What is neo- about neo-Hindutva?

The Political Asceticism of Mamata Banerjee: Female Populist Leadership in Contemporary India

“…The rise of New Spirituality has been concomitant with the retreat of the state and the ascent of the 6. An instance of such citizen movements can be located in the India Against Corruption (2011) agitation against the ruling United Progressive Alliance national government, in which large numbers of middle-class citizens actively participated (Reddy 2018). The movement centered around the austere figure of Anna Hazare, a veteran rural development activist and satyagrahi (observer of satyagraha) whose hunger strikes demanding anticorruption legislation sought to emulate the Gandhian style of resistance.…”

“…Similarly, the discourse of political asceticism privileges the moral leadership of the idealized figure of the outsider in politics, who is predominantly male in embodiment. The Gandhian ethic of political leadership, which advocated nonattachment to political power, generated a rhetoric of anti-politics in postindependence Indian political culture (Hansen 2008; Reddy 2018) and has often inspired popular movements against the perceived corruption and moral decadence of mainstream institutional politics. More often than not, such movements gather momentum around the idealized male figure of a citizen activist, who represents the incorruptible political outsider by virtue of his austere personal lifestyle 6 —an emulation of the Gandhian style of political asceticism.…”

“…The rise of New Spirituality has been concomitant with the retreat of the state and the ascent of the neoliberal mode of governance. The ascent of influential Hindu ascetic gurus such as Swami Ramdev (Bhatia 2011; Gooptu 2016; Longkumar 2018; Reddy 2018) as national icons in citizens’ protests against corruption in the government and the rising appeal of Neo-Hindutva (Anderson and Longkumer 2018; Reddy 2018), a contemporary version of the Hindu Nationalist discourse that privileges an apolitical leadership model, in the past decade have been instrumental in reinstating the rhetoric of anti-politics in India.…”

Nation branding, soft Hindutva, and ecotraditionalism in anti-plastics discourses in India

“…This has been particularly true of spaces such as those of indigenous knowledge systems, indigenous medical systems, and yoga (e.g., Longkumer 2018;Miller 2020). Such soft Hindutva can also function as opposition not to the secular or religious Other, but to inept and corrupt local governments, as it seeks to save the nation from the politics of the state (Reddy 2018).…”

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“…Gail Omvedt points out that while these movements emphasised "anti-communalism", they did little to question the underlying caste hegemonies that led to the dominance of Hinduism in the first place (Omvedt, 2006, p. 3). The continuous "rebranding" of casteism in India has been attributed to various rigorous attempts at reinforcing Hindu nationalism or Hindutva (equating being Hindu to the idea of being "Indian") through different strategies, the latest of them being performance of "apolitics" or the targeting of seemingly "neutral" or "indigenous" activities by the ruling parties to give the impression that their appeal is "universal" (Omvedt, 2006, p. 8;Reddy, 2018).…”