ABSTRACT
India, a country that has for long defined itself as being warm and welcoming to a ‘guest’, as symbolised by the namaste greeting or the phrase “Atithi devo Bhava” (the guest being the extension of the divine), currently finds itself in turmoil trying to make sense of and define the guest. Given India’s social and political ethos, it is not surprising that post-independent India has witnessed waves of refugees migrating to India, including Tibetans, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, and some others such as Tamils, Afghans, Rohingyas, Chakmas, and Hejongs. India follows a principle of non-refoulement, sending none of the refuges back to their home country where they face threats to their lives. The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019, or the CAA, has brought a shift in the socio-political landscape of India, where the ‘guest’ is primarily viewed as a foreigner and an outsider who has to not only prove his/her citizenship but must express it through certain structures of feeling articulated through given national symbols. The becoming of the guest into a foreigner and an outsider and possibly having the potential to becoming an anti-nationalist perhaps marks the rise of xenophobia that the chapter seeks to interrogate. In the backdrop of the violence at Jamia Millia Islamia University, CAA protests at Shaheen Bagh and the riots in the north-east district of Delhi, we will explore the term ‘xenophobia’, the emergence of the ‘foreigner’, and how it becomes a site for reproducing and defining nationalist identities and patriotism, particularly in new media. The chapter would be based on the digital ethnography of popular new media sites, like Facebook and WhatsApp, which constantly circulates images and narratives of fear, nationalistic identities, nationalisms in the public sphere.
