The Greater India Experiment: Hindutva and the Northeast

South Asia in Motion

by Arkotong Longkumer

The assertion that even institutions often viewed as abhorrent should be dispassionately understood motivates Arkotong Longkumer's pathbreaking ethnography of the Sangh Parivar, a family of organizations comprising the Hindu right. The Greater India Experiment counters the urge to explain away their ideas and actions as inconsequential by demonstrating their efforts to influence local politics and culture in Northeast India.

Longkumer constructs a comprehensive understanding of Hindutva, an idea central to the establishment of a Hindu nation-state, by focusing on the Sangh Parivar's engagement with indigenous peoples in a region that has long resisted the "idea of India." Contextualizing their activities as a Hindutva "experiment" within the broader Indian political and cultural landscape, he ultimately paints a unique picture of the country today.

Genres: India, Nonfiction

336 pages, Hardcover

Published December 1, 2020

Reviews

[Adarsh Badri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arkotong Longkumer’s, The Greater India Experiment: Hindutva and the Northeast, which was published in 2020, is an essential ethnographic account of the rise of Hindutva in Northeast India.

This book explores the nuances of Hindutva knowledge production and its tools for socio-cultural assimilation in the Northeast. Longkumer’s study seeks to contribute to broader research on Hindu nationalism and its growing influence in the Northeast.

The book is a brilliant ethnographic account of how Hindutva has penetrated the seemingly Christian-dominated Northeastern parts of India. It is packed with details and accounts of the ordinary lives of the Sangh workers and their understanding of what it means to do Seva. It also allows the reader to get an in-depth exposition of what the Hindutva project seeks to achieve: a Greater India (Akhand Bharat) project. It dwells on various anthropological works from Michel Foucault to James Scott to discuss how Hindu nationalists seek to build on the Hindutva project through an arboreal connection between indigenous people in the Northeast and the most prominent Hindu community in mainstream India.

I highly recommend this book to everyone interested in reading about Hindutva. It provides a succinct account of how Hindtuva explores space--and the cultural tools of appropriation it seeks to promote.

[Deva Nandan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful ethnography into Hindutva politics in all its geographic, symbolic, and semiotic extremes. And for someone not well-versed in the region like me, a great primer to the North East in all its ethnocultural diversity and historical complexity.