The Quiet Mainstreaming of Transnational Hindutva: Long Distance Nationalism and the Australian State

This article seeks to advance the scholarship on the Indian diasporic mobilisation of Hindutva by organisations linked to the Hindu nationalist movement. It does so by focusing not on typical accounts of civil society coordination, but rather on the case of Australia to explain how states that receive migrants actively facilitate the growth of the nationalist Sangh network’s influence outside of India. Focusing on these pull (rather than push) factors, we reframe the mobilisation of diasporic long-distance nationalisms as being deeply shaped by their relationship with state accommodation and a liberal multicultural policy of representation. By examining three policy areas – multiculturalism, education, and foreign policy – the article shows that the individual and collective actions of the Sangh in diasporic communities are made possible largely through ‘quiet mainstreaming’ – that is, legitimisation and normalisation – in the receiving states. Beyond these policy vignettes, this article offers a portrait of the Australian Sangh, which has been relatively obscured in the scholarship on diasporic Hindutva.