National Identity Contestation in Indian Politics During the Modi Era

Indian politics can be understood as a contest between two variants of a shared national identity narrative. The national identity narrative has a plot specifying what is glorious about the nation’s past, the heroes and villains of its present, and its destiny and dangers. The Hindutva and secularist partisan variants of the national identity narrative also have such plots. Each variant is supported by a coalition of large social communities, each with its own ethnopolitical identity narrative. The Hindutva variant has gained ascendancy by accommodating the narratives of growing intersectional communities of class, religion, caste and gender. The secular variant is anchored in communities that embrace their own identity narratives. This article addresses the methodological challenges of reconstructing social narratives from discourse. It shows how all the identity narratives form hegemonic ideologies for certain strata and institutions within the coalitions and communities.