As a practicing Hindu, a part descendant of a Hindu Bengali family who migrated from Bangladesh amidst the violence of partition driven by British colonialism, I am intimately aware of the loss, trauma, and struggles with identity that are shaped by the intertwined processes of expulsion and displacement.
This expulsion at the root shapes the yearning for the land that is lost on the other side of the partition, the soil, the cultural textures, and narratives of belonging.
Land loss forms the infrastructure of colonial violence, reflecting its white supremacist ideology, carving out lands into property and nation to uphold the extractive practices of racial capitalism.
Lost stories and a lost land
I, like most of our family in my mother's side, live everyday with stories of loss, of being disrupted from the land that roots us.
This land is now marked as alien land, on the other side of the border, a border that is shaped by the white supremacy of colonialism, administering colonies through separation.
Stories of the Sameshwari river in Shushong Durgapur, of a three-year-old girl sailing in the steamers with her parents and her siblings, of Durga Pujas celebrated by Hindus and Muslims together, of fish that would swim into the nets, stories connected eternally to a land that I have never visited, shape in profound ways my search for my roots.
For the between 12 to 20 million people who were violently displaced around religious lines by a partition crafted by British colonialism, these stories of loss are deeply embedded in bodies, in the negotiations of everyday life, and in the struggles for identity.
Hindutva as the far right and co-option of victimhood
Hindutva as a far-right political project, alongside far-right Islamist nationalism in the sub-continent, emerged as mirrors of the white supremacy of British colonialism.
The white supremacist notion of land as an extractable resource, to be divided up and bounded into territories, placing communities in opposition to each other, shaped the organizing of Hindutva. Hindutva's claims of Indigeneity mirrors the divisive colonial strategy of producing the other to legitimize violence.
Its politics seeks to craft India as a Hindu nation (rashtra), taking its ideological pedagogy from Nazi Germany, based on a monolithic Hindu culture (sanskriti) and race (jati).
This project of constructing a narrative of the nation based on a monolithic cultural identity simultaneously seeks to mark as the outside of the nation India's Muslim communities, and uphold the violent hierarchy of caste as an organizing system.
At the heart of its fascist ideology, Hindutva constructs the trope of the "Hindu as a victim." Paradoxically, it co-opts the trauma that resulted from the violence of white supremacy to build an infrastructure of violence that mirrors white supremacy. Devoid of the values of the Indian anticolonial struggle that centered love, connection, community and non-violence, it projected a politics of hate that could serve as the basis for mobilizing violence.
Hindutva's theft of our stories and lived experiences
As a Hindu Bengali, alongside the trauma of colonial violence, I negotiate daily the sexual and physical violence unleashed by Hindutva.
Hindutva actively steals our stories of trauma to set up its politics of hate.
Its narrative around the "Hindu in danger" actively mobilizes around the trauma of the partition, turning our trauma as Hindu Bengalis into a commodity.
Instead of holding the white supremacy of colonialism accountable (rejecting the underlying white supremacy) as the source of the trauma, it reproduces the colonial "divide and rule" trope, mirroring its underlying white supremacist structure.
For its project of othering Muslims, Hindutva needs to colonize, occupy, and curate the stories of Hindu victimhood. The "Hindu Bengali as a victim" is a necessary tool in its weaponization of hate, fueling its ongoing marginalization of Muslims as perpetrators.
Fascism's erasure of dissenting Bengali Hindus
The long tradition of Bengali resistance to colonial white supremacy also offers a register for resisting Hindutva (Bengal produced the largest number of anticolonial revolutionaries on record, alongside the state of Punjab in the West). Hindutva targets Bengalis even as it postures around Hindu Bengali trauma.
The active construction of the dissenting Bengali Hindu as an outsider is integral to the fascist politics of Hindutva.
The Hindu Bengali rejecting Hindutva's violence is framed as anti-Hindu, Hinduphobic, Communist, Marxist conspirator, anti-national etc.
When, as a Bengali Hindu, I have resisted Hindutva's politics of violence, my Hinduism has been denied, calling into question my loyalty to Hindutva.
Violently abusive narratives crafted around tropes such as "vile Leftist," "Communist" etc. are thrown in so the hate-filled ideology of Hindutva can be held up.
My connection to the land, my identity as a Hindu, my identity as an Indian are called into question, turning me into an outsider who should be grateful to Hindutva and therefore, align with its nationalist causes (in this instance, also erasing the rootedness of my father's side of the family in West Bengal, with a strong history of contribution to India's postcolonial nation building work).
Resisting Hindutva
The performative display of victimhood that co-opts material registers of trauma pose critical threats to the very communities that have experienced the trauma.
When an ideology draws upon victimhood, crafting stories of trauma, to hold up its fascist structures, it mirrors the violence of white supremacy that birthed it. Moreover, it further perpetuates white supremacy, expanding manifold the violence of white supremacy.
Calling out Hindutva is also about tracing and naming its white supremacist character. Seeing through the deployment of victimhood is critical to the securing of the soul of the anticolonial imaginary.