ABSTRACT
The promotion of conservative gender values has been a feature of the rise of authoritarian populism globally. This paper argues that India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) uses populist strategies to promote a political project of marketized Hindutva, which melds neoliberalism and Hindu nationalism and appeals to men and women in distinctive ways. This reflects the gendered nature of neoliberalism, electoral imperatives and the patriarchal gender values of Hindu nationalism. Using populist discursive and mobilizational strategies, the BJP aims to suture together a broad social base, represented as “the people,” through the creation of an aspirational identity. Concurrently, it stokes resentment against establishment elites and religious minorities for holding back the people’s aspirations. This politics of resentful aspiration underpins an empowerment agenda of marketized social policies targeted at turning poor and lower-middle class women into virtuous market citizens who embody neoliberal rationalities and Hindu nationalist social values. It also drives a protection agenda mobilizing young, lower-middle class men and the strong arm of the state to protect women’s capacity to become virtuous market citizens. These agendas claim to empower and protect women but are deeply disempowering for the women and men they target and contain inherent contradictions.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Kanishka Jayasuriya, the two anonymous reviewers, and Robert J. Shepherd for their helpful suggestions which have vastly improved this article. Previous versions of this article were presented at the 2019 Women in Asia conference at Monash University under the auspices of the Monash Asia Initiative and Gender, Peace, and Security Centre and at a plenary panel at Deakin University’s “After Liberalism” conference. I thank the participants at these sessions for their comments and questions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Priya Chacko is a senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Adelaide, an academic fellow at the Australia-India Institute at the University of Melbourne, and a non-resident fellow of the Perth US-Asia Centre at the University of Western Australia. Her research focuses on the domestic and international politics and political economy of India and the Indo-Pacific region.
Notes
7 I adapt the term “suspension of difference” from Vedi Hadiz, who defines it more generally to describe the populist creation of a homogenous political identity in a context of the internal sociological diversity created by economic modernization. See Hadiz Citation2018, 567.
24 I use the term “financialization” to mean financial inclusion – gaining access to credit, insurance, savings accounts, and electronic payments via financial institutions.
37 “Middle caste” refers to groups such as Jats and Yadavs.
48 Elections between 1996 and 2009 produced a two-to-three-point gender gap for the BJP. The Congress Party, in contrast, consistently won support from more female than male voters during this same period. See Rukmini Citation2019, 46.
54 Hindutva ideology positions women in three major ways – as chaste wives, heroic mothers, and celibate warriors. See Banerjee Citation2005.
56 Modi Citation2018b. SC (Scheduled Caste or Dalit), ST (Scheduled Tribe or Adivasi), and OBC (Other Backward Class) are terms in the Indian Constitution for oppressed groups which the state is supposed to upliftment.
59 These include state-owned companies like the Indian Oil Corporation and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, and Indian and transnational private companies such as Reliance, Essar, and Shell.
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