The Performative Politics of Ethnocultural Nationalism in India Thespian and Quotidian Performances of Hindu Nationalism

Abstract

The dissertation explores alternative configurations of Ethnocultural nationalism in newlineIndia that complicate the discourse of India as a multiethnic nation and Indianness with an newlineinfusion of majoritarian Hindutva based imagination of India as a Hindu nation. The newlineoriginal contribution of the dissertation is the examination of performative processes that newlineconstitute self, belonging, identity and citizenship in Hindu nationalism. I further the idea newlineof nation as a performatively constituted community, forged through embodied acts. All newlineidentities, whether secular or communal, have to be continually re-cited, reiterated and newlineembedded within the dominant discourse of the nation. A citizen, through this daily newlineplebiscite not only reaffirms and legitimizes the territory and the state, but also asserts their newlineown constituent role in it, thereby, seeking a quid pro quo legitimization. newlineI explore the quotidian embodied and spectatorial acts through which the newlineorganizations of the Hindu Right construct the Hindu nation employing play, assemblies, newlineparades, symbols, songs and invented traditions. Through literary and dramaturgical newlineanalysis, I examine the experiences of this ethnocentrism and their condensation on stage. newlineThe three plays, stretching over three decades and three events crucial to the rise of the newlineHindutva, serve for organizing the performance of Hindu nationalism in contemporary newlineIndia. Coupled with the ethnographic sections, it also illustrates an opening up of the newlineperformance paradigm that the discipline advocates enabling me to examine the multiple newlineconfigurations of Hindu nation in theatre and the theatricality of quotidian Hindu newlinenationalism. The second chapter is an exposition of the performance paradigm as an instrument newlineof transdisciplinary analysis. Here I propose performance as a heuristic tool breaching and newlinebridging the divide between theatre and lived culture. A singular study of culture, through newlinethe keyhole of literature, that discounts the larger lived and embodied realities can benefit newlinefrom a performance paradig