Making of the Hindu Nation, Masculinity and the Citizen – Critical Reading of Children’s Magazines in South Asia and the Place of Muslims

Bibliographic Data

ID6147536
AuthorsM Noorunnida (University of Hyderabad, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume22
Issue1
Pages68-90
Publication date2024-02-06
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHawwa (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1569-2078 • E-ISSN: 1569-2086
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/15692086-12341413
OpenAlexW4391650650
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited4

This study critically analyses popular and children’s science magazines published in Kerala, a southern state of India. It examines how these magazines construct an ideal Hindu nation and citizen through different narratives. Here, I argue that the imagery of popular children’s magazines in Kerala is rooted in the Hindu ideal – wherein dominant masculine characters and a glorified Hindu cultural past are foregrounded. In these magazines, the idealisation of Hindu masculinity takes place through presenting Muslims as less progressive / incapable of acquiring “modern standards”. In this context, the Hindu emerges as a reformer who helps the Muslim to “acquire modernity”. Also, children’s science magazines view science as a means for liberation from religion and irrational beliefs through critiquing “irrational” stories in popular Malayalam children’s magazines. But a close examination of science magazines reveals that it is embedded in the very religious ideologies from which it is seeking liberation

Context (archaeology · Hinduism · Ideal (ethics · Ideology · Masculinity · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Secularism · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Social and Economic Development in India · Socioeconomic Development in Asia · South Asian Cinema and Culture · Religious Studies

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