More than 70 years after its founding, with Narendra Modi’s authoritarian Hindu nationalists in government, is the dream of Indian democracy still alive and well?
India’s pluralism has always posed a formidable challenge to its democracy, with many believing that a clash of identities based on region, language, caste, religion, ethnicity and tribe would bring about its demise. With the meteoric rise to power of the Bharatiya Janata Party, its solidity is once again called into question: is Modi’s Hindu majoritarianism an anti-democratic attempt to transform India into a monolithic Hindu nation from which minorities and dissidents are forcibly excluded?
With examinations of the way that class and caste power shaped the making of India’s postcolonial democracy, the role of feminism, the media, and the public sphere in sustaining and challenging democracy, this book interrogates the contradictions at the heart of the Indian democratic project, examining its origins, trajectories and contestations.
Table of Content
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Trajectories and Crossroads: Indian Democracy at 70 – Alf Gunvald Nilsen, Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Anand Vaidya
1. Democratic Origins I: India’s Constitution and the Missing Revolution – Sandipto Dasgupta
2. Democratic Origins II: The Minority Question in South Asia – Anupama Rao
3. Democratic Origins III: Violence and/in the Making of Indian Democracy – Sunil Purushotham
4. Democratic Origins IV: Comment – Ajay Skaria
5. The State and/of the Media in Modi’s India – Siddharth Varadarajan
6. Writing Counter-insurgency, Conflict and Democracy – Nandini Sundar and Dolly Kikon
7. Democratic Trajectories I: Congressism, Anti-Congressism, and Composing the ‘People-as-a-Whole’ – Subir Sinha
8. Democratic Trajectories II: Merit and Caste in Contemporary India – Ajantha Subramanian
9. Democratic Trajectories III: Ritual Inclusivity in Turbulent Times – Kathinka Frøystad
10. Democratic Trajectories IV: Comment – Manali Desai
11. India’s Democracy: Contest for the Nation’s Core – Kavita Krishnan
12. Feminism and the Politics of Gender – Raka Ray and Srila Roy
Conclusion: Indian Democracy and Its Prospects: 2019 and Beyond – Alf Gunvald Nilsen, Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Anand Vaidya
About the Editors
Notes on Contributors
Notes
Index
About the author
Anand Vaidya is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Reed College.
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