Archiving as History-Making: Religious Politics of Social Media in India

Abstract

This article explores the case of right-wing Hindu nationalist volunteers in India, to turn a critical eye on a digital practice that has become prominent on new media in India in recent times—the assembling of facts, figures, and treatises as an ideological exercise by the net-savvy “nonexperts.” Using qualitative methods, I argue that this practice of online archiving constitutes a distinct politics of history-making. I show how archiving-as-history-making is pertinent especially for religion's interface with cyberspace and the varied ways in which online users participate in religious politics. Online archiving for religious politics offers a sobering, and even troubling, picture of the digital commons, and unsettles some of the universalist claims underlying much celebrated user-generated content.