ABSTRACT
The Bharatiya Janata Party, conventionally an upper-caste party led by Hindi-speaking local elites whose rise was precipitated by its use of violence to rectify supposed historical wrongs against the Hindu majority (ostensibly by the Muslims), has undergone a discursive shift. In its attempt to hegemonise Hindutva, its recent makeover has pegged it as a party of everyman, while crafting a discourse around the figure of the elite, who, apart from Muslims, is its key political adversary. The idea of the elite converges into a gender-agnostic strawman figure who is professed to be a nominal Hindu not bound by religious norms, urban, foreign educated or English-speaking, western culture influenced and an ideological adherent to liberal or socialist values. A recently coined terminology that is frequently used for this group is “urban Naxals” who engage in “antinational” activities. The populist nationalist and controversial leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has successfully steered the party to power since 2014, is antithetical to the figure of the elite. This chapter shows how the right’s anti-elite discursive framings mask the contradictory nature of Hindutva politics that is helmed by “vernacular elites” who espouse anti-elitist ideals. This inherent contradiction of the Hindutva ideology is partly mitigated by the deployment of neo-liberalism, suitably adapted to subcontinental specificities, which promises to bring “development” to Hindutva’s expanding middle-class constituency.
