ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to conceptualise the specific form of state populism in India by examining the articulatory practices of Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling party in India, and the rhetoric and government policies of Narendra Modi, the elected Prime Minister of world’s largest democracy. While populism is regarded as the equivalential logic of the people against an antagonistic frontier including the state, this chapter will argue how the specific form of state populism as it exists today in India’s electoral democracy uses the state to challenge a real or perceived enemy. In doing such an exercise, the chapter will attempt to theorise how state populism, besides building the equivalential logics, also accommodates democratic demands through a new logic of governance. The logic of governance, although it has a parallel to Ernesto Laclau’s logic of difference, is not always similar to the differential logic. Thus, while populism in Laclau’s works has the dual logic of equivalence and difference, the nature of state populism in India operates through a triad: the logic of equivalence, difference and governance.
