The Grannies of Shaheen Bagh: Hindutva Power and the Poetics of Dissent in Contemporary India

Abstract

This essay focuses on contemporary India and the rise to near hegemony of “Hindutva power,” which works through both the transformation of the exercise of sovereign power and the inculcation of a distinct habitus, or structure of predispositions, in more and more sectors of society. This Hindu supremacist and nationalist habitus marks a far-reaching transformation not only of democratic political culture but of religious belief and practice as well. But despite their sense of inevitability, these developments are part of a scene of contestation and the staging of prodemocracy and anti-fascist dissent.