Srirupa Roy
Institution: University of Göttingen
Srirupa Roy is professor and chair of State and Democracy at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), University of Göttingen, and a founding co-director of ICAS:MP, the Merian-Tagore International Centre for Advanced Studies "Metamorphoses of the Political." (ICAS:MP). Her books include The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism (Stanford University Press, 2024); Saffron Republic: Hindu Nationalism and State Power in India (with Thomas Blom Hansen, Cambridge University Press, 2022); Visualizing Secularism and Religion: Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, India (with Alev Çinar and Maha Yahya, (University of Michigan Press, 2012); Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism (Duke University Press, 2007), and Violence and Democracy in India (with Amrita Basu, Seagull Books, 2006).
Reflections Upon "New Civilizationisms"
I approach civilizationalism as a historically situated practice of political claims-making, rather than civilizations as substantial things. I thus ask how various kinds of political, historical, cultural, and social forces have produced civilizational claims (civilization as an outcome or effect), rather than how civilizational forces have shaped politics, history, culture, and society (civilization as a cause/driver). I am specifically interested in the state-made and state-making aspects of civilizationalist projects. What are the defining features of new civilizational discourse in India—what is “new” about it, and what are the new forms of state authority and state-society relations that it legitimizes?
In a recent collaboration with Thomas Hansen and others on the politics of “new Hindutva” or the consolidation of a governmental/state project of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India (Hansen and Roy eds. 2022), I looked at the rise of rightwing think tanks as part of the making of a new Hindutva establishment. I was struck by the proliferation and intensity of “civilization talk” in these think tank milieus. I also noted how the language of civilization is particularly prominent in international contexts, where it is often emphasized more than the religious nationalist/majoritarian themes that Hindu nationalism is usually associated with. Civilization seems to work as a mode of translation and a coded dog-whistle—an innocuous and positive concept that allows Hindu nationalists to connect to and be recognized by established international institutions, spaces, and networks, while at another (most times, a domestic political) register, other and less salubrious meanings of civilization are implicitly signaled to supporters. This translation/conversion work of civilizational discourse intrigues me, and I plan to pursue this in future research: how civilizationalist ideas are marshalled by authoritarian political projects in a bid for international legitimacy and recognition.