Date/Time: Thursday, August 31, 2023 — 10:00-12:00 (CET)
This panel is jointly organised by The European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), The Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI) and the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Adelaide.
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Moderator
Dr Priya Chacko (Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Adelaide, Australia).
Speakers
“Politics, ethics, and emotions in ‘New India’,” by Dr Ajay Gudavarthy (Associate Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi).
“Ram Rajya 2.0: How nostalgia aids the populist politics of neo-colonial Hindutva futurism,” by Maggie Paul (PhD candidate in Politics and International Relations at the University of Adelaide, Australia).
“Constitutional roots of judicial populism in India,” by Dr Anuj Bhuwania (Professor at the Jindal Global Law School in India & currently Senior Visiting Fellow at the SCRIPTS ‘Cluster of Excellence’ at Freie University Berlin).
“India’s refugee policy towards Rohingya refugees: An intersectional approach to populism,” by Dr Monika Barthwal-Datta (Senior Lecturer in International Security at the University of New South Wales, Sydney) and Dr Shweta Singh (Associate Professor of International Relations at the South Asian University, New Delhi, India).
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Brief Biographies and Abstracts
Dr Priya Chacko is Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Adelaide. Her current research includes authoritarian populism, economic nationalism, and foreign policy, with a focus on India and diaspora politics, racial capitalism and foreign policy, with a focus on Australia.
Politics, ethics, and emotions in ‘New India
Bio: Dr Ajay Gudavarthy is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is a regular contributor to leading news dailies in India that include The Hindu, The Indian express, The Telegraph, The Wire, The Outlook and Newsclick. He has appeared on and shared his views with various international print media and news channels including Channel News Asia (Singapore), Al Jajeera, The Conversation, South China Morning Post, BBC, The Independent and The Time Magazine, Friday Times, Khaleej times, The Dawn, Arab News, The Diplomat, among others.
Ram Rajya 2.0: How nostalgia aids the populist politics of neo-colonial Hindutva futurism
Abstract: This presentation to argue that authoritarian populist politics in India utilizes populist discursive and mobilizing strategies to advance a ‘Hindutva futurism’ built on the neoliberal economics of market prosperity and a civilizationalist ideology which is preoccupied with internal disunity, external threats, and celebrating and recovering a lost civilizational glory. The symbolism of Hindutva futurism has been epitomized by an archetypal past-cum-future imaginary that has had many lives in India, Ram Rajya (Ram’s kingdom) – the utopian rule of an upper-caste Hindu God Ram in the epic Ramayana characterized by peace and prosperity. Through an exploration of the campaign to build a Ram temple on the site of a demolished mosque and Ram-themed films, the presentation will show that the invocation of Ram and Ram Rajya produces an affective economy of nostalgia. This utilizes the language of affective injury and restorative justice to invoke emotions related to resentment and aspiration to cultivate a populist cleavage between a persecuted Hindu people and privileged liberal-left ‘elites’ and religious minorities which justifies the neocolonial domination of the latter by the former.
Bios: Dr Priya Chackois Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Adelaide. Her current research includes authoritarian populism, economic nationalism, and foreign policy, with a focus on India and diaspora politics, racial capitalism and foreign policy, with a focus on Australia.
Maggie Paul is a PhD candidate in Politics and International Relations at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Her research interests include the contestations of citizenship in the South Asian context, politics at the urban margins as well as decolonial, post-development and pluriversal theory (and practice). Her current research focuses on how the colonial, and nationalist, construction of the “infiltrator” figure from Bangladesh affects contemporary citizenship in India, rendering it contingent.
Constitutional roots of judicial populism in India
Bio: Anuj Bhuwania is currently a Senior Visiting Fellow at the SCRIPTS ‘Cluster of Excellence’ at Freie University Berlin. He is a Professor at the Jindal Global Law School in India. He has previously held visiting positions at the University of Cambridge, University of Göttingen, Jawaharlal Nehru University and at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. He is the author of ‘Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India’ (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Email address: anujbhuwania@gmail.com
India’s refugee policy towards Rohingya refugees: An intersectional approach to populism
Abstract: Contemporary investigations into links between populism and foreign policy overwhelmingly favor an ideational approach to populism, are largely aimed at developing universally applicable insights or rules and treat foreign policy as a set of discrete domains for action. Such studies are constrained in their ability to generate complex, nuanced and empirically rich understandings of how domestic populist politics link to shifts in policy preferences and outcomes in the name of ‘foreign policy.’ In this study, we develop an intersectional analytical approach to investigating the links between populism and foreign policy, through a case study of India’s shifting refugee policy towards Rohingyas under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Modi government. We conceptualize refugee policy as foreign policy and interrogate the categories of ‘the people’ and ‘other’ not as monolithic, but as intersectionally constituted along varying discursive identity constellations, and investigate them in the context of regional political dynamics. In these ways, we expand the scope of populist foreign policy analysis, and highlight how foreign policies of populist governments cannot be understood without insights into the complex intersectional ways in which the ‘people’ and the ‘other’ are co-constituted and reinforced in and through ‘foreign policy.’
Bios: Dr Monika Barthwal-Datta is a Senior Lecturer in International Security at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney. Her research areas include critical security studies, decolonial feminist approaches, non-traditional security issues, strategic narratives, South Asian security, and Indian foreign policy. She is the author of Understanding Security Practices in South Asia: Securitization Theory and the role of non-state actors (Abingdon: Routledge 2012) and Food Security in Asia: Challenges, Policies and Implications
Dr Shweta Singh is Associate Professor of International Relations at the South Asian University (New Delhi, India). She is co-editor (with Tiina Vaittinen and Catia Confortini) of the Edinburgh University Press series titled Edinburg Feminist Studies on Peace, Justice and Violence. Her recent publications include the special issue (co-edited with Ingrid Nyoborg, and Gunhild Hoogensen Gjorv), ‘Re-thinking Violence, Everyday and (In) Security: Feminist/Intersectional Interventions,’ Journal of Human Security (2022) and ‘Towards an intersectional approach to populism: comparative perspectives from Finland and India’ (with Elise Feron), Contemporary Politics (2021). She has served as the UN Women International Expert on Populism, Nationalism, and Gender (Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific).
