On November 16th, join Mithilesh Mishra (UIUC) and Asha Sarangi (Jawaharlal Nehru University) on Zoom at noon for their lecture, "Statist Nationalism: Discourses, Institutions and Policies in India."
The inauguration of India as a sovereign democratic republic in 1950 was steered through a set of discourses, institutions and public policies initiated by the Indian state. In its long march of more than seventy years, Indian state has institutionalized its democratic political order to achieve certain objectives and desirable goals pertaining in particular to the federal structure and its territorial and cultural political accommodation. The historical-contextual durability of the complex web woven through an intricate relationship between discourses, institutions and politics in independent India presents an interesting case to understand the success or failure of Indian democracy at large. The state-led initiatives and plans to address, counter, unfold and administer a number of sub-state nationalisms after independence in India provide us a crucial understanding into the structures and practices of the Indian polity in contemporary times of increasing global nationalism of the far right.
