Disaster Relief and The RSS

Malini Bhattacharjee is an Assistant Professor at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru. She has earned her doctorate, MPhil and MA degrees in political science from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She started her career at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, South Asia Regional Delegation in New Delhi and subsequently worked in a conflict resolution firm named Metaculture in Bengaluru. She joined Azim Premji Foundation in 2010 and is a part of Azim Premji University since 2012. Her research interests revolve around the issues of religious identity, ethnicity and political conflict, politics of humanitarianism and the intersections emerging between religion and development. She is particularly interested in the politics of Hindu nationalism and the political dimension of its seva (service) activities.She also has an interest in elementary educational policy in India and has spent a fair amount of time in researching on the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (aka RTE Act) in Karnataka.In her current role at Azim Premji University, she teaches courses on politics and democracy, Indian politics, governance, religion and development, and religion, state and democracy. During her free time, Malini loves playing with her daughter and watching movies.

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroductionDisaster Relief in India: ′Religious′, ′Secular′ and Those ‘in Between’Unpacking a Homonym: Seva and Its Multiple Meanings′Nation Building′ through SevaSeva after the ′Super Cyclone′: The Case of UBSS in OdishaBuilding a ‘Hindu’ Rashtra in Post-Earthquake KutchConclusionBibliographyIndex

"This book is one of the finest attempts to synthesize theoretical approaches and empirical evidence to explain the notion of secularism, the anxieties we face today in religious coexistence and the threat that the Hindu Right poses to India′s social fabric and to the country′s political structure."