In this ECPS interview, Associate Professor Ajay Gudavarthy analyzes India’s 2026 state elections as a critical moment in the consolidation of Hindutva populism, neoliberal governance, and majoritarian politics. He argues that the BJP’s electoral successes cannot be understood merely as victories of cultural nationalism, but as part of a broader “hegemonic project” that fuses welfare delivery, infrastructural populism, caste reconfiguration, emotional polarization, and centralized state power. For Assoc. Prof. Gudavarthy, the opposition’s crisis is not only electoral or organizational, but also ideological: it has failed to offer a compelling alternative to both majoritarianism and neoliberalism. As India moves toward 2029, he warns that “India’s opposition cannot break majoritarianism without breaking neoliberal consensus.”
Interview by Selcuk Gultasli
India’s 2026 state elections have dramatically reshaped the country’s political landscape while intensifying debates over populism, democratic erosion, federalism, and the future of constitutional pluralism under Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP’s historic breakthrough in West Bengal, consolidation in Assam, the continuing erosion of Left politics, and the disruptive rise of Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) in Tamil Nadu together reveal a transformed political order increasingly structured by emotional polarization, welfare nationalism, charismatic leadership, cultural majoritarianism, and institutional centralization. At the same time, controversies surrounding voter-roll revisions, anti-Muslim rhetoric, bureaucratic exclusion, digital mobilization, and the growing fusion of state power with majoritarian narratives have deepened anxieties about the trajectory of India’s democracy and the resilience of its federal constitutional framework.
To examine these developments, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) spoke with Associate Professor Ajay Gudavarthy of the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), one of India’s leading scholars of populism, political emotions, democratic transformation, and contemporary Hindutva politics. Across a wide-ranging conversation, Assoc. Prof. Gudavarthy situates the BJP’s electoral successes within what he describes as a broader “hegemonic project” that combines neoliberal governance, infrastructural populism, cultural nationalism, and emotive majoritarian mobilization.
For Assoc. Prof. Gudavarthy, the significance of the 2026 elections lies not simply in the BJP’s electoral victories, but in the deeper social and ideological reconfiguration underpinning them. He argues that “market integration, modernity, and modern technology do not necessarily dilute traditional religious or caste identities. On the contrary, they can strengthen them further by nationalizing them and making them even more emotive.” In this sense, contemporary Hindutva emerges not merely as a nationalist ideology, but as a comprehensive populist assemblage linking “big development, big growth, majoritarian imagination, and a theocratic centralized state” with charismatic leadership and welfare delivery.
A central theme running throughout the interview is Assoc. Prof. Gudavarthy’s insistence that the BJP’s dominance cannot be understood apart from the persistence of neoliberal consensus in India. According to him, the opposition’s crisis is not only organizational or electoral, but also ideological and cultural. “The opposition cannot effectively challenge majoritarian consensus without simultaneously confronting neoliberal consensus,” he argues. “The crucial question as India approaches 2029 is whether the opposition will be able to articulate a radical social democratic agenda capable of breaking neoliberal consensus and, through that, also disrupting the majoritarian political imagination.”
Assoc. Prof. Gudavarthy further contends that the BJP has successfully transformed cultural nationalism into a hegemonic social condition by combining aspirational development with affective politics centered on belonging, civilizational memory, and anxieties surrounding immigration, identity, and social insecurity. Drawing on thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Zygmunt Bauman, David Goodhart, and Partha Chatterjee, he explains how populist politics in India increasingly operates through what he calls the convergence of “right-wing populism and subaltern pragmatism.”
At the same time, Assoc. Prof. Gudavarthy cautions against reducing the current conjuncture to irreversible authoritarian consolidation. While he acknowledges that the BJP has succeeded in constructing “a comprehensive hegemonic project built around a powerful cultural narrative,” he also identifies growing “social, political, and constitutional excesses” as potential openings for democratic resistance.
This interview offers a theoretically rich and empirically grounded exploration of how populism, neoliberalism, emotions, welfare politics, and majoritarian nationalism are reshaping democratic politics in contemporary India—and what these transformations may mean for the future of democracy as the country moves toward 2029.
