Abstract
Meera Nanda, Postcolonial Theory and the Making of Hindu Nationalism: The Wages of Unreason, 2025, xi + 246 pp., Routledge. ISBN: 9781032848501
Postcolonial and decolonial critics have trenchantly contested the universalisation of ideas and concepts associated with modernity and Enlightenment, including rationality, secularism, individualism, liberal democracy, objective science and the nation-state. They argue that the universalisation of these ideas disregards their origins in the intellectual and socio-political milieu of the European/Christian context. At the same time, such universalisation also discounts the ‘epistemic violence’ of colonialism through which they gained traction in other parts of the world. However, the recent surge of conservative populist regimes worldwide, particularly in the Global South, has given a fillip to the critical scrutiny of decolonial and postcolonial arguments against the ideals of the Enlightenment’s modernity. Nanda’s book contributes to this critical scrutiny of the arguments and the impact of post-colonial and decolonial theories in India by arguing that they have assisted Hindu nationalists in India to embellish their populist claims and gain a veneer of emancipation and academic respectability. She points out that some of the celebrated contributions of decolonialism and the postcolonial left now find themselves in the arsenal of civilisational exceptionalism, leaving many of modernity’s emancipatory forays against the ills of India’s gendered and caste-ridden social order without breath or bite.
Nanda, in this book, declares in very stark terms that the post-colonial left and the Hindutva right have been ‘strange bedfellows’ (p. 1) and examines the inadvertent, although not inculpable, role of the former in an intellectual scaffolding to the latter. The author also contends that the post-colonial left’s critique of modernity has always had a distinctive, obvious but unexamined Hindu sensibility. Her self-description as ‘an old-fashioned Enlightenment secular humanist who proudly locates herself on the side of universal norms of reason and human flourishing’ (p. 7) is indicative of the polemical nature of her engagement with post-colonialism and decolonialism. This book is, in many ways, a close companion to Nanda’s previous work, A Field Guide to Post-truth India, and, more broadly, a continuation of her life’s work as a historian of science, arguing consistently against relativising science and undermining its authority as a mere colonial vestige.
The book is organised into four core chapters, with two each devoted to the postcolonial left (context and content) and the Hindutva right (pioneers and contemporaries)—accompanied by an introduction and an epilogue. In her introduction, Nanda highlights the convergence between the post-colonial left and the Hindutva right in their efforts to delegitimise secular modernity and refers to both as conservative revolutions that resemble the conservative revolution in inter-war Germany. She traces the neo-Hindu revivalism to ‘toxic, resentful Occidentalism’ and ‘Hindu superiority’ that were part of Indian nationalism from earlier days (p. 7).
In the first chapter, Nanda draws compelling parallels between the heightened cultural despair that characterised the conservative resurgence in the inter-war Weimar Republic and the romanticist and neo-Gandhian transformations of the 1970s in India, as backlashes against modernity. She observes that the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in New Delhi was the ‘ground zero’ of India’s Weimar moment, with the works of Ashis Nandy and others leading to the entrenchment of the postcolonial left in India (pp. 50–2).
In Chapter 2, Nanda unpacks the conceptual vocabulary and arguments of the postcolonial left and assesses the impact they have had on academia and beyond. Since any discussion of these arguments would far exceed the scope of a single book chapter, Nanda focuses on five important themes of post-colonialism: modernity described as the colonialism of the mind, science viewed as epistemic violence, secularism considered anti-Indian, a turn to myth and gods, and the concept of hybridity. This thematic focus helps her manage the discussion effectively as she engages with a host of thinkers and their contributions to post-colonialism in this chapter. This chapter remains central to Nanda’s main arguments in the book.
The third and fourth chapters are about the pioneers and the contemporaries of ‘palingenetic modernism’ (p. 146), which consists in pursuing the ‘rebirth’ of the ancient Hindu nation by seeking alternative modernity purged of elements that challenge traditional values. She identifies Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo as the progenitors of this palingenetic vision. This chapter’s compendious engagement with contemporary intellectuals of the Hindu right breaks the misconception that the right-wing intelligentsia is non-existent or sparse. This engagement with a host of right-wing scholars who stand on the shoulders of decoloniality is a significant overture towards engaging with the newer, much more nuanced articulations of the Hindu right in India. Nanda points out how the palingenetic modernism of the Hindu right, unlike decolonialists and the post-colonial left, extends the rubric of colonialism to the Islamic regimes and their cultural influences, along with European colonialism.
Nanda concludes the book by urging the left to maintain its universalist aspirations and focus on shared humanity. Although her engagement in the epilogue with Chomsky’s idea of a universal faculty for science (pp. 234–7) and Nussbaum’s universalist capabilities approach (pp. 239–41) is too terse to revive a compelling universalist vision, her intent is unmistakable. Underpinning Nanda’s arguments is her rejection of the view that ideas are valid only within their own historical contexts and conceptual constellations in which they emerged. For her, ideas travel, transfigure and transmigrate. Hence, the European/Christian provenance of Enlightenment ideals does not invalidate their universal aspirations.
Nanda is far from oblivious to the force of post-colonial/decolonial critique of modernity. But the book is consciously polemical, and at times its vehemence overshadows more measured recognition of the insights offered by postcolonial critique. The strengths of the book lie in its interrogation of the political life of post-colonial and decolonial arguments and its detailed engagement with the growing Hindu right intelligentsia—an area often underexplored in scholarship. Contrary to Nanda’s claims, however, most post-colonial left scholars perceive themselves as critics of the Hindu right and often claim that the surge of ethnic nationalism is in fact a consequence of modernity itself. However, we may observe here that Hindu nationalism has been more eclectic than either the post-colonial left or advocates of modernity like Nanda allow for. For those who deem the post-colonial left’s academic contribution invaluable in bringing attention to the details of context and tradition, of the web of meaning, Nanda’s book could be read as an important corrective to their lack of emancipatory edge. Such exchanges may contribute towards reconciling critical distance and contextual relevance. Whether one agrees with Nanda’s Enlightenment humanism or not, her insistence on confronting the political life of theory is an urgent reminder of the stakes in contemporary debates.