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Emotions matter to politics. Despite their importance, emotions tend to be neglected in the study of such routine aspects of politics as elections. Whereas emotions have certainly been studied in the context of spectacular political moments, this volume attends to the passions generated by elections, which have all too often been dismissed as a relatively banal dimension of politics. The volume delves into the passions evoked by India’s 2019 general election, widely billed as a ‘battle for India’s soul’. It explores the processes of social, economic and cultural change within which the election was embedded. Contributions from economists, sociologists, geographers, anthropologists and political scientists shed light on a significant political moment in India.
-truth politics’, but also some of the grislier consequences of this trend. This chapter reflects on the passions excited by, and expressed though, these new social media platforms. The 2014 Indian general election, which brought the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, was widely feted as ‘India's first social media election’ (Khullar and Haridasani, 2014 ). During the election campaign, political parties in India, most notably the BJP, placed an unprecedented emphasis on using social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and
In 2019 the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), led by Narendra Modi, won a huge victory in the Indian general election, increasing their tally of seats from 2014, and reducing their nearest rivals to an ineffectual rump. Commentators and political scientists can't agree on the reasons for Modi's success. Was it a result of effective campaigning and unchecked amounts of money thrown into the coffers of the BJP machine? Was it, as in 2014, the strength of Modi's individual appeal – the common man taking on entrenched elites? Or was it a peculiarly
-modern social phenomena, from ISIS to the Tea Party to the Hindu nationalist movement associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party ( Mishra, 2017 ). And latterly, with considerable contribution from contemporary technologies of mass communication and voter manipulation, it has been institutionalised through the ballot box. The election (or near-election) of demagogic, right-wing nationalists in Europe in recent years seems indicative of a growing preference for illiberal democracy in the cultural home of liberalism. In opposition to liberal
The victory of the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2019 parliamentary election has transformative implications for Muslim politics in India. Until the electoral rise of the BJP during the late 1980s, Muslim politics was safely ensconced within the dominant secular politics of India. Since its inception in 1980, the BJP has sought to craft a strategy that ignored Muslim voters, perpetuating a politics of polarisation in order to forge a Hindu majority by moderating caste divisions with an unambiguous
NaMo was one such people-led campaign that was formed to mobilise the section of society that disseminates knowledge and information like professors, scholars, thinkers, authors, journalists and columnists. Why the campaign #Academics4NaMo In 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party won the election it was commonly referred to as a crushing defeat for Congress and a landslide victory for the BJP. The result was seen in terms of numbers, seats, vote share and margins. When it came to ideology, it was described in highly tainted
Introduction Among the most disingenuous and carefully orchestrated playbook strategies of the Hindutva fascist movement in India, of which the current Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is part and parcel, is the manner in which it pursues its Islamophobic agenda. Arguably, there are few other spaces where Islamophobia is as dangerously manifest as it is in India today (Bazian et al. 2019 : 3–10). This is not just because of the frequency of Islamophic attacks – a daily occurrence now – or the depth
opportunities are not immediately visible. This was evident in how the lack of jobs and the agrarian crisis did not hurt the Bharatiya Janata Party's electoral prospects in May 2019. 6 At the same time, even as cultural majoritarian politics is breaking trust and dividing one group from another, it is laying emphasis on creating a united, stronger India. Majoritarianism creates a complex web of both inclusion and exclusion. As it excludes religious minorities from basic citizenship rights
In August 2019, the re-elected Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in India abrogated Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which gave Kashmir special rights as a territory that had acceded to the Indian state in 1947 under considerable pressure. This abrogation in many ways consolidates India's military occupation of Kashmir. It would also allow Indian citizens from beyond Kashmir to buy land and make business investments in the region. Interestingly, however, within hours of the abrogation, social media was full of Hindu men from
On 7 September 2014, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the right-wing Hindu body, widely regarded as the parent organisation of Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling party of India, published cover stories on ‘love jihad’ in its weekly mouthpieces Panchjanya , in Hindi, and Organiser , in English. ‘Love jihad’ was alleged to be a conspiracy under which Muslim men were targeting vulnerable Hindu girls and forcefully converting them to Islam by feigning love through trickery and marriage. The publications urged people to raise the slogan ‘Love ever