The 2019 election saw a strong presence of people-led campaigns in which small and localised groups played an important part and created a buzz. Online and social media platforms had a pivotal role in these campaigns. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which swept the election, wove its campaign around these platforms – ranging from WhatsApp to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram – and made Narendra Modi the message that was disseminated astutely by the BJP. Along with the BJP, many individuals and groups also ran campaigns in their private capacity to garner support for Modi. #Academics4NaMo was one such people-led campaign that was run to rally support from academics, intellectuals and thought leaders in favour of Narendra Modi. This campaign helped in building the narrative during the campaign as its members wrote articles and rebuttals, and organised online and offline meetings and discussions. All this was completely voluntary work arising out of their passionate belief in Modi and their conviction that he was the right choice. This article talks about the #Academics4NaMo campaign and how it made a mark during this election.

Emotions matter to politics. Despite their importance, emotions tend to be neglected in the study of such routine aspects of politics as elections. Whereas emotions have certainly been studied in the context of spectacular political moments, this volume attends to the passions generated by elections, which have all too often been dismissed as a relatively banal dimension of politics. The introduction reviews the rich literature on the importance of passions to politics, outlining the gaps in the study of emotions in studies of electoral politics. It then highlights the importance of India’s 2019 general election as an empirical case that offers insights into the interdisciplinary study of passions in politics. The chapter closes with an outline of the chapters and themes discussed in the book.

This chapter comments on why questions about love and romance increasingly occupy a central place in political debate in India. Focusing on the intimate scale at which caste and communal politics play out, it argues that young women’s bodies are iterated as sites at which ideas about nationhood and culture come to cohere. In doing so, it uses examples from the author’s ethnographic research conducted from 2012 onwards in the city of Chennai.

A much-remarked feature of the 2019 Indian general election was the unprecedented support garnered by the BJP among poorer voters. This chapter urges attention to the surging support for the BJP among members of certain caste communities within the poor, compared to others. It further reflects on the ways in which such passionate support entwined with specific political, social and economic rationalities. Support for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) among poor people of ‘upper caste’ or Savarna communities was considerably higher than among either Other Backward Classes (OBCs) or Dalit communities, whose members have been historically oppressed as ‘lower caste’ and ‘untouchable’ respectively. The thumping support for the BJP among the Savarna poor, despite the economic difficulties posed by several policies of Modi’s first government, may be explained by the affirmative action for ‘economically weaker sections’ instituted a few months prior to the election. This chapter reflects on the political emotions that led to the institution of affirmative action for this social class. It first discusses the class basis of the BJP’s re-election. Next, it highlights the caste differentiation of the class vote for the NDA. Third, it discusses the importance of affirmative action in attracting Modi, the BJP and the NDA to the Savarna poor, a social class whose members found themselves with a precarious privilege. The chapter concludes by reflecting on agendas beyond the BJP’s Hindu nationalist welfarism that continue to motivate members of poor people from other castes.

The dispute in Kashmir has been simmering since 1947. In 1989 a popular armed resistance began in Indian-administered Kashmir against the government of India. One of the most densely militarised zones in the world, the human rights violations committed by Indian government forces have resulted in more than 100,000 people being killed and more than 8,000 being forcibly disappeared. Even though eroding Kashmir’s autonomous status under the special Article 370 has been a persistent policy of the Indian government, since 2014, after the BJP took power, the battle to remove Kashmir’s autonomy has been brought to the forefront, and the possibility of a major demographic shift through settler colonialism has become a looming threat. On 5 August, the BJP annulled Article 370, which guaranteed Kashmir’s autonomous special status. This chapter illustrates how the special article was a symbol of Kashmir’s historical sovereignty and served to underwrite the demand for self-determination by the Kashmiri people, and how the resistance to India continues.

Despite a declining share in GDP, agriculture still constitutes the mainstay for close to half of India’s population. Yet, with little investment in agricultural research and extension over the past two decades, lack of procurement at announced minimum support prices, and in the face of growing climatic variability, the farming community continues to experience massive distress. This has resulted in a large number of protests by farmers over the past few years, escalating since 2017, a direct response to the unmet promise made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his 2014 election campaign, to implement the recommendations of the National Commission on Farmers. The current protests have also seen an articulation by women farmers, seeking recognition and support for their contributions to the economy as farmers, not just as home-makers and ‘unpaid household helpers’.

This chapter examines the economic performance of the Narendra Modi government from 2014 to 2018, focusing on the demonetisation episode and the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). It also looks at the problem of ‘joblessness’ that was evident in the Indian economy during the 2000s. The chapter argues that the two large negative shocks to the Indian economy – demonetisation and the introduction of the GST – did not seem to have any political fallout, as their emotional value seems to have trumped economic reality. In addition, the problem of ‘joblessness’ can be attributed more to long-term structural factors and less to the Modi government’s handling of the Indian economy.

Whether it is the frustration and anger expressed by the protesting farmers and other marginalised groups or the righteous indignation that was expressed when forty CRPF personnel were killed in a suicide-bomber attack in Pulwama, emotional politics seems to be the order of the day. After India executed an air strike against ‘terrorist camps’ across the border, passions ruled the public arena without restraint. Even though people stood solidly behind the government’s decision, many sections of the media (print, electronic and social media) whipped up popular sentiment in a way that condemned anyone who questioned the official narrative. As emotional politics took over, the space for debate and discussion shrank. In this environment, the irresistible urge is to explain the current phase of Indian politics and the electoral victory of the BJP through the lens of emotions. However, all such accounts, invoking a simple and rather indefensible binary between emotions and reason, remain myopic. They fail to recognise the deeper shifts that are occurring in the political discourse – changes that often lie hidden under the effervescence of emotions. In particular, the manner in which the BJP is challenging the preceding consensus around the politics of difference remains unnoticed. While we confront the present nature of emotional politics, it is equally important to reflect on the new reasoning that majoritarian politics is employing in India and many other parts of the world.

Narendra Modi led his party to an emphatic victory in the 2019 Indian elections. While there are many factors that contributed to this electoral success, the popularity of Hindutva history, its adoption by many as Indian history, and the emotional fervour with which that history has been weaponised within and outside the academy, carries some explanatory weight. This chapter will look at the ways the Bharatiya Janata Party and its fellow travellers have perpetuated convincing historical narratives that have undermined the secularism written into the Indian constitution. While this historical perspective has deep roots, its prominent place in the 2019 election campaign vividly showcases the emotive and destructive power of history.

This chapter asks why young Indians go to the polls. Focusing on young women, it argues that many young Indians increasingly seek what they call ‘dignity’ and ‘sophistication’: categories that signal a wide range of everyday experiences. These desires do not translate to a single or easily pigeonholed ‘youth vote’: rather class, caste and regional differences shape young women’s demands of the political system. This chapter uses examples from the author’s ethnographic research conducted from 2012 onwards in the city of Chennai.

In India in May 2019, Narendra Modi's party won re-election with a parliamentary majority and a five-year term in office. Modi is radically centralising power in pursuit of something close to one-man rule. He is aggressively seeking -- with considerable success -- to disempower and/or to capture every significant alternative power centre. By constricting the space for open, pluralistic politics, it is entirely possible that by the next national election in 2024, he will have made it impossible for opposition parties to achieve victory. India's democracy will have been strangled, and will be replaced by a ‘competitive authoritarian’ system. It is strange that this is possible despite an array of impediments. India's sophisticated voters have thrown out ruling parties at most national and state elections in this federal system since 1980. India has a lively civil society and well-organised interests. For many decades, it had lively media outlets, and a staunchly independent Election Commission and higher courts. But those institutions, and others, are now under threat from co-optation or control. What methods have been deployed by the Modi government to make solid headway in its authoritarian project, and is that sustainable?

This chapter juxtaposes disjunctive invocations of Hindu male prowess and constructions of the ‘licentious’ and sexually ‘ferocious’ Muslim male on the one hand, and assertions of recalcitrant romances and ‘illicit’ intimacies on the other, in modern India. It takes its cue from two campaigns and events in present-day India. The first is a manufactured movement by hegemonic, homogenised Hindu identities and patriarchies around conversions of Hindu women by Muslim men under the supposed threat of ‘love jihad’. The second is the launch of ‘anti-Romeo’ squads by the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, which is supposedly meant to be against the euphemistically named ‘eve teasing’, but can often become a source of harassment and fear for women and men, and a means to perpetuate love taboos. Through these two markers, the chapter probes intersections between masculinities, sexualities, religious identities, intimate lives and political articulations.