Theorizing Populism in India

Abstract

Right-wing populism has managed to turn traditional progressive political practices on their heads. A critique is absorbed or resignified from its original meaning. Significant political categories within the repertoire of progressive politics, including ideas of welfare, rule of law, secularism, equality, liberty, and justice, have been significantly resignified in public discourse, emptying them of their ‘original’ meaning to produce a distinctly conservative public morality. As Chantal Mouffe suggests, it is imperative to decode the structure and the nature of consent for such a morality, not through moral rejection of the process, but through political intervention. The relevant question today for progressive politics is to create a social narrative that can overturn ‘conservative populism’ by fusing subalternity and democracy.