Farmers against Fascism: How India’s Farmers’ Protests Cultivated Alternatives to Neoliberal Hindu Nationalist Dystopia

Abstract

In this article I analyze the mass mobilizations mounted by Indian farmers against three pro-corporate agricultural bills passed by the far-right government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I argue that the discourse of civil protest is insufficient to understand these mobilizations. On the contrary, they embody the principles of mutual aid, direct action, and intersectional and international solidarity, pointing to the possibility of collective life beyond the limits imposed by neoliberal Hindu nationalism. At the same time the emancipatory possibilities offered by these practices are qualified by persistent social divisions and the hegemony of nonviolence, alongside pressing circumstantial factors.