Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 July 2017
Les nations-États sont des « communautés politiques imaginaires », répète-t-on à l'envi depuis la publication de l'ouvrage de Benedict Anderson (1991). La production des significations culturelles et des pratiques sociales alimente, au moins depuis le 18e siècle, la construction historique des identités nationales à l'intérieur de frontières géographiques recevant une définition politique en termes de souveraineté. Et la religion, pour autant qu'on la considère comme une action rituelle générant des représentations, fut et reste l'un des principaux vecteurs de symboles pour cette construction.
The production of cultural meanings and social practices fosters the historical formation of national identities. And religion was and is still one of the principal purveyors in this construction. This observation is verified in India in the case of public rituals which have played a critical role for the construction of an unified national consciousness, especially since the 1980s. The purpose ofthe type ofritual activity represented by mass processions is to demarcate the spatial extension of hinduness, to show the extent of its authority, to build its sovereignty, and to distinguish its members in a manner both concrete and symbolic most of the time against Muslims. Deployed over the public space which they at the same time “saffronise ”, these solemn rituals attest to the sharing of an immemorial identity, determined at the outermost bounds of a culture and the race: hinduness rather thon indianness, but also space rather than territory, mystagogy rather thon history, rite rather than contract, ethnie community rather than civil society, autocracy crossed with monarchy against democracy. So the hinduness is elective in a double meaning: the nation of Ram is a political reaction, in form of ritual action, which Hindus alone periodically renew in order to be what they are.