Television & New Media 1–7 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1527476415575491 tvn.sagepub.com Article Locating the “Internet Hindu”: Political Speech and Performance in Indian Cyberspace Sriram Mohan 1 Abstract The article seeks to offer an understanding of the politics and presence of this increasingly visible, informal online political formation in India, whose members are referred to as the Internet Hindus. Used to describe young, often urban, middle-class/ upper-middle-class followers of Hinduism residing in India (and abroad), the term has come to be associated almost entirely with those who aggressively voice their right-wing political views and support for Narendra Modi on social media platforms. The article explores the politics espoused by some of these “Internet Hindus” and frames them vis-à-vis the larger themes foregrounded by the electoral victory of the Hindu nationalist political outfit, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In doing so, the article attempts to locate “Internet Hindus” in a democracy, which has the third largest Internet user base in the world, and seeks to deconstruct their ethno-nationalistic online posturing, while reflecting on what this may mean for the online collective itself. Keywords Internet Hindu, digital politics, social media, Hindutva, political speech, Hindu nationalism In November 2012, Outlook, an English news magazine published weekly, excerpted the then-unpublished book Patriots and Partisans, authored by historian and newspaper columnist Ramachandra Guha. Titled “Who Milks This Cow?,” the author noted that any of his newspaper columns related to “Hinduism, Hindutva, Guru Golwalkar, Gujarat, 1 Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India Corresponding Author: Sriram Mohan, School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, V.N. Purav Marg, Deonar, Mumbai 400 088, Maharashtra, India. Email: mohan.sriram@outlook.com 575491TVN XX X 10.1177/1527476415575491Television & New MediaMohan research-article 2015 at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on August 31, 2016 tvn.sagepub.com Downloaded from