A major new peer-reviewed study examining Hindutva in Australia should be essential reading for policymakers, educators and multicultural community leaders.
Published online on 17 August 2026 in Asian Studies Review, The Quiet Mainstreaming of Transnational Hindutva: Long Distance Nationalism and the Australian State is authored by Felix Pal of the University of Western Australia, Priya Chacko of Adelaide University and Nisha Thapliyal of the University of Newcastle.
The article’s importance lies not simply in documenting the activities of Hindu nationalist organisations in Australia, but in asking a more difficult question: what role has the Australian state itself played in enabling their legitimacy?
What is ‘quiet mainstreaming’?
The authors locate Hindutva within the transnational network associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), commonly referred to as the Sangh, whose organisational and ideological affiliates include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Rather than concentrating only on how Hindutva organisations mobilise the Indian diaspora, the researchers examine the Australian institutions that receive and interact with them. Their central concept is “quiet mainstreaming”: the process through which organisations and political ideas acquire legitimacy and normality through apparently routine relationships with governments, bureaucracies and public institutions.
This is the paper’s most significant analytical contribution. The authors reject the idea that far-right movements simply penetrate an otherwise neutral political mainstream. Mainstream institutions themselves can facilitate normalisation through the everyday decisions of politicians, bureaucrats, educators and government agencies.
Importantly, this should not be read as equating Hinduism or Hindu Australians with Hindutva. The paper’s subject is specifically Hindu nationalist organisations and networks and how organisations claiming representative status can acquire institutional authority.
This story was originally published in amust.com.au. Read the full story here.
