Subjection of Self
One can feel the narcissistic triumphant self riding on the ideology of Hindutva in India. This Self is founded on a dissemination of Hindutva signs, images, icons, spaces, texts, and practices which are produced, distributed and consumed by unsuspecting Hindus. The Hindutva signification system renders visible and therefore constructs pretentions for it as being based in reality. The visibilization of signification lays bare the ideology of Hindutva. The dissemination of Hindi as a literary langue and rise of Hindi discursive sphere particularly in the North, the saffron flags, red tilaks, trishuls, Icons like Shivaji Maharaj slogans and other practices relay the message of Hindutva ideology. The TV serials like the Ramayana and the Mahabarata led to its the wider reception. The empire of signs of Hindutva speak in multivalent modes and embed unexplored meanings. While there is plenitude of meanings in the Hindutva signs like any other signs there is loss of meaning the moment they are decoded in reductive mode which is idealized, naturalized and uncritically consumed. This process legitimates a self surfing on the empire of signs of Hindutva and constructs its subjectivity and somehow determines the dominant ways of relating to external reality. This means in some way the metamorphosis of the self is related to what Aluthusser calls ‘interpellations’ or turn of attitudes, beliefs and values caused by the political apparatus of state power whereby a citizen is turned into a subject.[15] This is why the self riding on the ideology of Hindutva is a domesticated and subjected self whose human agency is weakened. We certainly cannot assume that the empire of signs of Hindutva works its way in the consciousness of subjects of Hindutva in the same way. That is why we have several shades of hardened fanatics, moderates and fence sitters among them. All ideologies produce a web of resistance to their homogenizing effects and same is true of Hindutva . But the fact that the representational apparatus (value coding apparatus) is constantly churning out signs, images, icons, spaces, texts and practices which summons the self under the subjection of the ideology of Hindutva cannot be dismissed away though everyone may respond to the imperative differently. Hence, the subjection of the self to the empire of signs of Hindutva is diverse and different in degree as well as intensity.
Sources of our self and Hindutva
The self surfing on the empire of signs of Hindutva remains under a false pretention of singular source of self. This forgetting of the plural sources of our self may be a reason behind the politics of hate and intolerance that most of Hindutvadis exhibit in different degrees. The erasure of the other sources of one’s self from ones consciousness and acceptance of Hindtuva ideology as a primary identity and its enforcement on every other is the hub around which the politics of Hindutva is rotating in our society. The occultation of the other sources of the self of a Hindutvavadi is a product of consumption of the signs of the Hindutva Empire. Within this empire of signs a kind of self is territorialized and anchored becomes an object of fetish. This desire for a truncated self that roots itself in an invented tradition that may be viewed as a desire springing from a sense of loss felt under-colonisation and in the presence of minority religions that have international reach. Rooting its self in the imagined one-dimensional source of self, the Hindutvadi embarks on a project of cultivation of self that is at once in conflict with those who root their self in the multiple sources that are embedded in our country. Hence, we can trace a fixation to one-dimensional identity which one is ready to protect even to the point of death. Though we can recognize a rigorous construction and circulation of the empire of the signs of Hindutva, the transformation of India into a Hindu Rastra does not seem to be on the horizon. Thanks to several enlightened and secular Hindus, there is a strong resistance to monolithic Hindu nationalism. This refusal to an immersion into the empire of signs of Hindutva is an assertion of the plurality of the sources of an Indian self. Such contestation of idealisation and mythification of Hindutva though not easy is being courageously pursued by young students in several national universities in our country today.
Opening up the Space of counter Enunciation
Within the inhospitable nationalism that we are attempting study, we can open up a space of counter enunciation. It is a space that will find a home to what has been exorcised, expelled, excluded, excised and evicted. It is space that ruptures the flow of triumphant progressive march of the neo-Hindu self intoxicated on the opium of Hindutva. This can perhaps became a space of dissensus where dissent and the dissident can be at home. It is at this point that the dissident self of an Indian can emerge busting the burble of the Hindutva driven self.
Naming the Schizo in Hindutva
Roland Barthes’ book, Mythologies[16] that deconstructed the contemporary myths of his society can be a great help to a project of demystification of the Hindutva. Besides, Charles Taylor’s sources of self [17] can dismantle the myth of a uniform, singular source of the self of an Indian. But our study of catechresis of the term Hinduism and Hindutva, as well our attention to the seizure of the value coding apparatus that spins an empire of signs of Hindutva, has the power to delegitimize the mono-culturing of the self of the Hindutvavadi. It is certainly an antidote to our being-in-India that is being systematically brought under the gravitational power of Hindutva. Although our society is haunted by its hierarchical unevenness, it is plunged into a corrosive Hindu singularity that blinds itself to all diversity and it co-existence. Hence, resisting and provincializing Hindutva sites of divisive production and distribution of values and meanings is urgent than ever before. Hence, the challenge among other things may involve a disentanglement of Hindtuva from Hinduism and Hinduism from nationalism. This means Hindutva-centrism of nationalism has to wane away. Hindutva being an invented tradition is not there to stay. It is for us to expose how it has become the new opium of the masses in our country. Indeed, it is the heart of the heartless and sigh of the poor. It is here that we can catch it by its horns and expose how it increases impoverishment and poverty of the masses. The fact that economics of Hindutva excludes even its own adherents has potencies of the revolts from it weaker section. This revolt has begun particularly in our universities among the students today where seizure of an alternate space of value construction and circulation can hasten the demystification of Hintudva. These and other movements celebrate many-ways-of-being Indians. These movements have the power to deflate the TINA doctrine of Hindutva and produce legitimacy to alternate ways-of-being-Indians will gain.
Naming the Schizo in Hindutva
Hindutva schizolisizes and draws boundaries that separate and divide Indians. It schizophrenic[18] mode of coding of values in the Socio-cognitive-political sphere of our country divides and subdues. It draws lines of segmentation and alienation of people in their own country. It means Hindutvadins unfortunately evolves as a Schizo cut off from the plural ethos of our civilization and works to bring a split in our people from an imagined singularised and monocultured nationalism. One may understand the shift from Foucaultian disciplinary regimes to controlled societies in the rise and growth of Hindutva. It is not that disciplinary practices have diminished but they reached a new level of intensification so that disciplinary power remains immanent to the Hindutva subject. The Hindutvavadin construct India as a body without organs and inscribes it with one-dimensional totalized Hindu cartography that brings about multiple split between the Hindus and the rest of Indians. There is reciprocal relation between the production India as a body without organs and desire of the Hindutvavadins. The integral Body becomes an organism with the fuller functioning of all its vital organs of which none is replaceable. But a body without an organ is a product that is instituted by desire that is subjected to some fixed socially authorized behaviour. In the case of Hindutva, the dream of Hindu nation is a body without organs which is produced by desire of the Hindu fundamentalist led by a narcissistic self fed on the egoistic ideology of Hindutva . Thus, we can notice a desire towards pre-determined becoming is leading the self creation of the Hindutvavadins. That is why we may say that it is the Schizo in the Hindtuvavadins that appears to schizolize or divide our country.
Bringing Rhizomatic India Forward
Indians are rhizomatic communities where diversity and otherness flower in the same territory. The diversity and plurality in our country do not exist in isolation but it co-blossoms. India is a rhizome with vibrant networks among its diverse people that keep it together. The metaphor of a rhizome is drawn from biology by Deleuze and Gauttari, in their famous book, a Thousand Plateaus.[19] It is a root that spreads horizontally in a non-hierarchical manner giving diverse sprouting points all the way. Though, we have tried to trace its analogy with the people and their diversity in our country, yet the evil of caste hierarchy that is embedded in the depths of way-of-being-Indians may weaken it. But the fact that it allows diverse lines of flight, the metaphor of a rhizome can also illumine the diverse lines of flight that Indians ride to resist caste hegemony. That is why rhizome is an apt metaphor that characterizes the complexity of our cultures in our society. Thus, on one hand this metaphor can catch the real India while on the other hand it can expose how Hindutva ideology along with its value coding empire of sign is destroying the real India. It can assist us to map how real India is getting de-territorialized as Hindutva-driven nationalism is getting territorialized. While we are led to understand how terms like India, Hindu, Nationalism are losing their original content and are acquiring new meanings through process that we described as catachresis, it empowers us to ride a wave of resistance and arrest the social engineering that is out to invent a intolerant India.
Conclusion
Our study has attempted to bring to light how a monolinearized Hindutva masquerades as nationalism in our country. We have also tried to expose how it reverses, displaces, plural Hinduism and enforces a homogenised Hinduism which attacks the plural ethos of our country. Hence, seizing the apparatus of value coding, we have to try to reverse and displace the fanatic ideology of Hindutva. This would evolve the (dis)locating of the empire of the signs of Hindutva and the revival of the rhizomatic ways of being Indian. Gandhian Philosophy being fundamentally non-violent is open to plurality. It has been openly anti-hindutva. Although, some among us might think Gandian Philosophy is trapped in its linear categories and does not adequately consider reversing, displacing processes of non-linearity which are complexly at work in a constantly metamorphosing Hindutva, it still has its importance and has the seeds that can reverse and displace a Hindu singularity that is being pursued by the fundamentalist in our country. That is why this paper has an implicit Gandhian starting point but quickly takes up a critique of logo-centrism and logic of the same that is embedded in Hindutva and thinks through follows and inter-connections to deconstruct complex and non-linear condition of Hindutva today.
[1] See Gayatri Spivak, ‘Poststructuralism, Marginality, Postcoloniality and Value’ in Peter Collier and Helga Geyer-Ryan, Ed., Literary Theory Today ( London: Polity Press, 1990), p. 228.
[2] See Roland Barthes, The Empire of Signs, Trans. Richard Howard (New York: the Noonday Press, 1982.
[3] G.C. Spivak, ‘Translation as Culture’ in Parallax 6:1 (2000), 13–24
[4] The Persians used the term ‘Hindoo’ to refer to the people living across river sindu /Indus. Al-hind denoted people of a particular geographical area for the Arabs.
[5] See Romila Thapar, Cultural Pasts : Essays in Early Indian History ( New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 1029.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid., p. 1046.
[11] See Vasuda Dalmia, The Nationalization of the Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu Harischandra and the Nineteenth- Century Banaras (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010).
[12] Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Post colonial theory, India and ‘the Mystic East’ (London: Rutledge, 1999), p. 108.
[13] Aditya Nigam, the Crises of Secular-Nationalism in India ( New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 183.
[14] http://www.savarkar.org/content/pdfs/en/essentials_of_hindutva.v001.pdf accessed on 25th June 2016.
[15] Peter Pericles Trifonas, Barthes and the Empire of Signs (Cambridge: Icons Books, 2001), p. 31.
[16] Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans., Annete Lavers ( New York: the Noonday Press, 1991).
[17] Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: the making of Modern Identity ( Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989).
[18] See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Gauttari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
[19] See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Gauttari, Trans. Brain Massumi, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).
