The Rhetoric of Hindu India

Manisha Basu teaches in the Department of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are postcolonial theory and literatures, nationalism and philology, secularism, globalization, African literatures, literary theory and cultural studies, South Asian literatures and cultures, and language and imperialism.

• Preface; 1. Introductory matters: the strange case of secular India; 2. Time's victims in a Second Republic: new histories, new temporalities; 3. To make free and let die: the economics of metropolitan Hindutva; 4. A power over life and rebirth: V. D. Savarkar and the essentials of Hindutva; 5. Between death and redemption: Hindu India and its antique Others; 6. The afterlife of Indian writing in English: telematic managers, journalistic mantras.

'The Rhetoric of Hindu India is a timely and productive addition to South Asian studies, and its theoretical and methodological frameworks have an applicability beyond the Indian context. The book engenders further conversations about the public(s) that the rhetoric of metropolitan Hindutva gives rise to, the consideration of what makes India 'Hindu' and whether literatures in vernacular languages mimic the movements that Basu has masterfully traced within Anglophone literature.' Nabeel Jafri, International Journal of Hindu Studies