Abstract by Meera Nanda 

Hindu triumphalism and India's emergence as a global power

Hindu spirituality has been a part of India's soft power from the very beginning. Nationalist leaders from the secular-humanist Jawaharlal Nehru to the Hindu nationalist Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo simply assumed without any hesitation that India was a great civilization whose historical destiny was to offer its tolerant and pacific spiritual traditions to the rest of the world. Immediately after the Independence and through the Cold War, India deployed its soft power as the self-appointed World Guru for largely pacific, anti-colonial and internationalist goals.

With the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the"hot war" against terrorism in the new millennium, there has been a complete turnaround in India's position: Far from remaining non-aligned, India is now firmly aligned with the United States and Israel against "Islamic terrorism," and far from supporting nuclear disarmament, India is fueling a nuclear arms race in South Asia.

This paper will look at how the earlier discourse of a pacific Hindu spiritualism is undergoing a transformation into Hindu triumphalism which ties India's emergence as a "Superpower" to Hindu revivalism. Hindu spirituality continues to be an important element of India's self-presentation to the rest of the world. But this spirituality is now firmly serves as a weapon in the global "Clash of Civilizations" which pits the supposedly intolerant, violent and "unspiritual" monotheistic religions (both Islam and Christianity) against the supposedly tolerant, non-violent and spiritual monism of Hinduism.

This talk will focus on the Hindu Right's formulation of Hinduism's supremacy in the supposed clash of civilizations. It will look at how this Hindu triumphalism has become part of the common sense of the mainstream of Indian thinking today, both domestically and in international affairs. The dangers this triumphalism poses for non-Hindu minorities at home will also be looked at. The evidence for growing Islamophobia in the country will be examined.