Tracing the rise of ascetic masculinity in India

Religious ideas have played— – and as this chapter will show, continue to play— – a central role in Indian politics, and these ideas are gendered in nature. Some of these take a particular masculine form – violent, heterosexual and upper caste – and it finds expression in the political sphere through physical as well as symbolic forms of violence. One such form of masculinity gaining political capital is ascetic masculinity. I demonstrate in this chapter that the manifestation of ascetic masculinity traced in the works of Vivekananda, 1 , Golwalkar 2 , and Gandhi continue to be present and influence politics in India. A politics of appropriation in the contemporary Indian politics has seen right- wing Hindutva organizsations applauding Gandhi and Vivekananda often. There is a growing trend within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to celebrate both Gandhi and his assassinator Godse (Mukherjee 2019). This chapter will look at how ascetic aspects of the works of Vivekananda and Gandhi are taken out of context and appropriated by the RSS-BJP that helps them corelate their ideas of asceticism with that of Golwalkar, and how that appropriation is serving their violent masculinist tendencies