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Guest speaker Alf Nilsen on ‘Making the Neoliberal Hindu Nation’

by Adam David Morton on July 26, 2022

Guest speaker Alf Nilsen on ‘Making the Neoliberal Hindu Nation’

Adam David Morton | July 26, 2022

Tags: India
India
| 0 282

Presenter: Professor Alf Nilsen (University of Pretoria) hosted by the Discipline of Political Economy at the University of Sydney

Title: ‘Making the Neoliberal Hindu Nation: The Politics of Accumulation and Legitimation in Modi’s India’

Date: 18 August, 1:00-2:00pm

Room: School of Social and Political Sciences, A02, Level 4, Room 441

Abstract:

The Modi regime presents us with an apparent conundrum: on the one hand, India’s socioeconomic structure has never been more polarised, with the richest 10% of the population earning 56% of all income and owning 64% of all wealth in the country while precarity prevails for the working poor; on the other hand, the BJP governs on the basis of an unprecedented parliamentary majority, underpinned by substantial electoral support from the country’s subaltern citizens. What does this conundrum tell us about the politics of accumulation and legitimation under Modi’s BJP? In this paper, I address this question by considering the emergent form of state in contemporary India. More specifically, I present a Gramscian analysis of the relationship between neoliberal policy regimes, Hindu nationalism, and autocratisation in the current conjuncture. Escalating inequality, I argue, has to be understood both in terms of how the power of capital has reached its apotheosis under Modi’s regime and in terms of how state intervention through economic policy tends to intensify market rule and commodification. I then consider how Hindu nationalism, autocratisation, and the making of an “ethnic democracy” work to legitimise the inequalities of neoliberal India. I argue that it is necessary to extend the temporal parameters of our analysis beyond the Modi regime in order to fully understand these equations. In particular, I focus on how the legitimation of inequality through majoritarianism and autocratisation under Modi constitutes an extension of elite reaction to the political rise of lower caste groups and Dalits.

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Author: Adam David Morton

Adam David Morton is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. He is author of Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy (2007); Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development (2011), recipient of the 2012 Book Prize of the British International Studies Association (BISA) International Political Economy Group (IPEG); and co-author of Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis (2018) with Andreas Bieler. The volume Henri Lefebvre, On the Rural: Economy, Sociology, Geography is out in 2022 with University of Minnesota Press, co-edited with Stuart Elden.

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  • Home
  • About
  • Manchester University Press Book Series
  • Past & Present Reading Group
  • A Political Economy of Australian Capitalism
  • Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE)
    • Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE)
    • JAPE Issues
    • JAPE Submission Guidelines
    • JAPE Young Scholar Award
  • Australian IPE Network (AIPEN)
  • Forums
    • Forums
    • Debating Anatomies of Revolution
    • Debating Debtfare States
    • Debating Economic Ideas in Political Time
    • Debating Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India
    • Debating Social Movements in Latin America
    • Debating The Making of Modern Finance
    • Debating War and Social Change in Modern Europe
    • Feminist Global “Secureconomy”
    • Gendered Circuits of Labour and Violence in Global Crises
    • Scandalous Economics
    • The Military Roots of Neoliberal Governance
    • Politicising artistic pedagogies
  • Literary Geographies of Political Economy
  • Pedagogy
    • Five Minute Honours Theses
    • Piketty Forum
    • Radical Economics Pedagogy
    • Unconventional Wisdom
    • Journal Club
    • Marxism Reading Group
  • Wheelwright Lecture
  • Events
  • Contributors
  • Links
    • Political Economy At Sydney
    • PHD in Political Economy
    • Master of Political Economy
    • Centre for Future Work
    • Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ)
    • Climate Justice Research Centre (UTS)
 

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