‘Being Hindu, Being Indian’ undertakes a systematic intellectual study of Lala Lajpat Rai’s nationalist thought through his active political life, spanning 1888 and 1928. Contesting the dominant scholarly interpretation of Lajpat Rai’s nationalism as the precursor of Savarkarite Hindutva, it highlights the internally differentiated nature of ‘Hindu nationalism’. An examination of Lajpat Rai’s thought as a Hindu Mahasabha in the mid-1920s reveals that Rai organised a Hindu politics in service of a secular Indian nation-state. The book argues that this neither reduces his secularism to Hindu majoritarianism, nor completely proves right revisionist scholarship that increasingly questions the analytical contrast between these categories. Methodologically, the book constitutes an argument for resisting reductionism and respecting the nuances, fluidity, and internal tension in a politicians-thinker’s thought.

Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav is an intellectual historian of modern South Asia, with interests in nationalism, secularism, and religious and political thought more broadly. After receiving a DPhil in History from the University of Oxford while at St Antony’s College, she was a post-doctoral research fellow at the “Multiple Secularities” Research Group at the University of Leipzig in Germany, and at ICAS: M.P. in New Delhi, India. She is now an incoming Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at the National Law School of India University in Bangalore, India. Vanya’s research has been published in leading peer-reviewed academic journals such as the Journal of Asian Studies, Global Intellectual History, Studies in Indian Politics and Religions. Committed to making history accessible to the public, her first book, ‘Being Hindu, Being Indian: Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas of Nationhood’, was published with Penguin Random House India in February 2024.