Any creature that comes out of there, shoot it

Hindu Nationalism, Viral Bodies, and the Political Imaginaries of Covid-19

Bibliographic Data

ID2634964
AuthorsRachel A Rothenberg (University of Washington, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume29
Issue29
Publication date2022-12-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSouth Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1960-6060 • E-ISSN: 1960-6060
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/samaj.8292
OpenAlexW4321347344
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited14

In this paper, I draw on digital ethnographic analysis of social media posting around the crisis. I argue that anxieties about the disorder of urban space co-exist alongside caste-based discourses of cleanliness and bodily regulation in Hindu nationalist social media users’ repudiation of COVID-19 as a disease of the urban poor. Alongside discourses of caste, their invocation of the alleged role of the Islamic proselytization group Tablighi Jama’at in the spread of the disease in urban North India, and discourses around the intimate life and spatial organization of poor urban Muslims, demonstrates how the Hindu nationalist response to the COVID-19 crisis focuses on the site of the Muslim male body as an invasive “viral” force. I then trace how the Hindu nationalist response to COVID-19 is integrated into existing concepts of unruly bodies, legitimizing a state-based response of repression and violence

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak · Biology · Hindu nationalism · Hinduism · Nationalism · Outbreak · Political science · Politics · Indian History and Philosophy · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Religious studies · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Internal Medicine · Virology