<< This project outline is part of my application materials for an academic opening in political science/South Asian studies. This interdisciplinary project explores the effects of political language on democracy when it transitions to authoritarianism. Speeches by politicians, media houses and opinion-makers are often believed to be innocuous. Yet they shape citizens’ behaviours, manifest power relations and construct realities we live in. As part of it, I retrace the lineages and impacts of populist, authoritarian and communal rhetoric in the world’s largest democracy: India.

Problem statement

While authoritarian regimes such as China attempt to justify their absence of electoral democracy by promoting supervised deliberative democracy,¹ India leans towards the opposite. While celebrating elections as the single measure of democratic conduct, it curtails individual freedoms, the rule of law, minority protection, fair political competition, and institutional autonomy.² This interdisciplinary research agenda examines this transition from democracy to authoritarian rule from the standpoint of populist political oratory and aesthetics.

Passages to democracy have often elicited greater participation from citizens, inviting public figures to be closer to their constituents through embracing a more accessible language and visuals marking in-group belonging.³ However, with the rising fortunes of populist politics globally, expressions of proximity to the masses have paradoxically damaged democracy rather than strengthened it.⁴ Why do populists use this type of narratives, and how do they benefit from new forms of digital communication? In what ways do specific uses of political vernaculars by elected representatives end up making democracy weaker? The significance of this project lies in combining computational and ethnographic methods to retrace the historical and linguistic lineages of populist, authoritarian, and communal rhetoric in the world’s largest democracy: India. To that end, I build and analyse a novel archive of Indian political speeches and media discourse since the late 19^th century, as well as a large dataset of political images. In parallel, I propose to examine speech-making ethnographically from the standpoint of political leaders and political advisory.

Objectives

First, I will offer a systematic content analysis of a large dataset of visuals of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in order to theorise how populist aesthetics is not solely encoded by fixed visuals—such as the army/pious man—but rather by a chameleonic multitude, which is characteristic of what I term a behrupiya’s (shape-shifting) performance. The research will then identify the discourse of authoritarian populism and its historical transformations. I will examine how it constructs a positive system of values around anti-democratic politics. The project will investigate this via five discursive themes of democratic decline. I will probe whether, (1) populism speaks the unlikely rhetoric of sainthood, (2) authoritarianism the one of peace and (3) Islamophobia the language of ‘secular’ unity. I will locate these repertoires in political speeches and within the realm of media entertainment, where (4) caste is showcased as a form of merit and (5) economic inequalities are presented as necessary outcomes of governance.

The project aims to show that languages of leadership retain core components of populism and authoritarianism worldwide—such as anti-elitism and extreme power centralisation. I would suggest, however, that this discourse could proliferate in India by acquiring strong vernacular overtones. Grounded in the intellectual history of political Hinduism, it would flaunt attributes such as irenism (nonviolence), pietism (religiosity), organicism (harmony and order) and distributive politics (targeted welfarism). The research will also grapple with the digital turn in political communication. It will highlight how coordinated disinformation campaigns online further consolidate this illiberal turn. As internet consumption among poorer sections is growing rapidly, influencers have become opinion-makers. Whether entrepreneurs, sportspeople, actors or YouTubers, I will stress their dearth of critical commentaries when compared to their global counterparts.

I will then identify the political use of hate speech in public discourse, notably on TV and social media. I hypothesise that content targeting Muslim minorities creates more engagement on YouTube when it is devoid of explicit ideological markers. By showing how Islamophobia is associated with Bollywood entertainment subjects on the most notorious far-right show, The Debate on the channel Republic TV, I will demonstrate how the media contributes to the transformation of Hindu nationalism into a new political commonness that is ‘fun’ and relatable. An ethno-nationalist and misogynist common-sense is further consolidated on social media such as Twitter, where trolls invisibilise the expression of dissent through public abuse. This occurs despite the preference prominent Indian politicians have for communicating populist messages on media accessible by the rural poor (such as radio) rather than on those preferred by educated professionals (such as X/Twitter). Hence, by looking at the political theory of representation from the vantage point of its margins, the approach intends to question existing analytical universals. I aspire to examine the inadequacy of the paradigms on populism set by the Global North, even as the term acquires new forms in South Asia.

Expected findings

I propose that populists in power appropriate the register of the saintly to place themselves above competitive party politics. I further hypothesise that the securing of political autonomy from powerful intermediaries—including ethnic groups—can be achieved through displaying linguistic and stylistic similarities with Hindu gurus. The use of computational tools to infer language registers as well as lexical differences between speakers help reexamine the concept of populism. I will inquire whether the rejection of political and economic elites is accompanied by an emphasis on the similarity between leaders and the led. Does the emulation of intimate rapport, counselling postures, and folksy mannerisms that underpins the populist appeal? The project will provide historical depth to this modality of power, retracing its unexpected origins in the language of M.K. Gandhi (1869-1948), who fused political communication, faith, individual charisma, and “biomoral” concerns.⁵ This effort to historicise contemporary populist appeals will help revisit the various ways in which the political representation of the people is legitimised in the Indian public sphere. I will then identify the political use of hate speech in public discourse, notably on TV and social media. I hypothesise that content targeting Muslim minorities creates more engagement on the video sharing platform YouTube when it is devoid of explicit ideological markers. By showing how Islamophobia is associated with Bollywood entertainment topics on the most notorious far-right show, The Debate on the channel Republic TV, I will demonstrate how anti-Muslim tropes are “activated”⁶ by populist stands in which Muslims are presented as profiteering elites.

Publication plans

The significance of this study is to interrogate the paradoxical decline of democratic norms—rule of law, civil liberties, political equality—in the larger historical context in which democratic participation is deepening, with more subaltern sections of the population being represented electorally and socially.⁸ By the summer 2025, I will submit or revise five articles to journals with a focus on political communication, computational social science, political theory and South Asian studies. The manuscripts are provisionally entitled:

(a) “An Overflowing Imaginary? People’s Identification as Sartorial Change, the Case of Narendra Modi’s ‘Dress Populism’” (data collection completed, currently designing the analytical framework),
(b) “Above Politics: Populist Authority as ‘Guruhood’ in Indian Politics” (R&R in Politics and Religion, co-authored with Christophe Jaffrelot),
(c) “The Activation of Anti-Muslim Ideology Through Populist Anti-elitism in Indian TV News” (first draft completed, co-authored with Vihang Jumle),
(d) “From Patronage to Clientelism: Consulting Agencies and the Transformation of the Indian Political Party” (initial fieldwork completed),
(e) “Two Languages of the Nation: The Official Discourse of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in Hindi and English (1999-2023)” (data collection completed, co-authored with Neha Chaudhari).

The project will also include the publication of the dataset and its metadata. I aim to host them online in the form of an open access ‘Data Descriptor’ in Nature’s journal Scientific Data (Social Sciences section). Finally, along with colleagues at the IIIT-Delhi and the Médialab of Sciences Po Paris, I will finalise the constitution of a large database (≈ 50,000 videos) of Indian news content hosted on YouTube to account for drivers of extreme speech, self-censorship, polarization, and fading media pluralism. This initiative—led by Christophe Jaffrelot and Julia Cagé—is funded by the Open Science Framework, and further aims at comprehending the effects of media ownership change on freedom of speech in India.

This preliminary work will be the basis of my second book titled The Power of Style: Politics and Media in Contemporary India. The originality of the proposed monograph is to go beyond the study of savior-like political genre by advancing an empirical typology of the role of stylistic idioms in Indian politics. I will study three sets of actors: populist leaders, new media influencers, and organised advisory/political consultancy. By combining computer-assisted methods and ethnography to analyse the evolutions of populist and authoritarian aesthetic and speech-making in post-independence India, the book will contribute to three complementary disciplinary subfields: political sociology, computational political communication, and political ethnography. Existing accounts of the political use of language in India stress its role in producing a cohesive nation⁸ and distinctive regional identities,⁹ while at the same time providing a legitimising vocabulary for minority provisions¹⁰ and economic liberalisation.¹¹ The book will be a critical addition to this literature by showing how the category of the people, and not just that of the nation, is actualised and regenerated¹² via the use of political oratory. It further proposes new understandings on the contribution of discursive and aesthetic styling¹³ in asserting political power on media/social media in the South Asian context. Through the “ethno-discursive” study of three actors—populists, influencers, and political consultancy firms—I propose a fourfold typology to characterise the contribution of stylistic tropes to Indian political representation. Each empirical chapter will appraise one of its archetypal features: (i) embodiment, (ii) legitimation, (iii) activation, and (iv) bypassing. The aim is to have the book proposal ready to be sent out to potential acquisition editors by September 2026, including at Columbia University Press (Political Theory/Asian Studies topics), Princeton University Press (Political Science subject), and the MIT Press’s Information Society Series.

References

1 Perry, Elizabeth J. 2015. “The Populist Dream of Chinese Democracy.” The Journal of Asian Studies 74(4):903–15.
2 Jaffrelot, Christophe. 2021. Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
3 Anderson, Richard D. 1996. “‘Look at All Those Nouns in a Row’—Authoritarianism, Democracy, and the Iconicity of Political Russian.” Political Communication 13(2):145–64. See also Moffitt, Benjamin. 2024. “How Do Populists Visually Represent ‘The People’? A Systematic Comparative Visual Content Analysis of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders’ Instagram Accounts.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 29(1):74–99.
4 Varshney, Ashutosh. 2021. “Populism and Nationalism: An Overview of Similarities and Differences.” Studies in Comparative International Development 56(2):131–47.
5 Alter, Joseph S. 1996. “Gandhi’s Body, Gandhi’s Truth: Nonviolence and the Biomoral Imperative of Public Health.” The Journal of Asian Studies 55(2):301–22.
6 Hawkins, Kirk A., Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, and Ioannis Andreadis. 2020. “The Activation of Populist Attitudes.” Government and Opposition 55(2):283–307.
7 Hansen, Thomas Blom. 2021. The Law of Force: The Violent Heart of Indian Politics. New Delhi: Aleph.
8 Roy, Srirupa. 2007. Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
9 Bate, Bernard. 2009. Tamil Oratory and the Dravidian Aesthetic: Democratic Practice in South India. New York: Columbia University Press.
10 Bajpai, Rochana. 2011. Debating Difference: Group Rights and Liberal Democracy in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
11 Bajpai, Anandita. 2018. Speaking the Nation: The Oratorical Making of Secular, Neoliberal India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
12 Roy, Srirupa. 2024. The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
13 Vittorini, Simona. 2022. Modi à la mode: Narendra Modi’s fashion and the performance of populist leadership. 56(2):131–47.