ABSTRACT
This article examines the Narmada Movement in Gujarat to illuminate the enduring modes of politics and collective identifications it engendered in the state. It shows how the movement engaged the instruments of democracy to forge a popular consensus around a coercive Gujarati nativism that became the touchstone of political action and helped consolidate a politics of Hindutva at the turn of the twenty-first century. It concludes by reflecting on the conundrum of democracy in Gujarat posed by this coercive nativism, namely, democracy’s complicity in and vulnerability to popular support for exclusionary politics. This analysis elucidates the regional particularities of politics in Gujarat while also revealing the contradictory relationship among democracy, participatory social movements and exclusionary politics more generally.
