International Center for Cultural Studies

Creating a Nationality: The Ramjanmabhumi Movement and Fear of the Self

2021-04-30

The destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in December 1992 was a watershed in the politics of independent India. It was also an apocalyptic turning point for community life at Ayodhya, and for the highly interdependent cultural lives of Hindus and Muslims living there. This book narrates how Ayodhya's inhabitants experienced the events that led up to and followed the destruction of the mosque. Woven into the narrative is an analysis of the culture of communal conflict, the nature of organized mass violence, and the political psychology of Hindu nationalism. The authors argue that the chain of events which they describe is the end-product of a century's effort to convert Hindus into a 'proper' modern nation and a conventional ethnic majority.
Simultaneously, the effort is equally to turn the followers of other Indian faiths into well-behaved ethnic minorities and nationalities. The American model of a 'melting pot' is being imposed with the expectation that it will dissolve India's primordial identities. A society which has for centuries been a salad bowl of diverse communities, each identifiably different but constituting parts of a whole, is being forced to conform to the pattern of a 'proper' nation-state. In recounting the story of Ayodhya from this perspective, the authors are primarily concerned with the everyday reality of Indian civilization and the fate of its moral vision. They voice the concern of a huge majority of Indians to whom the events at Ayodhya look like an attack on Hinduism itself. They suggest that the underlying battle-lines within Indian civilization are less between religions and ethnic communities than between an ancient order and the hegemonic vision ofan imperial modern West and its indigenous collaborators.

Contents

Editorial: Tarrying with Memories and Feelings

Acknowledgement

Disquisition: Literary Debate and Memory Politics

Article

(p09) Polemic, Reality and Chinese Malayan Revolutionary Literature: Jin Zhimang and His Practice of “Here and Now”..............................................Show Ying Xin

(p47) Intervention and the Impact of the Cold War in Malay and Chinese Malaysian Literature（1950-1969）...............................................................Chong Fah Hing

(p73) The Circuitous Relationship: Shenzhou Poetry Society and the Home Soil Literary Debate in Taiwan..............................................................Ngoi Guat Peng

(p103) Wang Tuo’s “Xiangtu” Genealogy: Literary Debates, Activism, and Iowa....................................................................................................Yi-Hung LIU

Academic Paper

Research Article

(p131) Speculation Beyond Technological Mediation Theory: A Case Study on Morse Things as a Thing-Centered Design...............Wan-Chen LEE, Rung-Huei LIANG

(p169) From Tourist to Marriage Migrant: Intimacy and Lifestyle Imagination in Taiwan-Hong Kong Cross-border Marriages..............Tsung-Yi Michelle HUANG, Chun-Kai WOO

(p211) Configuring Sustainable Lifestyle in Alternative Food Networks from the Perspective of Practice Theory........................................................I-Liang WAHN

(p255) The Heritagization of Washoku and Its Discontents: Beyond Constructionism and Traditionalism.......................................................................Cheng-Heng CHANG

Forum: The Emotional History of Youth Poverty in East Asia

(p300) Shrinking Futures and Divergent Issues of Korean Youths...............................................Yunejong JOO, translated by Yauchong TAN

(p308) Development and Transformation of “Youth” Discourses in Post-war Taiwan........................................................................Zackary Zong-Kun CHANG

(p342) Representation of Youth Poverty since 2008: What is Revealed and What is Veiled?......................................................................................Chung-Chen CHEN

(p362) There is No Future: The Understanding of Emotion in “The Generation of Weariness” in Taiwan.............................................................Keng-Liang CHENG

Book Review Forum: Revolution/Post-revolution: Reflection on the History, Thoughts and Culture of China's Rise by HE Zhaotian

(p384) Revisiting the Mass Line and Socialist Experience: Thinking for the Cross-Strait Relations....................................................................................Chih-Ming WANG

(p394) Looking for the Masses?.....................................................................Shu-Fen LIN

Commentary

(p403) A Fascism for Our Time...........Harry Harootunian, translated by Chunyen CHEN

(p426) Pháinn-Mih-A: the Narrative of “Thing” and “Necro-geography” On earth...............................................................................................Ting-Yu LIANG