Is India Becoming More Democratic?
Ashutosh Varshney2000, The Journal of Asian Studies
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Abstract
A great deal of confusion exists on how to discuss, and theoretically characterize, political developments in India during the last decade and a half. There is, of course, a consensus that the Congress party, a towering political colossus between 1920 and 1989, has unambiguously declined. While there are legitimate doubts about whether the decline of the Congress party will continue to be irreversible, it is clear that much of the political space already vacated by the Congress has so far been filled by three different sets of political forces. The first force, Hindu nationalism, has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention (Basu 1997; Hansen and Jaffrelot 1998; Jaffrelot 1993; Varshney 1993). The second force, regionalism, has also spawned considerable research of late (Baruah 1999; Singh forthcoming; Subramanian 1999). A third force, not so extensively analyzed, covers an array of political parties and organizations that encompass groups normally classified under the umbrella...
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India's 2019 Elections : The Hindutva Wave and Indian Nationalism
The Book Review, 2020
The volume makes a significant contribution to the study of India’s elections and its strength lies in analyzing elections through consideration of factors that are not only uniform across states and thereby constitute a national narrative but goes deeper to understand the regional subtexts and electoral contexts specific to states. Factors like Modi’s leadership, organizational character of BJP, Hindu nationalism and grass roots works of RSS network may be more helpful to understand the party’s consolidation in its traditional bastion of north and western India. However, its penetration in new social and geographical territories necessitates a nuanced understanding of the social and electoral alliances forged by parties as well as salience of mobilizations, driven either by personalities or identities in state politics. It is in this context that the volume enriches the field of election studies as the state specific authors pay due consideration to the local and regional contexts of elections despite leadership of Modi and Hindutva wave leaving its profound footprint at the national level.
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