Celebrating More Than the New Year: The Hindu Nationalist Greeting Cards

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Both glorious and painful histories of Indian society are narrated on B.’s cards via visual and textual references to ‘great patriots’ and ‘divine kings’. Among the range of figures selected and inscribed with the potential to translate the history of Hindu society are figures like King Vikramaditya, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Rana Pratap. These figures have been circulated and appropriated by other political agents before. Now, Hindutva agents re-stage them and claim their ownership of them by means of public performances such as processions and rallies. In them, the motif of battle has become a central part of iconography and narratives of the Indian nation-state. The images are supported by poetry, pledges and appeals that aim at translating ‘do’s and don’ts’ of the citizenry by referring to the authority of dharmashastras, an ancient code of moraland social laws and rules. Historical grandeur, pathos-laden heroic poses and gestures, rich colours,costumes and backdrops from mythological plays (Ramleela) or tele-serials (Ramayan, Krishna), and the glowing smile of victory on the figures’ faces turn the Hindutva NewYear cards into a celebration of nationhood and a guidebook of nationality.

Image and text work as memory aides and create an imaginative space of identity construction, like a montage in a film. In the New Year cards, important events that are of historical relevance and, according to the Sangh Parivar, should be part of every Indian’s nationality, are alleged to have happened on that very day (aaj ka din). One Vikram Samvath card reads: “this is the day when Brahma made the world, the day of Ram’s coronation, the birthday of Hedgewar, the re-awakening of national pride, the day when Vikramaditya defeated the Huns and Shakas, the first day of the national calendar”.

The figure of Vikramaditya also enables the visualisation of another crisis allegedly faced by the homogenised Hindu community, the so-called ‘anti-national’ invader. Many texts printed on New Year cards are aimed at highlighting the fact that Vikramaditya drove the invading Shakas and the Huns out of India. One new year card (ca. 1995, Hindu Manch) praises Vikram for protecting and rescuing the authentic Hindu culture from alien rule. The card’s text reads:
"Whenever Shakas and Huns bared their bloody claws and terror struck the masses, and evil people troubled us, bringing bloodshed and rape, seeing that every day the Hindus were threatened, Vikramaditya once again would reveal his brave masculinity and courage by slaughtering and beating them up or making them Hindu. So we commemorate that with the Vikram-Year."

Vikramaditya’s case seems to offer two ‘solutions’: to chase invaders out of the country or to split and absorb them into the Hindu mainstream.

	This New Year card was designed by B., it depicts Mother India blowing the conch, positioned opposed to three dragon-like snakes (signed with the stigmata of Islam, Christianity and the USA). The artists explains the iconography like this:

"Take the example of the portrait of Bharat Mata. When multinational companies started coming into India, we (VHP) produced a picture of Bharat Mata in which we showed her blowing a conch. We also showed three snakes near her. One was of fanatical Islam, which is creating problems in Kashmir and Assam. The second snake represented the work of missionaries in tribal areas and in places like Nagaland where they are instigating an insurgency for a separate Naga state. The third snake symbolised the multinational companies. We wanted this form and message of Bharat Mata also to spread among the people. >>>

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