Creating Suitable Evidence of the Past? Archaeology, Politics, and Hindu Nationalism in India from the End of the Twentieth Century to the Present

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14 décembre 2020

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OpenEdition

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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ , info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess


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Archaeological Survey of India archaeology Ayodhya BJP Dravidians Hindutva Indo-Aryans Indus Valley Civilization nationalism

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Hindu nationalism

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Anne-Julie Etter, « Creating Suitable Evidence of the Past? Archaeology, Politics, and Hindu Nationalism in India from the End of the Twentieth Century to the Present », South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, ID : 10.4000/samaj.6926


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This article deals with the relationship between Hindu nationalism and archaeology in India from the end of the twentieth century onwards. Archaeology has been closely linked to the political sphere since the nineteenth century, in particular through the existence of a state organization such as the Archaeological Survey of India. Organizations belonging to the Hindutva nebula, notably the BJP, started to resort largely to archaeology’s legitimizing discourse in the late 1980s and 1990s. They have turned it into a powerful political and ideological tool since then, using it to bolster their politics of exclusion. Archaeological data have enabled them to materialize their theses on identity and nation into actual places and objects and thus give them the appearance of empirical and scientific facts. Distortion and creation of archaeological evidence have become current practices so as to fit and promote the Hindutva agenda, as shown in two cases: the Ayodhya dispute and the controversies on origins, both being part of the Hindutva project to define the Indian nation as Hindu and confer upon modern Indians autochthonous ancestors, in contrast to Muslims.

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