Hindutva Movement: Burkean Examination of Violence as Retributive Justice

Abstract

The thesis examines the Hindutva movement as a rhetorical text to understand how it contributes to the rhetorical study of social movements. The Hindutva movement is a mass movement that has grown in influence and in number in the last thirty years and its final goal is to wage a battle to create a Hindu rashtra (nation) in India with a monolithic Hindu culture. The rhetorical texts of V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar are analyzed with Burkean guiltredemption-purification cycle. These rhetorical tools provide an insight into the guiding question of this thesis: how Savarkar and Golwalkar use rhetoric in ways that justify and motivate audiences to accept violence in order to restore a Hindu Nation.