Making ‘Ethical Hindus’: Sanskrit Traditions, Oral Performance, and Hindu Nationalism in Contemporary India
This article considers the intersections between Hindu nationalist Sanskrit traditions and notions of ethical Hindu selfhood. Its main material is drawn from ethnographic research in Hindu-nationalist-affiliated schools in the central Indian state of Jharkhand. In examining the interweaving of mantr...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2017
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| In: |
Religions of South Asia
Year: 2017, Volume: 11, Issue: 1, Pages: 53-71 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Jharkhand
/ Hinduism
/ Nationalism
/ Denominational school
/ Sanskrit language
/ Religious literature
/ Value ethics
|
| IxTheo Classification: | BK Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism NCB Personal ethics NCC Social ethics |
| Further subjects: | B
Mantras
B Ethics B Hindu Nationalism B Sanskrit language B sevā B Schools |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article considers the intersections between Hindu nationalist Sanskrit traditions and notions of ethical Hindu selfhood. Its main material is drawn from ethnographic research in Hindu-nationalist-affiliated schools in the central Indian state of Jharkhand. In examining the interweaving of mantras and stotras into school life, this article shows how the daily enactment of Hindu nationalist Sanskrit traditions constructs a register from which can be drawn a disciplinary experience of Hinduism, together with an ordered Hindu society: Hindu sangathan. In further analysing the emergence of Hindu identities in Sanskrit traditions at the margins of Hinduism, my research demonstrates the development of Hindu representation outside of juridical languages of rights. Instead, I illustrate its formation as a detailed task of ethical reform. In pointing toward the efficacy of oral Sanskrit traditions in constituting ethical identities, this article contributes to scholarship which foregrounds models of action which cut across liberal secular conceptual categories of public/private, and reason/emotion. |
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| ISSN: | 1751-2697 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religions of South Asia
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1558/rosa.28984 |