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Radha Rajan
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Historically, the sense of nation and nationhood among Hindus has been cultural and civilisational.
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Politics, a means to protect and preserve dharma, was subordinate to dharma.
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Historically, until Hindus faced successive Islamic and Christian conquests, they had no sense of civilisational, adversarial political-cultural purposes. However, confronted with the hostility of Islam and Christianity, a heightened Hindu nationalism manifested itself over the last 1200 years as organized resistance and as individual acts of extreme courage to protect Hindus and the Hindu way of life.
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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi [1] and later Jawaharlal Nehru successfully stifled the march of Hindu nationalism. Nehru viewed a politically vibrant Hindu nationalism as a threat to his preeminence and invoked the might of state patronage to promote an academic discourse and an ‘authorized’ history that relegated Hindu civilization to the margins of national consciousness [2]
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Writers of modified history [3] perpetuated the colonial fiction that India was always pluralist, never Hindu, the implication being that Hindus cannot claim this land as their special janmabhumi, and cannot legitimately undertake steps to protect their territory, their way of life, or their cultural sensibilities.
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So intolerant was Indian political discourse to Hindu nationalism that even eminent Hindu political leaders took to mouthing inanities, like ‘Hindu nationalism is only cultural nationalism.’ That this misconceived articulation amounted to a denial of territorial content and political intent in Hindu nationalism was either overlooked or ignored or simply not understood at all.
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the book critically examines the freedom movement between the years 1890-1947, particularly the events that launched Gandhi to the commanding heights of the movement. Gandhi did not rise naturally to demonstrated leadership potential; rather, this exalted position was reserved for him and he simply walked to the pinnacle immediately after his return to India from South Africa.
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This book seeks to correct the anti-Hindu political discourse which owes its existence to Gandhi and Nehru; this book signals the beginning of the collective effort of political-minded Hindus to set down the coffins of Gandhi and Nehru from the unwilling shoulders of the Hindu nation.
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[Excerpted from
Eclipse of the Hindu Nation: Gandhi and HIS Freedom Struggle
Radha Rajan
New Age Publishers Pvt Ltd, Delhi, 2009
Price: Rs 495/-
To order, call Rima Kar Ghosh at 011- 26493326/27/28 or e-mail Rima at ncbadel@ncbapvtltd.com
