DEMOCRATIC CULTURE AND POLITICS IN INDIA
Democracy is not just a set of institutions; it is a way of constituting the nation - in other words, of making and remaking society and ‘the people.' As such, societies striving to be democratic always run the risk of becoming majoritarian and even supremacist. This course historicizes three tumultuous moments in the making of an Indian people and nation
1. Pluralist nationalism: the powerful nonviolent movement that Gandhi and the Indian National Congress led against the British, challenges to this movement, and the efforts after independence to establish a pluralist state and culture.
2. Majoritarianism: Democratic nationalism was always dogged by majoritarianism. In part, this is what accounts for the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan; it continued to be at play in caste and religious identities throughout our period.
3. Hindu supremacism: From the 1920s onwards, a a significant strand had sought to remake Hinduism into Hindutva, a racist and supremacist ideology. From the 1990s, Hindutva has increasingly become the dominant force in Indian society and politics.
Throughout the course, our focus will be on popular movements and ideologies, as well as the shifting politics of the disprivileged - Dalits (the fomer ‘untouchables'), lower castes, women, peasants the urban poor, and Adivasis (‘tribes')