ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 investigates the applicability of such concepts as cultural misrecognition from my ethnographic studies in broader context of politics in India. Based on secondary sources, this chapter discusses a uniqueness of Indian politics through consolidation of regional issues and democratization of political practices during the two United Progressive Alliance regimes at the centre. I conceptualise the coalition strategies and identity issues as two predominant features of the politics in India after the 1980s. This chapter shows in what ways and why West Bengal politics has differed and also remained integrated to the wider political cosmos of the country. I argue that while a distinctive form of party-mediated mechanism dominated much of the politics of the three decades of West Bengal, issues of identity consolidations continued subtly. I argue that the state is at a crucial juncture of major alteration in everyday political practices. Based on my ongoing ethnographies on several communal conflicts, I locate West Bengal’s politics in the form of “cultural misrecognition” and identity consolidation in the broader context of India. This chapter, therefore, theorises the major facets of post-Left West Bengal politics and its possible linkages with the country.
