Catarina Kinnvall
Professor
Enforcing and Resisting Hindutva : Popular Culture, the COVID-19 Crisis and Fantasy Narratives of Motherhood and Pseudoscience in India
Author
Summary, in English
This article analyzes how Hindu nationalists employ fantasy narratives to counteract resistance, with a particular focus on narratives of ‘motherhood’ and ‘pseudoscience’. It does so by first introducing a conceptual discussion of the relationship between fantasy narratives, ontological insecurity, gender, and anti-science as a more general interrelationship characterizing pre- and post-COVID-19 far-right societies and leaders, such as India. It then moves on to discuss such fantasy narratives in the case of India by highlighting how this has played out in two cases of Hindu nationalist imaginings: that of popular culture, with a specific focus on the town Varanasi and the film Water (produced in 2000), and that of the COVID-19 pandemic and the emerging crisis and resistance that it has entailed. Extracts of interviews are included to illustrate this resistance.
Department/s
- Department of Political Science
Publishing year
2022-12
Language
English
Publication/Series
Social Sciences
Volume
11
Issue
12
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
MDPI AG
Topic
- Gender Studies
Keywords
- COVID-19
- far right
- gender
- India
- nationalism
- ontological security
- pseudoscience
- resistance
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 2076-0760