An ethnographic research among activists subscribing to majoritarian Hindu nationalism in India reveals that anxiety, masculinity and sexuality are crucial ingredients in their identity politics. The inimical figure used to mobilise the Hindu nationalist identity is a stereotyped Muslim masculinity which in turn is imagined as dangerous owing to a mix of negative images of Islam, history, physicality and culture. The specificities of anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002, and especially the pervasiveness of sexual violence there, can be understood as an assertion of the new Hindu identity which conflates nationalism with masculinity and violence. And yet it was the complicity of the institutions of the state that accounted for the lethality of violence in Gujarat. The article argues that masculinised nationalism and embedded statehood are crucial features of contemporary (inter) national politics.

China as a victim rather than a proponent of modern colonialism is an essential myth that animates Chinese nationalism. The Chinese statist project of occupying, minoritising and securitising different ethno-national peoples of Central Asia such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, with their own claims to homelands, is a colonial project. Focusing on China's securitised and militarised rule in Xinjiang and Tibet, the article will argue that the most appropriate lens through which this can be understood is neither nation-building, nor internal colonialism but modern colonialism. It argues that the representation of Uyghurs and Tibetans as sources of insecurity not only legitimises state violence as a securitising practice but also serves contemporary Chinese colonial goals.

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