Kaul, N. (2017) "Rise of the Political Right in India: Hindutva-Development Mix, Modi Myth, And Dualities", Journal of Labor and Society, Volume 20, Number 4, pp. 523-548., 2017
We are witnessing a global phenomenon of the rise of right-wing leaders who combine nationalist r... more We are witnessing a global phenomenon of the rise of right-wing leaders who combine nationalist rhetoric with a claim to challenge the pernicious effects of neoliberalism. But, upon achieving power, they do not oppose the business elite, instead, while paying lip service to the victims of economic processes, they direct the blame for those structural problems upon the minorities and " Others " within the rightwing nationalist imagination. In the Indian context, this is typified by the rise of Narendra Modi. The Modi-led BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) and its coming to power in 2014 has similarities with Trump, and is also different from the earlier incarnations of the BJP. In the first part of this article, I explain the innovative nature of the specific Modi-mix of Hindutva and Development, and outline the toxic impact his right-wing populist government has had on a broad spectrum of Indian society and polity. However, in spite of the visible increase in real and symbolic violence across the country, Modi continues to remain popular and wield great influence. The second part of the article answers this apparent puzzle by providing an account of the work of the " Modi myth " that projects him as an ascetic, paternal, and decisive ruler. This political myth is constantly reinforced through medium, speech, and performance. Further, given the many disparate constituencies with differing concerns that Modi-led BJP addresses itself to, the policy inconsistencies are reconciled by a strategic and systematic use of " forked tongue " speech that presents the different interests as being uniform. A populist right-wing politics is constructed out of keeping these dualities in motion by speaking to the different constituencies with a forked tongue. I conclude by giving three examples of management of such dual domains: corporate/grassroots, national/international, India/Bharat.
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Books by Nitasha Kaul
“Introduction. The Himalayas from its edges: networks, identities and place-making”, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research [Online], 62 | 2024.
URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ebhr/2248
Centre d'études sud-asiatiques et himalayennes (UMR8077 CNRS/EHESS)
Nitasha Kaul re-examines certain understood ways of thinking about economics as a discipline, especially in relation to questions of identity and difference. This book explores the notion that economics is not a timeless, universal, objective science but a changing response to the problems of knowledge and administration. The epistemological inheritance of economics is ‘rooted’ in the enlightenment, and it also inherits the liberal paradoxes of that age. Kaul argues that the juxtaposition of identity with economic (culture/economy) is essential, and can only be achieved by critiquing establishment economists’ discourse on identity, and taking feminist poststructural and postcolonial work seriously. The author challenges the assumption that there is a simple linkage between the category economic, the entity economy and the study of economics. She envisions an economics in the plural: contextual, social, political – econo-mixes.
This book brings together some of the most urgent topics of the day – the power of economics as a discipline, the questions of difference and the politics of identity, and feminist perspectives on this. It will be particularly relevant to heterodox economists, feminist theorists, postcolonial studies scholars, social and cultural theorists, philosophers and history of ideas or intellectual history of thought scholars.
A new addition to critical Kashmir studies resources: ‘Women and Kashmir: Knowing in Our Own Ways, ‘ published in Review of Women’s Studies, Economic and Political Weekly. An all Kashmiri women-scholars team: Nitasha Kaul and Ather Zia as guest co-editors, authors include Mona Bhan, Hafsa Kanjwal , Inshah Malik, Mir Fatimah Kanth, Samreen Mushtaq, Uzma Falak, Essar Batool and Aaliya Anjum.
We urge the readers of this review issue to move beyond the comfort zone of merely acknowledging the vulnerabilities of the marginalised Kashmiris, by equalising the illicitness of the military and the militants, by thinking past the self-serv- ing machinations of the Indian power brokers at the centre and Kashmiri mainstream politicians at the periphery, and by asking the difficult question: How long must ordinary Kashmiris suffer their traumatic history as endless memory before their calls for freedom and justice are taken seriously enough to warrant a political resolution?
The Kashmiri women herein speak of myriad things: of spectacles and street protests; women’s companionships and female alliances; women’s movements and imaginaries of resistance; the links between militarisation, militarism, and the creation of impunity by the law; competing patriarchies and sexual violence as they seek to break Kashmiri communities; the infrastructures of control that limit their mobilities, bodies, and experiences; public grief at funerals as a challenge to Indian sovereignty over Kashmir; and autobiographies, oral histories, and the textures of political memories.
In the powerful idiom of postcolonial criticality, the ques- tion we should ask is not “Can the Kashmiri women speak?” but rather “Can you hear them?”'
[We would like to thank the guest editors Nitasha Kaul and Ather Zia, and the members of the editorial advisory group of the Review of Women's Studies Mary E John, J Devika, Kalpana Kannabiran, Samita Sen, and Padmini Swaminathan for putting together this issue on " Women and Kashmir."]
Papers by Nitasha Kaul
Kaul, N. (2024) "Arundhati Roy ‘anti-terror’ charge part of a push to silence Modi’s critics", The Conversation (UK), 20 June.
Roy and Sheikh Showkat Hussain, formerly professor at the Central University of Kashmir, have been charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) – an anti-terrorism measure. The charges relate to “provocative” speeches they made at a seminar in October 2010, which apparently “propagated the separation of Kashmir from India”...
But all this was 14 years ago, before the BJP took power nationally in 2014. So why is the Modi government risking international opprobrium by persecuting such an internationally famous figure about what she said years in the past?...
The answer is that picking a fight over Kashmir is an easy win for Modi’s style of Hindu nationalism. Anyone who insists on raising the myriad problems of militarisation, mismanagement, human rights abuses and repression in Kashmir tends to be accused of being anti-national, seditious, pro-Pakistani or terrorist...
As a result, the BJP is clearly ultra-sensitive about Kashmir. Targeting a globally prominent figure such as Roy in such a vindictive manner is part of a multi-pronged political strategy aimed at baiting and discrediting opponents of Modi’s Hindu nationalist ambitions...
The BJP’s wants to use the persecution of Roy – and other progressives and Kashmiris – as leverage over its main political rival, the Congress Party-led Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (India), which outperformed expectations in the recent election. If it speaks out over stunts like this, it risks being delegitimised as “anti-national”. If it stays silent, it risks alienating its own progressive supporters...
Its indicative of a wider pattern in Indian politics under Modi. This sort of targeting is particularly pronounced for those who defend democratic values and critique Modi’s authoritarianism – but who have also spoken in support of Kashmiri people’s rights or aspirations at any time in the past...
I know this from bitter experience. I’m an academic and author of Kashmiri origin focusing on democracy and human rights in India and beyond. In 2019, I provided testimony at a US congressional hearing on Kashmir, that pro-Modi government news agencies sought to suppress.
When Congress leaders spoke in my support, the Karnataka BJP referred to me as a “Pakistani sympathiser who wants India’s break up” and criticised “#AntiNationalCongress” for having invited me...
Various other authors, journalists, academics and activists have been similarly targeted. Many who have spoken up from Srinagar or from Delhi have been imprisoned.
Roy’s persecution is part of this wider pattern which attempts to delegitimise any criticism of Modi and his government and clamp down on freedom of speech, while trying to trap the opposition into being called anti-national. Roy and Showkat’s persecution must be seen for what it is: a chess move that is part of a strategy designed to continue the undermining of democracy in India.
Kaul, N. (2023) "Subalternizing Geopolitics: Bhutan as a Small Himalayan State", Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs (GJAA), Policy Forum on 'Beyond Great Power Competition: Subregional Strategies and Priorities', Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington D.C., Volume 9, pp. 11-18.
What would it mean to study great power politics in a world where the existence, agency, strategy, and the priorities of small states were acknowledged and taken seriously?¹ Geopolitics, in its conventional sense, has always focused on the perspectives of major powers, which has led to the accepted narratives of zero-sum games and national honorbased clashes. In such narratives, small states at the periphery of large powers are seen merely as placeholders-as real estate, buffers or transit routes, as sites of power play. This thinking perpetuates border disputes, significant restrictions on connectivity and relationality, and have implications for all entities concerned. I invite you to instead think about what I have previously called "subalternizing geopolitics." To consider the center from the periphery in any context is vital because the margin is a revealing place; the common-sensical assumptions and self-reinforcing truisms of the dominant status quo narrative are not obvious there. Effectively, looking at geopolitics from Delhi in India or Beijing in China provides a different perspective on the underpinnings of international ties as opposed to looking at it from Thimphu in Bhutan. To understand the workings of great power, and to be able to anticipate socio-political dynamics and their influence upon the classical tropes of territory, conflict, alliances, and so on, it is essential to pay much greater attention to the disaggregations that comprise of sub-regional shifts, including...
https://academic.oup.com/isr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isr/viab028/6303451
Abstract (in English)
Contemporary democracy in multiple countries has been under assault from what has been variously called right-wing populism, authoritarian populism, cultural majoritarianism, new nativism, new nationalism, quasi-fascism, and neo-fascism. While the authoritarian behaviors of several electorally legitimated leaders in these countries have been in focus, their misogyny is seen as merely an incidental part of their personality. This article highlights the centrality of misogyny in legitimating the political goals and regimes of a set of leaders in contemporary democracies—Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro, Duterte, and Erdogan (all but Trump are still in power)—in countries from across Global North/South, non-West/West, with mixed populations and different majority religions. The argument proceeds as follows. First, I clarify the conceptualization of misogyny and explain why it matters. Second, I demonstrate the substantive misogyny of political leaders who are/have been heads of hegemonic right-wing political projects in five contemporary democracies (Trumpism, Modification, Bolsonarismo, Dutertismo, and Erdoganism). Third, I put forward three systematic ways in which misogyny works as an effective political strategy for these projects, by enabling a certain politics of identity to demonize opponents as feminine/inferior/anti-national, scavenging upon progressive ideas (rather than rejecting them) and distorting them, and sustaining and defending a militarized masculinist approach to policy and delegitimizing challenges to it. This article, thus, contributes to the literature on how masculinity, misogyny, and gender norms more broadly intersect with political legitimacy, by arguing for understanding the analytic centrality of misogyny to the exercise of political power in multiple global projects.
Abstract (in Spanish)
La democracia contemporánea en varios países ha sido atacada por lo que se ha denominado de diversas maneras como populismo de derecha, populismo autoritario, mayoritarismo cultural, nuevo nativismo, nuevo nacionalismo, cuasifascismo, neofascismo. Si bien se ha centrado la atención en los comportamientos autoritarios de varios líderes legitimados electoralmente en estos países, su misoginia se considera simplemente una parte incidental de su personalidad. En este artículo, se destaca la centralidad de la misoginia en la legitimación de los objetivos políticos y los regímenes de un conjunto de líderes en las democracias contemporáneas: Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro, Duterte y Erdogan (todos menos Trump se encuentran en el poder) en países del norte/sur global, orientales y occidentales, con poblaciones mixtas y diferentes religiones mayoritarias. El argumento procede de la siguiente manera. En primer lugar, aclaro la conceptualización de la misoginia y explico por qué es importante. En segundo lugar, demuestro la misoginia sustantiva de los líderes políticos que son, o han sido, jefes de proyectos políticos hegemónicos de derecha en cinco democracias contemporáneas (trumpismo, modificación, bolsonarismo, dutertismo, erdoganismo). Por último, planteo tres formas sistemáticas en las que la misoginia funciona como una estrategia política eficaz para estos proyectos, al permitir: una determinada política de identidad para demonizar a los oponentes como femeninos/inferiores/antinacionales; una búsqueda de las ideas progresistas (en lugar de rechazarlas) y distorsionarlas; sostener y defender un enfoque masculinista militarizado de la política y deslegitimar los desafíos que se le plantean. Por lo tanto, en este artículo se contribuye a la literatura sobre cómo la masculinidad, la misoginia y las normas de género se cruzan de manera más amplia con la legitimidad política, al defender la comprensión de la centralidad analítica de la misoginia en el ejercicio del poder político en múltiples proyectos globales.
Abstract (in French)
La démocratie contemporaine de multiples pays a été prise d'assaut par ce qui a été diversement qualifié de populisme de droite, de populisme autoritaire, de majoritarisme culturel, de nouveau nativisme, de nouveau nationalisme, de quasi-fascisme ou de néo-fascisme. Bien qu'une attention ait été accordée aux comportements autoritaires de plusieurs dirigeants légitimés par l’électorat de ces pays, leur misogynie est souvent simplement considérée comme étant une composante accessoire de leur personnalité. Cet article met en évidence la centralité de la misogynie dans la légitimation des objectifs et régimes politiques de tout un ensemble de dirigeants de démocraties contemporaines—Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro, Duterte et Erdogan (tous sauf Trump sont encore au pouvoir)—de pays du monde entier, qu'ils soient des pays du Nord, du Sud, occidentaux ou non-occidentaux, et dont les populations sont mixtes et les religions majoritaires sont différentes. Je traite cet argument de la manière suivante: D'abord, je commence par clarifier la conceptualisation de la misogynie et par expliquer en quoi elle est importante. Ensuite, je démontre la misogynie substantielle des dirigeants politiques qui sont/ont été à la tête de projets politiques de droite hégémonique dans cinq démocraties contemporaines (Trumpisme, Modification, Bolsonarisme, Dutertisme, Erdoganisme). Enfin, je mets en avant trois manières systématiques dont la misogynie fonctionne comme stratégie politique efficace pour ces projets, en permettant: une certaine politique de l'identité diabolisant les opposants comme étant féminins/inférieurs/anti-nationaux, une récupération et une déformation des idées progressistes (plutôt que de les rejeter), et le maintien et la défense d'une approche masculiniste militarisée de la politique tout en délégitimant les contestations de celle-ci. Cet article contribue ainsi à la littérature portant sur la façon dont la masculinité, la misogynie et les normes de genre s'entrecroisent avec la légitimité politique en plaidant pour une compréhension de la centralité analytique de la misogynie dans l'exercice du pouvoir politique dans de multiples projets mondiaux.
This article makes a novel contribution to the literature on Bhutan's International Relations (IR) by shifting the focus away from an exclusively India-China framing. First, it points out how small states are increasingly salient but under-studied in IR and how non-European non-island states like Bhutan are even more so, and why we gain by addressing this. Second, it shows how the conventional study of Bhutan has solely focused on its friendship with India and the threat to it/this from China, and why it is important that these conventional narratives be critically examined. In doing so, we perceive the endogenous drivers of Bhutan's foreign policies, for instance via Bhutan's stance on the Doklam issue. Third, going beyond the three typical determinants (economic factors, bilateral relations with India, and threats from China), the article provides two additional axes of understanding Bhutan's foreign policies-bridging of attributional distances and learning from experience.
The post-2014 period in India has seen a clear political shift under the leadership of Modi-led BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), a ruling party ideologically parented by the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), a right-wing Hindu-nationalist paramilitary volunteer organization that has millions of members nationwide. These years have been marked by a resurgent Hindu nationalism referred to as Hindutva. Hindutva as an ideology of majoritarian nationalism claims to make India a strong nation and gain international recognition as a rising power. However, both domestically and internationally, it is evident that contemporary that India is marked by a consistent erosion of liberal democratic norms whereby constitutionally guaranteed rights continue to be steadily qualified, undermined, and diminished, alongside a lack of promised improvement in global rankings on various indicators. Moreover, there has been an increase in anti-minority targeting, which is multidimensional and pursued through non/violent and extra/legal means. In this article, I explain the broad backdrop to political transformation and increased violence in India and then specifically focus on explicating two key dynamics—one, the multiple ways in which changes in the sphere of education have been crucial to how dissent is securitized in India and two, how the internalized hierarchical ordering of ideas of citizenship within Hindutva means that Hindu males are seen as the normative citizens and Muslims as the radical Other that can be targeted with exclusion, discrimination, humiliation, even lynching. Using the example of the multiplying vocabularies of “Jihad,” I highlight how any aspect of Muslim life or livelihood can be interpreted as a form of sinister “Jihad” deserving a justifiably violent response and/or economic marginalization. I conclude by referring to the sustained and ongoing nature of this transformation of India and call for us to recognize and challenge it.
Critical scholarship can be a way of enacting insurrections against entrenched and enduring dogmatisms of the nation-state and its inalienable right to systematically deploy violence against selective Others. This article focuses upon the violent bordering practices of the nation-statist system, their connexion to the bordering of knowledges, and their impact upon specific kinds of bodies at the border, which together enforce a systemic vulnerability that is tied to legacies of colonialism, slavery, and capitalism. In the first part, I reflect upon the violence of bordering practices in the nation-statist system, foregrounding how those who predominantly receive this violence in the form of death and debility are the racialized Others. I put forth four specific implications of these violent bordering practices: they enable a cascade of interlinked dehumanizations of people within the nation-state borders; they occlude from view how any nation-state is not homogeneous over time in terms of what one might see as national culture; they allow economic processes to be perceived as scientific and abstract rather than as embedded in the realms of contested political jurisdictions; and they render and sustain the nation-state itself as a racialized construct that both produces and profits from class inequality in contemporary capitalism. In the second part, I argue for the need to perceive the link between violent bordering practices and bordered knowledges, highlighting and synthesizing insights from across disciplines that can aid in asking counter-hegemonic questions. In conclusion, and as part of necessary anti-national scholarly enquiry, I call for a multidimensional and sustained critical stance towards the nation-states' rights to enforce borders.
Kaul, N. (2023) "Bharat: why the recent push to change India’s name has a hidden agenda", The Conversation (UK), 8 September.
(22 August 2023)
Since 2014, under the rule of the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a new chapter has being authored in India’s history, whereby the country has come to deviate from the basic principles of democracy, minority rights, and executive accountability. This needs greater recognition and urgent action.
“Introduction. The Himalayas from its edges: networks, identities and place-making”, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research [Online], 62 | 2024.
URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ebhr/2248
Centre d'études sud-asiatiques et himalayennes (UMR8077 CNRS/EHESS)
Nitasha Kaul re-examines certain understood ways of thinking about economics as a discipline, especially in relation to questions of identity and difference. This book explores the notion that economics is not a timeless, universal, objective science but a changing response to the problems of knowledge and administration. The epistemological inheritance of economics is ‘rooted’ in the enlightenment, and it also inherits the liberal paradoxes of that age. Kaul argues that the juxtaposition of identity with economic (culture/economy) is essential, and can only be achieved by critiquing establishment economists’ discourse on identity, and taking feminist poststructural and postcolonial work seriously. The author challenges the assumption that there is a simple linkage between the category economic, the entity economy and the study of economics. She envisions an economics in the plural: contextual, social, political – econo-mixes.
This book brings together some of the most urgent topics of the day – the power of economics as a discipline, the questions of difference and the politics of identity, and feminist perspectives on this. It will be particularly relevant to heterodox economists, feminist theorists, postcolonial studies scholars, social and cultural theorists, philosophers and history of ideas or intellectual history of thought scholars.
A new addition to critical Kashmir studies resources: ‘Women and Kashmir: Knowing in Our Own Ways, ‘ published in Review of Women’s Studies, Economic and Political Weekly. An all Kashmiri women-scholars team: Nitasha Kaul and Ather Zia as guest co-editors, authors include Mona Bhan, Hafsa Kanjwal , Inshah Malik, Mir Fatimah Kanth, Samreen Mushtaq, Uzma Falak, Essar Batool and Aaliya Anjum.
We urge the readers of this review issue to move beyond the comfort zone of merely acknowledging the vulnerabilities of the marginalised Kashmiris, by equalising the illicitness of the military and the militants, by thinking past the self-serv- ing machinations of the Indian power brokers at the centre and Kashmiri mainstream politicians at the periphery, and by asking the difficult question: How long must ordinary Kashmiris suffer their traumatic history as endless memory before their calls for freedom and justice are taken seriously enough to warrant a political resolution?
The Kashmiri women herein speak of myriad things: of spectacles and street protests; women’s companionships and female alliances; women’s movements and imaginaries of resistance; the links between militarisation, militarism, and the creation of impunity by the law; competing patriarchies and sexual violence as they seek to break Kashmiri communities; the infrastructures of control that limit their mobilities, bodies, and experiences; public grief at funerals as a challenge to Indian sovereignty over Kashmir; and autobiographies, oral histories, and the textures of political memories.
In the powerful idiom of postcolonial criticality, the ques- tion we should ask is not “Can the Kashmiri women speak?” but rather “Can you hear them?”'
[We would like to thank the guest editors Nitasha Kaul and Ather Zia, and the members of the editorial advisory group of the Review of Women's Studies Mary E John, J Devika, Kalpana Kannabiran, Samita Sen, and Padmini Swaminathan for putting together this issue on " Women and Kashmir."]
Kaul, N. (2024) "Arundhati Roy ‘anti-terror’ charge part of a push to silence Modi’s critics", The Conversation (UK), 20 June.
Roy and Sheikh Showkat Hussain, formerly professor at the Central University of Kashmir, have been charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) – an anti-terrorism measure. The charges relate to “provocative” speeches they made at a seminar in October 2010, which apparently “propagated the separation of Kashmir from India”...
But all this was 14 years ago, before the BJP took power nationally in 2014. So why is the Modi government risking international opprobrium by persecuting such an internationally famous figure about what she said years in the past?...
The answer is that picking a fight over Kashmir is an easy win for Modi’s style of Hindu nationalism. Anyone who insists on raising the myriad problems of militarisation, mismanagement, human rights abuses and repression in Kashmir tends to be accused of being anti-national, seditious, pro-Pakistani or terrorist...
As a result, the BJP is clearly ultra-sensitive about Kashmir. Targeting a globally prominent figure such as Roy in such a vindictive manner is part of a multi-pronged political strategy aimed at baiting and discrediting opponents of Modi’s Hindu nationalist ambitions...
The BJP’s wants to use the persecution of Roy – and other progressives and Kashmiris – as leverage over its main political rival, the Congress Party-led Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (India), which outperformed expectations in the recent election. If it speaks out over stunts like this, it risks being delegitimised as “anti-national”. If it stays silent, it risks alienating its own progressive supporters...
Its indicative of a wider pattern in Indian politics under Modi. This sort of targeting is particularly pronounced for those who defend democratic values and critique Modi’s authoritarianism – but who have also spoken in support of Kashmiri people’s rights or aspirations at any time in the past...
I know this from bitter experience. I’m an academic and author of Kashmiri origin focusing on democracy and human rights in India and beyond. In 2019, I provided testimony at a US congressional hearing on Kashmir, that pro-Modi government news agencies sought to suppress.
When Congress leaders spoke in my support, the Karnataka BJP referred to me as a “Pakistani sympathiser who wants India’s break up” and criticised “#AntiNationalCongress” for having invited me...
Various other authors, journalists, academics and activists have been similarly targeted. Many who have spoken up from Srinagar or from Delhi have been imprisoned.
Roy’s persecution is part of this wider pattern which attempts to delegitimise any criticism of Modi and his government and clamp down on freedom of speech, while trying to trap the opposition into being called anti-national. Roy and Showkat’s persecution must be seen for what it is: a chess move that is part of a strategy designed to continue the undermining of democracy in India.
Kaul, N. (2023) "Subalternizing Geopolitics: Bhutan as a Small Himalayan State", Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs (GJAA), Policy Forum on 'Beyond Great Power Competition: Subregional Strategies and Priorities', Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington D.C., Volume 9, pp. 11-18.
What would it mean to study great power politics in a world where the existence, agency, strategy, and the priorities of small states were acknowledged and taken seriously?¹ Geopolitics, in its conventional sense, has always focused on the perspectives of major powers, which has led to the accepted narratives of zero-sum games and national honorbased clashes. In such narratives, small states at the periphery of large powers are seen merely as placeholders-as real estate, buffers or transit routes, as sites of power play. This thinking perpetuates border disputes, significant restrictions on connectivity and relationality, and have implications for all entities concerned. I invite you to instead think about what I have previously called "subalternizing geopolitics." To consider the center from the periphery in any context is vital because the margin is a revealing place; the common-sensical assumptions and self-reinforcing truisms of the dominant status quo narrative are not obvious there. Effectively, looking at geopolitics from Delhi in India or Beijing in China provides a different perspective on the underpinnings of international ties as opposed to looking at it from Thimphu in Bhutan. To understand the workings of great power, and to be able to anticipate socio-political dynamics and their influence upon the classical tropes of territory, conflict, alliances, and so on, it is essential to pay much greater attention to the disaggregations that comprise of sub-regional shifts, including...
https://academic.oup.com/isr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isr/viab028/6303451
Abstract (in English)
Contemporary democracy in multiple countries has been under assault from what has been variously called right-wing populism, authoritarian populism, cultural majoritarianism, new nativism, new nationalism, quasi-fascism, and neo-fascism. While the authoritarian behaviors of several electorally legitimated leaders in these countries have been in focus, their misogyny is seen as merely an incidental part of their personality. This article highlights the centrality of misogyny in legitimating the political goals and regimes of a set of leaders in contemporary democracies—Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro, Duterte, and Erdogan (all but Trump are still in power)—in countries from across Global North/South, non-West/West, with mixed populations and different majority religions. The argument proceeds as follows. First, I clarify the conceptualization of misogyny and explain why it matters. Second, I demonstrate the substantive misogyny of political leaders who are/have been heads of hegemonic right-wing political projects in five contemporary democracies (Trumpism, Modification, Bolsonarismo, Dutertismo, and Erdoganism). Third, I put forward three systematic ways in which misogyny works as an effective political strategy for these projects, by enabling a certain politics of identity to demonize opponents as feminine/inferior/anti-national, scavenging upon progressive ideas (rather than rejecting them) and distorting them, and sustaining and defending a militarized masculinist approach to policy and delegitimizing challenges to it. This article, thus, contributes to the literature on how masculinity, misogyny, and gender norms more broadly intersect with political legitimacy, by arguing for understanding the analytic centrality of misogyny to the exercise of political power in multiple global projects.
Abstract (in Spanish)
La democracia contemporánea en varios países ha sido atacada por lo que se ha denominado de diversas maneras como populismo de derecha, populismo autoritario, mayoritarismo cultural, nuevo nativismo, nuevo nacionalismo, cuasifascismo, neofascismo. Si bien se ha centrado la atención en los comportamientos autoritarios de varios líderes legitimados electoralmente en estos países, su misoginia se considera simplemente una parte incidental de su personalidad. En este artículo, se destaca la centralidad de la misoginia en la legitimación de los objetivos políticos y los regímenes de un conjunto de líderes en las democracias contemporáneas: Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro, Duterte y Erdogan (todos menos Trump se encuentran en el poder) en países del norte/sur global, orientales y occidentales, con poblaciones mixtas y diferentes religiones mayoritarias. El argumento procede de la siguiente manera. En primer lugar, aclaro la conceptualización de la misoginia y explico por qué es importante. En segundo lugar, demuestro la misoginia sustantiva de los líderes políticos que son, o han sido, jefes de proyectos políticos hegemónicos de derecha en cinco democracias contemporáneas (trumpismo, modificación, bolsonarismo, dutertismo, erdoganismo). Por último, planteo tres formas sistemáticas en las que la misoginia funciona como una estrategia política eficaz para estos proyectos, al permitir: una determinada política de identidad para demonizar a los oponentes como femeninos/inferiores/antinacionales; una búsqueda de las ideas progresistas (en lugar de rechazarlas) y distorsionarlas; sostener y defender un enfoque masculinista militarizado de la política y deslegitimar los desafíos que se le plantean. Por lo tanto, en este artículo se contribuye a la literatura sobre cómo la masculinidad, la misoginia y las normas de género se cruzan de manera más amplia con la legitimidad política, al defender la comprensión de la centralidad analítica de la misoginia en el ejercicio del poder político en múltiples proyectos globales.
Abstract (in French)
La démocratie contemporaine de multiples pays a été prise d'assaut par ce qui a été diversement qualifié de populisme de droite, de populisme autoritaire, de majoritarisme culturel, de nouveau nativisme, de nouveau nationalisme, de quasi-fascisme ou de néo-fascisme. Bien qu'une attention ait été accordée aux comportements autoritaires de plusieurs dirigeants légitimés par l’électorat de ces pays, leur misogynie est souvent simplement considérée comme étant une composante accessoire de leur personnalité. Cet article met en évidence la centralité de la misogynie dans la légitimation des objectifs et régimes politiques de tout un ensemble de dirigeants de démocraties contemporaines—Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro, Duterte et Erdogan (tous sauf Trump sont encore au pouvoir)—de pays du monde entier, qu'ils soient des pays du Nord, du Sud, occidentaux ou non-occidentaux, et dont les populations sont mixtes et les religions majoritaires sont différentes. Je traite cet argument de la manière suivante: D'abord, je commence par clarifier la conceptualisation de la misogynie et par expliquer en quoi elle est importante. Ensuite, je démontre la misogynie substantielle des dirigeants politiques qui sont/ont été à la tête de projets politiques de droite hégémonique dans cinq démocraties contemporaines (Trumpisme, Modification, Bolsonarisme, Dutertisme, Erdoganisme). Enfin, je mets en avant trois manières systématiques dont la misogynie fonctionne comme stratégie politique efficace pour ces projets, en permettant: une certaine politique de l'identité diabolisant les opposants comme étant féminins/inférieurs/anti-nationaux, une récupération et une déformation des idées progressistes (plutôt que de les rejeter), et le maintien et la défense d'une approche masculiniste militarisée de la politique tout en délégitimant les contestations de celle-ci. Cet article contribue ainsi à la littérature portant sur la façon dont la masculinité, la misogynie et les normes de genre s'entrecroisent avec la légitimité politique en plaidant pour une compréhension de la centralité analytique de la misogynie dans l'exercice du pouvoir politique dans de multiples projets mondiaux.
This article makes a novel contribution to the literature on Bhutan's International Relations (IR) by shifting the focus away from an exclusively India-China framing. First, it points out how small states are increasingly salient but under-studied in IR and how non-European non-island states like Bhutan are even more so, and why we gain by addressing this. Second, it shows how the conventional study of Bhutan has solely focused on its friendship with India and the threat to it/this from China, and why it is important that these conventional narratives be critically examined. In doing so, we perceive the endogenous drivers of Bhutan's foreign policies, for instance via Bhutan's stance on the Doklam issue. Third, going beyond the three typical determinants (economic factors, bilateral relations with India, and threats from China), the article provides two additional axes of understanding Bhutan's foreign policies-bridging of attributional distances and learning from experience.
The post-2014 period in India has seen a clear political shift under the leadership of Modi-led BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), a ruling party ideologically parented by the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), a right-wing Hindu-nationalist paramilitary volunteer organization that has millions of members nationwide. These years have been marked by a resurgent Hindu nationalism referred to as Hindutva. Hindutva as an ideology of majoritarian nationalism claims to make India a strong nation and gain international recognition as a rising power. However, both domestically and internationally, it is evident that contemporary that India is marked by a consistent erosion of liberal democratic norms whereby constitutionally guaranteed rights continue to be steadily qualified, undermined, and diminished, alongside a lack of promised improvement in global rankings on various indicators. Moreover, there has been an increase in anti-minority targeting, which is multidimensional and pursued through non/violent and extra/legal means. In this article, I explain the broad backdrop to political transformation and increased violence in India and then specifically focus on explicating two key dynamics—one, the multiple ways in which changes in the sphere of education have been crucial to how dissent is securitized in India and two, how the internalized hierarchical ordering of ideas of citizenship within Hindutva means that Hindu males are seen as the normative citizens and Muslims as the radical Other that can be targeted with exclusion, discrimination, humiliation, even lynching. Using the example of the multiplying vocabularies of “Jihad,” I highlight how any aspect of Muslim life or livelihood can be interpreted as a form of sinister “Jihad” deserving a justifiably violent response and/or economic marginalization. I conclude by referring to the sustained and ongoing nature of this transformation of India and call for us to recognize and challenge it.
Critical scholarship can be a way of enacting insurrections against entrenched and enduring dogmatisms of the nation-state and its inalienable right to systematically deploy violence against selective Others. This article focuses upon the violent bordering practices of the nation-statist system, their connexion to the bordering of knowledges, and their impact upon specific kinds of bodies at the border, which together enforce a systemic vulnerability that is tied to legacies of colonialism, slavery, and capitalism. In the first part, I reflect upon the violence of bordering practices in the nation-statist system, foregrounding how those who predominantly receive this violence in the form of death and debility are the racialized Others. I put forth four specific implications of these violent bordering practices: they enable a cascade of interlinked dehumanizations of people within the nation-state borders; they occlude from view how any nation-state is not homogeneous over time in terms of what one might see as national culture; they allow economic processes to be perceived as scientific and abstract rather than as embedded in the realms of contested political jurisdictions; and they render and sustain the nation-state itself as a racialized construct that both produces and profits from class inequality in contemporary capitalism. In the second part, I argue for the need to perceive the link between violent bordering practices and bordered knowledges, highlighting and synthesizing insights from across disciplines that can aid in asking counter-hegemonic questions. In conclusion, and as part of necessary anti-national scholarly enquiry, I call for a multidimensional and sustained critical stance towards the nation-states' rights to enforce borders.
Kaul, N. (2023) "Bharat: why the recent push to change India’s name has a hidden agenda", The Conversation (UK), 8 September.
(22 August 2023)
Since 2014, under the rule of the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a new chapter has being authored in India’s history, whereby the country has come to deviate from the basic principles of democracy, minority rights, and executive accountability. This needs greater recognition and urgent action.
This article identifies the colonial imperative of 'we must develop them, with or without their consent', which is used by the Indian state in order to dominate Kashmiri Muslims, and argues that this notion of development combines patriarchal silencing of the subjugated as well as a gendered fantasy of liberating oppressed Kashmiri women and minorities. While the colonial nature of Indian rule over Kashmir has been a long-term phenomenon, the focus in this article will primarily be on a specific political transformation imposed by the Indian state since August 2019, when even the pretence of autonomy and recognition was given up, and all phenomena constituting coloniality became conspicuous and acute. Adopting a feminist lens, I highlight nine features of contemporary Indian coloniality in Kashmir: denial of consent, paternalism, violence, enforced silencing, lack of accountability, arbitrariness, divide and rule, humiliation and a specious idea of development. I further argue that such a notion of coloniality as development is better understood as 'econonationalism' (akin to homonationalism and femonationalism), where the supposed liberatory ideas are rhetorically deployed to mask a dehumanising subjugation.
In this episode of the Thinking Global podcast by E-IR (E-International Relations), Nitasha Kaul speaks with the team. Professor Kaul begins by exploring Democracy in India, discussing thinning press freedoms and the effect of technological change and surveillance on Indian Democracy. From here, Professor Kaul speaks about the status of Human Rights and Human Rights Abuses in Indian Administered Jammu and Kashmir, prior to an exploration of the response to such abuses by the international community.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/75dlzZJm063QkjKALdYSEw?si=8a56fd7bbbe54bf4
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nitasha-kaul-on-democracy-india-and-human-rights-in/id1678283886?i=1000613948714
Amazon: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/43049687-7385-4fd3-9e4b-2e115dcf63d1/episodes/7b10b960-dad3-4d43-969c-155d44985904/thinking-global-nitasha-kaul-on-democracy-india-and-human-rights-in-jammu-and-kashmir