Love Jihad and the governance of gender and intimacy in Hindu nationalist statecraft

dc.contributor.authorNielsen, Kenneth Bo
dc.contributor.authorNilsen, Alf Gunvald
dc.contributor.emailalf.nilsen@up.ac.zaen_US
dc.date.accessioned2022-07-28T07:28:18Z
dc.date.available2022-07-28T07:28:18Z
dc.date.issued2021-12
dc.description.abstractWhat role does the Islamophobic theory of “love jihad” play in the politics of Hindu nationalist statecraft—the legal codification of Hindu nationalist ideology—in India today? In this article, we address this question through a critical analysis of how the idea of “love jihad” relate to both (a) a conservative politics of governing gender and intimacy in which women are constituted as subjects of protection and (b) an authoritarian populism grounded in a foundational opposition between true Indians and their anti-national enemies within. The article begins by exploring how “love jihad” has transformed from an idea that was used to legitimize extra-legal violence by Hindu nationalist vigilantes to the status of law, with a particular focus on the BJP-ruled state of Uttar Pradesh. We then situate the “love jihad” laws in relation to a regime of gender governance that constitutes women as subjects of protection—and specifically protection by state and nation - and discuss how this resonates with a pervasive patriarchal common sense in Indian society. Finally, we show how “love jihad” laws and the wider conservative politics of gender and intimacy within which it is embedded feeds into the authoritarian politics of the Modi regime, in which Muslims are consistently portrayed as enemies of the Indian nation, and reflect on what this entails for the country’s secular political order.en_US
dc.description.departmentSociologyen_US
dc.description.urihttp://www.mdpi.com/journal/religionsen_US
dc.identifier.citationNielsen, K.B. & Nilsen, A.G. 2021, 'Love jihad and the governance of gender and intimacy in Hindu nationalist statecraft', Religions, vol. 12, no. 12, art. 1068, pp. 1-18, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12121068en_US
dc.identifier.issn2077-1444 (online)
dc.identifier.other10.3390/rel12121068
dc.identifier.urihttps://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/86524
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherMDPIen_US
dc.rights© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.en_US
dc.subjectLove jihaden_US
dc.subjectHindu nationalist statecraften_US
dc.subjectAuthoritarian populismen_US
dc.subjectLawen_US
dc.subjectGender and intimacyen_US
dc.titleLove Jihad and the governance of gender and intimacy in Hindu nationalist statecraften_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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