Lecturer: Dr. Thorsten Wojczewski (Lecturer at Coventry University).
Moderator: Dr Ajay Gudavarthy (Associate Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University).
Dr. Thorsten Wojczewski is a Lecturer in International Relations at Coventry University. Previously, he was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of Global Affairs, King’s College London. His research interests are foreign policy analysis, populism and the far right, world order, poststructuralist IR and critical security studies. His research has been published or is forthcoming in International Affairs, International Relations, International Studies Review, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Journal of International Relations & Development, among others. He is the author of the books ‘The Inter- and Transnational Politics of Populism: Foreign Policy, Identity and Popular Sovereignty’ (Cham: Palgrave, 2023) and ‘India’s Foreign Policy Discourse and its Conceptions of World Order: The Quest for Power and Identity’ (London: Routledge, 2018).
This lecture discusses the relationship between Populism, Hindu Nationalism and Foreign Policy in India. It unpacks the major ideological themes and issues of Hindu nationalism and outlines the Hindu Nationalist foreign policy outlook. Drawing on discourse-theorical approaches to populism and nationalism, it then shows how populism and nationalism are related and can be used to construct and mobilize collective political identities such as ‘the people’ in the realm of foreign policy. It discusses how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi used foreign policy issues for the purpose of political mobilization and rallying ‘the people’ behind their political project. At the same time, it discusses the impact of Hindu Nationalism and populism on India foreign policy. Finally, the lecture looks at Modi’s outreach to fellow populist radical right politicians in the United States and Europe and sheds light on the rationale and effects of this international collaboration.
