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Hindu culture for an Indian nation: gender, politics, and elite identity in urban south India
Author(s) -
HANCOCK MARY
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1995.22.4.02a00130
Subject(s) - caste , hinduism , elite , hindu nationalism , gender studies , ideology , politics , sociology , brahman , identity (music) , nationalism , power (physics) , identity politics , political science , law , religious studies , aesthetics , philosophy , physics , breed , quantum mechanics , biology , genetics
In this article I describe a south Indian social movement, headed by a Hindu preceptor. This movement relied on elite women members and on feminine religious idioms to solicit upper‐caste consent to Hindu nationalism; with that ideology, it naturalized caste inequalities and attempted to broker alliances between urban elites and the poor. The movement represented upper‐caste contestation for hegemonic power, but failed because of indeterminacies attached to its “education of consent” and anti‐Brahman political sentiment.