Making India Hindu: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India

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The rise of Hindu nationalism in India has been an integral feature of political developments and cultural change over the last few decades. Accomplished by electoral means as well as by aggressive politics and vast media influence, the ascendancy of Hindutva has been the focus of serious attention in academic debates.

Written in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition, Making India Hindu brings together the work of eminent scholars to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on communalism in India.

With an in-depth Introduction and a new Preface, these essays show how Hindutva's spreading and deepening influence has drawn sustenance from cultural trends that permeate modern Indian history and from multifarious media that propagate Hindutva.

While the first edition helped explain the rise of Hindutva across the world in the 1980s, the second edition, updated to the 2004 elections, highlights the direct and indirect operations of Hindutva within India's political mainstream.

An incisive analysis of current events by Ludden and a thoroughly revised bibliography make the second edition of this classic a significant read for historians, political scientists, and students and scholars interested in the role of politics, religion, and nationalism in South Asia.

About the Author:

David Ludden is Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Excerpts from Reviews:

'The most encouraging feature of this book is the willingness of so many established scholars to confront the inescapable mystery of the phenomenon of communalism. ...The richness of the resultant fare is, for once, commensurate with the legitimately baffling complexity of the phenomenon.'

- Alok Rai, The Book Review

'....seeks to provide a window on the world of conflict that developed inside nationalism around the globe in the 1980s...'

- Harsh Sethi, The Hindu

'....it presents an array of different opinions and enables the problem to be seen from different perspectives and through different intellectual lenses.'

- H Y Sharada Prasad, Biblio

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