Event From Date
Event End Date
Event Title
ZHCES organises a seminar by Dr. Sammyh S. Khan
Event Details
ZHCES Seminar Series
TOPIC:
Lessons from the Past for the Future:
The Structure, Content, and Intergroup Consequences of Hindutva Ideology
SPEAKER:
Dr. Sammyh S. Khan
Keele University, United Kingdom
About the Speaker: Sammyh Khan is a lecturer in social psychology at Keele University. He completed his PhD at the Centre of Applied Cross Cultural Research (CACR) at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Before taking up his current position at Keele University, he held research fellowships at the University of Dundee, the University of St Andrews, and the University of Exeter. To date his research has had two main areas of focus, involving the application of social-identity and self-categorisation processes to: a) understand group processes and intergroup relations, with a particular focus on religious and political phenomena in the Indian Subcontinent; and b) understand and promote health behaviours and outcomes.Sammyh Khan is a member of the executive committee of the Asian Association of Social Psychology (AASP), the editorial board of the Journal of Social and Political Psychology (JSPP) and the European Journal of Social Psychology (EJSP), and serve as an associate editor for the Asian Journal of Social Psychology (AJSP) and the British Journal of Social Psychology (BJSP).
Abstract
My talk will present a set of studies that examined elite representations and lay understandings of the underpinnings of Hindu nationhood in India. Guided by a social-identity and self-categorisation perspective of identity entrepreneurship (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001) and social representations theory of history (Liu & Hilton, 2005), the first study examined how the Hindu nationalist movement defined Hindu nationhood in the pre-independence era. The study involved a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of the ideological manifestos of the Hindu nationalist movement in India, “Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?” (1928) and “We or Our Nationhood Defined” (1939), written by two of its founding leaders – V. D. Savarkar and M. S. Golwalkar, respectively. The texts constitute authoritative attempts to define Hindu nationhood that continue to guide the Hindu nationalist movement to this day. The identified themes reveal that the movement’s definition of Hindu nationhood was embedded in a historical narrative about its historical origins, trajectory, and mission. More specifically, a ‘golden age’ was invoked to define the origins and bases of Hindus, whereas a ‘dark age’ in its historical trajectory was invoked to demarcate groups considered to be abject to Hindu nationhood, and thereby to legitimise their exclusion. On the basis of the themes identified in the first study, a psychometric measure capturing the historical representation of Hindu nationhood propagated by the Hindu nationalist movement study was operationalised in the second study. The focus of the research did not only shift from elite representations to lay understandings between the first and second study, but also from qualitative to quantitative research. The measure was administered to Hindu university students in India together with established measures of national attachment and identity, as well as voting behaviour, religiosity, and beliefs about the Babri mosque demolition in Ayodhya. The findings from the analysis validated the measure and showed how, and the extent to which, Hindu nationalist representation of nationhood serve to justify and legitimise violence against religious minorities in India. Through its selective account of past events and its efforts to utilise this as a cohesive mobilising factor, the emergence and rise of Hindu nationalist movement, and its consequences, elucidates lessons for understanding the rise of right-wing movements around the world today.
DATE: 22nd March, 2019 (Friday)
TIME: 3:30 pm
Room No. 207, SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES II
(All are Welcome)
Dr. Pradeep Kumar Choudhury
(Coordinator, ZHCES Seminar Series)
