Fundamentalism usually has a religious connotation that indicates unwavering attachment to a set of irreducible beliefs. However, fundamentalism has come to be applied to a tendency among certain groups – mainly, although not exclusively, in religion – that is characterized by a markedly strict literalism as it is applied to certain specific scriptures, dogmas, or ideologies, and a strong sense of the importance of maintaining ingroup and outgroup distinctions, leading to an emphasis on purity and the desire to return to a previous ideal from which advocates believe members have strayed. Rejection of diversity of opinion as applied to these established "fundamentals" and their accepted interpretation within the group often results from this tendency.
The Temple Mount and Eretz Yisrael Faithful Movement is an Orthodox Jewish movement, based in Jerusalem, whose goal is to rebuild the Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and re-institute the practice of ritual sacrifice.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organisation. The RSS is the progenitor and leader of a large body of organisations called the Sangh Parivar, which have presence in all facets of the Indian society. RSS was founded on 27 September 1925. As of 2014, it has a membership of 5–6 million.
Dhanpat Rai Srivastava, better known by his pen name Premchand, was an Indian writer famous for his modern Hindustani literature. Premchand was a pioneer of Hindi and Urdu social fiction. He was one of the first authors to write about caste hierarchies and the plights of women and labourers prevalent in the society of late 1880s. He is one of the most celebrated writers of the Indian subcontinent, and is regarded as one of the foremost Hindi writers of the early twentieth century. His works include Godaan, Karmabhoomi, Gaban, Mansarovar, Idgah. He published his first collection of five short stories in 1907 in a book called Soz-e-Watan.
Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan, popularly known by his nom de plumeAgyeya, was an Indian writer, poet, novelist, literary critic, journalist, translator and revolutionary in Hindi language. He pioneered modern trends in Hindi poetry, as well as in fiction, criticism and journalism. He is regarded as the pioneer of the Prayogavaad (experimentalism) movements in modern Hindi literature.
Damayanti is a character in a love story found in the Vana Parva book of the Mahabharata. She was the daughter of Bhima and a princess of the Vidarbha Kingdom, who married King Nala of the Nishadha Kingdom. The character is also found in other Hindu texts by many authors in numerous Indian languages. She, along with Nala, are the central characters in the 12th century text Nishadha Charita, one of the five mahakavyas in the canon of Sanskrit literature, written by Sriharsha.
The Damdamī Ṭaksāl is an orthodox Sikh cultural and educational organization, based in India. Its headquarters are located in the town of Mehta Chowk, approximately 40 km north of the city of Amritsar. It has been described as a seminary or “moving university” of the Sikh countryside.
Martin Emil Marty is an American Lutheran religious scholar who has written extensively on religion in the United States.
Communalism is a term used to denote attempts to construct religious or ethnic identity, incite strife between people identified as different communities, and to stimulate communal violence between those groups. It derives from history, differences in beliefs, and tensions between the communities. Communalism is a significant social issue in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Communal conflicts between religious communities in India, especially Hindus and Muslims have occurred since the period of British colonial rule, occasionally leading to serious inter-communal violence.
Shuddhi is Sanskrit for purification. It is a term used to describe a Hindu religious movement aimed at the religious conversion of non-Hindus of Indian origin back to Hinduism.
The partition of India and the associated bloody riots inspired many creative minds in India and Pakistan to create literary/cinematic depictions of this event. While some creations depicted the massacres during the refugee migration, others concentrated on the aftermath of the partition in terms of difficulties faced by the refugees in both side of the border. Even now, more than 60 years after the partition, works of fiction and films are made that relate to the events of partition.
Harjot Singh Oberoi is a Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He received his PhD from the Australian National University. His thesis earned him the J.G. Crawford Prize in 1987. He is known for his studies of Sikh history, particularly during the late 19th-century and early 20th-century.
Integral humanism was a set of concepts drafted by Deendayal Upadhyaya as a political program and adopted in 1965 as the official doctrine of the Jan Sangh and later BJP. Upadhyaya borrowed the Gandhian principles such as sarvodaya, swadeshi (domestic), and Gram Swaraj and these principles were appropriated selectively to give more importance to cultural-national values. These values were based on an individual's undisputed subservience to nation as a corporate entity.
The Noakhali riots were a series of semi-organized massacres, rapes and abductions, combined with looting and arson of Hindu properties, perpetrated by the Muslim community in the districts of Noakhali in the Chittagong Division of Bengal in October–November 1946, a year before India's independence from British rule.
The Fundamentalism Project was an international scholarly investigation of conservative religious movements throughout the world, funded by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The project began in 1987, directed by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, concluding in 1995. The understanding of fundamentalism framing the project was considered controversial in some cases, though even those scholars with criticism of the assumptions upon which the project was based admit that there is a great deal of useful empirical information to be found in the publications that grew out of the project.
The Hashimpura massacre was the killing of 50 Muslim men by police on or around 22 May 1987 near Meerut in Uttar Pradesh state, India, during the 1987 Meerut communal riots. It was reported that 19 personnel of the Provincial Armed Constabulary rounded up 42 Muslim youths from the Hashimpura mohalla (locality) of the city, took them to the outskirts of the city, shot them in cold blood and dumped their bodies in a nearby irrigation canal. A few days later, the dead bodies were found floating in the canal and a case of murder was registered. Eventually, 19 men were accused of having performed the act. In May 2000, 16 of the 19 accused surrendered and were later released on bail. Whereas, the other three accused died in the intervening period. In 2002, the Supreme Court of India ordered that the case trial should be transferred from the Ghaziabad district court to a Sessions Court at the Tis Hazari court complex in Delhi.
Amana ('Covenant') is an Israeli settlement movement formed by Gush Emunim in 1976. Its primary goal was "developing communities in Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights, the Galilee, the Negev and Gush Katif." The initial communities it developed were Ofra, Mevo Modi'in, Kedumim, and Ma'aleh Adumim. Settlements developed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law.
The 1970 Bhiwandi riots were Religious riots which occurred between 7 and 8 May in the Indian towns of Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad, between Hindus and Muslims. The riots caused the deaths of over 250 people; the Justice Madon commission, which investigated the riots, stated that 142 Muslims and 20 Hindus had been killed in Bhiwandi alone, and 50 Muslims and 17 Hindus in the surrounding areas. The commission strongly criticized the police for anti-Muslim bias in the aftermath of the riots, and also criticized the Shiv Sena, a Hindu-nationalist political party, for its role in the violence.
There have been several instances of religious violence against Muslims since the partition of India in 1947, frequently in the form of violent attacks on Muslims by Hindu nationalist mobs that form a pattern of sporadic sectarian violence between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Over 10,000 people have been killed in Hindu-Muslim communal violence since 1950 in 6,933 instances of communal violence between 1954 and 1982.
Neelakshi Singh is a contemporary Hindi author. In 2004 she won Sahitya Academy Golden Jubilee Award.
