Panel Discussion: Caste, Indigeneity, Region, and Settler/Colonialism in Modi’s India
This panel considers the complex entanglement of caste, indigeneity, region, and settler/colonialisms under Hindutva rule in Modi’s India. Our work interrogates how caste crucially distinguishes Hindutva rule as an upper-caste project, the ways in which prior identity formations in various regions of India variably shape the fallout of Hindutva ideology, and the implications of ongoing projects of settler/colonialism and contested claims around indigeneity have been intensified and even co-opted under the banner of Modi’s India. Towards this end, the panel specifically explores the role of media narratives, post-2016 legislation, and the fraught semantics of indigeneity that remain bound to the religious communalism of Partition and regional claims of continued coloniality.
Panelists:
Reema Rajbanshi – Northeast Protests: A Politics of Otherwise
Khatija Khader – Narrating Kashmir and Framing Public Discourse: Locating Resistance in the Pen of a Kashmiri Journalist
Dheepa Sundaram – Cultural Nationalism and the Making of a Hindu Rashtra: Reinventing of the “Secular” in Modi’s India
Santhosh Chandrashekar – Respondent