<< This preprint—SMUR version—is a manuscript accepted for publication in the journal Polity. The SMUR version will be archived on Academia.edu (incl. keywords). Citation will be downloadable on the Hal repository. This complies with the access policy of the journal. The original title of the article is: “The Making of a Populist: Entering Politics and Autonomy-Seeking in Contemporary India.”

Table of contents 1.Abstract / 2.Introduction: becoming populist / 3.Populist careers / 4.Method and case study / 5.Not leader, son / 6.Autonomy-making / 7.Epilogue: without, within / 8.References / 9.Appendix

Abstract

Accomplished populists are researched from distant quarters, long after their populist turn. Yet, populism—the attempt to represent the people through being the people—is not an overnight decision; it results from a gradual self-fashioning welded to the political trajectory of its bearer. This article proposes to explore populism diachronically as a political career. It builds on a 7-year ethnography of Indian student activism gravitating around the figure of Govind, a secular left student leader turned politician in North India during the 2019 parliamentary elections. Seeking simplicity and connect over ideological coherence, Govind progressively self-identifies as a populist, which he—and his new depoliticized entourage—recasts as the art of generating emotional mass identification with the people through anti-elitist bhashan (speech). Through combining qualitative longitudinal interviews, participant observation and discourse analysis, the article aims at contributing to three adjoining fields of inquiry: the political theory of populism, the sociology of political professionalization and the anthropology of political becoming and subject-formation. I will show how the embrace of populism is motivated by aspirations to gain leverage vis-à-vis political parties and group-based affiliations driving co-ethnic voting. Contra ideationalists, Govind’s case helps to reconsider populism as an a-ideological attempt to become politically autonomous—and not solely as an unmediated relationship between the people and a leader. Second, I will argue that the claim of representative sameness at the core of the populist appeal is inseparable from the one of hierarchical distinctiveness, embodied in the authoritative figure of the neta (leader). This generative contradiction emerges as essential to embody constituents’ aspirations to identify with the representative, but also to exhort future patron-client relations instrumental to India’s nonprogrammatic distributive politics. Third, I suggest that entering politics as a populist is not only about ad-hoc learning, but also about strategic unlearning. Moving from value-based left campus activism to ‘Hindu-centric’ national politics, atheist Govind has to tactically reinvent himself as a proud and de-casted son of the soil, as well as a religion-friendly Gandhian, parting ways with his idealistic university comrades.

Keywords: populism; party; professionalization; career; discourse; distributive politics; North India; student politics; unlearning; equality-hierarchy

Introduction: becoming populist

This article advances that populists’ prime concern with unmediated representation of the people is conceived in instrumental terms—both strategic and stylistic—as an effective way to gain autonomy vis-à-vis political intermediaries such as a party or ethnic group. The contribution constitutes the first comprehensive attempt to chronicle populist becoming ethnographically, following over a period of seven years the political journey of Govind, a celebrated figure of the Indian left. From his student days until date, it recounts his unsuccessful attempt to secure a parliamentary seat in his native constituency at the 2019 legislative elections. Ahead of the electoral campaign, Govind progressively self-fashioned as a populist, a posture he further refined later that year.

The following question is addressed: why—and how—does one become a populist representative? The answer aims at determining who gets into office during populist waves in which institutional checks and governance are disfigured (Norris 2020; Urbinati 2019). The lack of direct access to populists and the difficulty of studying biographical change longitudinally has directed the focus to a combination of large-N and trans-national content analysis of established populists’ speeches, policies and public impact (Forgas 2021). Because we do not know whether populists frame their actions in terms of adhesion to ideas, strategies or style, the existing consensus around the idea of a minimal (Rooduijn 2014) definition of populism as a Manichean, anti-establishment and people-centric ideology (Hawkins and Kaltwasser 2019, p. 3) relies on indirect evidence. This ‘ideational’ approach pioneered by Mudde (Mudde 2004) might either align or contradict the way populists view their own political labor and the road to electoral success.

Consistent findings in political sociology indicate that formative ideologies are primarily acquired during the “impressionable years” spanning from adolescence to university years (Krosnick 1989; Fillieulle 2019). In line with ideationalists (Steger 2019), we could expect that established populists would display anti-elitist ideologies in their incipient career, possibly as early as their political entry. Yet, many veteran populists showed no such inclination in their inceptive public involvement, during and after their university years. After all, archetypal populist and conservative Viktor Orbán was once a liberal-cum-pluralist student leader and member of opposition (Fowler 2014). Similarly, left populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon was for the longest time a social democrat student unionist and upper-house representative, who notably voted for the European Union’s Maastricht Treaty, a landmark in the region’s bureaucratic and free-market turn (Spiering and Harmsen 2007).

The absence of biographical depth in existing studies contributes to “pathologizing” populists in the likes of Trump and the constituents that bring them to power (Williamsetal 2018; Forgasetal 2020; Nai and Coma 2019). Here populist leaders are found to be irrevocably narcissists and their voters both cognitively simple (Choma and Hanoch 2016) and emotionally aroused (Bakkeretal 2020). In an oft-cited article, political psychologist Ashish Nandy concluded that the current Indian Prime Minister Modi was paranoid, ego-centered and conspiracy-savvy (Nandy 2002), twelve years before the beginning of his populist reign (McDonnell and Cabrera2018; Jaffrelot2021). In other accounts, populism is more broadly interpreted as a cathartic social response to economic ills, political managerialism, ideological disenchantment and rising inequalities, all symptomatic of the West’s grappling with “crisis” and “decay” (Ignazi 1996; Caramani 2017; Rodrik 2018; Kriesi and Pappas 2015).

Excessive emphasis on immutable psychological factors over diachronic ones (either historical or biographic) made populism a disease symptom and an abuse word. Consequently, a quasi-exclusive focus has been given to leaders’ personalistic relationship with voters. For instance, out of the 15 items of the Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey 2018, only one engages with populists’ relationship with stakeholders beside the people-politician interaction—i.e. the item is intra-party democracy (POPPA 2018). Other elite and public opinion surveys solely focus on the tête-à-tête between populists and their constituents (Hawkins, Riding and Mudde2012; Akkerman, Mudde and Zaslove 2014), although the larger question of authoritarianism is regularly evoked (Silvaetal, p.159). By restricting the analysis to non-institutional and non-organizational aspects such as leaders’ personalistic relationship with supporters, we might loose sight of populism’s political purposes besides vote-grabbing in the name of the ‘real’ people. In particular, I will argue that a populists’ call for securing support in their own name—rather than that of the community or party flag—is a way to bypass intermediaries’ influence and strike better power-relations within a given political structure.

I turn to ethnographic methods to investigate whether populism is also a means to political autonomy rather than solely a symbiotic representation of the people. Few studies use anthropological inquiry to understand how populism is used by constituents as an identity marker for collective action (Seo 2019) or as an alley for pride-making in the hand of subalterns (Mazzarella 2019) opposing ‘evil’ elites (Pied 2019; Watt and Dodds 2008). While illuminating accounts of populists’ public performances exist (Pels 2003; de la Torre 2010), not a single ethnography proposes to embrace the point of view of populist figures and their journey to prominence.

Adopting an inductive approach to the populist practice, the article defines the populist practice it in the way his proponent—and central figure of this account—conceives it. It is here coined as anti-elitist speech-making generating mass identification with the leader, whose appeal relies on the claim that she represents the common people against elites of corrupt/dynastic politicians, businessmen and outsiders. This understanding is fairly uncontentious as it entails most widely accepted definitional criteria of populism, including anti-elitism, people-centrism, unity (and indistinctiveness) of the people, Manichean moralism, nativism and personalized leadership (for an exhaustive list, see Meijers and Zaslove2020, p.13). Such characterization relies on three theoretical assumptions. As populists enable strong identifications, these can only be sustained though repeated relational performances (Ostiguy, Panizza and Moffitt 2019). Second, the populist performance legitimizes a mimetic mode of representation in which a leader is both the extension of the people and owned by them (Ankersmit 1996, p.21-45). Lastly, populism should enable otherwise conflicting social groups to be subsumed under the label people, forming what political theorist Ernesto Laclau (2005) has termed an “equivalential chain” of demands (p.171).

These clarifications are needed mainly to distinguish populist claims from other forms of political representation. While there is no finite inventory of representation types in contemporary democracies, the literature on South Asian politics distinguishes at least five ways to successfully represent constituents electorally. The first is epitomized by the aphorism “don’t cast your vote, vote your caste.” Termed group representation, it reflects the tendency of voters to choose representatives among co-ethnics, who are believed to be more responsive and committed to collective upward social mobility (Chandra 2004). The gradual consolidation of some of these groups into larger voting blocs defined along religious lines has been the historical driving force of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka’s strands of majoritarianism (Chhibber and Verma 2019). Two other dominant tropes are the politics of patronage and welfarism, in which voters choose rent-seeking politicians who act as brokers and problem-fixers (Berenschot 2010). Because they have privileged access to scarce state resources via their party and personal networks, they are committed to distributing them selectively in a non-programmatic and clientelist fashion (Auerbach 2019). An additional way to represent the masses, in particular among left politicians is to “declass,” which amounts to display trajectories of social downlift to signal closeness with the downtrodden, e.g. farmers, lower Hindu castes and religious minorities (Martelli 2020).

This contribution suggests that populist representation can be distinguished in key ways from the aforementioned patronage, welfare, declassing, majoritarian and caste politics. Because of the deliberate vagueness of catch-all terms such as ‘the people’, populists aim at broadening a voting base defined by traditional party- or caste-based constituencies. We will see how this constitutes a risky electoral gamble as populists upset the normal functioning of patronage and group-based politics. In particular, we will see how the radical claim for equality among citizens in the form of “I am the common and indivisible people” has to transcend perceived caste and ethnic hierarchies while assuming the image of a commanding leader who can attract public spending, protect constituents in case of need and mediate conflicts. As we will see, Govind’s populist conundrum is epitomized by his 2019 campaign slogan neta nahi beta (not the leader, the son), which failed to attract dominant co-caste voters and shape a strongman reputation. Constituents preferred electing a more ‘powerful’ outsider and party-man believed to be caste-assertive and uncompromising with the rival Muslim community.

Despite the fact that in India citizens vote mostly for a party or party chief rather than for a particular legislative or local candidate (see section below), Govind chose the populist route to become party-less and caste-less. This apparent contradiction is explained by his need to control a declining party on which he has little hold, while broadening the traditional voting base of his organization, which is associated with his dominant caste. As I describe how Govind attempted to circumvent the relative weakness of his party and the dominant framework of anti-Muslim politics in the country by becoming a populist representative of all the plebe, I survey his gradual biographical and oratory transformations as well as his impression management strategies. In light of the existing literature on political entry and professionalization of public office seekers, I stress Govind’s need to unlearn ideological party politics, which was core to his student activism for nearly one decade.

The rest of the contribution is divided into four distinct sections. First I review the extant literature on political entry. Building on it, I ask whether populist careering necessitates a biographical bifurcation, in which initial political attitudes—including ideological congruity, horizontal camaraderie, value-driven commitments and organizational discipline—are progressively unlearned. Second, I introduce the study’s empirical background and methodological framework, which combines ethnographic inquiry and longitudinal interviews. The article then retraces Govind’s journey towards populism. After differentiating his politics from non-populist modes of representation, I show how he gradually levied populism as an instrument for autonomy-making vis-à-vis his party and dominant caste affiliation. In the quest of portraying himself as a family member avenging the layman’s honor against corrupt politicians, Govind secured significant popularity—in particular among deprived Muslims—but lost the support of his co-ethnics, causing electoral defeat. Govind’s populist claim of sameness with constituents contradicted their expectation to be represented by someone distinctively powerful, i.e. by an assertive caste leader effectively rerouting public funding to the constituency while delivering protection and patronage. Understanding that he now needs to combine representative sameness with hierarchical distinctiveness, the essay concludes on Govind’s half-hearted prospective decision to join a more authoritative political party despite its dynastic tendencies, hence jeopardizing his future ability to be the common people.

Populist careers

Careers have been understood sociologically as a diachronic process, resulting from a combination of individuals’ public and private concerns (Goffman 1959, p.123), in which agents “make and are made” (Navarre 2015). More specifically, political careers in contemporary democracies are the result of image-making and the interiorization of given social roles within a competing electoral field (Lefebvre 1997; Joignant 2007). Professional politics is more than just one’s ability to live off politics (Boelaert, Michon and Ollion 2018); it is a trajectory—within politics and from adjacent spheres such as activism, public administration, political assistantship, business or brokerage occupations—and an ethos, defined in terms of know-how, networks and attitudes (Holtz 2015; Hû et al. 2017; Demaziere 2009). As elsewhere, the particular expectations of political “role taking” (Nay 1997) in India are heavily shaped by the type of office sought: the parliament tends to speak the language of deliberative policy-making and administration, local governance the one of favors, disputes, accountability and community, while peripheral stakeholders often use a saintly language of faith, morality and self-sacrifice (Morris-Jones 1962, p.140; Parthasarathy 2019). In classical interactionist sociology, such idioms are thought to be acquired on the go, through involving substantial resocializations, emulation of peers and and ad-hoc professionalization, in which competition, loyalty, risk-taking and fear of faux pas are omnipresent (Evans and Sanderson-Nash 2011; Corbbett 2013; Collective 2019; Agrikoliansky and Aldrin 2019; Aldrin and Vannetzel 2019; Demaziere Le Lidec 2014; Scheff 2005; Jacobs 2017; Dulong 2010; Beauvallet and Michon 2017). A political career is then informed by continuous informal learning, in which the “sense of the game” as well as “taste for the game itself” is cultivated, often in liminal political organizations, such as student organizations, NGOs, parties’ youth wings as well as fraternities and sororities in university settings (Bourdieu 1990, pp.66-67, Altbach 2006; Bargel 2011; Bargel 2014).

To make a career in politics as a new entrant is not easy, particularly in India, where the margins of victory in parliamentary elections are low (Vaishnav and Hintson2020), the age of representatives high (Rampal 2019), the personal spending for contesting elections on the rise (Kapur and Vaishnav 2018) and the opportunities to get a ticket for those not hailing from political families scarce (Jaffrelot and Verniers 2020). As noted by Pierre Bourdieu (1981), a career within a particular political field is defined by a two-pronged competition, within an electoral arena and within a party or movement (p.19). Through the example of India, I discuss the main obstacle to political careers that are built on unmediated relationships with constituents. We will see that the hazard is due to the electoral strength of political intermediaries such as political parties and caste solidarities. However, I hypothesize that when these intermediaries appear as insurmountable obstacles to political advancement, the only career avenue available for aspirants is the one of populism.

The political sway of party support in winning Indian elections and the near-impossibility of winning as an independent (Chhibber, Jensenius and Shah 2019) means that a successful incipient political career is often determined by party elites and dynasts, that is by those against whom populist politicians stand against. Indeed, Indian parties lack a proper institutional structure (Mainwaring and Scully 1995) and are controlled by “ruling cliques” who have little interest in promoting nascent populist aspirations among politicians. Down the line populists’ popularity can challenge their political hold and the electoral future of their offspring (Chandra 2004; Manor 2016). Because it is the “symbol” (party ticket) rather than the “face” (candidate’s standing) that encodes authority even for local elections (Auerbach 2019, p.178; Banerjee 2010), career politicians do not hesitate to do party switching (Kamath 1985). The average Indian political entrepreneur can be considered a backbencher rather than frontliner, that is someone whose success depends heavily on the reputation and strength of her party rather than her own (Borchert and Zeiss 2003). Bahubalis, strong men with criminal records are notable exceptions to this trend; as their ability to cultivate boss-like notions of force and governance enable them to capture votes in their own name (Michelutti et al. 2019). In general however, it is the party network that confers to elected members the power to distribute to constituents selective access to state resources. As indicated by Auerbach and colleagues (2021), since Indian parties shine in tasks like “waging vast election campaigns and advocating for citizens in front of the state in between elections,” they are reluctant to delegate such authority to emergent populist leaders (p.10).

Because populist narratives are mainly deployed to mark differences from the establishment rather than denoting actual programmatic content (Comaroff 2011), populist careers can only thrive when bearers find a corridor for distinguishable action that transcends the party’s hold. Because it is the party establishment that distributes winning tickets, such independence is often restricted to those already influential within a party structure, and who are fighting for its control. For instance, Jaffrelot and Anil (2020) note that India’s populist spokesmodel, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) was driven in that direction due to “first, her sense of insecurity; and second, the never-ending threat of rivals who exacerbated it” (Jaffrelot and Anil 2020, p.267). Another example is the current head of the administrative division of Delhi, who famously proposed to abolish “VIP raj [rule], VIP culture” (Kejriwal in Tawa Lama Rewal 2019) while firing five prominent founders of his party. Last but not least, the unchallenged populist rule of current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, can be partly explained by his ambition to exert absolute vertical supervision over the ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, Indian People’s Party) (Sinha 2017). In the shadow of these established populist politicians, the vast majority of new political entrants aim at being the party rather than being the people, in particular for constituency-based contests (Piliavsky 2014).

Populists’ relationship with political parties is not only understudied; its scrutiny being mostly Western-centric, it has led to at least five problematic generalizations. First, populists’ parties are presented as patrimonial entities and personal fiefdoms (Calise 2010; Musella 2020) characterized by leader-centeredness and monocratic power (Heinisch and Mazzoleni 2016; Musella 2015). However, such depictions are too broad to characterize populists interactions with political parties; In India, the main opposition party as well as most regional parties are patrimonial and dynastic, centered around one family and its immediate coterie, but they are often not populist platforms (Chhibber 2013; Chandra 2016).

Second, populism is presented as an instrument to personalize party politics (Taggart 2000; Schedler 1996). While this holds true in most situations, it does not cover cases in which populism is not a mean to capture a party, but rather a way to detach oneself from it so as to operate in spite of or in conjunction with it. By way of example, M.K. Gandhi’s anti-modernist, non-urban, religious-imbued mass popular appeal was articulated at the margins of the Indian National Congress, but it enabled him to impose many of his views on the party’s approach to the freedom struggle from the outside (Subramanian1999; Devji 2012).

Third, populists’ engagements with parties are usually depicted as part of a finite set of institutionalized intermediaries; elected representatives, institutional and administrative offices, media, the judiciary and political funders. This relationship is complicated in multi-ethnic countries like India in which influential non-institutional interest groups based on caste and confessional affiliations play a major role in securing votes and funding for a candidate. Parties themselves are better understood as loose but interconnected networks of interests and aspirations rather than formal organizations (Auerbach 2020; Sircar 2018). The success of populists’ appeal thus depends on their ability to convert their popular hold into electorally successful arrangements with a wider range of informal intermediaries.

Fourth, party personalization by populists is usually considered to be a direct outcome of the digitization of politics, in which social media reinforce a disintermediated rapport between representatives and represented (Mazzoleni and Bracciale2018; Gerbaudo 2018; Kramer and Holtz-Bacha 2020). Yet, in a country like India where interactive social networking platforms are still used by a minority of the population—e.g. 12 percent for Twitter—(CSDS 2019), populism is not a direct byproduct of technological change. Instead populism can be fueled though different usages of old mediums such as radio, television and mass rallies (Bajpai 2018).

Fifth, the literature on populists and political parties (Chiapponi 2017; Dommett 2020) infers and categorizes their rapport but refrains from providing a firsthand account of what happens between them behind the scenes. While inference is good for generalizations, ethnographic evidence of these interactions helps uncover the how—and then ultimately the why—of populists’ engagements with intermediaries such as parties, interest groups and institutions.

The caste-driven voting pattern of India’s democracy is a significant obstacle to populists’ claims that they are the unmediated representatives of the common folk across caste divides. The understanding of caste groups as cohesive voting blocks forming temporary alliances (Wyatt 2009) dates from colonial times (Dirks 2001); yet this electoral dynamic consolidated with the extension of affirmative action quotas in administration and education to a so-called “backward” meta-caste group from the 1990s onwards (Rao 2009). Such fluid alliances of caste-based regional parties deeply influenced the political game in North India; they enabled the rise of new generations of political actors from a wider range of caste backgrounds (Jodhka 2010). Because castes are discrete and ascriptive social entities that reject and compete against each other for local political dominance (Gupta 2015), a populist narrative of the united people across caste lines seems at first incongruous. In particular, caste-defined electoral dynamics appear to contradict the “logic of equivalence” of populism, which enables its bearers to fuse conflicting groups into a larger socio-political bloc (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, p.130). This bloc is often labelled by populists as the silent majority, and is defined by its opposition to the corrupt elite. Through gradually conflating the identity of the Indian people with the majority Hindu community, Hindu nationalists like Narendra Modi exemplified that populism proves instrumental in diluting certain politicized caste affiliations into a larger ethnic ensemble (Chhibber and Verma 2019). Through a variety of mediums—including his monthly radio show—Modi built his image of a familiar guru and family member distanced from crooked politics, dispensing personal advice on citizen’s everyday life using popular epics and popular aphorisms, while building his commonness by celebrating innumerous Hindu festivals at the expense of non-Hindu ones (Bajpai 2021). Here, Modi’s populist narrative serves his resolutely majoritarian ideology.

Another way to bypass caste cleavages is to invoke commonness on the basis of class rather than ethnicity. The poor as the synecdoche of the people is best exemplified by Indira Gandhi’s socialist slogan “Garibi Hatao” (get rid of poverty), but is also found in the discourses of agrarian leader Charan Singh (1902-1987), for whom it is the farmer that embodies the disenfranchised citizen (Jaffrelot and Tillin 2017). Contrary to the Latin-American scenario, left-wing populism has visibly declined in India since the 1980s, soon followed by the downfall of Communist-led state governments—with the notable exception of Kerala (Bhattacharyya 2016). In a context where most Indian parties adopt a welfarist agenda (Aiyar 2019), left-leaning party politics has been unsuccessful for various reasons; the main one is probably its failure to attract lower-caste voters—who first shifted to caste leaders in the 1990s and then to Hindu-centric representatives—as well as religious minorities such as Muslims.

The structural limitations to the pursuit of populist politics, and in particular left populism, usually deter new political entrants from it altogether, as they favor alternative career paths such as sycophancy/discipleship (chamchagiri/chelagiri), political inheritance or direct entry from sports, business or cinema. The exceptional case of Govind—which I introduce in the next section—shows that populist trajectories are driven by aspirations for political autonomy, sometimes at the cost of immediate electoral success. After presenting the methodology of the study, I argue that achieving mass popularity through embracing populism is a bargaining instrument for upcoming and established politicians, in particular those who do not have otherwise sufficiently solid economic, symbolic or dynastic capital to impose their views on a partisan structure.

Method and case study

The analysis relies primarily on qualitative longitudinal interviews and ethnographic insights, which share an interpretivist research framework that focuses on meaning-making practices of actors in a given context (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow2012, p.56; Mabilon-Bonfils 2019). In line with recent advances in political theory, ethnography is here used to destabilize the lens through which we understand phenomena such as populism (Shapiro 2002; Longo 2019). In particular, Govind’s progressive engagement with populism as a stylistic-cum-strategic instrument to emerge as a trans-party and trans-caste leader upsets the traditional account of populism as a thin anti-elitist ideology. As we will see, populism is not only a fusion between a politician and the people; it is also an attempt to bypass intermediaries who jeopardize one’s thin-roped career. My ethnographic proximity with a cohort of educated youth entering politics in North India permits to apprehend career orientations diachronically as a series of decisions and upheavals (Becker 1966; Fillieule and Neveu 2019). More specifically, interviews focus on how Govind justifies and interprets his own political choices (Niewiadomski 2019) while striving for biographical coherence (Naudet 2011).

It is the confrontation between Govind’s self-narrative and ethnographic evidence of his political behavior over the past seven years that ascertains that the biographical facts discussed are in line with his actual political image-making (Fabre, Jamin and Massenzio 2010)—c.f. Pierre Bourdieu’s critique of the “biographical illusion” (Bourdieu 1994; Heinich 2010). The longitudinal approach adopted breaks with the traditional research timeframe used to apprehend political personnel, which is too often restricted to political campaigns (Blom Hansen 2004), thus weakening the possibility of inductive generalizations on long-term political practices (Inglis 2010). The processual logic of inquiry (Neale 2021) I adopted is used to understand how Govind progressively renounces more traditional representation genres to embrace a highly disruptive populist narrative. Evidence of this are identified through confronting Govind’s public behavior with his private insights about what his populist performances aim to achieve.

In this context, the longitudinal approach is best suited to uncover populism as an outcome of a trial and error strategy (Dent 2019). The diachronic approach makes it possible to identify in the the micro-world of Govind’s everyday life the macro-world of structures, discourses, fields, institutions and the threats they pose to his political advancement (Henderson et al. 2012, p.19). Moving from student activism to national politics, Govind finds many of his beliefs of “what works and what doesn’t” shattered, forcing him to describe his new phase of life in sharp contrast with the previous one (Alwin 2017). Over the past seven years, the ethnography involved two intensive phases of ethnographic immersion: the university period (2014-18), in which Govind learns activism and uses it as a stepping stone for national politics, and the campaign time in his state, including his contest for the 2019 legislative elections, in which Govind develops his populist agenda. The second phase includes three sub-periods: pre-electoral preparation (2018), active campaign (2019) and post-defeat (2020-21), in which Govind further consolidates his populist agenda.

The argument is built on 90 unstructured and four semi-structured interviews with Govind and his collaborators between 2014 and 2021, 14 of his political speeches¹ in national and regional languages, his autobiography as well as a two-year-long ethnography of campus politics in a flagship Indian university and Govind’s subsequent political journey in two different states of North India. From this I first extracted 391 quotes on a thematic basis and then grouped relevant ones in 118 distinct blocs, which are referred inline with roman numerals [i, cxviii]. Anonymized blocs are available in the appendix. Whenever necessary, I have included a text analysis of Govind’s speeches as well as ethnographic sketches. Geographical references are imprecise to preserve the anonymity of Govind and his team. Pseudonyms and anonymized references are marked [A].

The poor-but-upper-caste background of Govind, his “elite” educational trajectory, the deprived social profile of his native constituency, and the declining strength of his party are the four parameters we need to contextualize his populist turn. Govind was born in a village, somewhere in the alluvial plains of north India. He hails from a dominant upper caste encoding land power and political influence. Contrary to his Dhartiwale [A] caste status however, Govind’s family is economically poor and nearly landless, which forced his father to occasionally work as a daily laborer, while his mother worked in the nearby childcare center. Govind father’s sickness led his parents to shift him for a few year from the local private school to a dysfunctional public school. Despite this, Govind managed to access university in the state’s capital before enrolling in a training center in the hope of becoming a civil servant. However he soon changed plans—and with the mentoring help of a co-party professor—he joined one of the country’s most politicized flagship postgraduate universities in the social sciences named SFU [A]. An active member of the student wing of his left-leaning party, Govind became over the next four years a visible activist on campus. With the help of his oratory skills, his promise to restore the original electoral framework of the students’ union—and thanks to an entrenched sense of anti-incumbency against a more established left organization—he was elected at the topmost post of the university students’ union. After a series of events that catapulted him and his university to the center of the national political debate, Govind decided to return to his constituency upon completion of his doctoral thesis in order to contest the 2019 parliamentary elections.

After protracted negotiations, Govind secured a ticket for the contest, but the pre-poll opposition alliance led by a major regional caste party refused to ‘vacate’ the seat for his organization in his constituency. This led to a three-cornered contest in which the candidate of the majority party at the center (BJP) emerged victorious by more than 400,000 votes, even though Govind secured around half of the minority (Muslim) vote—despite the caste party’s decision to file a bigwig Muslim candidate. Govind’s party is mostly led by co-upper-caste fellows, yet his community decided to vote for another Dhartiwale candidate from the BJP, who won with his ally all the seats in the state except one. Of the 1.9 million voters in the district, the Dhartiwale community constitutes nearly one fifth of them, followed by Muslims at 15 percent and two influential middle-castes (at 12 and 7 percent) [A].

Govind’s constituency, Ranigrad [A] has been a left bastion for nearly three decades, but with the industrial decay of the region and the shift of votes to parties headed by families from deprived castes, his party lost part of his traditional support vote. The criminal activities the party practiced in the name of union baazi (politics by unionizing), as well as the privatization of state-owned industries led to spiraling unemployment and emigration to other states. The region’s economy is dominated by subsistence agriculture [A]—in particular rice, pulses, wheat, barley, maize, sugarcane, and oilseeds—and few surviving petrochemical production units, in particular an oil refinery. In 2018, the main state developmental agency, Niti Aayog (Policy Commission) ranked the constituency as one of the “least improved” in India [A]. For the election, Govind designed a political strategy based on eight distinct populist claims, which I review in the next section. He consolidated his approach in the months following the election, as he started touring the state, giving speeches against a law reforming the accession to Indian citizenship on communal lines, and whose aim was in fine to further antagonize Hindu and Muslim communities (Martelli 2021). The section also discusses how Govind’s populist agenda departs from his ideologically-oriented politics on campus, and which is derived from a process he calls unlearning.

Not leader, son

“My speech is different here, have you noticed it? The horizon of university politics is limited: the mass politics is different, the horizon is large. We have to change the tactics. The first thing is communication…” [i]. Govind does not get the chance to finish his sentence, as he is dragged into yet another urgent practicality with a key campaigner holding one his three phones. In no time we embark on an overpacked off-road vehicle for the campaign trail of the day. Days of horizontal equality and communitas are over: we are not anymore campaigning on foot in the residential university campus, asking permission to address classrooms, canteens or university residences past 11pm, convincing students to vote for you one-by-one over chai or during pamphlet distribution. The new tempo and aesthetic of national politics is all about vertical power assertion, relational prioritizations and darshan (seeing and being seen). We travel in a procession of four-to-eight SUV cars shoveling dust in villages to attract inhabitants to the nearby rally; rally stages are better and better attended, making it necessary to multiply loudspeakers; the candidate is not anymore addressed as comrade or bhai (brother) by his close entourage but as neta (leader); attributes of importance are given, from massages by aides to ‘vip’ security, including copious meals wherever we go, making the neta fleshier by the day; time is punctuated by countless compulsory visits, to mukhiyas/sarpanchs (village-level elected representative), thekedars (contractors), to devotional sites and weddings/funerals of influential families; privacy has vanished, so much that we have to hide in a circuit house (hotel for government officials) bathroom to grill a frowned-upon cigarette. So when, early 2019 I first heard that Govind had finalized his campaign slogan for the upcoming parliamentary elections, and that he had chosen neta nahi beta (not leader, son) as a symbol of his rooted and egalitarian proximity with the people, I didn’t just appreciate its populist tone; I also felt a pinch of irony.

Even as Govind could not finish his sentence about how his political rhetoric changed since campus days, I had already started accumulating clues of his populist turn, which I subsequently grouped in eight distinctive registers: populist reflexivity (1), anti-elitism (2), nativism (3), intimacy-focus (4), simplicity-focus (5), disintermediation (6), policy disinterest (7) and demagoguery (8). I exemplify in this section how Govind relates and incorporates these strategic and stylistic components of the populist ethos in his everyday political attitudes. As it will become evident, these choices are far from inconsequential, as they force Govind to renounce his explicit ideological stands for secularism, depressed caste assertion, queer politics, capitalist regulation and minorities’ self-determination. In his place, Govind prefers to invoke floating signifiers such as Gandhi, the tricolor (flag), the fetish of the constitution to maintain a semblance of ideational coherence with his previous commitments, while tapping into the popular repertoire of symbols circulating among the masses.

As of mid-2019, Govind stated to self-identify as a populist politician, but the clearest articulation of this fashioning emerged only a few months later, while he was conducting a yatra (political tour/pilgrimage) in his state against the aforementioned Citizen Amendment Act. Asked about the formidable crowds attending his public meetings, Govind immediately linked these to his populist election campaign slogan, which was visibly continuing to act as a rallying cry:

Again I am using, I am trying to create distance from neta [leader]. Putting myself as son of soil. Last mone pore [do you remember]? Kher, janta jut nahi bolti hai, abhi neta ki taraf se wada nahi kar raha hu [In fact, people do not lie. Right now I am not making promises as a leader]. I will give you too much content on left populism [he starts laughing] [ii].

This “too much content” pointed to a passing comment he made earlier that day, after which I expressed my interest for his self-labelling as a left populist.

This is left populism. Why are people connecting to me? Because I am attacking dynasties, because I am attacking the corruption of politics, I am attacking the difference between political class and the common masses. If I will sit with these people nah [he refers here to dynasts], I will be delegitimated. You are talking about Amit Shah’s son [i.e. son of current Home Minister heading the national governing body of cricket], and you are sitting with Raja [A] [i.e. son of famous politician, head of opposition party in Govind’s state], you will be like cheer leader, you will just become an entertainer. People will come and clap in your ecosystem only. We want to break that ecosystem nah [iii].

Through drawing a Manichean frontier in his speeches between the “naturally simple-hearted” [iv] people (janta) and the corrupt political leaders (neta) who for instance, are always getting their pensions on time when they retire [v], Govind not only labels himself as a populist: he also implements a distinctive anti-elitist populist rhetoric. To implement people-centric identifications, he systematically distinguishes himself from traditional politicians, stressing that he has not come to “make [a] career in politics” [vi], or that the speech he is about to give is “non-political” [vii]—both assertions being obviously incorrect. In his autobiography (he dictated while still on campus) he stresses that his temporary turn to politics is accidental, as he was pushed into it by the “bruises” of poverty [viii].

Govind’s populist self-identification is also strongly associated with his ability to create mass identification to his person though bhashan (speech), noting for example how the “electrifying effect of mass” [ix] gives to his public addresses the spell to attract support. Understanding public speeches as a way to “connect to people by expressing [our] deepest selves” [x], Govind theorizes anti-elitist bhashan as the ultimate populist tool to garner support. Talking about himself at the third person: “It’s like ki chalo Govind [A] a raha hai, to bhasha sunein kam se kam chalke” (Govind is coming. So let’s go and listen to his speech at least) [xi]. This obsessional emphasis on speeches often obfuscates other aspects of non-populist politics such as policy making. When asked about it, he often does not answer, or seems annoyed: “other people will do it [the policy work]. I will give bhashan” [xii].

If Govind’s understanding of populism is mainly defined in linguistic terms, it is because he uses language to establish equivalences between himself and the audience, sometimes to the point where indistinguishability between the two is stated. Through staging representation as mimesis, Govind declared barely four weeks before the 2019 polling that he was not a candidate; instead every citizen of the constituency was a candidate:

You are considering me a candidate? Don’t think that I am a candidate. You all are candidates. When you all are candidates, I have come to make a request that on 9th going for my nomination, I will not do nomination, 30 lakhs [3 million, i.e. all the residents of the constituency] people of Ranigrad [A] will do nomination because it’s a matter of prestige for Ranigrad. Not in any condition, Ranigrad’s nose should not bow down [xiii].

The main rhetorical device Govind uses to achieve populist mimesis is para-social simplicity, or—as he terms it—the fact that his “language and [my] terminology are very easy to understand” [xiv]. Speeches are devoid of the political jargon he used to employ back when he was a political activist on campus. In 2016, as Govind was becoming a national figure—after an even that attracted national media attention—he warned the audience of SFU of its tendency to “speak in heavy jargon which the common people of this country are unable to understand” [xv]. In the same address, under the spotlight of national media he did not hesitate to compare his aspirations to the one of a policeman he met in prison, parting away from the traditional left depiction of the cop as a representative of state oppression: “This policeman, like me, comes from an ordinary family…” [xvi]. His constant emphasis that “people’s representatives [even PM] should talk like a common person” [xvii] brought him many admirers within the leftist SFU student community, who praised him for his ability to “talk in the language that people understand” while at the same time criticizing him for the “revisionist” positions of his party [xviii]. One of Govind’s lead campaigners notes: “he might have been brought up in SFU which is prestigious university, he is a doctorate […] but he speaks like us, he is talking about us only. This is one of the reasons, people are becoming more and more associated day-by-day” [xix].

Hence, populist simplicity could not be achieved without breaking away from the ideological and partisan political rhetoric Govind he was trained with on campus. During a video interview I co-conducted in 2018, he expressed his desire not to “confine” himself to SFU’s student politics, whose “discourse is not applicable or effective in the general masses” [xx]. In at least four occasions, Govind reflected upon his political trajectory as an unlearning process [xxi]. His belief that the ideological tenets he learned in university are “of no use” or even misleading [xxii] became most visible in the aftermath of his traumatic defeat at the 2019 parliamentary elections:

Our tools are dead. They are useless now […] As an academician, first all, what is my capacity? I am a student, I was a student. I was a research scholar. Debate something. We have an idea, a perspective, to look [at] the world. […] The problem is. All my knowledge are…limited I can say or, those knowledges are incapable to analyze what is happening in Indian society. I feel, Marxism, [Platonism?]…these all ideas are…too old. These are not helping me. The new is not come. What new is emerging, that we are unable to understand. And old is not enough. That is the situation. […] We have to go […] in the process of knowledge gaining. Learning and unlearning. What I have learned in the society, those things we have unlearned in the university. And what we have learned in the university, now we have to unlearn in the society. The all setting, I am telling you. Rationality, classics, scientific, science…we have to carry pistols, we have to kill people. And it is very shocking. I can’t do it. That is why my mind is blank [xxiii].

This extreme sense of restlessness was not only triggered by our near escape from a BJP-led mob lynching two days earlier: it was precipitated by Govind’s inability to use the political knowledge he acquired on campus to understand the mentality of voters in his constituency. Yet, while Govind feared he had not sufficiently unlearned the peaceful ideational politics of SFU to compete in the violent politics of his state, he had successfully parted with the ways of his university’s activism in at least four respects. Two of them, namely his progressive refusal to engage in intra-left “factionalism” [xxiv], as well as his focus on political image-building outside campus at the cost of his credentials inside campus [xxv] are not specifically tied to his populist narrative, but the other two are.

First, Govind has learned how to replace his rich conceptual repertoire with more accessible, symbolic and simplistic references. Below the two illustrative quotes I added in Figure 1 specificity scores—a measurement of over- under-representation of words based on their relative frequencies in texts (Lebart et al. 2019)—of conceptual terms in Govind’s speeches, i.e. those lemmatized words with the suffix *ism or *tion. Scores above 2 and under -2 are statistically significant (Gréa 2017; Léon and Loiseau 2016). While Govind turned away from explicit references to leftist and anti-caste caste concepts such as socialism or casteism, he started to use increasingly those nationalist notions that encode popular pride outside campus premises (nationalism, tradition). He additionally stopped attacking the BJP on the basis of its ideological leanings towards Hindutva (advocating a Hindu nation) and its organizational avatar, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS—National Volunteer Corps). When asked about his reluctance to reclaim the left in his speeches, Govind replies: “If I will brand myself as a leftist, the entire baggage of international communist movements, that we have to claim. I will have to wash the sins of Stalin, the poor does not care about him […] So my point is to popularize the left ideology without taking the name of Marx, Lenin, and the word communist…they [BJP] will grant. […] If Modi is not attacking me nah, I will be finished. […] And they are attacking, then everybody is remembering Govind Jaishankar [A]” [xxvi]. The two statements below illustrate Govind’s understanding of simplicity as a tool to unfold an anti-elitist narrative:

What is the difference between SFU people and normal right wing [politicians]? Basic communication difference I’m telling you. They break the sentences, it is naked, clear. In SFU people think…they don’t use sentence, they use concept notes, conceptual words, terminologies. They talk in terminologies. For example […] Modi uses the word andolan jivi [making a living out of social movements], he describes it. SFU people they don’t describe it. They use a conceptual word, fascism. What Modi will do, ye [he speaks slowly to imitate Modi]…then he will describe it. I have changed…images and stories, both…it should relate to people, people can use their imagination to connect with the story [xxvii]. See, big bindis on their forehead, speaking an elitist language, English with an American accent, using BMW [car brand]. Going here and there, by flight and having Bisleri [branded water bottle]. Talking about environment […] human rights […] freedom of expression […] constitutional rights. […] In your political life, for the sake of political discourse, you have to prioritize the issues also [he means practical problems and not conceptually-framed debates]. You [himself], as a mass leader, your priority should be to counter right wing reactionary forces, [only] then the rights of lesbian, gay and kiss of love [a protest against the repression of romance in the public space]. You should not speak anything against them, but you should not put these things first. You want to talk about environment, which is true, but get narrative from the farmer. Get narrative from wage working women in the factory, living in the jhopar patti [slum/mud hut], make them brand ambassadors. […] Then people will associate […] What you are saying [i.e. principled spokespersons of Indian liberals] is the narrative of the old civil society. The charming boys and girls of the old civil society [xxviii].

The register of simplicity in Govind’s populist appeal is also associated with the one of intimacy, in which closeness with the people in invoked through the abundant use of popular references that entail high levels of interdiscursivity (Wu2011; Abdul-Latif 2011), producing a para-social language (Marmor-Lavie and 2008) from which “every class of the society should get something […] the same speech” [xxix]. The linguistic components of this intimacy-making process are many; including frequent use of rhymes [xxx], popular tales (kahavat) and anecdotes [xxxi], recurrent use of epics [xxxii] and imagery building on everyday objects [xxxiii]. Examples are given of each of these in Appendix. On many occasions, the intimate bond with the audience he creates is then used to target the ‘bad’ elites. The way to proxy elite’s evilness vary, but one efficient way is to compare them to popular demons—such as the mythological character Ravan. Below is a telling example, followed by a quote in which Govind reflects on his foundness for popular religious stories:

Sometime I use Ram [virtuous god] as a son of Vishnu [god]. As Vaishnavas [followers of Vishnu], vaishnav[a]s are against violence. So if you are a Ram bhakt [a devotee of Ram], how can you kill a person in the name of Ram? I invoke Ramcharitmanas [epic poem] written by Tulsi Das. Ravan rathi virati [victory chariot of Ravan] […]. Ravan [demon] is on chariot. And Ram is marching by foot, and who are on the chariot in our times…those who are in power, they are on chariot, and Ram works in field. That’s why people connect you [xxxiv] [Two years earlier…] If you are smart you can use this [superstition], because the discourse of Hinduism is so diverse. Take the thing and break the political Hindutva. You should build around a kahavat [tale]. This around that [xxxv].

Manichean anti-elitism, the essence of populism is here encoded in the intimate language of epics that every Hindu constituent can relate to at a personal level. This ability to conjure symbols that are not part of the political repertoire of the left exemplifies Govind’s effort to relate with the audience at an emotional level. Govind’s use of Mahatma Gandhi—a figure disliked by the secular left for his his religiousness and lack of caste blindness—to pitch tolerant good Hindus such as Gandhi against corrupt bad Hindus (such as the militant who killed Gandhi) [xxxvi] is probably the best example of this ability to unlearn ideational campus politics by detaching symbols from their negative left ideological signification. Govind notes in four instances the importance of the Gandhian symbol in his speeches:

[1] You have to use Gandhian tactics […]. Don’t go for his narrative. Just use his tactic. Gandhian tactic is, don’t invoke violence, talk about unity, don’t attack religion, use the…good religious anecdotes. Attack communalism [xxxvii]. […] [2] Gandhi understood the religious pulse of this country. Ishwar allah tere nam, sabko sanmati de bhagwan [popular verse in secular schools naming together Hindu and Muslim divine names, i.e. “Ishwar Allah they are your names, bestow wisdom on all, god”] [xxxvii]. [3] Yes we learned stuff [in SFU], but our all narrative and terminology is useless outside of campus, this is what I’m saying. Gandhi is the most untouchable person inside the campus. But outside campus Gandhi is most effective [xxxix]. [4] In India if you want to counter Hindutva, [you have to do it] not by bypassing Hinduism, you have to use Gandhi, there is no way. If you can abuse Hindutva and Hinduism both directly, [if] that kind of advantage you have, then of course you can go with Ambedkar [Dalit leader who located caste oppression as a consubstantial feature of Hinduism]. But that situation we do not have. So the situation is different, so only we can take perspective from Ambedkar, but each and every word about Hinduism said by Baba Saheb Ambedkar, we can’t say now. We have to refer Gandhi only. […] Gandhi was Hindu, but not [to] kill anyone. To save everyone. As Hindu, Nathuram Godse, killed a Hindu, Gandhi. So they are claiming they [RSS/Hindutva] are saving Hindus, it’s a shame. It’s bullshit [he starts giggling] [xl].

The ability of Govind to circumvent mentions of the pantheon of the Indian left pantheon, such as Marx and later Ambedkar, and his ability to engage with secular values without invoking the concept of secularism triggered controversial debates on campus, where many accused him of developing around himself a non-ideological personality cult. As former campus activists stopped actively supporting him, Govind progressively surrounded himself with a new cohort of depoliticized chamchas (unconditional followers) from outside campus—one of them being nothing less than a goonda (criminal) who went to jail on murder charges [xli].

As Govind systematized his populist self-fashioning, he became more and more active in presenting himself as a patriot and humble citizen fighting against corrupt elites. In an afterthought attempt to break the anti-national tag the BJP tried to saddle on him, he regretted criticizing the atrocities committed by the Indian army in the contested region of Kashmir [xlii]. As I asked him to explain why he does not wish to criticize these crimes even if he knows that the army is a nationalist symbol, he admitted that “this is not about the belief and faith. It is about that…how mass is thinking. […] Mass leader always go with the masses, and they remain with masses” [xliii]. Similarly, as he wants the masses to believe he has not moved up the social ladder since his adolescence days, he instructs us not to let media film the new pukka [cement] three-storey house in which he and his team live in the village, but the modest familial house few meters away, in which his mother resides. The old house is indeed much more prone to elicit an intimate relationship with poor constituents through staging filmed scenes of family life set in a décor of frugality—in which he indeed acts as a “son.” For instance, I sketched below in Figure 2 a widely-circulated image of himself on the day of the officialization of his candidacy, in which he is seeking the blessings of his mother and also those of Zainab [A], the mother of a Muslim student who mysteriously disappeared from SFU in 2016—following a scuffle with right-wing students.

Strikingly, populist considerations have also emerged in seemingly unrelated conversations, notably those regarding marriage. Govind had over the years become worried that if he weds an urbane educated woman, that would damage his ability to produce an anti-elitist populist narrative. Until now he had reluctantly chosen celibacy, citing the “lack of private space” for romance [xliv] and the risk to his reputation if he were to indulge in an affair [xlv]. One night, as we were enjoying the fresh breeze on the rooftop of Govind’s empty party office, a problematic question was raised by Roshan [A], an activist lawyer who served as his former political mentor. Taking advantage of the gossip-oriented conversation he abruptly and facetiously asked: “Govind, why don’t you marry Salini [A] [a famous Bollywood actress and SFU graduate known for her courageous anti-government stands]? She has your ideology, she is sharp, politically active, smart, sexy, plain make up [sic].” To that Govind answered, half-boastful and half-annoyed:

I could marry Salini anytime, but that won’t be good. Politically that won’t serve any purpose. This populist thing, you have to go with the morality of the masses. They will say I’m different, she is loose, city people, etcetera. Once I am settled, once I have some political post or something. then I will look, then I will marry [xlvi].

This reluctance to be associated with the elite outlines the centrality of populism in Govind’s political career; to the point that he internalizes its requirements upon his most personal life. After all, Govind is aware that his coupledom is a matter of popular scrutiny, as “wife” and “girlfriend” are two of the eight suggested related searches in 2021 when typing his name in Google’s search engine (from an Indian IP address). Populists have to be like the common people, and partnering with an “elite” actress will prevent them from claiming they are like the common people. Such populist people-likeness gives coherence and credibility to his constant anti-elitist stand and nativist appeal. His speeches are full of attacks against BJP politicians, who are compared to a “dirty house” [xlvii], to parvenus, liars [xlviii], rich [xlix], thieves [l], betrayers [li], dishonest people [lii], vote-hungry while “sucking the hard-earned money from the common people in various forms” [liii]. In Govind speeches, common people and their metaphors—he compares them to an elephant trapped by the mahout [liv]—are defined in terms of class rather than on a religious basis:

What is the divide you want to create? It is the division of haves and haves-nots. Modi is the representative of Ambani [business tycoon close to the ruling dispensation], we are the representatives of aam aadmi [common people]. This is a fight between aadmi [people] of Ambani [i.e. the government], and the aadmi of Hindustan [he laughed at the rhyme I underlined, which he uses in his speeches]. That narrative we have to bring. That will bring class issues, without taking the name of Marx and Lenin [lv].

The last two components of Govind’s black-and-white vision of the world unfolded during the 2019 parliamentary elections is nativism and demagoguery. Indeed, not only did he portrays his contender and party members as a coterie of corrupt politicians, he also introduced them as outsiders, not hesitating on some occasions to compare them to British colonizers [lvi]. Using a similar register of self-victimization to that of Narendra Modi (Jaffrelot 2003), he often equates in his campaign speeches political attacks on him as direct offenses to the people of the constituency [lvii]. On the one hand he praises inhabitants of Ranigrad and the larger state as full of wisdom [lviii], dignity [lix], patriotism [lx] and martyrdom [lxi], which makes it impossible for a traitor “to be born” on that land [lxii]. On the other hand, the BJP is presented as a party that has, through jailing him and portraying him as a seditious person, “humiliated the land of Ranigrad” [lxiii] by trying to make its “nose bow down” [lxiv]. To complete this emotional picture, Govind does not hesitate to introduce a more economic form of shame, one affecting farmers [lxv] who cannot become middle-class consumers. As a solution he promises that under his leadership farmers “will be free from muddy and torn cloth[es] […] having bullet motorcycle and RayBan sun goggles as their appearance” [lxvi]. On the occasions in which the nativist argument is not sufficiently hard-hitting, Govind resorts—against his strong secular credentials [lxvii]—to invoke Hindu-majoritarian demagogy [lxviii]. While he denies indulging in this kind of rhetoric, he could not help in few rallies from appealing to right-wing supporters by accusing them in lieu of a Mosque destroyed by Hindutva militant in 1992 [lxix] (the construction of the temple has since begun). For instance, he once declared:

They form government every time, but they don’t build temple and the agenda of building a temple keeps on shifting from one page to another in the manifesto. At first, it was on page no. 39, then to page no. 40, and there is probability that from next time onwards this issue will be removed from manifesto turned determination booklet [lxx].

Now that the eight components of Govind’s populist politics have been discussed—populist reflexivity, anti-elitism, nativism, intimacy-focus, simplicity-focus, disintermediation, policy disinterest and demagoguery—the inevitable question emerges: what are the reasons behind this career choice? In the following section, we make sense of how Govind uses populism to free himself from his party and caste bonds, which he believes are the two main obstacles to his electoral success.

Autonomy-making

The why of Govind’s populist career choice is prima facie puzzling: he could have more easily opted for a safer career option in his party—for example, as a member of the state’s legislative assembly in which the narrative of service delivery trumps the one of people-likeness. Similarly, he could also have joined the leading opposition party (the Indian National Congress, INC) which had offered him the much-coveted position of President of the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) of his state, i.e. the state political leadership, an offer he then refused. He even once hinted that he could—upon switching to Congress—get a nomination seat in the upper house of Parliament, the Rajya Sabha [lxxi]. When asked why he didn’t accept such enviable posts, he replied ambiguously: “President koi bhi ho sakta tha. […] Lekin us situation ko handle karna, uskelie apke pass political reason ho” [Anyone could have been President [of the PCC]. But to handle the situation, for that you need a political reason] [lxxii]. This is an indication of Govind’s apparent reluctance to make a career within a party, where his progression would be more squarely indexed on his contribution to the organization. This rejection of the ‘easy career route’ is in contrast with the choice of many of his peers from SFU, which as he notes himself: “are being coopted by mainstream political parties [from which] they will get a space in bureaucracy, […] in academics, [and] in civil society, very easily” [lxxiii].

Overtime, it became clear however that Govind was using his populist rhetoric to gain autonomy vis-à-vis these two parties in order to emerge as the major opposition face in the country. Because of his grand ambitions, Govind continuously feared that flaunting his allegiance to these parties will put him in a position of subordination towards party leadership, damaging in fine the credibility of his populist narrative. In his constituency, his reluctance to appear as a LPB [A]—Left Party of Bharat—figure is noticeable and self-asserted. For instance, during the 2019 elections, one of his campaign managers noted as we were leaving a joint meeting with district LPB katyakartas (political workers):

We are like Modi, cultivating brand, we don’t come as LPB, we don’t carry them with us. We are campaigning separately, without them. We are creating a brand because we are countering their [BJP] propaganda. People carry a bad image of LPB, that we are zamindars [big landowners]. […] People remember their blunders [industrial mismanagement, see section 2 and [lxxiv], so it is better not to divide [the vote]. Anyway LPB will do their campaign otherwise. If Govind wins, it is not going to be the victory of Govind Jaishankar from LPB, it is going to be the victory of Govind Jaishankar with LPB [lxxv].

Early discussions discussions with Govind in 2014-15 often revolved around doctrinal debates—i.e. the unsuitability of democratic centralism or the relevance of the so-called National Democratic Revolution line [lxxvi]—and the need to reform the party’s outlook towards caste oppression and what he calls the “good side of capitalism” [lxxvii]. He now defends the idea that the “Communist party died,” that their “narrative is lost” and the LPB’s political survival is only due to India’s huge social diversity [lxxviii]. On another occasion he asserted more bluntly: “It is non-significant, whether I am in LPB or not, It is there or not it is not important” because in any case, “the strength of party only” is not sufficient to win elections [lxxix]. The various references to Govind as a “brand” comparable to Modi signal’s his need to use populism to compensate his It further hints at the fact that both politicians hyper-personalize their image beyond policy orientations and party structure for political gains (Pich and Newman 2020).

Govind’s reluctance to associate himself with his party in public is so salient that out of the 14 transcribed speeches under scrutiny, he refers to the LPB explicitly only once—and that too in 2018. In any case, Govind’s visible attempts to erase signs of affiliation is an open secret in the constituency, freeing political space for Govind to self-present as a national patriot in direct connection with the people. In one of his campaign speeches as well as in our conversations, he clearly states that he is not attached to a party, but to the masses:

A journalist asked me that why on your vehicle there is no party’s flag, I replied him that if there would have not been an electoral code of conduct, I would have put tricolor on my vehicle […] I say this fight is not ‘Govind vs. Modi’, this fight is ‘Modi vs. We The People of India’, make a clear note of this [lxxx]. So the only one thing I have learned, I will not be towards the political organizations, party daftar [office], and the political leaders, I will be towards masses. What mass needs, what I can groom to them. There is a direct dialectics between me as an individual and masses. So what I imagine about the society, and what society is aspiring, I have to find a middle path, or the common ground. Reduce my romanticism, my idealism, what I have learned in SFU, but I can’t completely departure from myself. Because I loved, that’s my love. I can be just to understand, I will try to be, [the] 21st century Gandhi of India. Not Marx, nor Lenin not Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh I can’t be, because I have already crossed that age, the age of romanticism, the college days [lxxxi].

Not only did Govind avoid visiting his party office; he also organized his political moves with aides, assistants and collaborators who have no affiliation with the LPB. In contrast with his campus days, most of his young helpers have no connections with SFU, and when they do, they do not have ideological groundings in political activism. Govind admits that: “those who are non-political people, I am relying more on that” [lxxxii]. This also enables him to strike ad hoc alliances with political figures from other political parties, who can organize rallies and bring him exposure to new political audiences such as poor Muslims. Regarding who he is willing to partner with, Govind is explicit: “I am selecting people from different parties […] commitment should be high, and ambition should be low [lxxxiii].”

Thus, Govind’s populism can be read as an attempt to sustain a political career in spite of rather than thanks to a political party. His understanding of populism as autonomy-making is even more evident when considering his then reluctance to join the Congress. Earlier in this manuscript, we pointed out that Govind was eager to distinguish himself from dynastic opposition leaders by fear of being associated with the elite [see iii]. In another instance, he is once again concerned about being perceived as a member of the establishment: “I tell you, I have to save my political credibility also. […] In Indian polity, the one thing every layman can tell you [is]: ah neta hai [says this with blasé tone]. They have too much money. It is like, very understood thing. Nobody will believe that you don’t have the resources” [lxxxiv]. Being assimilated with the so-called “Congressi” cosmopolitan and foreign-educated elite would alienate part of his support base; at least Govind believes this when he uses the word “credibility.” This insight helps us to understand populist careers as a process difficult to reverse. As a matter of fact, if Govind sides with the political class he denounces, this will nullify his populist appeal: he will become one of them. He once expressed very clearly this anguish of loosing his populist appeal on social media, in particular on the video sharing platform YouTube were his speeches regularly attract millions of views:

Without compromising, sustainability is very difficult. Compromise with power. I have to meet Rahul Gandhi [Congress leader] and I have to tell him ki, arhe [come on] boss, you’re my boss, gora sharab dedijie [please give me white/foreign liquor]. He will be happy, theek hai a jao [ok come, join Congress]. And I will be finished. And what I will do? Kya kya ka impact [What is the impact]? Ham hai pe youtube sun raha hai nah log, sashwat kyu sunega? [People are listening to me on YouTube, then [after joining Congress] why will people listen to me honestly?] Rahul Gandhi ko nahi sunega ya amko suni? [Won’t [they] listen to Rahul Gandhi or listen to me?] Rahul Ganhi kya unto sunte [hai]? [Does Rahul Gandhi listen to them?] Uska impact tum dekhi rehen ground pe? [You can see his impact on the ground?] […] Isse lare, koi larne wala nahi tha, toh space mil gaya. [To fight with him [Modi], there was no one to fight [against him], so [I] got the space] Vo ek space jo hai, vote ma transfer nahi hua. [That one space did not translate into votes.] Char lakh log jo hai, char lakhs chalis lakh log, youtube pe dekh raha hai, to chalis lakh log pura desh ka hai, Ranigrad ka to hai nahi. [The four lakh people, forty lakh people who are watching on YouTube…but these forty lakh people are from the entire country and from not Ranigrad.] Ranigrad ka kul…do lakh sattar…ussi ne se nikalna parega. [The total [vote transfer] from Ranigrad [had to be] two lakhs and seventy thousand [in order to win]…have to extract from there.] I have lost two times in SFU [student elections], before winning for President, [once] I lost by six votes [lxxxv].

This quote is revealing in two ways. First, Govind admits that his populist and unmediated relationship with viewers on social media would be damaged if he were to join the ‘elitist’ party. At the same time, he acknowledges that while his populist rhetoric has brought him in the limelight at the national level as a potential opponent to Modi (see lxxxvi, also lxxxvii), it failed to attract sufficient voters in his constituency. This suggests that Govind’s populist modality, enabling him to be a “polarizing force” [lxxxviii] did not succeed in supplanting other winning forms of political representation which structure patronage politics and ethnic voting at local levels.

Efficient patronage is notably tied to constituents’ belief that a strongman can not only fix individuals’ issues, but also route porous public resources to one’s constituency while giving privileged access to her/his group of supporters (Auerbach 2021). Conscious of the need to appear as someone who can deliver, Govind had been “promising like a son” [lxxxix] that he will commission public infrastructures, such as an All India Institute of Medical Science (network of reputed public-funded hospitals), an Indian Institute of Technology (network of prestigious public technical universities) [xc], roads [xci] and a new train line [xcii]. However, as a poorly-affiliated populist having the support of neither the opposition alliance (who presented a candidate against him) nor the ruling alliance, the promise of securing for Ranigrad non-programmatic public investments controlled by his arch-enemies seemed, at best, very unlikely. This highlights the potential electoral damage of populist campaigns in contests where the practice of distributive politics—where politicians act as brokers—is a must. Many undecided voters we met during door-to-door campaigns admitted that Govind neither had the local network nor the strongman attitude to intervene when “the police asks a bribe” [xciii], or when “your son is in jail” [xciv]. If Govind’s populist popularity did not sufficiently translate into votes [xcv] it is because a section of voters might have thought like this initial well-wisher from another state: “Prothome mone hoechilo je era kichu korbe, but over time ekta jinish lokhkho korlam, era shudhu kotha bole, boro boro bhashan” [At first I had felt that they [Govind] will do something. But over time I have noticed something….these guys only talk, skilled in bhashan] [xcvi]. Many people, indubitably, preferred to vote for a corrupt and efficient neta rather than a virtuous but ineffective son.

Despite these shortcomings, it is because Govind can claim national visibility that he could sustain his populist career financially even after the polling. Indeed, as a promising crowd-puller, Govind managed to secure various streams of funding for his political campaign, much of which he did not spend in the prospect of pursuing further his political career [xcvii]. In 2018 Govind appeared very worried about his ability to secure the several crores (one crore rupees is around 135,000 USD) necessary for campaign expenses [xcviii]. However, Govind’s populist appeal convinced at least one ruling regional party (in another state) that it was worth funding him in exchange—it seems—for his frequent appearances for events in that state [xcix]. The fact that Govind could amass economic capital to sustain his long-term running costs (e.g. maintaining one car with driver in the seven sub-constituencies of Ranigrad) [c] but was reluctant to spend it for the campaign generated a lot of frustration among his campaigners. Most of them were working for him for free [ci] while finding ingenious solutions to cut on expenses—e.g. stealing petrol for the cortege of cars from mobile transmission towers [cii]—hoping that Govind will, post-victory, “change their life” [ciii]. Despite his best efforts, another obstacle that limited Govind’s populist electoral success has been his relative inability to secure support across caste divides, and—significantly—among his co-ethnics from the Dhartiwale caste. Below I suggest that Govind’s populist argument that he embodies all the non-corrupt, non-rich and non-political people upsets the traditional voting logic of his caste members, who believed that he betrayed the aspirations of Dhartiwale power-assertion in the constituency. Said differently, the populist insistence that all humble and honest people are equals did not please many Dhartiwale who—like other castes—practice group-assertion while cultivating a language of pride and superiority. All-in-all, this indicates that locally the egalitarian populist argument proposed by Govind did upset the hierarchical paradigm of caste politics.

In Govind’s words, the electoral caste ‘equation’ of the state is as follows: “Dhartiwale, Dalits and Muslims, this combination is winning combination in this Uttar state [A]. Because Dhartiwale have land, money and muscle. Dalits and Muslims have numbers…population. We change the political equation in Uttar” [civ]. The change Govind is referring to is his attempt to secure the support of poor sections of Dhartiwale, Dalits and Muslims at the same time, beyond caste allegiances. A Dalit Member of the Legislative Assembly and co-campaigner acknowledges that this is Govind’s electoral trump card: “Govind is a smart lad, [he] will not let himself trapped in his Dhartiwale identity” [cv]. Govind’s speeches indicate his effort to weaken caste-based voting under the banner of the common man—here symbolized by the reference to the footslogger:

To become a leader of any specific caste, one has to just prove that he is loyal to the identity, and any prominent leader among them. But we will not follow them. We will not get involved in politics of any specific caste and religion. ‘What is the wandering skill of a foot soldier if he doesn’t take a path on which there are no scattered stones’ [cvi].

Yet, Govind acknowledges that the use of symbols of the people such as the poor or the constitution [cvii] cannot happen in a vacuum of caste identities, but rather in addition to them: “I’m trying to create a common ground. Like when you talk about Dalits, OBC, EBC [administrative terms for clusters of lower castes], I talk about poors also, I talk about farmers also. Caste identity and class identity. Both I am trying to intermingle” [cviii]. In order to further assert caste and religious equality he tries as much as possible to appear with Dalit and Muslim politicians on stage, but refrains from talking about caste reservations (caste-based affirmative action), which would alienate upper castes:

I am a leader, there are many leaders around me and they are from different sections of the society. So the question of representation [by their caste/religious leaders] will be reduced or minimized. That allegation [that he is a Dhartiwale representative] will not sustain. And to, doing this in present times, again and again you have to talk about history. Like today I have said: ye dharti [this land] is related to Puran Narayan Singh, he belongs to a dominant community. But this land also belong to Lakshmi Paswan, he was a Dalit [both are local leaders] [cix, see also cx].

His attempt to be the champion of all communities is most visible in his willingness to represent Muslims, which he grounds in the argument that all communities should have the same status and rights. Avoiding conceptual terms such as secularism, he relies instead on anecdotes of inter-faith entente, pointing for example at Hindu devotional songs written by Muslims [cxi], at the similar beard worn by “both maulana [Muslim scholar] and sadhu [Hindu renunciate]” [cxii], or at the 2,000 rupees note having the same value coming from Muslim or Hindu hands [cxiii]. As earlier stated, rhymes involving ready-made binaries between harmonious and communal sections are his next favorite rhetorical tool to denounce unequal treatment of religious communities:

I start my discussion with romanticism of freedom struggle. Then I come to economy. Then I try to plaint a picture of binary things. [..] And using colloquial words, phrases, humor, then sometimes aggression. […] Like, khet me mar raha hai kisan, seema pe shaheed ho raha hai jawan, jisne bech dia do thake me apna imaan, vo hi TV per bechte Hindu aur Musalman [he then translates to English by himself, underlying mine]. Farmers committing suicide in fields, soldiers are dying on border, and those who have sold their souls [integrity] for pennies they are doing Hindu-Muslim [communalism] on television [cxiv].

As it turned out, Govind’s populist claim of equality among the have-nots did not bring the expected electoral results for at least two reasons. First, in a climate of religious polarization, Govind’s presence at multiple “Muslim events” and his visits to community leaders favored the BJP narrative that Govind was in fact a Muslim candidate in disguise who had betrayed both his Hindu faith and his caste affiliation. Such feeling was fueled by rumors circulating on the instant messaging platform WhatsApp, implying that Govind had not performed the last rites of his recently deceased father in the fashion prescribed by his caste—which implies for instance head shaving. A former friend of his in SFU commented: “[we advised him] to be an urban phenomenon. But in this state [A] you cannot do without caste. Despite he did so many things, he went to temple, he went there [laughter], he got abuses from left people…he could not get Dhartiwale votes [he laughs again] [cxv].

The resilience of caste politics in India might be an indication that it is ‘special treatment’ rather than the pursuit of social equivalence that drives group voting for local elections. As Anastasia Piliavsky (2021) notes, the language of political patronage, deference and caste is hierarchical. In this context, the horizon of social upliftment under a big man’s leadership also means the social stagnation—or even the demotion—of rival community groups (p.32). It is very possible that Govind’s egalitarian claim sounded like a threat for many Dhartiwale, who could expect more economic and social advancement through supporting the BJP Dhartiwale candidate. The fact that several of his collaborators pointed out after elections that his Dhartiwale identity was not sufficiently emphasized gives credit to this interpretation. The following insight on Govind’s defeat by one of his aide is a clear acknowledgement of the fact that caste groups want to “go up” rather than pursue inter-caste social equalization:

I am decasted, I am Govind Jaishankar [rhetorical figure of speech], I am not Dhartiwale…so Dhartiwale is not giving votes, and even Yadav [another influential caste] is not giving votes. You will have to own this thing [Dhartiwale identity]. He cannot own [it], that is why he is not the leader of Ranigrad, he will have to own [it] if he wants to be the leader of Ranigrad, as a Member of Parliament. He will have to take an open stand [that he is the Dhartiwale’s leader] at least in the field […]. They were already ours [Muslim vote], we should have worked somewhere else. In that we missed the narrative that RSS was creating under the current, that this guy is a Muslim leader, basically. If you go to his [social media] Twitter, almost 80 percent of his followers is Muslim. People from his own community did not want him to rise. Because, they think that they will lose their power. That he is not going to work in their favor. Because he is communist, they have seen the communist regime snatching their land. And that he is against capital, so he will not make their businesses flourish. He talks about gareeb [poor], already garibs are getting lot of things from the government. Equality is not their concern, their concern is, who is going up, and whom you are with. There are few thekedhar [contractors] lobbies, if they give money and votes to the BJP candidate [A], obviously they are going to get favors, on ministry basis, on policy basis [cxvi].

We are left to wonder why Govind did not understand that his “populist becoming” would be at the same time a popular success and an electoral debacle: he gained supporters but many of these did not vote for him [cxvii]. One possible interpretation is that he did not really have a choice; he needed the populist ethos to stand on the shoulders of his party and caste. Populism, conceived as a toolkit for autonomy-seeking was his solution to establish the rapport de force he needed to better control political intermediaries hostile to him. The other interpretation is that, despite his best efforts, Govind did not sufficiently unlearn the egalitarian premise of his student politics days. Flaunting his populist claim, he stated equivalence of all among the poor and raised them against the rich elite ruling them. That sameness of all the have-nots, in which he included himself as the local, kindhearted son, was pitted against outsiders and corrupt political leaders. As it turned out, constituents did not adhere to this representative sameness encompassing all the deprived. They preferred instead to support someone distinctively powerful, which would in all likelihood further the interest of the Hindus against Muslims and the majority caste of the constituency against those who did not ally with them. Despite Govind’s populist appeal, voters preferred hierarchical distinctiveness to representative sameness. They sought a neta, not a son.

Epilogue: without, within

This longitudinal ethnographic study focused at biographical levels on how and why one becomes populist. Diachronic empirical evidence showed that populism is a processual journey involving the gradual unlearning of ideological, conceptual, technical, and party-centric rhetorical idioms, as these impede populists’ simple, warm, Manichean, anti-elitist, unmediated and culturally-relatable narratives of people-centrism.

The article argues that populist careers should be understood beyond the people-populist binary. Instead, I suggest they are better conceptualized as a tripartite relationship, in which the populist needs to claim the people in order to better control and/or bypass cumbersome intermediaries—in this case political parties and ethnic groups. Populism as autonomy-making is likely to be the consequence of a power-struggle in which a politician fears she cannot mobilize sufficient relational, economic or symbolic resources for asserting leadership within king-making groups—here electorally successful organizations and dominant caste combines. Perceived political weakness or excessive ambitions are thus the likely biographical drivers of a populist career. Considering the many obstacles to the conduct of populist politics, the likelihood that it will be adopted by new political entrants is low. Yet, populists’ popularity as well as their disruptive strategic and discursive practices contribute to the renewal of political communication and practices in South Asia. As populists build electoral presence in opposition to the dominant political establishment, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to undo their anti-elitist stand without jeopardizing their own popular appeal.

This is a conundrum that Govind, the prominent left student leader-turned-politician in North India experiences vividly as he contemplates the electoral shortcomings of his populist politics. Despite his stardom status, he proved unable to gather sufficient votes on his name to become a Member of Parliament. As we have seen, traditional mechanisms of representation such as party-supported patronage and caste-based assertiveness prevented him from garnering sufficient votes based on the idea that all poor people were equal in their fight against economic and political parvenus. As a result of caste pride and the deepening of communal politics in India, deprived citizens did not wish to elect a populist who was arguing that he was like all the common people, irrespective of community divides. Rather than standing for equality and sameness, voters preferred hierarchy and distinctness through voting for a strongman and sitting Minister who appeared credible in securing public funding, displaying largesse and giving co-ethnics privileged access to resources.

The case study opens up new questions for the study of populism, in particular outside Europe and the Americas. First, because the ethics of political efficacy in South Asia is associated with good patronage and targeted allocation of public goods, it relies heavily on the assumptions constituents make about the strength of a party or about the personal hold of a candidate. Hence, at local levels, populist representation based on the argument “I am the people” might not perform electorally as well as the claim “I am the boss,” which is the prerequisite for top-down distributive politics. Populism might then work better for national elections only, where non-programmatic public spending, local caste equations and various forms of para-legal protection are not winning parameters.

Second, the South Asian case complicates our understanding of the relationship between populism and charisma (Canovan1981; McDonnell 2016). As we have seen, populism presupposes a form of aesthetic substitution (Ankersmith 1996, p.28), in which the putative people and the leader are interchangeable. Yet this claim of commonness is always in contradiction with the requirement of distinctiveness, as the populist leader can represent ordinary people only through standing out vis-à-vis the rest of the political class. The need to flaunt extraordinary qualities to embody the people defines our common understanding of populist charisma (Pappas 2016). The resolution of this dilemma depends on what we mean by extraordinariness. For most populists, exceptionalism resides in their ability to stand out in the media landscape as someone speaking truth to power in the name of the voiceless. In the Indian political landscape, exceptionalism is also—and maybe mainly—characterized by those bosses and political criminals commanding supra-legal notions of force, justice and benevolence (Michelutti et al. 2019). In various respects, it seems that it is the latter form of charisma rather than the former that facilitates candidates’ victory in their respective constituencies.

This is not to say that populism has no future in South Asia. On the contrary, with the massification of the use of social media and the individualization of the relationship between elected representatives and citizens, opportunities for unmediated populist politics are not scarce. Such politics is however more likely to emerge at higher positions of decision-making at state and national levels, where caste and regional affiliations are—slightly—less decisive winning parameters. Examples abound: Narendra Modi (India), Imran Khan (Pakistan) and Mahinda Rajapaksa (Sri Lanka) for Prime Ministerial posts, Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal) and Arvind Kejriwal (National Capital Territory of Delhi) for Chief Ministerial positions.

The contribution also considers party relations as an additional classification criteria for populisms worldwide. The story of Govind is exemplary of populism without party. In the case surveyed, the candidate used populism as a means to distance himself from his party to be able to win elections without it. This form of populism as autonomy-making might be the least electorally efficient as compared to populism within a party. In the latter scenario, a leader uses populism as a way to further his control over it. The example of Modi is exemplary of this populism within: he controls the BJP, benefitting from its machinery and the centralization of resources. Like Kejriwal, he does not run away from his party; he rather personifies it.

As it should now be clear, this account found no evidence of populism as a thin ideology. Rather, Govind—an upholder of secular and redistributive values—used populism instrumentally, both as a way to represent the putative people away from communal divides and to distinguish himself from restrictive party and caste affiliations. Evidences of his populism are stylistic and strategic rather than ideational. It is precisely because the populist strategy he set for himself didn’t allow him to win elections that in our last encounter he, for the first time considered switching party. “See when I was in my state [before joining SFU], I had one obsession: amir [rich], garib [poor]. I was angry, how to snatch, how to get there. […] What the actual binary is: those who have power, the dynasties, the political families, and those who are powerless […] There were two things that I was having by staying in LPB: credibility and space for populism. But I have realized another thing; you cannot be a face without the organization [here a strong party], once you are in the party then you can build a face [cxviii].” Later that year, Govind eventually officialized that he was joining the Indian National Congress, the non-plebeian party he earlier bitterly criticized. By switching sides to a dynastic opposition party, Govind will certainly damage the credibility of his anti-elitism, but since his populism without has failed, he is left to try populism within, at the cost of populism itself.

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1. I would like to thank Victor Alembik for his help in collecting and translating Govind’s speeches.

Appendix

BLOC	QUOTE	DATE	TYPE	LOCUTOR	TEXT
i	380	16/9/2018	interview	Govind	My speech is different here, have you noticed it? The horizon of university politics is limited: the mass politics is different, the horizon is large. We have to change the tactics. The first thing is communication…we have to communicate…
ii	108	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	Like Hanuman, Mahavir, Baljranbali, Pavansutr, Pavanputr. These are names of Hanuman. Like Shiv Mahadev…Not like that [I will take revenge], just in a funny way, like humorous way. I will not put myself in the religious trap, like eagle, like saheen, come down, put your paw, [snaps his fingers] and fly. [I ask: so again you are neta?] Again I am using, I am trying to create distance from neta. Putting myself as son of soil. Last manhe pole [mone pore, do you remember]? [He starts imitating his own speeches] Ke kharab…janta jut nahi bolti hai [in fact, people do not lie], abhi neta ki taraf, suwidha [?] nahi kar raha hai [the leader—in this case his opponent—is not going to facilitate]…invoking son of soil. I will give you too much content to write on left populism [laughter].
iii	93	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	I don’t have enough time to change the narrative, they will win [Vidhan Sabha elections] easily. We need more time. The next five years we will work on that. You are working on left populism. Why are people connecting to me. Because I am attacking dynasties, because I am attacking the corruption of politics, I am attacking the difference between political class and the common masses. If I will sit with these people nah, I will be delegitimated. You are talking about Amit Shah’s son, and you are sitting with Yano, you will be like cheer leader, you will just become and entertainer. People will come and clap in your ecosystem only. We want to break that ecosystem nah.
iv	303	27/2/2020	speech	Govind	Today if half war is won then credit goes to the common people of Uttar. Actually we are naturally simple-hearted. We easily fell in trap of low-priced offers like ‘sale’. We easily fell in trap of extra product at same price like ‘buy one get one free’ offers. But here we are not buying something, we aren’t doing any sort of bargaining. We are on mission to save our nation and constitution. We are following Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar.
v	288	17/2/2020	speech	Govind	This is the situation. You see, those who are minister, CM, MP, MLA, they all are getting salaries, both old and new MPs are getting money. In police, the retired one are getting pensions. Is this a government? Is it, who is the government? Who is the government in your district? You have DM, SP, block heads, they are only the government employees? They are only representing the government Government employees’ pension has stopped, while pension for government’s MP is continued. See, they will say you to decline subsidy on gas cylinder, for that big hoardings will be installed with the smiling face of PM.
vi	220	17/4/2019	speech	Govind	From your blessings and kindness I have not come to make career in politics. Its your blessings and strength of your salt that I have enough talent to fetch a good job easily, but human’s only aim is not only to feed the stomach? If person’s only aim would have been to feed the stomach then why Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar faced so much insult? Why Bhagat Singh got hanged? Why Gandhi got pumped bullet in his body? Anyone has to carry out the social responsibility. But when you will take-up the social responsibility in favor of weaker sections, oppressed and exploited sections, and talk of them then powerful people will apply their power or not? Obviously will apply power, will put different types of allegations, will use police and administration, will apply media’s power. Their only aim will be how to suppress poor’s voice.
vii	296	27/2/2020	speech	Govind	Main reason behind my sleeplessness is that current situation of our country is not letting me to sleep. In this situation my words couldn’t be very polite. I apologize for it. In that case, consider this speech as non-political and kindly show your big heart and forgive me.
viii	375	20/9/2016	biography	Govind	I don’t like it when some say I lost my way and so ended up in politics. Actually, I explored many paths and chose politics. I got pushed around in life and, bruised and battered, ended up in politics. Those who are being roughed up in life must enter politics. There is no other option. As Premchand said, if you haven’t experienced the summer heat you can’t enjoy the first raindrops of monsoon. Someone who has experienced no pain in life doesn’t have the desire to be free of it. Even if his life has no discomfort he doesn’t realize it. He who has not experienced hunger doesn’t value food. You run after flavor only when your belly is somewhat full.
ix	381	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	What Dhartiwales are getting? They are behind different political leaders. They are behind Bhavesh, they are behind Prateek, they are behind Ramvilas Paswan. Now, it at least Uttar, people have already started to accept me as a leader. You can see the electrifying effect of mass.
x	368	20/9/2016	biography	Govind	The secret to being a good debater and public speaker is to know how to communicate with those directly in front of you. I felt that I should connect to others on the basis of what I myself had thought and experienced rather than spout empty words from a book that had no relevance to me. A person could not live in isolation in society. He had to be connected to the world and this was done through one’s thoughts and actions. A farmer grew foodgrain, a worker produced goods, and great artists, writers and politicians connected to people by expressing their deepest selves.
xi	382	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	Naturally they are coming. We are doing nothing. We are just joing campaign. It’s like ki chalo Govind a raha hai, to basha sunhe kam se kam chalke…let’s go and listen to what he speaks.
xii	66	30/5/2019	interview	Govind	[I say: what about your policy programme?] Other people will do it. I will give bashan.
xiii	231	17/4/2019	speech	Govind	You are considering me a candidate? Don’t think that I am a candidate. You all are candidate. When you all are candidate, I have come to make a request that on 9th going for my nomination, I will not do nomination, 30 lakhs people of Ranigrad will do nomination because it’s a matter of prestige for Ranigrad. Not in any condition, Ranigrad’s nose should not bow down. The only slogan the people of Ranigrad should raise ‘we don’t want a leader, we want a son’.
xiv	284	17/2/2020	speech	Govind	But do remember, I am not a leader who gets scared. There is no word ‘scare’ in my dictionary, and Ramprasad Bismil and Ashfaqullah Khan, they both together used to sing a patriotic song ‘The desire to make a sacrifice is in our hearts, let us see what strength there is in the arms of our executioners.
xv	180	3/3/2016	speech	Govind	One more thing I want to say from my prison experience. This is my self-criticism and if you think it applies to you too, then take it in that spirit. We from SFU are refined and civilized in our speech, but we speak in heavy jargon which the common people of this country are unable to understand. It’s not their fault. They are honest, straightforward and perfectly capable of understanding. It is we who are unable to explain things to them at their level. In the end what reaches them? No more prevarication [lying], just sell on OLX. It is critical that we establish a conversation and debate on this ‘for sale’ mentality that has been created in this country.
xvi	179	3/3/2016	speech	Govind	This policeman, like me, comes from an ordinary family; like me, wanted to pursue studies; like me, wanted to understand the systemic ills of the country and fight against them, wanted to understand the difference between being literate and educated, yet is working as a policeman.
xvii	197	15/8/2018	speech	Govind	People comes first, peoples have to decide whom to elect whom to reject. I believe every peoples representatives even PM … should talk like a common person. So I believe there is no need to say Assume you MP or PM. I would like to say that! We all should think same way as common person thinks. In NCERT books there’s a famous quote of Gandhi “Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you have seen, and ask yourself if this step you contemplate going to be any use to him. Look at the geography of Ranigrad. It is on the banks of River Ganges. It connects two parts of Uttar, It has fertile lands. It is an epicenter of rich culture, language, religion. Our language is most unique in Uttar.
xviii	61	29/5/2019	interview	Govind	They were counting on this mistake…if they were just singing songs with daphli which news channel would have covered that? They want to provoke, they want to be elitist. There is this joke. Kanaiya’s party is considered revisionist, old, but he is the only one who talks in the language that people understand. And the guy who is counting, who is saying I am the biggest Maoist, I am the leader, the representative of the poor of the tribal. He is talking in a language that is full of jargon that even people with the best vocabulary can’t understand. You understand how hypocritical this is. And both of them [Umar and Govind] are my friends…and I give them all the truths, all the criticism, that is why they want to be my friend.
xix	25	16/9/2018	interview	Govind’s team	Come on here, he is speaking like us, he might have been brought up in SFU which is prestigious university, he is a doctorate [sic], he has a PhD degree with him, but he speaks like us, he is talking about us only. This is one of the reasons, people are becoming more and more associated day by day. When he won the SFUSU elections, just entire focus, you know, on the pragmatic problems. He did not speak much about…[inaudible]…global phenomena…nothing like that, just focus on the very local problems, a very local tone. [inaudible] Being pragmatic is the most important thing when it comes to public perception.
xx	310	22/9/2018	interview	Govind	Yeah, those who have worked with me in SFU sometimes they feel that I am comprising too much. Maybe I have some personal aspiration to become a political leader or a mass leader in India but my concern is I will not indulge myself in such kind of petty discussion or the allegation. I am not..I don’t think that I have to answer those allegations. My focus is how we will stop this fascist disease which is spreading very fast in India. That’s why I am coming out more and more and I am not confining myself to SFU. This is my prime concern and those who are serious political activists, they are also realizing the same thing; SFU cannot save..SFUites cannot save themselves now. They have to join the hands with the other fighting forces in the country. So they have to come out from the campus, when they will come out of the campus they will realize that the discourse, the form of SFU political discourse is not applicable or effective in the general masses. So I am just waiting for that situation when the other political leaders will come out from the SFU, they will realize it. For example, some of our colleagues/comrades they came out from SFU and now they are comprising in their terms.
xxi	9	26/5/2019	interview	Govind	I am a very pragmatic person Vyshakh. I know. I have started many times in my life from zero. It is not new. I will start in politics also. I told you. What I have learned in society, I have unlearned it SFU. What I have learned in SFU, I will unlearn it in the society. That is the process of knowledge gain. What I have learned in SFU it will not help me. For a short time I was politician, again I have to be activist. I have to prepare myself. Again I have to be academician in Ranigrad, this is a different kind of PhD in which I will not get any doctorate. Nobody is prepared for that long march. Not my family, not my mother. Not my brother, not my friends. Everybody had a hope. There is not political backing, what is the [swear word] situation, I am fighting with Modi and this Yano is fighting with me. They are happy really, they have written about it. In such adverse situation you have to reinvent yourself.
xxii	44	26/5/2019	interview	Govind	There was a possibility that we will loose, but this margin, such kind of result. And again everything has changed. That is creating restlessness. See, it is not happening with me only, you have to understand each and every individual. Like, you have certain plans. You came to India, you finished your PhD, you got a job. You will plan for your marriage. After sometimes you feel, everything has changed. So the thing that is continuously coming in my mind. There is an epistemological break. We talked about it. We are in a transitory phase, the world is in a transition. All classical idea have lost their charm. They are not useful for us. To enlighten our current position. In isolation you cannot analyze India. We have to link it with other nations. So yes, in India there is Hindutva. What about Britain? Brexit is ok, you can compare Brexit and the raise of Hindutva. Somewhere it is connected to each other. It is a matter of Identity. But that identity is also changing very fast. They are going to change the decision. Universities are completely failed. Intellectuals have completely failed. On thing, in my limited capacity I can tell you. Our tools are dead. They are useless now.
xxiii	45	26/5/2019	interview	Govind	As an academician, first all, what is my capacity? I am a student, I was a student. I was a research scholar. Debate something. We have an idea, a perspective, to look the world. Then, because of the situation, I came in the mainstream politics. The problem is. All my knowledge are…limited I can say or, those knowledges are incapable to analyze what is happening in Indian society. That is why sometimes I feel, I am stuck somewhere. What has happened. Whether I have to respond, Immediately what is happening around me. The only anxiety is, I am trying to connect the dots. The historical processes, the current situation, and where we will go. I find myself incapable to connect these dots. I feel, Marxism, [Platonism?]…these all ideas are…too old. These are not helping me. The new is not come. What new is emerging, that we are unable to understand. And old is not enough. That is the situation.
xxiii	46	26/05/2019	interview	Govind	We have to go, go though in the process of knowledge gaining. Learning and unlearning. What I have learned in the society, those things we have unlearned in the university. And what we have learned in the university, now we have to unlearn in the society. The all setting, I am telling you. Rationality, classics, scientific, science…we have to carry pistols, we have to kill people. And it is very shocking. I can’t do it. That is why my mind is blank. What I can do. I am in my home, but there is a sense of insecurity. Why? This place was very secure. Suddenly what happened. What has changed. That also we have to understand. And, [stammering] where I was, that place is also shacking [changing?]. SFU, [name of city], urban, cosmopolitan city. That is also is creating restlessness. Only one thing we can do. Galti karna or sickna [make mistakes and learn]. We have to bring different ideas, we have to pull different ideologies together. We have to practice or, alag alag cheeses ko tez karna. Experiment. You have to do many experiments. Maybe some of them will click. And we will find the route.
xxiv	17	16/9/2018	interview	Govind	I want to keep myself away from SFU politics. There are some issues in SFU unit, so I decided it is better to quit. Because the condition of the organization is not good. My intervention is giving wrong impression to them, that I am trying to dictate. I told them, don’t push me there. I don’t care, I am into the masses only. […] New people do this job, keep me away, if there is no positive involvement, I do mind to involve myself. My only worry is that, there must be left unity. I insisted in the party forum, and everybody accepted it. And I told them that at any cost you have to join the left. The last time you people did blunder. Please join, otherwise you will be irrelevant. You first join the left unity, take some space, reorganize the unit, start with day-to-day activity, establish an organizational structure and discipline, and then try to expand the base. The new people should work for that. New people should feel they have enough space to do this job. Strategically I kept myself away.
xxiv	18	16/9/2018	interview	Govind	I think it is not good also, being in mainstream politics and activist, confining yourself in one university frame, it will reduce your narrative also. There is no need to counter CBQTB or SKE, because this is a time to ally all of them to defeat BJP. The SKE candidate for President was in BJTG only, he accused me and joined SKE, that is why I had to keep myself away…he accused me of being a casteist, an opportunist. It is just out of ego fight, and a lot of jealousy. It is quite natural. We are sitting together and suddenly I will become a national figure.
xxiv	20	16/9/2018	interview	Govind	That here people are identifying me as ex-SFUSU President I do not mind, but inside SFU, it is a different kind of dynamic. It will confine me.
xxiv	49	26/5/2019	interview	Govind	The surprise is…between 2014 to 2019, there was some incident-based movement, all got fizzled-out. [examples given] but what is the result? What is the impact? SFU to matlab…apne mar jaega…hopelessness se katam ho jaega SFU. You know what I find shocking, is bar, SFU me koi/call? juloos nahi nikhla. Opposition party. People are surrendering. Not at all. What government…what was the mistake of government. They have attacked from the outside. After our incident they have learned it. No. There is no need to attack outside. Break it from inside. And they have successfully done it. The entire process. Do you know, this time they have outsourced the entrance examination. There is no stake of teachers. One private agency they have given to them, that agency conducted the entrance examination. They will give the results. If they can manipulate EVMs, if the hypothesis is correct, they can manipulate the results of SFU also. The entire demographics of the students will be changes. Next time there will be a different SFUSU. They have opened other courses, MBA, business, engineering…they will vote for ABVP, they find themselves comfortable with this ideology. Actually there is a crisis of ideology I am telling you. I will not say the end of ideology. Serious crisis. They fought, but that was the last fight, when I was in jail. I was SFUSU president, I continued the fight, and in the next election, what am I finding? The shittiness…I was SFUSU president, and the next election, my organization was not contesting. In this situation also, the progressive, left, liberal, were unable to resolve their internal contradictions. That line I will not support. I cannot match Modi…it’s a fact. Those who have wished to defeat Modi…
xxiv	62	29/5/2019	interview	Govind’s team	Kashmir. Ok. Let’s talk about Kashmir. You say. Whatever you say, [with] your extremist tag. Tell me, if I am a person in a conflict zone, and I have an everyday stake. About family, about getting to school about getting income. Would I ever be an extremist then. I will take the best deal that is given to me on the day. You talk about someone who has no stake in Kashmir at all. And this is you privilege you have to understand that. Nothing will ever happen to you no matter what stance you have. You have no emotional connectivity with the people, and responsibility more importantly. And then you go on giving an extremist call, you go on doing representation. The protest they did, cotton and this patti to represent failed examination. What the [swear word]. What are you doing. How is it sensitizing people about this. This is just becoming a selfie venue. How is it sensitizing youth to put cotton on your lips. Ok as a performative tool maybe, if you are that sensitive. If you are not, if you are a superficial person who is doing politics to improve his self-image, how does this affect you? How does this affect Kashmiris? [My question: don’t you think that people make genuine attempts to change themselves through politics and that this is not only superficial?] And that faith has been taken away. I have seen…the place that say we are democratic, we believe in love. I have seen people becoming worst enemies for shitty political disagreements. Shitty. In SFU. And than they talk about solidarity. Adivasi is not adivasi, CBQTB is not Ambedkarite, communist is bourgeois…
xxv	317	15/3/2018	interview	Govind	[I ask him why he goes and signs attendance, against the instructions of the SFUSU] if I don’t sign they [the university administration and the BJP] will have an opportunity to says I am here for activism only, that I live on taxpayer money.
xxvi	67	30/5/2019	interview	Govind	Without movement we cannot organize people. And we need organization. From Uttar to India, this is the route. Not from Delhi to Uttar. We have to bring your political narrative on ground. Popular narrative. You should have something to saw. You should have something to offer. This I have done. This we can do.[he does not want to label himself as a left populist] because there is a strong propaganda against left. It will exhaust [our?] organization. It is better to skip. They will do it, opposition will do it. He will call you Naxal, Maoist, this that. We should not choose our own. If I will brand myself as a leftist, the entire baggage of international communist movements, that we have to claim. I will have to wash the sins of Stalin, the poor does not care about him, what he has done, I do not want to associate with him. I don’t like him. Simply I want to constrain myself. If there is a right, there will be [a] left. So my point is to popularize the left ideology without taking the name of Marx, Lenin, and the work communist…they will grant. Then we will use the energy of power. If Modi is not attacking me nah, I will be finished. There will be no political relevance. And they are attacking, then everybody is remembering Govind Jaishankar.
xxvii	172	19/2/2021	interview	Govind	What is the difference between SFU people and normal right wing. Basic communication difference I am telling you. The break the sentences, it is naked, clear. In SFU people think…they don’t use sentence, they use concept notes, conceptual words, terminologies. They talk in terminologies. For example I am telling you if, Modi uses the word Andolan Jivi, he describes it. SFU people they don’t describe it. They use a conceptual word, fascism. What Modi will do, ye [he speaks slowly to imitate Modi]…then he will describe it. I have changed…images and stories, both…it should relate to people, people can use their imagination to connect with the story.
xxviii	76	20/9/2019	interview	Govind	Innovative things you have to speak. Kam se kam Modi ka bhashen…general masses, koi depression nahi jata, kush hota. Implications will be different [when Modi speaks about on flag, people on the ground say jai shri ram] because that is a painkiller. If you have a pain in your leg, you take a pain killer, but this is not a cure of the disease. Painkiller will harm you, Modi will harm the harmony of this country. But at least getting painkiller if giving release. [why Modi says positive things] Because he has to claim himself to be an ordinary person of this country. He has claimed. Here packaging comes. Narratives comes. Why he has propagated this thing that I am son of chai walah. Because…to counter these all important narratives as elitist narratives. Simple thing.
xxviii	77	20/9/2019	interview	Govind	I am telling you an interesting observation: Modi is not fighting with the moral of Russian revolution. He does not care. Every rightwing politician in the world is countering the morale of French revolution. No Menshevik, Bolshevik. The idea of equality itself is endangered. Muslims out of America, we are American first.See, big bindis on their forehead, speaking an elitist language, English with an American accent, using BMW. Going here and there, by flight and having Bisleri. talking about environment, talking about human rights, talking about freedom of expression, talking about constitutional rights.
xxviii	78	20/9/2019	interview	Govind	My point is, you always prioritize things in your life. In your political life, for the sake of political discourse, you have to prioritize the issues also. You, as a mass leader, your priority should be to counter right wing reactionary forces, then the rights of lesbian, gay and kiss of love. So basically talking about rights do not bring strength to defeat your opponent. You should not speak anything against them, but you should not put these things first. You want to talk about environment, which is true, but get narrative from the farmer. Get narrative from wage working women in the factory, living in the jhopar patti, make them brand ambassadors.
xxviii	79	20/9/2019	interview	Govind	What you are saying is the narrative of the old civil society. The charming boys and girls of the old civil society. What you are saying is the old civil society. Where you can put forward your programme. Ravish, through struggle, he has became the lovely boy of this civil society. But Rohit Sardana can’t [this anti-Muslim guy who died of Covid].You have to strategize to accommodate Rohit Sardana. Because he never went to shakha. He is not member of BJP. Why is he supporting BJP and propagating the narrative of right wing? For the general mass, they don’t know the writings and work of Jean Drèze. But when Jean Drèze sits on the streets and has food with the poor, he gets affection. Then quality comes. He is a very big man. Skin is white, color is white, speaks English, Hindi, values the culture, then people will associate.
xxix	171	19/2/2021	interview	Govind	That kind of ecosystem they have created. And third, you should have language. If you have acquired these three properties as a leader, recognition, polarization and communication…you have to talk in that language that every class of the society should get something from you speech. Ambani will get something else, and Sumita will get something else. The same speech. [Modi] He appeals to sanyasi, it is very interesting, these are all designed and crafted. What Modi does, he behaves as if everyone else is blind except you, this trick applies to public speeches, you only are a knowledgeable person, all in front of you are fools. You have to break it.
xxx	183	3/3/2016	speech	Govind	[example of ryme in the last sentence of the quote, i.e. har/arhar, more examples in cxiv/113] My question is, Are you [those in power] able to see the difference or has your rationality been destroyed…. Is it a good thing to lose one’s rationality so soon because 69% of the people of this country voted against this kind of mindset? Only 31% voted for you and among them were some who were taken in by your slogans. Some of the people you lured with your har har [religious rallying cry, usually associated to the deity Mahadev/Shiva] slogan can only think of the price of arhar [dal] these days.
xxxi	200	15/8/2018	speech	Govind	Then the old man said to his sons to tie up the remaining four sticks in a bundle. Then the old man said to them to break the bundle of four sticks . None able of his sons were able to break the bundle of sticks. On our Independence Day we raise slogan “Hindu Muslim Sikh Christian, we are the four soldiers of Mother India”
xxxi	201	9/10/2015	speech	Govind	[see 177: on the use of proverbs] This ABVP candidate is making River Ganga to flow in opposite direction.
xxxi	202	3/3/2016	speech	Govind	When I spoke to my mother I asked her: So you took a dig at Modiji? She replied that it was not a dig at him. To make fun of people is their prerogative. We just express our pain, those who understand, cry, and those who don’t, laugh. My mother said, it was my pain which made me say Modiji is also a son to a mother, my son has been falsely accused in a sedition case. So when he talks about mann ki baat, why not also talk about maa ki baati?
xxxi	203	3/3/2016	speech	Govind	If you repeat a hundred times that the sun is the moon, will the sun become the moon?
xxxi	233	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	The lie was such, it can be related a famous quotation in context to illiterate “a small mouth, speaks much.”
xxxi	234	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	Manmohan Singh has not become the Prime Minister, instead the people chose Narendra Modi as PM, it means Narendra Modi should not narrate crazy childish stories [Hindi slang], Modi should not try to explain what Nehru did, instead explain what you did, what about the transferring of 15 lakh INR to each citizen’s bank account. You should be accountable whether 15 lakhs have reached to every citizen or not.
xxxi	246	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	I have fallen in this trap, in such a way that once a bird was given a lesson “a hunter will come, lay a trap, will spread the grains, don’t go there, else you will be trapped” [Hindi slang used]. I will not fall into this trap, I know it is Ranigrad district.
xxxi	285	17/2/2020	speech	Govind	The mud cannot be washed with mud. While passing through a way, get bitten by a dog, then you are a human not a dog that you will not bite a dog in retaliation. That is why I want to say all my youth friends that in any circumstances, in any situation we do not have to take help of violence. This time, we have to decide whether we have to lead the paths of Britishers or the paths proposed by The Great Martyr Bhagat Singh. I have decided that I will follow the paths of The Great Martyr Bhagat Singh. I will follow the paths of Gandhi and Ambedkar. I have decided that today is Karpoori’s death anniversary. Karpoori was BJTG (All India Students’ Federation) leader during his studentship.
xxxi	286	17/2/2020	speech	Govind	That development will take place, being a separate district additional funds will be allocated, separate district headquarter will be formed, a collector will sit, judge will sit, production will start, industries will be set-up.
xxxi	299	27/2/2020	speech	Govind	Once a wildfire broke out in a forest, a koel bird was trying to quench thirst with that wildfire.
xxxii	107	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	And I will use the religious texts to invoke secularism. Like ishwar allah tere nam, sabko sanmati de bhagwan. These kind of texts. [he invoked many such lines in his evening speech says Parvez]. I invoke that. When I was in school I uses to pray, tu iram hai, tu rahim hai, tu karim krishna khuda. That was the prayer of my school. This is staunch secularism, not to attack religion, just…good things of religion. Not [to] project yourself as Ram, bhakt or shiv bhakt or make some binary [?], I will not go for that. My name is enough. My name is Govind [starts laughing], it’s mythological character. So I don’t need. An interesting thing, Modi’s wife is Jashoda [Krishna’s foster-mother]. Jashoda adopted Krishna as a child. [How is that useful?] To use mythology differently. See the coincidence of history, Modi’s wife, Jesghoda, who he left, and my name is Govind [she is my mother says Parvez, Govind laugh]. Krishna and Govind are synonym. Krishna Govind Mohan Gopal, all are synonyms. Indian gods have different names.
xxxiii	242	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	While standing in front of HDFC Bank I say its SBI Bank, then will it be SBI Bank? You all keep saying HDFC Bank, SBI…SBI…SBI…, will it become SBI? Similarly, if someone comes beside me and say anti- national…anti- national…anti- national…, will I become anti- national?
xxxiii	281	16/2/2020	speech	Govind	You may have noticed when we want to give medicine to our cattles we lure them by showing green grasses, the moment cattle opens mouth we put medicine in their mouth.
xxxiv	114	8/2/2020	speech	Govind	Sometime use Ram, as a son of Vishnu. An Vaishnavites, vaishnavs are against violence. So if you are a Ram bhakt, how can you kill a person in the name of Ram. I invoke Ramcharitmanas written by Tulsi Das. Ravan rathi virati… [Ravan Rathi Virath Raghubira? Ravan is on chariot. And Ram is marching by foot, and who are on the chariot in our times…those who are in power, they are on chariot, and Ram works in field. That’s why people connect you.
xxxv	34	15/9/2018	interview	Govind	[discussion between Anay and Govind] [Anay] There are important unwritten obligations over here, you believe in god, you got to believe in many such superstitions in your life. [Govind replies] That you can use in your favor. If you are smart you can use this, because the discourse of Hinduism is so diverse. Take the thing and break the political Hindutva. You should build around a kahavat. This around that.
xxxv	308	22/9/2018	interview	Govind	They [regional parties/social democrats] are incapable of identifying the threat of fascism India or the problem of neo-imperialism, of neoliberalism globally. So it is the role of left activists to talk about these problems in popular terms, not only to these leaders, but to the masses directly. It is a thing that we have to do. I am not talking about the Hinduization of the left discourse in India. […] Once we will stop to attack the religious discourse, to attack their psyche, we will try to use the psyche of the masses to bring them…to mobilize them on basic issues [earlier he mentions economic growth, education, literacy, basic infrastructure], and when they will come and we will be in power, we will help SMEs, improve access to infrastructure for women, health infrastructures for women, then the psyche of Indian masses will change and they will understand the power of the Indian constitution and citizenship. Now they think, because of lack of information and bad practices from parties, that the important points are caste and religion, and they are not ready to get rid of them. So first we shouldn’t attack the religious discourse but use it to fight fascist and Hindutva ideologies. There is a great diversity of things available in the Hindutva discourse that can be used to counter political Hindutva. There is no relation between Hinduism and Hindutva, Hindutva is a political ideology use by right-wing forces to snatch power because Hindus are the majority in this country. So this is a tactical strategy.
xxxvi	186	14/8/2018	speech	Govind	Vaishnava sect people don’t eat non vegetarian food because they believe that non vegetarian food causes mental blindness which is the main cause of anger. You don’t have love for Lord Rama, you have love for Ravana. You all are violence spreaders in the society, are hate mongers.
xxxvi	191	14/8/2018	speech	Govind	Tell me in our country, is there “Ram Raj” or “Modi Raj” ? Earlier we used to chant “Har Har Mahadev”, since the last election the new trend of chanting “Har Har Modi” has started. Tell me is Modi a Mahadev (greatest of great Lord) ?
xxxvi	204	15/8/2018	speech	Govind	What kind of a son are you Modiji ? What kind of responsibility have you fulfilled ? You failed as a son, you failed as a husband your wife has fulfilled her responsibility.
xxxvii	90	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	You have to use Gandhian tactics…that’s why. Don’t go for his narrative. Just use his tactic. Gandhian tactic is, don’t invoke violence, talk about unity, don’t attack religion, use the…good religious anecdotes. Attack communalism.
xxxviii	89	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	BJP has absorbed three movements: tribal, OBC, Dalit. And upper caste are obviously allied with BJP. So if we want to break this Hindutva agenda, you should have a different narrative. And that narrative, what we have learned in campus, that cannot be the narrative. [I mention about Ibrahim Maulana refusing to adjust to politics outside campus] For him Gandhi is fascist, it’s like bullshit. Gandhi understood the religious pulse of this country. ishwar allah tere nam, sabko sanmati de bhagwan. This is the biggest chage. But see, I have realized this in campus only. That we should invoke Gandhi. But I was like a minority within left circles. Very ten liberal eih [swear word] sick what are you doing. Left, right, CBQTB, everybody will attack you if you will invoke Gandhi in campus. But every…I am telling you, every social activist, those who have base on ground they all are invoking Gandhi. Medha Patkar, Harsh Mander, Gopal Gandhi, Tushar Gandhi, Yogendra Yadav, Anand Patwardan, Ram Puniyani…since a very long back.
xxxix	88	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	Yes we learned stuff [in SFU], but our all narrative and terminology is useless outside of campus, this is what I am saying. Gandhi is the most untouchable person inside the campus. But outside campus Gandhi is most effective.
xl	37	15/9/2018	interview	Govind	Koi admi kar raha hai, sirf or sirf, career agenda hai. In India if you want to counter Hindutva, [you have to do it] not by bypassing Hinduism, you have to use Gandhi, there is no way. If you can abuse Hindutva and Hinduism both directly, that kind of advantage you have, then of course you can go with Ambedkar. But that situation we do not have. The problem is; the process of Hinduization of Dalit commuities has already taken very deep. It went very deep, in each and every celebration of Hindu festivals you will see that…that community is taking part more and more. So the situation is different, so only we can take perspective from Ambedkar, but each and every word about Hinduism said by Babasaheb Ambedkar, we can’t say now. We have to refer Gandhi only. Ye mazboori ho rahi hai. […] Gandhi was Hindu, but not kill anyone. [but] to save anyone [everyone?]. As Hindu, Nathuram Godse, killed an Hindu, Gandhi. So they are claiming they are saving Hindus, it’s a shame. It’s bullshit [he starts giggling]. Bullshit [he repeats].
xli	357	17/3/2021	interview	Govind’s team	[Parv and Brahmo tell an anecdote about Kamdeo Singh, Govind’s main bodyguard] Kamdeo Singh is a ‘cheap bouncer’, why would Govind throw him out? [Brahmo explains that when you have a killer with you, some youth like Anand [another bodyguard] admire you, they are inspired by you] They are so many around, we picked him because he is leff dangerous than the other ones. He saw in Govind a future leader, he tries hard to be a contractor. He keeps on insulting all the outsiders. […] Usually Kamdeo Singh never leave Bihar. This time for [some court-related issue] he did not even come, even if he is his personal security in-charge. But that time, nobody knows why, he ends up coming to SFU, a red gamcha on his right shoulder, a blue gamcha on his left shoulder, and all his [swear word] rings on every finger. But Govind got panicked, he did not want to be seen with Kamdeo Singh. Then he calls me: why don’t you take him for a walk? [Parv starts laughing]
xli	358	17/3/2021	interview	Govind’s team	[Parv tells the story of Kamdeo Singh, Govind’s main bodyguard] He is a Dhartiwale that has killed a Dhartiwale. There are many criminals. If you kill just anybody it’s cheap, but if you kill someone of your own caste it’s different. Kamdeo is from the family of Govind, but distant one, something loose. He is in charge of the pistols for the Govind, even at that he is not that good. He is known to have killed one of his relatives over a land dispute, he said it was a mistake. What happened, he shot him from very close, there was blood all over his hands and clothes, he likes to boast about this. He immediately calls RK Singh [LPB leader] after this happens. He is arrested and put in jail. There police give him the beating of his life, he still remembers it, his body still remembers. So Kamdeo Singh is in jail, but he gets saved by RK Singh. He manages to get him bail, or some kind of acquittal. […] The rumor is that he has killed his wife, but there is no proof. In fact, everyone knows that he has killed his wife. He was [swear word] with the wife’s sister. But officially, it’s a suicide.
xlii	85	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	Once Vijay called me. He said since 4 years you are talking about constitution. And I [Vijay] thought it is a useless thing in the world, what is a constitutional right, what is constitutional democracy. Now see it has become the national issue. Now constitution is the central…it is a strong safeguard. [Ibrahim Maulana has not realised he has moved out of campus] Now everything is under scanner. During the era of artificial intelligence, everybody is under the scanner. Always people should be very careful of their words. I have realized when I came out from jail and I have given one statement about Kashmir. “Security forces do rapes in Kashmir” Then I faced backlash. Then I realized no: now stop thinking on ground of campus. Now world is listening [to] you because of this new media. Islie jo hai, freedom not from country, in country. Differences I have to leak.
xliii	139	15/7/2020	interview	Govind	You have to pick up different symbols, this is a people, market will make things global, what you can do? This is not about the belief and faith [about nationalism]. It is about that…how mass is thinking. Being an academician, being an ideologue is one thing. Being a mass leader is a different thing. Mass leader always go with the masses, and they remain with masses, and they try to…[Parvez says: change]. This is the way to fix the morality of the state.
xliv	70	30/5/2019	interview	Govind	Mahadev [referring to Pratap’s soft Hindutva and Shiva liking] divide Muslim lives…I sleep with politics, I wake up with politics, I wear politics, I bath politics, I eat politics, I wear politics, I bath politics, I speak politics, I think politics, I breath politics. [about the difficulty to have relationships] No man it is ruined. It is being difficult, no space, no time, I cannot show my emotion and commitment. To whom I aspire to be my partner. With someone you have to invest at least your time. This is not the right time to be with you, I should be with her [laughs]…Amrita divorced. Anything. No time. No space. I was staying with Viraj, other people in party office. No space for good morning good night…I was trying [to get private space] but I was facing a lot of difficulties. That relationship tries to dominate other relations. And, in my profession, they have to live separately. It appropriates to all kind of relations. If Viraj is my friend, he should not dominate other relations. There was a fight between Raja and Viraj. So Raja has reclaimed “I am brother”, he [Viraj] has claimed that I am friend. So there was it. [I ask: what was the bone of contention?] Nothing, miscommunication. War of perception. Raja is thinking that Viraj is misusing. And Viraj is saying that Raja is misusing.
xlv	104	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	I am searching. Because leaving alone, single is very difficult. I receive all the time very good messages, very romantic messages but I can’t respond. This is my limitation. Now I am not in campus. I don’t know who they are. Suppose they take a screenshot. The problem now is that I am not living in campus, I don’t have a space. Meeting to you is difficult. We have waited for 24 hours. So any girl will not stay with me in this position.
xlvi	151	22/7/2020	interview	Govind	I could marry Salini anytime, but that won’t be good. Politically that won’t serve any purpose. This populist thing, you have to go with the morality of the masses. They will say I’m different, she is loose, city people, etcetera. Once I am settled, once I have some political post or something. then I will look, then I will marry.
xlvii	215	18/8/2018	speech	Govind	In my view I admit that we got Independence in 1947, and in this area Indigo collection Compound’s land was distributed among Common hardworking farmers anal landless Common peoples. But we need to continue our struggle for our existence. Like we use to clean our home because we know if we will not clean our house daily then our house will become dirty.
xlviii	287	17/2/2020	speech	Govind	Dushyant has said ‘where was the surety, for every house, where is the lamp, not for the city, for the city, there’ (Hindi poem’s stanza). How this situation erupted?
xlix	389	17/2/2020	speech	Govind	Your subsidy is declining while they [politicians] will get meals in canteens should not decline subsidy. For them there should be subsidy in rail travel, subsidized air travel. They should continue with availing all the facilities, only the people have to leave all these facilities.
l	240	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	We have shown you the trailer, how much the power you want to apply, you apply, call your robber friends, purchase media through their power but we will let you know that in this country people’s power is more powerful than corporate power.
li	227	17/4/2019	speech	Govind	Why this situation has come up? This situation has come up because time and again we have been betrayed. “With folded hands like a crane (a bird) will come with shaking necks, will take vote and then forget.”
lii	212	18/8/2018	speech	Govind	Every five years they come among common people in their hired helicopter by taking donations from their corporate friends, they will spread hate between two religion or two classes, they will again win the elections and they will again facilitate their corporate friends from whom they took donations and then the media will cover up every inactions of the government.
liii	282	16/2/2020	speech	Govind	Notice the situation of farmers, in the last few months 12,000 farmers have committed suicide. Farmers are not getting proper prices for their crops. But when we go to the market to buy the same thing, we have to pay much more money than usually, but the farmers sell it at a much lower price. This is the reason that today no farmer wants their children to become farmers. […] People are struggling hard to earn money, but some dishonest people are sucking the hard earned money from the common people in various forms. We have think upon it. […] Those who were chewing Rajnigandha Tobacco has come down to Shikhar Tobacco. There is a severe cash crisis. Particularly, the state of Uttar where migration is a big issue where almost 50% are migrants. You go to any village, you will find 3 categories of people: women, elderly and children. In a country like India our issue is not CAA or NRC but employment is our sole issue.
liv	213	18/8/2018	speech	Govind	But I want to tell you a story that…when people trap the baby elephant, the process of trapping the baby elephant includes first digging a pit, and then they cover the pit with dried grass and when the baby elephant comes in greed of grass by then he steps on the pit covered with grass and he falls down. Then he is tied with an iron chain, the baby elephant tries to break the iron chain but he can’t break it. Slowly baby elephant grows bigger and bigger but deep in his mind he believes that he can’t break this iron chain, but the reality is if he wants to break the iron chain he could break it in just one stroke, but due to his deep rooted belief that he cannot break it, this giant elephant stays slave in spite of being so powerful.
lv	68	30/5/2019	interview	Govind	If somebody is a very good baller, and he is throwing balls at the speed of 135. We have to use that speed. Pratap Kumar is no more Left. Is being branded [like that] now. He has been branded has leftist inside Congress. What is the divide you want to create? It is the division of haves and haves-nots. Modi is the representative of Ambani, we are the representatives of Aam Admi. This is a fight between aadmi of Ambani, and the aadmi of Hindustan [laughs]. That narrative we have to bring. That will bring class issues, without taking the name of Marx and Lenin.
lvi	277	16/2/2020	speech	Govind	The British used to throw cow flesh in Hindu Temples and flesh of pigs in Mosques. British used to trigger communal clashes between Hindus and Muslims. Today the same people with the same mindset are ruling our country. Today following the same pattern of “Divide and Rule.” We have to think that our country was divided into two parts in the name of religion.
lvi	295	17/2/2020	speech	Govind	Whenever needed, Uttar has given birth to one of the finest braves. If it is needed today, we all have to take these responsibilities on our shoulders to challenge the government. If government behaves like Britishers, then we are ready to sacrifice like Ashfaqullah Khan and Ram Prasad Bismil. You all do keep remember, the freedom which our ancestors got by fighting, at any cost we will not let to lose this freedom. The flying Tiranga (national flag) with pride, will not let to lose its pride, and our constitution which do not discriminate on any ground, whether you put cap or mark on forehead, no one discriminates whether you put beard or long hair at back, whether you move by cycle or Fortuner [a SUV], votes of both of you are equal.
lvii	185	14/8/2018	speech	Govind	Because to defame and to demoralize the people of Ranigrad. When government noticed that this youth who studied on people’s paid tax money and he is speaking for people’s rights. Then they thought to defame him and his birthplace.
lviii	189	14/8/2018	speech	Govind	People used to tease us. that Uttaris [people from Uttar] don’t have wisdom, See our Rabriji have more brain than him. You have noticed that the innocent and the poor people of society are declared mentally-ill.
lix	199	15/8/2018	speech	Govind	Freedom doesn’t means that we host tricolored flag or balloons. Freedom doesn’t means that on 15th August we could eat sweets. Freedom doesn’t mean that we should hold tricolor in our hands and chant the glory of any particular. freedom means that every common people could live their life with dignity
lx	218	17/4/2019	speech	Govind	Whatever possible, but no traitor can take birth of Ranigrad’s soil. This faith showed by the people of Ranigrad, as this debt is so big that I cannot repay if taken even seven births. Is debt of mother and soil can ever be payed? Cannot be paid, isn’t it? But at that time only I decided as soon as my education gets over, I will on the soil where I took birth. I had a clear understanding that at the worst time, my district people got abused, in the good time too I have to serve those people in Ranigrad.
lxi	239	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	I want to say you that this land is of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, this land is of Shaheed-e-Azam [the mighty martyr] Bhagat Singh, this land is of Mahatma Gandhi, this land is of Ranigrad’s several martyrs, that is why ask your PM whether is he remembering Govind or not.
lxii	238	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	Let it go, it may be possible, at once I assume that you all don’t believe me, but answer me that do you all believe yourself or not? Put a hold on your heart and think whether a traitor can take a birth on Ranigrad’s land.
lxiii	235	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	what is nationalism, what is meaning of nation? Nation is built with their own people. If farmers continue to suicide, if country faces worst employment in past 45 years, if youths are told to sell ‘pakodas’ after completing their engineering courses, it is just humiliation of education and the people of the country. You al must understand this.
lxiii	263	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	That is why it’s my request to you all, do remember this is not on an ordinary election while you go to cast vote on 29th. Through that vote you have to send message to the entire nation, and that message is, “the way BJP has humiliated the land of Ranigrad, you need to remember this.”
lxiv	390	2/4/2019	speech	Govind	Party ki larai nahi hai, Begusarai ki pehchan ki larai hai […] Main umidvar nahi hu, sab umidvar chhai. [This is not the fight for the party, this fight is for the identity of Begusarai. It’s not just me who is the candidate, everyone is the candidate.] […] Ranigrad’s nose should not bow down!
lxv	294	17/2/2020	speech	Govind	My father is a collector, my father is a doctor, in everything there is a respect and dignity. My father is a farmer, why there is no respect in that? If farmer does not cultivate crops, how stomach will be filled? Even Prime Minster too need crops for meals, isn’t it? That is cultivated by farmers only. Why a farmer doesn’t want his son to become a farmer? It is because there is no profit in farming. Those who don’t have any other job to do, they opt for farming.
lxvi	254	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	I mean to say, whatever the available resources you have, utilize it best. By this the condition of farmer will be much better. The farmers will be free from muddy and torn cloth appearance, the farmers will also be prosperous having bullet motorcycle and RayBan sun goggles as their appearance.
lxvii	106	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	[So you mean he was trying to approach you…]…to see a new alternative in Uttar. [So AVM will be in command?] Of course not, I am also a politician. [he laughts]. He called me, he talked to me. He is in contact with me. You want to meet him? [why not?] But he is an annoying person. Very dominating, one talking talking talking…one-sided talking. Not ready to listen to the position of others. [Govind asks about invoking Shiva in his speeches] I am staunch secular, I will not go for any Soft Hindutva thing. No. [at some point you were hesitating] What I told you, I will not attack religion, I will try to invoke it. But I will not project myself as a religious person. See the difference. So politically if I have to visit mosque and temple I will visit both the places but not as a religious person. As a person who believes in politics, right to freedom of worshipping. So if people are worshipping and they are asking me to be there for them I will be there, not for myself.
lxviii	283	16/2/2020	speech	Govind	I am even ready to accept your stone pelting I am not afraid. My whole struggle is against fear and hate Today I am in front of you because of your love, support and blessing. They want to crush it.
lxix	187	14/8/2018	speech	Govind	Let me tell you their conspiracy: they don’t want votes in the name of Lord Ram, if they really wanted to bring “Ram Raj” then they must fulfill the promise they made to build the Temple of Lord Ram. Instead of Ram Mandir, they have built BJP office worth 1100 crore rupees. They built the temple of Nathuram instead the temple of Lord Ram.
lxx	262	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	They form government every time, but they don’t build temple and the agenda of building a temple keep on shifting from one page to another in the manifesto, At first, it was on page no. 39, then to page no. 40, and there is probability that from next time onwards this issue will be removed from manifesto turned determination booklet.
lxxi	146	15/7/2020	interview	Govind	Whatever position I have got in Indian politics, I can get money, I can get some Rajya Sabha seat from somewhere, I can get post in different political parties. So you are asking this question, why you are not leaving LPB? At least I am intacting my political credibility. See, maybe Pratap very big leader in Congress, everybody will say once upon [a time] he was in NM, there are things you cannot erase. Either there will be new thing, in that new congress everything will be new. If there is no new thing, then remain wherever you are. Wait for your turn.
lxxii	101	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	Jese…even they are ready to give me PCC in Uttar. They are continuously trying to get me in Congress, but I am refusing. See, here your political consciousness is important. In Hindi there was a secret, don’t go for that. Because they are limiting themselves.
lxxiii	100	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	People will stop buying this [that SFU is an antinational university]. One community has stopped buying this. Not a single Muslim is ready to buy this narrative. Slowly the repercussions will be in different communities. They will also stop buying it nah. Why I am getting attention and connection, because there is also a counternarrative that is coming. One narrative of course, because this narrative was given by the state itself. Also the counternarrative, it will emerge in masses. That is why the anti-government, they will be pro-university, you are getting my point. This is an historical process actually. What is the basis of Siddharth Vemula in SFU? [nothing] But he got a very good position in Congress. What is the base of Pratap Kumar, he is an important person in Congress. What is the base of Arvind Panda? What is the base of Praveen? And not just in Congress. In BJP, why is…some Tripathi…Mamta Tripathi [young chap who contested in 2016]…Saurabh Sharma and all. Everybody is getting a space. Even Suveer Kant, he got space in SKE. In NCP, in SKE, in Congress, in BJP, everywhere. And there are masses, those who are listening. There is a feeding on the masses, they are getting claps, crowd, cheer-up, 50 000 crowd. The former president of…Fahad, he is addressing the gathering. He is going in a living suite [?], like Kushboo, like Swati, Sagarika, like Shray, they are being coopted my mainstream parties nah. Virat, Anay, Dilip, everyone is getting a space. Not just in the political space, they will get a space in bureaucracy, they will get a space in academics, they will get a space in civil society, very easily. [rely on their networks?] Not completely on that matter. Because there were contemporary to me, they have some jealousy also. Because they find somehow, that I have advantage. Because I am the first person who faced the state onslaught. So obviously I have more advantages compared to other people.
lxxiv	155	1/11/2020	interview	Govind’s team	[a lot of Dhartiwales did not vote for Govind] Of course, there are Dhartiwales they don’t like LPB guys, see, anti-incumbency was also there. We ruled for a lot more time. So generally people get bored with that, they have problems with that. LPB did very much bad things as well. If you you get power, you give favors to those who help you, those you think, these are our persons. They started bifurcating…this is not our voter, we will not do this for him, we will not allow, we will ask him keep coming. And then killing, mothers, sisters, daughters.
lxxv	352	2/4/2021	interview	Govind’s team	[Anay comments on the ongoing campaign] We are like Modi, cultivating brand, we don’t come as LPB, we don’t carry them with us. We are campaigning separately, without them. We are creating a brand because we are countering their [BJP] propaganda. People carry a bad image of LPB, that we are zamindars [big landowners].
lxxv	353	2/4/2021	interview	Govind’s team	[see 352] Anyway this is not in tune with the reality of this state. Where are they, those zamindars? People remember their blunder, so it is better not to divide [the vote]. Anyway LPB will do their campaign otherwise. If Govind wins, it is not going to be the victory of Govind Jaishankar from LPB, it is going to be the victory of Govind Jaishankar with LPB.
lxxvi	383	4/8/2014	interview	Govind	If I claim I am a leftist, first I have to be very much humanitarian…we have do not practice any discrimination on the basis of caste, caste and religion. If anybody has a characteristic of castism they cannot be a good candidate form LPB. I am not a blind follower of LPB. See…you cannot see things as black or white, you have to be very dialectical for everything. I am playing this…[dafli], some will take enjoyments and other irritations. There are positive and negatives. When LPB is negative I oppose CPI. Some are more orthodox…and they behave with in mind political opportunism. Blindly following the leaders to get some political benefits…shake hands. But a lot of people like me they want to change, introduce new things in the party… Many concepts of Marx are not applicable…we have to uphold the figure of new Marxists, like Rosa Luxembourg, like Althusser, like Gramsci. The theoretician of Frankfurt school…they have criticized Marxism, we have to incorporate new Ideas. I think Indian political parties, have to follow the Latin American model…take new steps according to the local context. I told you, there is no need to [do democratic] centralism or debate the tenets of differences between the National Democratic Revolution line and the Peoples’ Democratic Revolution one. Democracy has enough space, to practice proper political ideas…because, you can see all over the world, especially in Europe, when they came to power they practiced centralism. And the head of communist countries behaved as dictators. What Pol Pot did in Cambodia. Poland. What is happening in North Korea…is it communist party? I cannot understand. There is a danger of fascism. There is a tendency of autocracy [in BJTB] due to their Stalinist legacy.
lxxvii	96	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	People from civil society, people from cinema, new art, new culture, new YouTubers, they are against Modi, but they are not for Rahul Gandhi also. Comedians, comics, new artists. I am telling you, if you look dialectically at capitalism, there is always good side of capitalism. If you support productive capitalism, it will help. That section of capitalism will also support you. They will come behind you. Crony capital will be against you. They will come, because they are suffering, because of these economic policies.
lxxviii	48	26/05/2019	interview	Govind	Communist party died. And this process has already competed in Europe and America since long back. Because India is a very big country, there is a huge population, there is diversity, that we can understand. Because of different regions (reason?), this political party is still existing, but they have lost their narrative. There is no mass connect. Nobody is liking Rahul Gandhi. Those who are in Congress also they do no lot like Rahul Gandhi. But if Rahul Gandhi is not a good person, then who is the one? There is noone. Actually is the best men in Congress I am telling you. I find. He is the best man I am telling you. He is the least corrupt, he has ideological commitment, he is honest, humanitarian. Other people…they have [swear word]ed the Congress…or katam ho jaega.
lxxix	39	1/4/2019	interview	Govind’s team	[An advisor on Govind’s need to be a media person] The case of Govind is different. For other student leaders, espectially from DQJN, things are easy. You remember that guy who became Rajya Sabha member in Kerala, was he active in politics? Was he a media person? No, he won by the arm strength of the party only. Things are easy for them, you go and the machinery of the party works for you.
lxxix	52	26/5/2019	interview	Govind	If they are helping it is bonus. Anybody will help me, it will be bonus. It is non-significant, whether I am in LPB or not. It is there or not it is not important. LPB vo office ke pattar fekh raha hai. Amko khud nikal karke, apne as pass ke jo doge. Usko jake fitna par raha hai. Situation worst hai.
lxxx	255	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	Ranigrad’s teachers will teach here only. Not only children of Ranigrad, but children from adjoining districts and states may also come for education, such facilities can be developed here itself.
lxxx	264	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	This is the only ‘demand of time’, this is only ‘fight for justice’. That is why I say this fight is not ‘Govind vs. Modi’, this fight is ‘Modi vs. We The People of India’, make a clear note of this.
lxxxi	117	8/2/2020	interview	Govind	I have to play my role in India. So the only one thing I have learned, I will not be towards the political organizations, party daftar, party office, and the political leaders, I will be towards masses. What mass needs, what I can groom to them. There is a direct dialectics between me as an individual and masses. So what I imagine [? envision] about the society, and what society is aspiring, I have to find a middle path, or the common ground. Reduce my romanticism, my idealism, what I have learned in SFU, but I can’t completely departure from myself. Because I loved, that’s my love. I can be just to understand, I will try to be, 21st century Gandhi of India. Not Marx, nor Lenin not Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh I can’t be, because I have already crossed that age, the age of romanticism, the college days.
lxxxii	102	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	I have tried to consolidate with contemporary people. But I found that they are not very found to me…like very ah ya…pleasantly they are coming and joining hands. That is why I stopped them. So those who are non political people, I am relying more on that. Not on political people. Non-political because they have an emotional connection with SFU, they don’t have just political connection. So you can easily differentiate, the political class of SFU and the ordinary student of SFU. [I mention about Zaina and Aarna]. Many people, even I go to SFU programmes, the common first year second year student coming, taking selfie, cheering up, bringing clap. Because they don’t get what BJTB is saying. What TGJ is saying. I am not putting my attention to mobilize political activists, rather than [I focus] on those with political consciousness. that is the difference.
lxxxiii	97	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	I am selecting people from different political parties, those who have guts, those who have clear understanding, those who have less political ambitions, those who have commitment. Commitment should be high, and ambition should be low.
lxxxiv	141	15/7/2020	interview	Govind	I tell you, I have to save my political credibility also. It is very important. Once I will loose my political credibility, there will be nothing. In Indian polity, the one thing every layman can tell you [is]: ah neta hai.
lxxxv	53	26/5/2019	interview	Govind	That I have to think [how to manage things financially]. Financially when I joined SFU, there was no organization. I didn’t have any money. Getting 200 rupees here and there for poster. I cannot compromise this is my problem. Without compromising, sustainability is very difficult. Compromise with power. I have to meet Rahul Gandhi and I have to tell him ki, arhe boss, you are my boss, gora sharab dedijie. He will be happy, tikhai a jao. And I will be finished. And what I will do. Kya kya ka impact? Ham hai pe Youtube sun raha hai nah log, suswat kyu sunega? Rahul Gandhi ko nahi sunega ya amko suni? Rahul Gandhi kya unto sun se? Uska impact tum dekhi rehen ground se. Aam delli me hote, to amko is mat kar char mota yuve Priyanka Gandhi se mile panch par. Ground pe a gaye to dekh char milenge. Chance Modi gaye. SFU me jo hai lambe samnat [?] activism kie. Hue hope nahi …ban jaegi, band gaya, jail chale gaye. Isse lare, koi larne wala nahi tha, toh space mil gaya. Vo ek space jo hai, vote ma transfer nahi hua. Char lakh log jo hai, char lakhs chalis lackh log, Youtube pe dekh raha hai, to chalis lakh log pura desh ka hai, Ranigrad ka to hai nahi. Ranigrad ka khul…do lakh sattar…ussi ne se nikalna parega. I have lost two times in SFU, before winning for president, I lost by six votes [councilor post].
lxxxvi	143	15/7/2020	interview	Govind	See the question of visibility, if you are popular, it is a good thing but it is bad also. The good thing is, many people are listening to you, you can give then discourse and all, but one thing is very challenging in Indian politics, you will become a political entertainer. people will come, they will listen your bhaajan on Youtube and they will like your tweets, but you can’t organize anything on ground if you are too popular. The biggest hurdle I have faced. See if I am outside [media?]…if my popularity is going down and if I am off media an all, tik hai nah. It is good time to make organization.
lxxxvii	50	26/5/2019	interview	Govind	See I am gathering [people]. The problem is: my thoughts, my ideas and what I have learned, my knowledge, my capacity, I am finding myself unable to understand the changes. It is a matter of same Vijay. I do not know about other people, I was contesting elections. You are a research scholar, as a research scholar, you try to analyze me. I am the kind of participator observer in this election. Ok, I will loose, but the margin will be 50 000. If there is rigging of EVM, why don’t I have any proof, evidence? Getting my point? This hollowness you getting to spend. There is no alternative, I have to do. Whatever I can do in my capacity. Congress was in power, and still they are in power in many states. So they don’t have 15 to 20 bureaucrats who have the courage, that they can speak out. Everybody has died? For anything [no only EVM]. You just count the people on your hand. There are 15 to 20 people, they courageously fighting with Modi. I am not taking about general people. In this huge country of 130 cores people, why there is no one lakh, those who are continuously writing? We have to thing about our strategy, about our tactics. You are writing in English, and Modi is giving speeches in Hindi. We have to think about linguistics also. It is not only about Hindi, it is about Bhojpuri, it is about Tamil, it is about Telugu. It is about Gujarati, it is about Marathi. Why they have killed Kalburgi [Malleshappa Madivalappa Kalburgi]…because he was writing in Kannada, why they have killed Gauri Lankesh, because she was writing in Kannada, why they have killed Pansare [Govind]? Because, I think, whatever Pansare was doing, he was creating a huge effect. that’s why they have killed Pansare. If they are not killing me, it means that I am not creating effect. Ya to ye sach hai. Hamzor kar raha hai, mere sat attack ke upper ek bure opposition ko tukre tukre gang bol raha hai.
lxxxviii	169	19/2/2021	interview	Govind	In India I am telling, for being a mass leader three things you need: first, you should have a coalition. Whether people support you or oppose you, at least they recognize you. They [talk?] about you. You can take Modi everywhere. Modi is a person, Mamta di [maid], you and everybody knows who is Modi. At least they know the name, if anybody will say Modi, that picture will come in your mind. Second, you should have strong supporter[s] and strong opponent[s], it means, you should have the characteristics to be the polarizing force. Always you will have a kind of support base.
lxxxix	391	27/2/2020	speech	Govind	The only slogan the people of Ranigrad should raise ‘we don’t want a leader, we want a son’. You all raise this slogan. I am promising like a son. I am telling you a truth that when I came to know that the road of [locality] is in bad state, the youths fighting for that road came to my residence and told that Mr. Govind, the road of pour locality is bad.
xc	228	17/4/2019	speech	Govind	You tell me who can raise voice for Ranigrad? Who can strongly fight for raising an issue why there is no university in our district? Who can strongly fight why can’t an IIT be established in our district? Why we will go AIIMS for treatment? Why can’t AIIMS be opened in Ranigrad?
xci	226	17/4/2019	speech	Govind	You are contesting election in India, then tell me why elderly not getting old- age pension? Tell me why people are not getting house under Indira Housing Scheme? You tell me why both people of both panchayats Neema and Chandpura, are constantly demanding for roads, and today the pain has crossed all the limits and they declared ‘no road, no vote’, and will reject vote.
xcii	259	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	BJP didn’t catch, country’s soldiers caught him, then BJP to safeguard their people released Masood Azhar. This reality, a plane was hijacked, this ok, but army was ready to get the plane released. But I want to ask, why at that time army was not instructed to go and get the plane released from terrorists’ custody. You don’t behave like a shopkeeper who says “here the brave soldiers are dying, and you are worried about fan”. You all need to understand their conspiracy that how cleverly they hide their failures by incorporating army’s success into their own success.
xciii	324	2/4/2019	interview	Govind’s voters	[In the bazaar of the nearby town a campaigning team sits with baniya jewellery traders] He [Govind] says he is not a neta, that is all fine. But who takes you out of trouble when the police is asking for a bribe? There, he can’t help you, Govind is useless there.
xciv	323	2/7/2021	interview	Govind’s team	[see xcvii/322] People vote for you because you can their their son out of jail. people know, that left leaders, because of ideology, they will not do that. It reaches crazy levels. For instance a lot of candidates who reached out for crown funding backtracked at the last minute. If people see that we are crowd-funding, the will say, how can he help us, he is poor. Incredible right?
xcv	144	15/7/2020	interview	Govind’s team	[Aparna, on the need to convert the popular support for Govind into votes] How you convert speeches into votes is crucial. But if you have no strenght on the ground, no ability to put even one person per Panchayat how do you want to win? […] Even in SFU, we would have prepared at least three months in advance. But here is different, votes do not translate into votes that easily.
xcvi	387	1/2/2021	interview	Govind’s voters	[a Govind’s initial well-wisher comments on his lack of ability to practice distributive politics] Prothome mone hoechilo je era kichu korbe, but over time ekta jinish lokhkho korlam, era shudhu kotha bole, boro borobhashan…amra jokhon kaaj kortam tokhon, shob kichu silently on ground kora hoto…eto kotha toh boltam na. Tokhon nirob-e kaj korte hoto, ekhon dekhi shudhu gochano kotha. [translation] At first I had felt that they [ Govind and the others] will do something. But over time I have noticed something….these guys only talk, skilled in bhashan [oratory]…When we used to work [reference to her participation with the Naxal movement] all actions were done on the ground…we never spoke so much…in those days we had to work silently…but these days I see, only well crafted words.
xcvii	322	2/7/2021	interview	Govind’s team	[One of the funders of Govind’s campaign comments on him] My father wanted to go, I said chalo, out of five days, he met us once for 10 seconds. He shook my hand: “ho you came, good.” Than he left. [swear word], I arranged 80 lakhs for you and you behave like that? He was very clear that he will loose and that was his only chance to stack cash. We got him 80 lakhs, but this is only 10%. He was funded heavily and yet he didn’t respect his campaigners. This is why people are not saying. When you are a pure media product, what do you do? You have to work on the ground. When family members die, you have to attend the funeral ceremony, it matters to people you know.
xcviii	8	6/4/2014	interview	Govind	[Remnant of industrial past] Ramnagar oil refinery opened in 1964 […] Hindustan Fertiliser Corporation’s Ramnagar unit, a public sector unit that closed down in 2002. Ramnagar was once the industrial hub of Uttar, with a refinery, fertiliser factory and ancillary industries. The refinery is still around, but not much else. No new factories have come up since the time of Pandit Nehru. […] Because of their bad policies. The factories closed because of their union baazi. Their leaders drew salaries while sitting at home, lazying around and doing politics. […] If you’ve been an MLA for two years, you get a handsome pension. If you’ve been an employee for 33 years, you get nothing.
xcix	384	17/3/2021	interview	Govind’s team	[Shafaq sends me a picture of Govind’s bodyguard shaved and without moustache. Then Parv sees the picture and tells me that for a scheduled court meeting, the MDR party had sent ‘bouncers’ to protect Govind from a potential attack].
c	56	26/5/2019	interview	Govind	Mane ek vidhan sabha regular gumne walla, ek gari or ek admi chayye nahi. Ek gari, ek admi, uska pocket karch, ek manihe jo hai, running cost jo hai, [saree?] panch lakh gyara hai [in total].
ci	385	4/4/2021	interview	Govind’s team	[see 355] I am already giving my time, but it’s crazy that he [Govind] expects me to campaign on my own pocket. It’s Parv’s family who pays for his campaign expenses, is it normal? I mean [swear word]…where has the [swearing word] money gone?
ci	386	17/7/2020	interview	Govind’s team	[discussion with Parv about Govind’s car purchase] About the MG [brand of SUV], I think it is a post-election incentive. [He makes a joke a bit later, that money collected during the election was used to buy the car. Later we discuss about car prices , Parvez says his favorite car would be a Toyota Fortuner, we talked about the Volvo of Akhilesh Yadav]. The Mahindra Scorpio has become banal, the MG Hector is more distinguishable. [Parv knows the price of the car, 12 lakhs. I check online and I find 13.5 as retail price.]
cii	354	3/4/2021	interview	Govind’s team	[Parvez discusses with Indro, who describes how the petrol stolen from transmission towers in then sold to Govind at a very discounted price]. We are filling the tanks of the cars for cheap, through syphoning off petrol from the generators of phone transmission towers. Then we give it at a subsidized price to Govind.
ciii	154	1/11/2020	interview	Govind’s team	If you think of Govind Jaishankar’s people around him. 80 per cent of people are not there because of the political influence he keeps on their mind, or the way…they think that this person is going to change their life. This person is going to work for use, this person is going to raise our voice.
civ	87	10/2/2020	interview	Govind	There is a traditional fight between Dhartiwales and Rajputs. If Rajputs will attack on me, then Dhartiwales will start mobilizing behind me. Dhartiwales, Dalits and Muslims, this combination is winning combination in Uttar. Because Dhartiwales have land, money and muscle. Dalits and Muslims have numbers…population. We change the political equation in Uttar.
cv	388	28/3/2019	interview	Govind’s team	[A MLA and campaigner for Govind comments] Everyone has to say that you are going to win. The chai wala, the kabari wala, not only you as candidate. Govind is a samrt lad, he will not let himself trapped in the Dhartiwale identity. He is the only one who can talk to everybody beyond the transitional divides.
cvi	304	27/2/2020	speech	Govind	To become a leader of any specific caste, one has to just prove that he/she is loyal to the identity, and any prominent leader among them. But we will not follow them. We will not get involved in politics of any specific caste and religion. ‘What is the wandering skill of a footslogger [footsoldier] if he doesn’t take a path on which there are no scattered stones’
cvii	24	16/9/2018	interview	Govind	Real Hindus, is the one who believes in diversity, who believes in the rights of all, who have a symbiotic approach, with anything surrounding him. […] We follow our constitution only. Nothing is more influential than our constitution for us. No document is higher, in status, than our constitution. Our constitutions, gives us rights, in the form of our religion, to believe what we want to believe. Or to believe what we don’t want to believe. We need not to challenge anyone’s beliefs. If you are believing in something fine, believe in it. […] In democracy, power lies with the people. We need to educate them. We have been aware of the ground reality. But other, religious parties, who claim they are the saviors of religion. Whosoever it is, it could be RSS, any other religious outlet. We need to convince the people, that the people are not doing any good to you. You are believing into Hinduism before RSS came into existence, before the RSS came.
cviii	16	16/9/2018	interview	Govind	That is the SFU understanding…but…you have to control you pace, slowly gradually, studently you cannot talk like SFU students. […] I am trying to create a common ground. Like when you talk about Dalits, OBC, EBC, I talk about poors also, I talk about farmers also. Caste identity and class identity. Both I am trying to intermingle. […] It is there, that is why I want to go in alliance. Not in 5 years, but in 10 years I will change the psyche of…because we had once upon a time such political considerations. […] It is there, that is why I want to go in alliance. Not in 5 years, but in 10 years I will change the psyche of…because we had once upon a time such political considerations. […] We have to take the name of those leaders, and I have taken them many times. [Chandrashekar] He was the first LPB MLA. At that time he fought against any kind of feudal odds. He worked very hard for the development of Ranigrad. They had a very good team. Party members. They have worked very hard to, ground the party. And work for all sections of the population. In that time such political culture was possible, building political consciousness. Now it is more difficult, but the possibilities are still there. […] You need to use the tactic of giving representation to all sections of the society. When you are going, there must be people from each and every section of the society. We have to build a leadership from those sections. That we have to do. I learned it from SFU only. See in the history of the communist party in India, the leaders were…
cix	14	16/9/2018	interview	Govind	It is very easy to use the tactics of representation, when you are able to connect history with present. Take some point from there and show the people. So the prejudice will be broken. That is the only way, from what I understand. I am a leader, there a many leaders around me and they are from different sections of the society. So the question of representation will be reduced or minimized.
cix	15	16/9/2018	interview	Govind	That allegation [that he is Dhartiwale] will not sustain. and to, doing this in present times, again and again you have to talk about history. Like today I have said: ye dharti, this land is related to Puran Narayan Singh, he belongs to a dominant community. But this land also belong to Yogeshwar Paswan, he was a Dalit [martyr].
cx	188	14/8/2018	speech	Govind	[denouncing caste, but avoiding to engage with the theme of reservation] Then the words of Mr. Lalu will be applicable, then in the country the words of Bhim Rao Ambedkar will be applicable, and when Bhim Rao Ambedkar’s words are applicable then the world must be equal. […] When being a human, when you got hit you too will be in pain, and when I get hit then I too will be in pain. When it will rain, both you and I will get wet. While sitting under sunlight, both you and I will start sweating. Is it possible when Paswan and Jha (one from lower caste, and the other from upper caste) will sit in sun, Paswan won’t sweat while Jha will sweat? Anyhow both will sweat. When being humans, both of us are humans.
cxi	245	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	This is the specialty of this country that a devotional song written by a Muslim is being played in temples, the specialty of this country is while you roam in your nearby localities at times you won’t be able to differentiate between Hindus and Muslims.
cxii	192	14/8/2018	speech	Govind	Both people will speak in favor of humanity if both are real scholars of their religion.
cxiii	244	26/4/2019	speech	Govind	Let’ see if someone denies while touching 2000 INR note stating that it has been touched by a dalit, if someone says that it has come from the hands of a Muslim.
cxiv	113	8/2/2020	interview	Govind	Five stops binaries like [he explains to me by imitating his own speeches], Hindustan me, mere malata [mamla tha] hi ko kaha? Kya hamko NRC se cover dete hai, aap LIC bhej dijiye. See the anecdotes. NRC, LIC…bherozghar [unemployed], NPR, sarkar, NPR, kamandar [communal], NPR…you have to make rimes…bill, deal [heart]. Is bill is this [?] ke deal me chetr kar dia. Like Bapu dham [sacred place/pilgrim spot], Gandhi medhan. Hamara desh, hamara sanvidhan [constitution] it is very poetic says the artist]. Jan ghan mani ghat… Another word is…khet me mar raha hai kisan, seema pe sahid ho raha hai jawan, jisne bhej dia do thake me apna imaan, vo hi TV per bhej ke karte [karke?] Hindu or Musulman.
cxv	129	10/3/2020	interview	Govind’s team	[Suresh on Govind] If your name is there in negative terms you are getting popular, that’s it. […] Govind in relying on ML, which is Dalit based, the youth does not know about Govind Jaishankar. I met 2 MP from BSP, they told me: Govind is Dalit right? Govind is loosing his grip because of virozgaris’ campaign of Yano. Dhartiwales have to say, he is our spoiled boy, but Dhartiwales hate Muslims. His supporters say, we would be happier if Govind gets Dhartiwale support, they were right, because Dhartiwales did not vote for Govind at all. Bhajinder and all advised Govind to be an urban phenonmenon. But in Uttar you cannot do without caste. Despite he did so many things, he went to temple, he went there [lughts], he got abuses from left people…he could not get Dhartiwale votes [laughs again].
cxvi	159	1/11/2020	interview	Govind’s team	We thought, ki, we work for them, and people are going to be ours, even if we are communist Dhartiwales [ref to the Mandal turn] I am decasted, I am Govind Jaishankar, I am not Dhartiwale…so Dhartiwale is not giving votes, and even yadavs is not giving votes. You will have to own this thing [Dhartiwale identity]. He cannot own, that is why he is not the leader of Ranigrad, he will have to own if he wants to be the leader of Ranigrad, as an MP. He will have to take an open stand [that he is the leader of the Dhartiwale] at least in the field, it cannot be open. They were already ours [Muslims], we should have worked somewhere else. In that we missed the narrative that RSS was creating under the current, that this guy is a Muslim leader, basically. If you go to his twitter, almost 80 percent of his followers is Muslim. People from his own community did not want him to rise. Because, they think that they will loose their power.
cxvi	160	1/11/2020	interview	Govind’s team	That he is not going to work in their favor. Because he is communist, they have seen the communist regime snatching their land. And that he is against capital, so he will not make their businesses flourish. He talks about garib, already garibs are getting lot of things from the government. Equality is not their concern, their concern is, who is going up, and whom you are with. There are few thekedhar lobby, if they give money and votes to Rituraj, obviously they are going to get favors, on ministry basis, on policy basis.
cxvii	340	24/5/2019	interview	Govind’s team	They [constituents of Ranigrad] vote because they think that [the BJP Dhartiwale candidate] will be minister [full note in notebook 7, available on 1/11/2021].
cxviii	359	20/7/2021	interview	Govind	See when I was in Uttar, I had one obsession: amir, garib. I was angry, how to snatch, how to get there. The rest is not important, it is for academic papers. then I went to SFU, I had to unlearn many things, I discovered about plurality, queers, Dalit, so on. Multiple identities. Then again when I went back to Uttar I had to unlearn again, and then during the lockdown I thought a lot. What the actual binary is: those who have power, the dynasties, the political families, and those who are powerless. See this is why Bhavesh is so popular, because he snatched the power and gave bits to others. That I have realized.
cxviii	360	20/7/2021	interview	Govind	[I ask him whether there is an overlap between political and economic power] Yes. I have decided to leave LPB, what do you think? [I ask him whether that will affect his populist strategy] You are right. There were two things that I was having by staying in LPB: credibility and space for populism. But I have realized another thing; you cannot be a face without the organization [or party, a strong one], once you are in the party then you can build a face.