Talk Title: Cultivating Authority Among the Students of Hindu Nationalism

Abstract: This talk explores a curious predicament emerging within India's Hindu nationalist movement. The decade-long success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Narendra Modi has infused India's polity with a novel authoritarian populist spirit. Indications of this populism are evident in the rapidly transforming membership base of the right-wing organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). For example, RSS's student wing in Pune city, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), has transformed from a small, urban upper caste group into the largest, most caste diverse organization in the state. This diversity is attributed to the increasing participation of rural lower caste male students in the ABVP. However, on its forward march towards Hindu majoritarianism, the ABVP has unintentionally brought together two groups historically kept apart: lower caste men and upper caste women. As these students begin mixing, the RSS must confront a fundamental contradiction in its logics. Although it seeks to socially integrate disparate caste communities, it continually upholds caste endogamy on the grounds of preserving "the family." With a new generation of students questioning the authority undergirding marriage practices, what is the RSS to do? By exploring the social dramas that ensue, l offer an insight into authoritarianism's construction of its own authority, and how this project is constantly a work in progress.

Speaker Bio: Leela Khanna is a postdoctoral fellow in the Weatherhead Scholars Program at Harvard University. Trained as an anthropologist of India, she ethnographically studies the politics, the practices, and the ethics of right-wing organizations. Through this research, she explores the role of ideology in shaping how people make sense of power, hierarchy, and social change.