Hindus, Muslims, and Group Identities

Populist, majoritarian nationalism that excludes minority groups from socio-political participation is increasingly a global problem. In India, devotion to the Hindu god Rama has become the criterion by which Hindu nationalists define the nation, prompting Islamist militant groups to commit violent attacks. Hindus, Muslims, and Group Identities examines ways that Muslim authors have constructed narratives about Lord Rama to make claims about inclusive Hindu, Muslim, Indian, and Pakistani identities. Synthesizing decades of research in cultural psychiatry, cultural psychology, social psychology, and peace psychology, multilingual cultural psychiatrist Neil Krishan Aggarwal develops a method to analyze perspectives from minority groups on the psychology of majority-minority relations. This method examines characters and events in narratives, the circumstances of a narrative''s production and readership, the author''s social identity, the construction of identities through narratives, and thematic convergence/divergence with other minority/majority perspectives^—^with the goal of identifying ways that individuals from minority groups inclusively recategorize identities. Aggarwal analyzes texts across four centuries that compare Muslim minority perspectives in Persian and Urdu with dominant Hindu narratives in Awadhi, Hindi, and Sanskrit^—^many previously inaccessible to English readers^—^to illustrate how Muslims have a thriving cultural tradition of revering Lord Rama that challenges exclusivist Hindu and Muslim identities. By comparing and contrasting majority and minority perspectives on social identities, this book advances evidence-based interventions for peacebuilding, bringing the study of intergroup conflict and cooperation in South Asia into conversation with scholarship from Europe, North America, and South America. In establishing a method to analyze minority perspectives on majority-minority relationships, Hindus, Muslims, and Group Identities offers insights which can be applied by scholars, policymakers, and peace practitioners to conflict resolution and peacebuilding initiatives across geographic regions and disciplines.