{Project} The Languages of Democratic Decline in India

<< This project outline is part of my application materials for an academic opening in political science. 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’ behaviors, manifest power relations and construct realities we live in. As part of it, I will 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 through celebrating elections as the single measure of democratic conduct, while curtailing individual freedoms, the rule of law, minority protection and institutional autonomy.2 This interdisciplinary research agenda examines this transition from democracy to authoritarian rule from the standpoint of political oratory. Passages to democracy have often elicited more participation from citizens, inviting public figures to be closer to their constituents through embracing a more accessible language.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 discourse, 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 most prominent non-Western democratic and secular state: India. To that end, I build and analyze a novel archive of Indian political speeches since the late 19th century. In parallel, I propose to examine speech-making ethnographically from the standpoint of political leaders and political advisory.

Objectives

The research will first 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) authoritarianism speaks the unlikely rhetoric of peace, (2) populism of sainthood and (3) Islamophobia of 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 centralization. I will suggest 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 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.

Expected findings

I propose that populists in power appropriate the register of the saintly to place themselves above competitive party politics. I further hypothesize 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. Is it the emulation of such intimate rapport, counseling 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 historicize contemporary populist appeals will help revisit the various ways in which the political representation of the people is legitimized in the Indian public sphere.6 I will then identify the political use of hate speech in public discourse, notably on TV and social media. I hypothesize that content targeting Muslim minorities is creating 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 contribute to the transformation of Hindu nationalism into a new political commonness that is ‘fun’ and relatable. An ethnicized and misogynist common-sense is further consolidated on social media such as Twitter, where trolls invisibilize 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 Twitter).

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.7 Rather than locating authoritarian and populist politics as the sole outcome of popular aspirations for ethnic hatred, para-institutional violence, personalization of leadership and nationalist pride, I examine how these aspirations are legitimized, impassioned, disseminated and tailored to different publics via the use of political oratory. After the submission this summer of my book manuscript derived from my PhD thesis—entitled In the Shadow of Saffron India: Student Politics, the Azadi Generation and the Politics of Becoming—I will submit or revise four new articles to be submitted to journals with a focus on political theory, contemporary history, political communication, and South Asian studies. The manuscripts are tentatively entitled: (1) “Above Politics: Populist Authority as ‘Guruhood’ in Indian Politics” (article under review in Politics and Religion, co-authored with Christophe Jaffrelot), (2) “From Patronage to Clientelism: Consulting Agencies and the Transformation the Indian Political Party” (initial fieldwork completed), (3) “Anti-Muslim Ideology as Entertainment Nationalism on Indian TV News” (data collection completed) and (4) “Two Languages of the Nation: The Official Discourse of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in Hindi and English (1999-2022)” (data collection completed). Another outcome of the project will be the publication of the dataset and its metadata. I aim at hosting them online in the form of an open access ‘Data Descriptor’ in Nature’s journal Scientific Data (SocialSciencessection).

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.
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 Brass, Paul R. 1974. Language, Religion and Politics in North India. London, New York: Cambridge University Press.
7 Hansen, Thomas Blom. 2021. The Law of Force: The Violent Heart of Indian Politics. New Delhi: Aleph.