Jyotirmaya Sharma is the professor of political science at the University of Hyderabad. A prolific academic and writer, he was the Fellow for the Spring Semester of 2012 at the the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Study at Uppsala, the Fellow for the academic year 2012-13 at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg at Goettingen, a fellow of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and was awarded the Asia Leadership Fellow Programme fellowship for 2008 by the International House, Japan, to name just a few of his academic accomplishments. Professor Sharma also held editorial positions at the Times of India and at The Hindu, and is regular writer for Mail Today, Hindustan Times and Outlook. He is perhaps best known for his body of work examining the contemporary face of Hindutva and Hindu nationalism, the 19 century reinterpretation of Hinduism and the ideas of Swami Vivekananda and how he has been interpreted and appropriated today. This line of research has produced the books Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism, Terrifying Vision: MS Golwalkar, the RSS and India and Cosmic Love and Human Apathy: Swami Vivekananda’s Restatement of Religion. His work on Vivekananda has been part of the larger exploration of the Hindu Nationalism; how despite his speeches on universal love and oneness, Vivekananda came be the father of the current political Hinduism which is based on a rigid idea of the Hindu nation state. Professor Sharma also explores how Swami Vivekananda is celebrated by many not associated with the Sangh, for his perceived liberal and inclusive ideas. Sharma calls these “powerful shared myth in our country”, even showing the reader how Vivekananda’s idea of Hinduism closely resembles that of a monochromatic Hindu identity, similar to the one Hindutva proponents believe in. His other body of work has been on Gandhi’s political thought and the ideas of violence and non-violence.
