Right Wing Hegemony in India since 2014

Today the Right is more visible as the principal actor at the grassroots and in the media. This politics of the Right is shaped by contradictory forces of individual aspirations and resentments rooted in social antagonism of race, caste, and religion. In his new book 2 , Lord Meghnad Desai has taken this ascendance of the Right as evidence of collapsed and collapsing " liberal order. " By liberal order Desai means a " ruling hegemony of ideas and attitudes " favouring social inclusion, market driven globalisation, and cosmopolitanism that consolidated itself in a post-1989 world. I am tempted to say, not so fast Lord Desai! For example, look at how the aspirational politics is faltering under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and a groundswell of opposition seems to be gathering in the country to his economic, cultural, and social policies. To restore politics on an even keel soon, the Left needs a new plan for reinvigoration and resurgence. Any backlash to the ugly manifestations of nationalist politics of the Right on the streets may help. However, this by itself will not restore the liberal order. Yet, we cannot gloss over the fact that we are at a political conjuncture in which a new hegemony 3 of the Right is attempting, if it has not already, to replace the old hegemony of the Left. To restore politics on an even keel soon, the Left needs a new plan for reinvigoration and resurgence. Any backlash to the ugly manifestations of nationalist politics of the Right on the streets may help. However, this by itself will not restore the liberal order. The first step is to acknowledge that we did not arrive at this conjuncture through the course of a single election campaign in India or elsewhere in the world. In India, the Right, since the early 1990s, was chipping-away at the old hegemony carefully constructed by the " Congress System " 4 and the Left-leaning civil society including media, academia, unions, and NGOs. The Right was exploiting the seeming hypocrisy in the praxes of ruling elites that arose from contradictions between politics of exploiting social difference

Journal of Muslim Philanthropy & Civil Society, 2023

Kaul, N (2023) "#Dissent and #Democracy in Contemporary India: Visions of Education, Versions of Citizenship, and Variants of Jihad", Journal of Muslim Philanthropy & Civil Society, 7(1), 21-43. https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/muslimphilanthropy/article/view/5012 The post-2014 period in India has seen a clear political shift under the leadership of Modi-led BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), a ruling party ideologically parented by the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), a right-wing Hindu-nationalist paramilitary volunteer organization that has millions of members nationwide. These years have been marked by a resurgent Hindu nationalism referred to as Hindutva. Hindutva as an ideology of majoritarian nationalism claims to make India a strong nation and gain international recognition as a rising power. However, both domestically and internationally, it is evident that contemporary that India is marked by a consistent erosion of liberal democratic norms whereby constitutionally guaranteed rights continue to be steadily qualified, undermined, and diminished, alongside a lack of promised improvement in global rankings on various indicators. Moreover, there has been an increase in anti-minority targeting, which is multidimensional and pursued through non/violent and extra/legal means. In this article, I explain the broad backdrop to political transformation and increased violence in India and then specifically focus on explicating two key dynamics—one, the multiple ways in which changes in the sphere of education have been crucial to how dissent is securitized in India and two, how the internalized hierarchical ordering of ideas of citizenship within Hindutva means that Hindu males are seen as the normative citizens and Muslims as the radical Other that can be targeted with exclusion, discrimination, humiliation, even lynching. Using the example of the multiplying vocabularies of “Jihad,” I highlight how any aspect of Muslim life or livelihood can be interpreted as a form of sinister “Jihad” deserving a justifiably violent response and/or economic marginalization. I conclude by referring to the sustained and ongoing nature of this transformation of India and call for us to recognize and challenge it.

2014

Democracy Politics and Society in Contemporary India, 2021

Right Wing Politics (RWP) is on the rise globally. India is no exdeption. This paper explores the rise of RWP in India and the manner in which it impacts Indian democracy.

2017. Compilation of articles and illustrations concentrating on the rise of rightist politics and its impact on the deprived sections of the Indian society by BHAGAT SINGH'S SOCIALIST INDIA (https://www.facebook.com/nbshsra/?fref=ts).

This Paper is a critique on Hindutva

IndraStra Global | India Edition, 2016

In the current dynamics of unfolding political tactics, it becomes imperative to understand the continuity and changes in the way political actions are mechanized and operated. Of which, one of the most evolving facet is that of political subversion, that is, defying the existential norms by an act of ignorance, violation or revisionist tendencies to change. Thereby, what calls for subversion for a state, becomes a revolution for the subversive actor. For instance, terrorism and insurgency, are subversive political activities that exemplify this complexity in defining what entails being subversive. Applying the theory of subversion to the current Indian context, it can be stated that at present, India stands to be a breeding ground for pseudo forces, such as- pseudo-liberals, pseudo-seculars, pseudo-hardliners, pseudo-religious sects, pseudo-activists, pseudo-law abiding citizens, and others. And thus, infusion of such elements make the future look less promising given the unaccounted growth in subversive political activities, of which, most are "internal" in origin.

Postcolonial Studies, 2018

This article takes up issues 1 around questions of minority, agency and voice in relation to the student protests sparked off in the capital city of India, Delhi, in 2016, with other student protests reverberating in the background across India on different campusesin the east, at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, and in the south, at Hyderabad University. Focusing on the moment at midnight 2 March 2016 when the student leader Kanhaiya Kumar was released on bail and returned to Jawaharlal Nehru University campus to address a large gathering, the question is formulated here with respect to how the students of India, who are citizens of the country but who were in a minority in relation to the reigning political dispensation, were treated by their own government almost as stateless migrants are by the nation-states that seek to contain them. This moment of protest and agitation, beamed across the country on television and carried in newsprint and on social media is read here through song, metaphor and the notion of the stateless, reflecting on how the postcolonial was reconfigured when agency was snatched back by students repudiating the subaltern categories into which they had been corralled by the state.