Ideologie, Organisation und politische Praxis des Hindunationalismus: Lehre, Rituale und Wirkung des RSS und der BJP

Abstract

Since 1925 a militant „National Volunteer Force“, the RSS, and since 1951 an „Indian People’s Party“, the „Bharatiya Jana Sang“, have tried to „reawaken“, in reality to construct the „living God“ of the Hindu nation - as an imagined community, as a visible collective and as the party of the Indian majority. Till 1986 these efforts were largely futile. It is only since the 9th parliamentary elections in 1989 that we observe the emergence of a threatening Hindu nationalist movement.
This movement arose as an initially only marginally effective agitation for the construction of a Rama temple in Ayodhya and it is greatly helped by the decline of India’s democratic institutions and the vacillations of the Congress government. The long expected and never attained Hindu nation thus suddenly manifests itself as the nation of Rama. As an imagined community this nation of Rama identifies with the ideals and the vision of „Ram Rajya“ and as a visible collective it operates on the basis of the symbols and the routines of the Ayodhya temple agitation. But as a self- assertive autonomous political force, it still seems to lack cohesion, endurance and an indisputed leadership.