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Accepted Paper:

Hindu Fascist Forces take over of Heritages in India  
Sasi Kumar (Woxsen University, Hyderabad, India.)

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Paper short abstract:

This analytical paper looks at the way how Hindu fascist forces take over all subaltern heritages in India, whether Muslim--Babri Masjid was an example in the past--Secular Constitution and JNU as progressive political space. Constitution represents as hallmark for social and political freedom.

Paper long abstract:

Heritage involves text, memory, politics and culture. India's past represents contesting forces and India's freedom struggle was not an exception to this. Hindu fascist forces was never be a part of long-drawn Independence struggle which Indian people fought and won against British colonialism in 1947.

It was the Rashtreeya Swayasevak Sangh (RSS) orchestrated and paved the way for Naredra Modi as Prime Minister of India in 2014. Though the RSS was formed in 1925, it was not at all part of Indian freedom movement in which all the contesting forces competed each other with their political, cultural and ideological positions. Even though, the RSS claims India had a glorious Hindu past heritage, they never involved in the struggle against the British destroying it.

The RSS began its project of erasure of Muslim past by demolition of Babri-Masjid in1992 and subsequently, it captured the power at the centre. It began altering history text books, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru's role in Indian freedom struggle, finally, Indian Constitution which was conceived by Ambedkar, who fought for social equality. He attacked upper caste hierarchy and Brahmanism which the RSS had always been supported for. Jawaharlal Nehru University, after its establishment, stood for political space against the RSS propagation of erasure of history of Muslims and Dalits, anti-colonial heritage, the constitutional imagination of social equality. This alter-heritage project of the RSS can be resisted by all the forces as they stood previously for India's freedom struggle, peasants, workers, students, Dalits and Muslims once again.

Panel P058a
Alter-heritage: imagining South Asian heritage from the margins I
  Session 1 Friday 29 July, 2022, -