An ancient civilization emerged in the Red River delta of what is today northern Vietnam which, by about 500 BCE, was characterized by the production of magnificent bronze drums. The region fully entered recorded history, however, only after Chinese imperial conquests extended into the area beginning in 214 BCE. Soon afterwards the area became part of an independent kingdom called Southern Yue (Nam Viet). In 111 BCE, it was absorbed into the Han Dynasty. The Red River delta then remained loosely part of empires based in China until 938 CE, when a Cantonese invasion fleet was defeated, and the Red River area became an independent state called Dai Viet. In the thirteenth century Dai Viet heroically repulsed three Mongol invasions, and in the fifteenth century Dai Viet began to expand south into the land of Champa (today’s central Vietnam). By the eighteenth century, Viet rule extended to the far southern Mekong delta. Meanwhile, from the sixteenth century Vietnam was divided between northern and southern strongmen. A major rebellion that began in 1771 ended with the unification of the whole of Vietnam under the Nguyen dynasty in 1802.

Vijayrajsinh, the leader of the protesting farmers in Dholera, often complained about how people from the BJP have captured the mamlatdar office (Block Development Office). According to him, they do not let any work happen without approval from the local BJP leaders. He claimed that the mamlatdar advised him to speak to the local BJP head to expedite the process of converting his agricultural land to non-agricultural land. Furious at this, Vijayrajsinh preferred to wait instead of talking to a ‘stupid’ from the BJP.

In the initial days of fieldwork, I viewed these stories usually targeted against the RSS or BJP with suspicion. After all, Vijayrajsinh was fighting against the BJP government in his opposition to the Dholera SIR project. However, spending time, one could witness the ubiquity of middlemen, brokers inside the government offices, and how each one of them was associated with the Hindutva organisations. Thus, these ‘men’ from right-wing Hindu nationalist organisations were part of the everyday state. For example, interviews with talatis working in and around the Dholera SIR villages that witnessed a massive spike in land prices underlined it. The talatis are government officials at the lowest echelons of bureaucracy in rural Gujarat tasked with duties such as maintaining crop and land records of the village, collecting tax revenue and irrigation dues in addition to delivering government-led development projects. In private, they agreed to have brokered land deals for private buyers, in many cases by using their past networks in Hindutva organisations. While their task as officials was to act as conduits to bring the state closer to citizens, their moonlighting was entirely against such a novel idea.

Similarly, in land deals, there is a ubiquity of private intermediaries usually referred to as dalals (brokers). Broker is used here to refer to the private agents or intermediaries who are not officially associated with the state. Under middlemen, I include both brokers and government officials who moonlight.