Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad, Hindu? Politics of Fearmongering and Unconventional Nationalisms of Soft Saffron Immigrants

In this paper, I shed light on the political ambivalence of religious Hindu Indian immigrants in America and how they navigate their politics vis a vis the larger project of global Hindutva, with specific reference to the phenomena of Hinduphobia, casteism, and covert Islamophobia. Through a brief overview of pre-existing literature on Hindu majoritarianism, I identify there to be an insufficient addressal of the politics of Hindus who do not fit into the binary of anti/pro Hindutva. I characterize this ideologically non-aligned section of the Hindu-fold as the soft saffron, because despite being critical of Hindu majoritarianism, their beliefs and sense of selves are anchored on certain elements of Hindutva narratives. I argue for the expansion of the current ontologies in which nationalism is discussed in academia to arrive at a more robust understanding of how authoritarian regimes derive legitimacy in subtler and indirect ways, that may even exceed the very idea of the conventional nation. Drawing on the work of Lisa Wedeen, I use ethnographic methods to provide insight into the soft saffron's political and cultural inclinations. Specifically, I conduct interviews with students who are members of Hindu student organizations at universities in a major U.S. city, and a social media study. My research suggests that the failure to bridge the social gap between secular and religious Hindu could potentially act as the first step towards countering the monopolizing of Hindu subject formation by majoritarian narratives.