‘Decolonizing the Hindu Mind’: Authoritarian Populism and the Political Life of Decolonial Theory in India

Abstract

This article argues that authoritarian populism poses a serious challenge to sociological theorization. Decolonial Theory has formed the intellectual backbone of the rise of Narendra Modi to power in India and, since 2014, has become a productive force, manifesting itself in new forms of statecraft in India. How has this come to be? Using the tools of historical sociology, this article builds a history of the ‘enemy of the people’ in Indian public discourse to conceptualize how Hindutva intellectuals used Decolonial Theory to gain legitimacy and eliminate the ‘other’. To confront this violent articulation of Decolonial Theory by Hindutva intellectuals, I argue that it is no longer possible to use the category of ‘native/indigenous’ as a location of sociological knowledge production. Instead, I propose the methodology of ‘looking within and without’ sociology to address the claims of decoloniality and meet the challenge of authoritarian populism.