Urban ‘untouchables’ and Hindu nationalism

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Abstract
The ‘untouchables’ of India are excluded from various areas of social and cultural life. Despite this, the higher castes do not exclude them from the category of ‘Hindu’ since, for them, the term is counterposed to the concept of ‘foreigner’. The lowest groups, on the other hand, often do not think of themselves as Hindus, for they use the word in terms of a very different set of conceptual oppositions. For them, ‘Hindus’ are people of high caste. Anderson's (1983) characterization of the nation as an ‘imagined community’ does not adequately explain why Hindu nationalists are now pressing minority ‘untouchables’ to define themselves as Hindus. Western reification of the concept of ‘Hindu’ has implications for political struggles in the sub‐continent.