Dissecting Hindu nationalism

The book successfully demonstrates how the unprecedented electoral verdict of 2014 has played out in creating a majoritarian narrative

Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism Is Changing India

Angana P. Chatterji, Thomas Blom Hansen and Christophe Jaffrelot (eds) 

HarperCollins, 537 pages, Rs 899

Future historians will find it an uphill task to chronicle Narendra Modi’s five-year term. Newspapers, the first draft of history and often the most important primary source for a scholar, would not be worthy research material for these years. Barring a few honourable exceptions, they present the scholar with the imminent danger of exposure to a singular, dominant narrative with barely a few degrees separating them in reverence and awe of the Modi era.

Therefore, it is heartening when an eclectic