Mainstream WeeklyIn the seminal book edited by Homi K. Bhabha titled Nation and Narration (Routledge, London and New York, 1990), the editor made a significant observation in his introduction: “The ‘locality’ of national culture is neither unified nor unitary in relation to itself, nor must it be seen simply as ‘other’ in relation to what is outside or beyond it. The boundary is Janus-faced and the problem of outside/inside must always itself be a process of hybridity, incorporating new ‘people’ in relation to the body politic, generating other sites of meaning and, inevitably, in the political process, producing unmanned sites of political antagonism and unpredictable forces for political representation.”
The above observation is quite relevant for interpreting the ongoing student/youth protests in India against arbitrary deletions of massive number of voters in the electoral rolls in the process of Special Intensive Revision (SIR), implemented by the Election Commission of India.
The coming to power of the BJP at the Centre and in a number of states in India has strengthened Hindutva politics and aggressive Hindu nationalism. The ongoing protests in New Delhi have challenged the dominant unitary discourse of Hindu nationalism. It has been observed that a large number of citizens being deprived of their voting rights in the recent state elections belong to the minority communities, particularly the Muslims. The Hindu reported: “Of 90 lakh voters excluded by SIR in West Bengal, 63 % are Hindus, 34 % are Muslims. As Muslims make up only 27 % of the State’s population, their 34 % deletion rate under the SIR is significant…The data on exclusions now show that Hindus faced high deletion rates in certain border constituencies where the majority of the electorate are Matuas. These Matuas are a sect of Hindu namasudras, a Dalit community, who migrated from Bangladesh in large numbers…Of those deleted during the adjudication process, the highest numbers were in Muslim-dominated districts.” (www.thehindu.com)
The present assertion of student/youth power in the heart of New Delhi, defying multiple forms of state repression, is centred around the call for the removal of the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, who allegedly took the unilateral decision of depriving millions of people of the democratic right to cast their votes in the recently held state elections.
The recent popular mobilizations in India initiated by the young protesters have posed a powerful challenge to the domination of Hindu nationalists in the public sphere. Embedded in the assertion of student/youth power is the possibility of birth of a variant of cosmopolitan nationalism in India.