Description
Over the past decade, a discourse of civilisation that emphasises the cultural and traditional elements of Hinduism in a Hindu nationalist way has been circulating in Indian politics under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party – BJP). Accordingly scholars have intensified their efforts to understand the various political, diplomatic and economic aspects and implications of Indian civilisationalism (see: Haug and Roychoudhury, 2023; Mawdsley, 2023; Nartok, 2023, Chacko and Thakur, 2025). This paper furthers the discussion by focusing on the impact of Indian civilizationalism on urban space which has been marked by grand mega-projects evoking India’s civilizaitonal legacy. Accordingly, this paper poses the research question: How does the idea of revoking Hindu civilization manifest itself in New India’s urban design? The aim of this paper is to provide both a conceptual and empirical intervention into discussions about the manifestations of India’s civilizational legacy by conducting qualitative research based on extensive content analysis of three distinct but exemplary sites in India – an ancient site (Lothal) in Ahmedabad, a temple (Ram Mandir) in Ayodha and a memorial (Shiv Smarak) in Mumbai. The paper integrates perspectives from urban studies, geography and cultural studies. By combining and utilising concepts of “nationalist urbanisms” (Kusno, 2004), “financialised urbanity” (Lukas and Duran, 2019) and “geopoetics” (Nassar, 2023), the paper reveals how civilisational ideas intersect with material structures rooted in colonial and capitalist regimes of capital accumulation and how they are specifically utilised to advance BJP’s civilizational agenda in urban space at the intersection of public, private and cultural sectors.
