HIST3489

Democracy is not only a matter of institutions. It is also a matter of popular culture and mass mobilization. This course is designed to introduce you to the everyday cultures that have sometimes sustained and sometimes bedeviled Indian democracy from the time of independence (1947) to the present. The topics you will get a deeper understanding of include: the rise and decline of secular nationalism; the rise of Hindu nationalism in the 21st century; the politics of language and region; the rise of populism and authoritarianism; and the transformations of Dalit, middle caste, Adivasi, and Muslim identities. Moreover, since this course has a strong comparative and conceptual dimension, you will also sharpen the analytical skills needed to understand similar phenomena in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

The course will provide an intertwined analysis, especially, though not only, of four sorts of political identities and cultures, and how these have shaped each other. The most prominent of these is Hindu nationalism, analogous in some ways to white nationalism, which has been increasingly successful electorally in the last three decades. We will look at Hindu nationalism in the 50s/60s around the Hindu Code Bill and Somnath temple, from the 80s around the Babri Masjid, and from the 2000s around a Hindu Rashtra or Hindu nation, shaped in part in the early stages also by diasporic Indians.

But while Hindu nationalism is currently more electorally successful than ever before, it still gets only around 40% of the votes (though many more seats than that because of the electoral system). This is indicative of the continuing strength of other identities, many of them sometimes at odds with Hindu nationalism. So, second, we will trace how mobilizations around caste and Adivasi [original peoples] identities, sometimes drawing inspiration from anti-racist mobilizations in the US, have led to the consolidation of a Dalit [formerly “untouchable” caste] identity by the 1970s, the transformation of middle castes, especially from the 80s, and the consolidation of a new Brahminical identity. We also look at how Muslim identities have been transformed and a part of popular politics during this period. Third, the course will explore the presence and transformations of linguistic and regional identities, leading to the creation of linguistic states by the sixties, and of regional parties and identities from the eighties to the present. Finally, the course will explore mobilizations around class identities: urban workers and rural landless laborers’ movements through the eighties, farmers’ mobilizations from the seventies through the 2020s, and middle-class mobilizations from the eighties.

AFV - A-F or Audit

02007

No

Periodic Fall & Spring