Description
Extant literature on the phenomenon of Hindu nationalism has for a long time pointed to how the Hindu majoritarian political project is fundamentally transnational. The current literature has in particular noted the transnational ties between diaspora Hindu welfare organisations and political organisations in the West, and Hindu nationalist political formations in India. These ties take the form of a diffusionist logic, where connections are imagined between a centre: India, and its peripheries: Western diasporic communities.
However, with the phenomena of a distinctly authoritarian Hindu politics coming to the fore in Western party politics and public debate, it’s become clear that Hindu nationalism increasingly constitutes its own force in the West. This is the case even if the networks linking academia, caste associations and more formal Hindutva diaspora politics inside the West itself remains under-researched. This paper builds on existing academic and journalistic work on the transnational networks of Hindutva to start to map its interlinkages within Europe. Here, it is especially focused on the ties between British caste associations, Conservative Party political networks, and its ties to academics in Belgium, specifically the so-called Ghent School at the University of Ghent.
This paper asks: what characterises intra-European networks of Hindu nationalist ideology and organisation? What are the modes through which they communicate and exchange knowledge and skills? What kind of unique sets of political vocabulary and grammars are produced through these networks?
