The lens of biopolitics of Michel Foucault can assist us to understand Hindutva. It is called Bionationalism by Banu Subramaniam in his book, Holy Science , the Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism. Recent venomous rant of ex-RSS chief of Goa , Mr. Subash Velinkar on St. Francis Xavier seems to turn colonial legacies into postcolonial biologies.
Bionationalism as a term was first used by South Korean Gottweis and Kim ( 2009) in the context of the Second World War. They manifest that bionationalism coverts the traditional ethnic nationalism based primarily into blood and group affiliations into a biopolitical construct grounded in the biological and the scientific domains.
Subramaniam borrows the term to describe Hindu nationalism in India. He says that Hindu nationalist ideas are scientized through biopolitical claims about gender, caste and sexuality. Being a biopolitics, the body and way body works becomes central to Hindu nationalism. This is why perhaps what we eat, how we dress, whom we marry etc., have become the main stay of Hindutva politics. Besides, this nationalism infuses masculinist and militarist aggression into its cadres. RSS is famous for its body regime of exercises in its Shakhas. Recent promotion of yoga may be also seen within these bodily regimes.
Women also have to remain chaste and pure to count as nationalist. Hyper fertility of the minority women, especially the Muslim women becomes an issue that triggers passions raising Hindu nationalist demographic anxieties. Therefore, it may be not an exaggeration to say that biopolitics seems to be the spirit of Hindutva politics. As such , it is an important issue that imbricates science and religion in our country.
Operating with the biological sciences , Hindutva has become an immunological thinking that seems to claim that the non-Hindus are not good for the immunity of our country. Body is everywhere where Hindutva is. Hindutva is a biopower. There is fear that it will steadily degenerate into necropower.
Biopower administrates life. It administrates bodily life and builds it socio-political significance. Necropower is power over death. It administrates death. It decides whose life is disposable and who can live. Biopower can slide into necropower. Given the violence and aggression associated with Hindutva, it appears that it is in very real danger of sliding to necropower. Necropower becomes a power to make live and let die .
Foucault teaches us that biopower is not enforced top-down through a sovereign. In our country it is cannot be directly enforced by our constitution. This is why may be our Government silently presides over it production through our discourses ( like one that afflicts Goa these days) , knowledge and regimes of truth.
Biopower becomes governmentality when it controls the large populations. Hindutva has indeed become a governmentality. It regulates without using visible power over every Indian. It is diffused into our society with the rise of the right-wing BJP in our country. Earlier, perhaps India used birth control that was imposed and enforced by the sovereign. We might remember the forced sterilization of Mrs. Indira Gandhi era. It was sovereign power in full blossom.
What we have today is more biopower although the sovereign power has not ceased to operate. It operates mainly through arms of the state like ED and CBI that sends shivers down the spines of several politicians and businesses. Bio-power in our country is uneven. It is enforced by a community that seems to feel its time has come with the end of colonialism. This kind of Kairos driven thoughts believes that history does not happen in time , it is to be made in time. This is why Hindutva waits for its opportune time to produce discourse of biopower in our society.
Biopower in India also sinks with the purity/ pollution regime of caste system. Caste is a biopower. Today the anxieties of the growing demographic imbalance might easily lead to riots and attempts at the extermination of the minorities. We seem to voluntarily summit to biopower. In India it has a science religion context to it. It uses great religious tradition that we know as Hinduism and the mainly the Science of Biology to produce itself. We have a great challenge to understand its workings and find new ways of mediating Science and Religion that are emancipative and do not produce disabling and oppressive biopower and biopolitcs. Authentic Science Religion Dialogue can become a true antidote to the reigning crippling bionationalism that is plaguing our country.
