The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions studies how a dominant strand of Hinduism in north India - the tradition which uses and misuses the slogan Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan - came into being in the late nineteenth century. It examines the life and writings of one major Hindi writer of the nineteenth century - the playwright, journalist and polemicist Bharatendu Harischandra (often called the Father of Modern Hindi) - as its focal point for an analysis of some of the vital cultural processes through which modern north India, as we experience it today, came to be formed. The issues which it examines include the formation of modern Hindi, the nature of social change with the impact of colonialism, the invention of ideas about holiness, and the creation of a new Hindi national consciousness.
This work of cultural biography analyses the intricate links between politics, language, culture, religion and nationality that evolved in nineteenth-century north India under the impact of colonialism, but which even today, in the very different context of modern Indian politics, occupy centrestage.