00:00:00 Webinar series intro 00:01:42 Speaker intro 00:03:36 Democratic backsliding and/in India 00:24:16 Q&A I (political democracy, substantive democracy) 00:30:09 Populist religious nationalism, ethnic democracy and fascist tendencies 01:05:14 Q&A II (Hindu identity, Hindutva, caste, fascism, populism) 01:37:00 Caste, class, the Left and democracy in India
Tag: South Asia
The Caste Pod is a podcast hosted by Ajantha Subramanian, historical anthropologist whose work addresses the historicity and political economy of caste. Ajantha is Professor
Hungarians have defeated a national autocrat and challenged a broader illiberal international alliance Hungarian voters have swept their far-right strongman Viktor Orbán out of office,
The Caste Pod is a podcast hosted by Ajantha Subramanian, historical anthropologist whose work addresses the historicity and political economy of caste. Ajantha is Professor
From Feminism in India The Transgender Amendment Bill 2026 was passed in the Rajya Sabha on 25th March 2026. The bill was earlier passed by
Nissim Mannathukkaren is an associate professor in Dalhousie University’s Department of International Development Studies in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is the author of ‘Communism,
On Wednesday, 11th March, 2026, along with 135 other nations, India co-sponsored a resolution of the United Nations Security Council which condemned Iran for attacking
The Caste Pod is a podcast hosted by Ajantha Subramanian, historical anthropologist whose work addresses the historicity and political economy of caste. Ajantha is Professor
South Asian states have obscured longstanding cross-border ties in order to consolidate national control. This history shows that dominant national identities crystallised only in the
Is India’s role in Kashmir “settler colonial” or part of a shared legacy of internal colonialism across South Asia? India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit
The Caste Pod is a podcast hosted by Ajantha Subramanian, historical anthropologist whose work addresses the historicity and political economy of caste. Ajantha is Professor
As cross-border strikes intensify and Pakistan’s defence minister declares “open war” against the Afghan Taliban government, the long arc of Islamabad’s Afghanistan policy appears under
Hardline Islamists gain ground in historic election following the 2024 July Uprising that ousted Sheikh Hasina. On February 12, 2026, Bangladesh held its first general
On 12 February 2026, Bangladesh holds its first election since the July Revolution in 2024 that overthrew the authoritarian government of Sheikh Hasina and the
Odisha has largely been untouched by the kind of Dalit and OBC movements that shifted the political landscape in other states. Consequently, these groups have
From Himal Southasian In October 2024, two months after the monsoon revolution in Bangladesh toppled Sheikh Hasina as prime minister and Awami League government, four
In this special episode of Saffron Siege: The RSS at 100, Harsh Mander speaks to Felix Pal, a lecturer on political science and international relations
From The Caravan Exposing the largest far-right network in history “The Sangh does not control, neither directly nor remotely,” Mohan Bhagwat, the chief of the
From The Caravan The RSS Project Mapping the Largest Far-Right Network in the World Seeing the Sangh is the world’s first comprehensive map of the
Political scientists Tariq Thachil and Kamal Nayan Choubey speak to Harsh Mander about how the RSS and its offshoots have made inroads into and are
In an affidavit before the Supreme Court, the [BJP-controlled, editor’s note] Madhya Pradesh government claimed India’s caste system was founded on “social harmony, equality, and
Escalated by police violence, a protest movement in Nepal snowballed into a spontaneous insurrection, culminating on September 9, 2025 with the toppling of the government.
In this episode of “Saffron Siege: The RSS at 100”, Apoorvanand Jha discusses how Hindu and Hindutva common sense kept the RSS popular even though
In Nepal, a protest movement in early September 2025 escalated into a spontaneous insurrection in response to police violence, culminating with the burning of the
From Jaffna Monitor Kaniyan Pungundran: I see your life as a story of human resilience — or perhaps more broadly, the resilience of Sri Lankan
All eyes have been on Nepal since last week when a large but loosely organised protest by young people in Kathmandu turned into a revolution
Gen Z Protests Against Social Media Ban and Elite Corruption Become Mass Uprising Against State Violence Soldiers are patrolling the streets of Kathmandu after protests
From Himal Southasian After anti-corruption Gen Z protests and a deadly uprising forced the prime minister and government to resign, Nepal searches for a new
Young people are protesting over systemic corruption and a system that rewards ‘nepo kids’ over meritocracy Youth-led demonstrations against corruption erupted throughout Nepal on Monday,
Earthquake in Afghanistan: When Customs Kill More Than the Quake, by S N Tripathy – 6 September 2025
The recent earthquake in Afghanistan was merciless. A 6.6-magnitude tremor, followed by powerful aftershocks, reduced villages to rubble, killing at least 2,200 people and injuring
From Lux Magazine, issue 14 “END FOSSIL FUEL NOW!” The sharp cry broke through the monotony of the COP28 plenary session in Dubai in late
From Himal Southasian After Pakistan’s military “win” in the May 2025 confrontation with India, the army under Asim Munir as field marshal has even greater
Shahrukh Alam, a lawyer practicing in India’s Supreme Court, dissects how the country’s law and order machinery has been turned against its Muslim citizens in
On 25 June this year, India marks 50 years since former prime minister Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency in India. This was the third time that
Development economist Amirullah Khan explains the social indicators that show the stark deprivation of the majority of India’s Muslims, especially in education and employment. He talks
Audrey Truschke is Professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, USA. Ivan Kalmar is Professor of Anthropology at the University
From Himal Southasian The Hindu Right has dispossessed India’s Muslims of meaningful political participation and fair representation while altering electoral politics to cast Muslims as
The ceasefire is just the first step in the long walk to justice and peace We, feminists from India and Pakistan, unequivocally welcome the ceasefire
In an unprecedented move, India recently suspended the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, citing cross-border terrorism. This was one of a series of escalations
From New Lines Magazine. A week after Indian naval officer Vinay Narwal married Himanshi Sowami on April 16, he was dead. The couple wanted to
From Himal Southasian How one Dalit woman’s courage in 1841 challenged a centuries-old system of caste-based slavery and hastened the promise of freedom for millions
Kashmiris must mourn on cue, stay silent on their own dead, and pretend the valley’s beauty isn’t built over graves. So predictably, the audit of
From Himal Southasian Violent pro-monarchy protests reveal Nepal’s incomplete transition from Hindu kingdom to secular republic, with nationalist myths and India’s Hindu Right feeding into
Sri Lanka’s civil war (1983-2009) between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist Tamil militant and political organization fighting for
Yesterday was a day of great strength, solidarity, and remembrance of women workers’ historic struggles for rights and against tyrants. Support for the striking ASHA
What more do parties like the CPI(M) and others who think like them want to wait for the Modi regime, powered by the RSS and
The ASHA workers’ strike in Kerala is entering its third week. We are appalled by the CPI(M)-led government’s apathy and the disgusting ignorance of the
From Himal Southasian Biren Singh’s BJP-led Manipur state government has used arrests, intimidation and narrative manipulation as tools to dominate the public and exacerbate decades-old
During the period when Bangladesh was still a part of Pakistan, the resistance of its people began against ethnic discrimination, regional disparities, economic inequality, oppression,
Donald Trump’s election victory has elicited a range of responses from progressive, Left-leaning people. Among the most widespread in India is a certain schadenfreude: Trump,
In July 2024, hundreds of influential far-right leaders gathered to network at the “National Conservatism” conference, or “NatCon,” in Washington, D.C. While the event was
From Himal Southasian Refugees from the war in Myanmar live in fear of harassment, imprisonment and deportation in the border areas of Northeast India and
From Freedom News Lethal repression of student protests triggers widespread revolt against political quotas and authoritarianism For three weeks, an insurrectionary movement has been rising
The 2024 Lok Sabha Elections produced the façade of sameness as 2019 was almost re-enacted in Kerala. Yet, the present elections should ring the alarm
From Himal Southasian India’s ruling BJP claims to have overcome the “tyranny of distance” that has plagued the Northeast but its politics have created greater
The author’s pieces on Hindutva in the 1980s had forecast many of the trends that are visible today. K. Balagopal was a civil rights activist
JURIST: Professor Kanjwal, to the readers of JURIST who might be unaware, can you give a brief history of the territory of Kashmir, including how
Gita Ramaswamy, Land, Guns, Caste, Woman: The Memoir of a Lapsed Revolutionary (New Delhi: Navayana Publishing, 2022), 432 pp. Ammel Sharon is Assistant Professor of
This paper asks how whether and how caste fits into a global history of racial capitalism? The misidentification of caste as custom has long misled
A dozen years after the end of Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long civil war, traditional homelands of the minority Tamil population are still under military occupation, thousands
Andrew Liu is an associate professor in the Department of History at Villanova University (Pennsylvania, USA). His research interests include modern China, South and East
Abstract What place does the caste system have in modern India with its globally integrating market economy? The most influential anthropological approaches to caste have
In the midst of the current global turn to the right, striking resonances across oceans emerge: strongmen and their allies point to specific and vivid