ABSTRACT
India is, as is well known, the world’s largest democracy, and today, it is also a precarious democracy as the authoritarian populism of the Modi regime encroaches upon the constitutional edifice that is the anchor of the Indian polity. Is it possible to discern and define utopian horizons in a context where democratic rights and liberties are being eroded, where religious majoritarianism fuels communal violence, and where neoliberalization drives the deepening of inequalities? This chapter explores this question in relation to the oppositional collective action of subaltern groups – more specifically, in relation to different social movements among Adivasi communities in contemporary India. Contrasting democratic grassroots mobilization in western India with Maoist insurgency in eastern India, the chapter argues for the necessity of joining a quest to discern and define utopian horizons with a clear understanding of the conjunctural compulsions of the moment. This, I argue, entails predicating radical oppositional politics not on a jettisoning of constitutional democracy, but on projects of democratic deepening animated by a politics of non-reformist reform.
