1. Introduction:
CatarinaKinnvall is the author of the book Globalization and Religious
Nationalism in India, The search for ontological security.This book was first
published in 2006 simultaneously in the USA and Canada by Routledge at 2 Park
Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon.
Globalization has made individuals and groups more ontologically insecure and
existentially uncertain. An uncertainty many people try to reduce by searching for
new secure self-identities. In this war of emotions, paramount figures are seeking
to rally people around simple, rather than complex, causes. Religion and
nationalism are two such causes that are more likely than other identity
constructions to provide answers to those in need, due to their ability to convey a
picture of security, inclusion, stability and simple answers. The book puts forward
a new approach to interpret identity construction, which is seen as an
individualized process, where interactions of the global and the local are
intimately implicated. Thereby, a psychological analysis of how increased
insecurity affects individuals’ and groups’ attachments to religious nationalism in
an era of globalization is presented. The author compares the differing
experiences of Sikh and Hindu nationalism, explaining why Hindus have been
much more successful in fusing nationalist and religious concerns in their
attempts to provide secure self-identities. Developing an innovative angle on a
significant issue of concern in the politics of South Asia, and much more broadly in
the context of the contemporary world and developing global politics, this book is
a valuable addition to normative critical social theory and the debate on identity
and culture in political science and international relations, appealing to an inter-
disciplinary audience.

2. Major Contribution:
The author discusses four ways of studying the relation between religion and
nationalism.
The first is to treat religion and nationalism, along with ethnicity and race,
as analogous phenomena.
The second is to specify ways in which religion helps explain things about
nationalism - its origin, its power, or its distinctive character in particular
cases.
The third is to treat religion as part of nationalism, and to specify modes of
interpenetration and intertwining.
The fourth is to posit a distinctively religious form of nationalism.
The author concludes by reconsidering the much-criticized understanding of
nationalism as a distinctively secular phenomenon.
Religion and nationalism as analogous phenomena
Consider first the strategy of treating religion and nationalism as analogous
phenomena. One way of doing so is exemplified by efforts to define or
characterize nationalism by specifying its similarity to religion, or by simply
characterizing nationalism as a religion. According to the author, nationalism
mobilizes a ‘deep and compelling emotion’ that is ‘essentially religious’. Like other
religions, nationalism involves faith in some external power, feelings of awe and
reverence, and ceremonial rites, focused on the flag. The author argued that
nationalism has its gods – ‘the patron or personification of fatherland’; its
‘speculative theology or mythology,’ describing the ‘eternal past and everlasting
future’ of the nation; its notions of salvation and immortality; its canon of holy
scripture; its feasts, fasts, processions, pilgrimages and holy days; and its supreme
sacrifice. But encompassing conceptual introductions: as a mode of identification,
a mode of social organization, and a way of framing political claims.

3. Religion as a cause or explanation of nationalism
A second way of analyzing the relation between religion and nationalism seeks to
specify ways in which religion helps explain nationalism. Such arguments can be
cast in several ways, depending on what it is about nationalism that is said to be
explained (for example, its origins, persistence, emotional power, content, or
form), and what it is about religion that is said to explain it (religious ideas,
institutions, practices, or events).
Most of the literature in this tradition focuses on particular cases, specifying the
ways in which particular religious traditions have shaped particular forms of
nationalism. Thus, for example, scholars have traced the influence of Puritanism
on English nationalism (Kohn 1940, Greenfeld 1992), of Pietism on German
nationalism (Lehmann 1982), of Orthodoxy on nationalism in the Balkans
(Leustean 2008), of Shinto on Japanese nationalism (Fukase-Indergaard and
Indergaard 2008), of Buddhism on Sinhalese nationalism (Kapferer 1988), and of
the Hebraic idea of covenant on Northern Irish, Afrikaaner, and Israeli nationalism
(Akenson 1992).
Religion as imbricated or intertwined with nationalism
A third way of analyzing the connection between religion and nationalism sees
religion not as something outside of nationalism that helps to explain it, but as so
deeply imbricated or intertwined with nationalism as to be part of the
phenomenon, rather than an external explanation of it.
Religious nationalism as a distinctive kind of nationalism
The fourth and final way of analyzing the connection between religion and
nationalism is that religious nationalism is a distinctive kind of nationalism. The
claim is not simply that nationalist rhetoric may be immersed with religious
imagery, or that nationalist claims may be framed and formulated in religious or
religiously tinged language. The author characterizes nationalism as ‘a state-

4. centered form of collective subject formation’; as ‘a program for the co-
constitution of the state and the territorially bounded population in whose name
it speaks’; and as ‘a set of discursive practices by which the territorial identity of a
state and the cultural identity of the people whose collective representation it
claims are constituted as a singular fact.’ This statist definition allows the author
to conceptualize religious nationalism as a particular type of nationalism.
Major Issues:
The major issues being addressed in this book are:
• Globalization and destabilization: approaching in security
• Securitized subjectivity: Others and the emotional aspects of construction
• Nationalism and religion as securitizes of subjectivity: Local responses of
global destabilization.
• Situating Sikh and Hindu nationalism in India.
• Globalization, modernity and the limitations of Sikh nationalism.
• Globalization, modernity and the power of Hindu nationalism.
• Globalization and religious nationalism: The future of India.

5. Critical thinking:
Globalization and Nationalism in India examines the growth of a nationalist
sentiment with a particular focus on, and comparison of Sikh and Hindu
nationalism. The choice of these two cases can be found in a number of related
factors. Firstly, no comprehensive comparative study has been made of these two
events – the rise of Sikh and Hindu nationalism. Secondly, processes of
globalization have significantly affected both the Sikh and the Hindu cases,
especially as the process are related to the search for security. These make a
comparative study relevant for understanding the relationship between
globalization in security and identify conflict that goes beyond an Indian context.
Thirdly, the rise in Sikh and Hindu nationalism cannot be understood apart from
Indian policy of secularism. As this policy shares a number of important
characteristics with multicultural policies in the West, these cases can serve to
inform a broader discussion of individual and group rights in the light of
globalization. Finally, there are significant differences in the extent to which
religious nationalism seems to have become the predominant identify-signifier in
the two cases. In these sense Sikh nationalism appears to have largely failed while
Hindu nationalism has largely succeeded, which makes for an interesting
comparison. All these factors are relevant for comparing Sikh and Hindu
nationalism and for increasing someone understanding of the relationship
between globalization, security, identity conflict and religious nationalism.

6. Conclusion:
I recommend that this work leads to the reader to go through. Because, this
timely and significant study explores the reasons behind the rise in Sikh
aggressiveness over the 1970s and 1980s, the attack on the Golden temple and
the destruction on Babri Mosque. It also evaluates the violent response of the
Indian state in fuelling and suppressing the Sikh separatist movement, resulting in
a tragic sequence of events which has included the raiding of the Golden Temple
at Amritsar and the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The book
reveals the role in this movement of a section of young, semi-literate Sikh
peasantry who were disaffected by the Green Revolution and the
commercialization of agriculture in Punjab. Drawing on a wide range of sources,
the author examines the role of popular mass media in the revitalization of
religion during this period, and the subsequent emergence of sharper religious
boundaries.
The author controversially challenges the relevance of classical, Eurocentric
theories of nationalism in analyzing its powerful influence in South Asia. Her
unique combination of Indian politics and history with a theoretical approach
makes this fluent and incisive book essential reading for students and scholars
interested in ethno-nationalism in the modern world.