Formations of Nationalist Thought in India: V.D. Savarkar and the Ideology of Hindutva.

FAIN: FT-54058-06

Vinayak Chaturvedi
Regents of the University of California, Irvine (Irvine, CA 92617-3066)

I propose to write a thematically-organized social history of ideas about V.D. Savarkar (1883-1966), one of the intellectual founders of Hindu nationalism in India. Savarkar’s writings form one of the most contentious, influential and yet still largely unexplored bodies of political thought in twentieth- century India. The purpose of my book project is to trace the processes by which Savarkar’s ideas of Hindutva, conceptualized in the shadow of British colonialism and against the background of an emergent Freedom Movement, developed into one of the most powerful influences in the formation of nationalist discourse in India during the twentieth century.