The dominant discourse on neoliberal globalization emphasizes a shrinking of physical distance, barriers, and time lag through greater interactions, flows, and communications working toward an integrated global economy. The restructuring of global space through neoliberal economic policies, however, has not resulted in such integration. The nation and region have been reformulated around fragmented ideologies of religion and ethnicity, often conforming to their respective political boundaries or claiming newer boundaries. The local has stubbornly refused erasure by resisting secular waves of economic integration. This fragmentation is popularly ascribed to be the result of an ontologically inward-looking nature of retrogressive local spaces such as the nations, regions, and communities. It is not coincidental that the sudden rejuvenation of difference on various local scales is occurring at the very moment when neoliberal regime of production has acquired global acceptance. Through a case study of Hindu nationalism, this article indicates how the neoliberal regime formulated at the global scale actually produces India materially and symbolically. The local is materially produced through biased neoliberal economic policies, which create certain patterns of development, quality of life, and prosperity. This material production is not separate from the symbolic production of Hindu fundamentalist national popular discourse. The “Hindu India” of the global village is not in antagonistic confrontation with the secular global regime of production but is created by it.
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