Seminar Questions:

1. Discuss the significance of the pitribhu/punyabhu (fatherland/holyland) distinction made by Savarkar. What purpose do these categories serve in his thought?
2. Why does Savarkar dwell so long on the name ‘Hindu’?

Seminar Reading:

1. V.D. Savarkar: Hindutva/Who Is A Hindu? (1923)

Background Readings:

1. Ashis Nandy, “A disowned father of the nation in India: Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and the demonic and the seductive in Indian nationalism”, Inter-Asian Cultural Studies, 15:1 (2014)
2. Basu et al, Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags (Delhi, 1993)
3. Chetan Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths (Oxford, 2001)
4. Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave (Princeton, 1999)
5. Aparna Devare, “Secularizing Religion: Hindu Extremism As A Modernist Discourse”, International Political Sociology, 3:2 (2009)