Upcoming Panel Disussion: Hindutva at the Cross Roads (New Delhi, 14 December 2011)

The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library
cordially invites you to a Panel Discussion

at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 14 December 2011

in the Seminar Room, First Floor, Library Building

on ‘Hindutva at the Cross Roads’

by

Dr. Pralay Kanungo, JNU and Dr. Christophe Jaffrelot, CNRS

Abstract:

Since the defeat of the NDA in the 2004 elections, Hindutva has been passing through a period of crisis. Its core ideology has been under pressure from inside as well as outside, its attempt to control an unwieldy BJP has not been productive, its record of governance in various states has exposed the myth of its commitment to Su raj (good governance), and it has been struggling hard to work out a new political strategy in the changing political context, thereby finding itself at the crossroads. However, as a seasoned campaigner, Hindutva has adopted various strategies to overcome the crisis: while on the one hand it attempts to manoeuvre democratic and constitutional institutions and spaces, on the other hand, it simultaneously undertakes exclusive Hindutva-focussed mobilisational programmes, and more importantly, escalates the scales of violence and terror in a systematic way. While Dr. Pralay Kanungo will explain the overall context of Hindutva’s multifarious strategies, Dr. Christophe Jaffrelot will focus specifically on the relationship between Hindutva and violence with special references to the Bajrang Dal, Gujarat and terrorism.

Speakers:

Dr. Pralay Kanungo teaches at Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He taught at Ramjas College and was Fellow at the NMML. He is the author of RSS’s Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan, and co-edited Hindutva’s Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva: Local mediations and forms of convergence, 2011.

Dr. Christophe Jaffrelot has been Director of CERI (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales) at Sciences Po (Paris) between 2000 and 2008. He is Research director at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and teaches South Asian politics and history at Sciences Po. His most significant publications are The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s, 1996 and 1999, India’s Silent Revolution. The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India, 2003 and Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and fighting caste, 2005. He has also edited India since 1950, 2011 and with L. Gayer, Militias of South Asia, 2010.