GUJARAT, CRADLE AND HARBINGER OF IDENTITY POLITICS

Ghanshyam Shah (via weblink) and Jan Breman

Abstract

Ghanshyam Shah and Jan Breman discuss their new book on why and how the ambition for majoritarian hegemony in the form of Hindutva found an early and congenial berth in Gujarat. Acting as a laboratory for turning ideological communal fervour to political ends, a caucus of upper-caste vintage designated a calibrated strategy to canvass votes of intermediate and low castes-cum-classes. Rooted in a heritage of mercantile capitalism, the course set hailed as a Hindutva model of neo-liberal growth. It has hugely widened the gap between the top and bottom ranks of the population. In this dichotomous divide between inclusion versus exclusion, nationhood is defined in religious terms. Addressed from the vantage point of the marginalized classes and communities of society, the articles in the volume, some written for the book itself and some previously published, focus on the Hindutva  authoritarian state practice and its  communal rupture of society and politics.

Biography

Jan Breman has conducted anthropological fieldwork in Gujarat between 1962 and 2015. His empirical research, focused on the bottom segments of the rural and urban workforce, discusses the changing plight of labour in the colonial and postcolonial era. Going back more than once to the same sites of investigations enabled him to trace the shape and direction of the political economy in one of India’s leading states. The book Capitalism, Inequality and Labour in India (2019–20) is an overview of his disconcerting findings. Breman is Professor Emeritus of comparative sociology at the University of Amsterdam and Honorary Fellow at the International Institute of Social History, also in Amsterdam.

Ghanshyam Shah is an independent researcher and retired Professor of Jawahalal Nehru University, New Delhi. He was earlier Director and Professor at the Centre for Social Studies, Surat; Dr. Ambedkar Chair Professor at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie; Fellow-in-Residence at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study, Wassenaar; and National Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. The books he has authored/co-authored/edited include Social Inclusion and Education in India (2020), Democracy, Civil Society and Governance (2019), Growth and Development: Which Way is Gujarat Going? (2014), Re-reading ‘Hind Swaraj’: Modernity and Subalterns (2012), Untouchability in Rural India (2006), Caste and Democratic Politics in India (2002, 2004), Public Health and Urban Development (1997) and Social Movements in India (1981, 2004).

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Organiser: SOAS Development Studies, Journal of Agrarian Change, and SOAS South Asia Institute

Contact email: ssai@soas.ac.uk