To (mis)quote Jawaharlal Nehru, at the stroke of the midnight hour on August 14/15, 1947, the Indian subcontinent was not just awakening to life and freedom; it was also being ravaged by ultranationalist and fascistic paramilitary movements who viewed freedom as the freedom to dominate as an ethnonational majority. In this paper, I trace the emergence of these movements and their ideologues from the 1920s through to the immediate aftermath of decolonization. In doing so, I offer a broad account of paramilitary movements, their entanglements with global fascism, their role in shaping the violent outcome of decolonization, and their participation in state-making and nation-building in South Asia.
