The Wrongs of the Religious Right (HB)

Meera Nanda’s book is an impassioned plea for secularization of mentalities. She compares the secular polities of India and America to argue that, faced with the current right wing assault, secular constitutions alone cannot guarantee secularism. She examines how India’s major ecological movements have been reframed by Brahminical Hinduism with some unintended but crucial help from those within these movements. Her work shows the interconnections between the Hindutva scientism and national chauvinism, a factor crucial for its middle class support and its ‘reactionary modernism’.

CONTENTS

1. Secularism without Secularization: Reflections on the Religious Right in America and India

2. Hindu Ecology in the Age of Hindutva: The Dangers of Religious Environmentalism

3. Making Science Sacred: How Postmodernism Aids Vedic Science.