This article maps the incursion of Hindu nationalism in Orissa, eastern India. It interrogates Hindu cultural dominance and nationalist mobilization as it gains momentum in the state. It speaks to majoritarianism in the context of liberal development, the related apparatus of nation making, mediated by issues of religion, caste, class, culture, tribe and gender. The text, as history of a discontinuous present, offers counter-narratives of lives often reduced to ‘lack’ or ‘spectacle’, reciting minority-subaltern claims in rethinking nation, rights and difference.
