CfP: Critical Studies of the Hindu Far-Right26.9.2025 {en}

Editors: Neha Chaudhary, Saarang Narayan, and Felix Pal

Call for Abstracts

Deadline for abstract submission: 30th January 2026

Email: nc526[at]cantab.ac.uk (Neha Chaudhary); saarangnarayan[at]yahoo.co.in (Saarang Narayan)

We seek chapter contributions to a new edited volume on critical studies of the Hindu far-right. When we discuss the Hindu nationalist movement, or the network of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), scholars tend to understand that such a phrase marks a clearly identifiable, comprehensible (and comprehended) political phenomenon. However, we suggest that these terms gloss over the fact that the entity we seek to comprehend is history’s largest, oldest and richest far-right mobilisation. The scale of such a network contains dizzying diversity, contradictions, fabrications and textures that are fundamentally inadequately captured by the term “Hindu nationalist movement.” As such, this book is a critical attempt to denaturalise our understanding of the Hindu nationalist movement and to challenge our normative understandings of what the Sangh is and how it works. In offering this edited volume as Critical Studies of the Hindu Far-Right, we emphasise the ways that the Hindu far-right is a dynamic, nimble, and flexible political assemblage that requires deep and frequent revisions of our current understandings. Thus, what we are critical of in this text is not necessarily the Sangh itself (we take that much for granted), but rather, we are sympathetically critical of the normative scholarly understandings of the Sangh. In searching for contributors, we hope to ask provocative questions like: What have we got wrong about the Sangh? What forms of knowledge about the Sangh are missing from normative analyses? Who counts as a member of the Hindu far-right and who does not?

In this volume, we invite contributions that lie within the following categories:

1. Contributions that offer critical and counterintuitive analyses of the most well-known organisations within the Hindu far-right: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). In these contributions, we anticipate that authors will provide analyses that, for example, puncture the stereotype of the selfless, ascetic RSS volunteer, map RSS real estate holdings, or complicate/examine the relationship between the RSS and the BJP.

2. Contributions that highlight extant, but understudied, organisational features of the broader Sangh network. Scholarship on the organisational network of the Hindu far-right remains largely preoccupied with electoral politics, communal violence, diaspora organising or the cultural diffusion of Hindutva. We expect contributions in this section to move beyond these focuses to include those that, for example, analyse the Sangh’s involvement in the trade union movement, the construction of orphanages, micro-service provision and/or the creation of private universities.

3. Contributions that focus on new forms or new Sangh organisations. The organisational network we write about is one that constantly updates itself, continually seeking to penetrate and shape new social assemblages in ways that outpace the development of new literatures on the Hindu far-right. What are the new kinds of organisations that it founds? What are the new organisational challenges faced by the Sangh? What do these new organisational forms or management patterns tell us about the directions the Hindu far-right is moving in, or even its vulnerabilities?

4. Contributions that analyse new terrains on which the Hindu far-right organises and expands during its growth. If the previous section examined new types of Hindu nationalist actors, this section explores how these actors operate in new environments and contexts. The contributors are encouraged to tell the story of the Sangh as it seeks to expand in new terrains like Cambodia, Japan, or examine the micro-processes of how the Sangh enters single villages, single workplaces, or single institutions like the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. They may, furthermore, examine new industries or professions that the Sangh seeks to organise, or new intellectual terrain (such as the appropriation of the language of decolonisation) that the Sangh seeks to utilise.

A core commitment of this edited volume – deeply tied to our project of highlighting critical perspectives on the Hindu nationalist movement – is our desire for this volume to emphasise the contributions of young, new and emerging scholars on the Hindu far-right. Submit your abstracts (maximum 500 words) to the email address mentioned above. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

The deadline for submission of abstracts to the editors is 30 January 2026.

The selected contributors will be asked to submit their chapters (6,000-7,000 words) by May 31, 2026. We are currently seeking a contract with leading university presses.