Speaking out: A postcolonial critique of the academic discourse on far-right populism

Abstract

Brexit and Trump’s victory in the United States has sparked renewed academic interest in far-right populism. However, this academic discourse remains remarkably orientalist in its tenor and rhetoric. The focus of academic debates remains restricted to dissecting the rise of far-right populism in the Global North West, while similar movements in Global South East remain largely ignored. We argue that the contemporary academic discourse about the far-right populism is based on the fundamental assumption that the ‘normal’ Global North West is becoming ‘abnormal,’ while the question of abnormality or lack thereof of the proverbial Orient is not taken up because in such othering discourse, the option of normality is foreclosed to the Global South East. Using the rise of the Bharatiya Janta Party in India as an example, we contend that far-right populist movements in the Global South East have developed and intersect with businesses and government in unique ways. The embrace of neoliberalism by the Indian far-right, a stark contrast to similar movements in the Global North West, further suggests that we might be witnessing a global reorientation of the capitalist order. Therefore, a comprehensive analysis of far-right populism must account for and pay attention to the heterogeneities of these movements across the Global North West and the Global South East.

Keywords

Bharatiya Janta Party far-right India populism post-colonial

In 2017, the Ministry of Environment of the Central government of India, led by the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), banned the slaughter and sale of cow meat in markets across India. This policy change, which had huge implications for thousands of small businesses and India’s leather and beef industry, was based on the ideology of Gao Rakhshaw, protection of cows as a sacred symbol of Hindu identity. This was the latest in a series of many policy changes implemented by the BJP—the modern face of Indian far-right populism—to further their ideology of Hindutva, the idea that the sacred motherland of India is for Hindus only. Since their first foray into politics, the BJP and its sister organizations have employed a distinctly nationalist agenda, alienating India’s vast minorities in the name of protecting a pure Hindu cultural identity. BJP’s rule, first in Gujarat and later in the federal government, has also been marked by incidents of outright violence and brutality against minorities, particularly Muslims.

The BJP’s agenda bears a distinct resemblance to that proposed by the National Front in France, Donald Trump in the United States, Victor Orban in Hungary, Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) in Germany, and other far-right populist parties in Europe. They share similar methods and ideologies: against elitism ( ‘drain the swamp’, Modi portraying himself as a humble chai-wala, aspiring toward ‘good days’ against the ‘Lutyens’ elite’), aimed at regaining national identity and sovereignty ( ‘Make America great again’, ‘United India, great India’), and anti-immigrant (Mexican rapists, ‘Islam does not belong in Germany’, ‘New Germans, we make them ourselves’). However, while the bogey-man of far-right in the Global North West¹ is discussed endlessly in popular press and academia, you will be hard-pressed to find any mention of the BJP (or any conservative nationalist movements in the Global South East for that matter) in this discourse.

We argue that this blind spot exists because the discourse on the contemporary far-right movements particularly in management and organization studies (MOS) is beset with characteristic neocolonial biases in its thematic focus, tenor, and rhetoric: the ‘Orient’ is still the passive other and the ‘Occident’ is still the place where all the ‘action’ happens. In fact, the entire contemporary rhetoric about the far-right populism is based on the fundamental assumption that the ‘normal’ North West is becoming ‘abnormal’ (or at least going through a change). The question of such changes in the Global South East is not taken up because for the always-assumed-to-be uncivilized, the undeveloped South East, the question of ‘abnormality’ is already foreclosed. We suggest that by focusing solely on the Global North West, the academic discourses on popular far-right assume and perpetuate the hegemony and normalcy of mythic North Western knowledge systems (Chakrabarty, 2000). We also assert that by ignoring the development of far-right movements in the Global South East and failing to account for the neocolonial context of such movements, the research on far-right populism becomes a part of ‘disciplinary forms of neo-colonialism through its appropriative, representational and exclusionary practices’ (Westwood and Jack, 2007, p. 250). As this research is driven and dominated by the sociocultural, political, and economic interests of the Global North West, it continues to reproduce the power asymmetries between the developed/developed, the colonizer/colonized, and the east/west (Banerjee, 2000; Mir and Mir, 2009; Murphy and Zhu, 2012).

We are critical of this neglect and its implications. We believe that it is the responsibility of the scholars in critical management studies (CMS) to critique the hegemony of knowledge produced in the Global North West, and to challenge its taken-for-granted assumptions (Dunne et al., 2008). We recognize that scholars working in CMS have extensively critiqued the ‘epistemic coloniality’ in the MOS literature (cf. Alcadipani et al., 2012; Ibarra-Colado, 2006), which has used the Global South East as the passive other to naturalize the dominance of the Global North West. Management and organizational practices of the Global North West, developed from the logics of colonization, are used to deliver civilization and modernity, in the form of ‘development’ to the Global South East (Cooke and Dar, 2008). At the same time, local ways of managing and organizing in the Global South East are marginalized as contributing to the economic backwardness of these countries. Thus, even in the academic discourse, management theories and praxis developed in the Global North Western context have become the hegemonic norm, imposed as the only correct—and authentic—way of thinking about management (Alcadipani and Rosa, 2011; Faria, 2014). As a result, the organizational knowledge from the South East is either marginalized or portrayed and categorized through the gaze of the Global North West (Alcadipani, 2010). Consequently, diverse voices from multiplicity of contexts have to be translated in predominantly White, male Anglophone knowledge systems, and must remain within established epistemic regimes of MOS to be recognized as legitimate (Faria, 2014; Faria, et al., 2010). Postcolonial scholars in MOS have not only critiqued these assumptions in various aspects of management but have also made a strong case for decolonizing MOS by developing research agendas focused on the Global South East (Alcadipani et al., 2012), creating space for alternative epistemologies through pluriversality (Faria, 2014; Ibarra-Colado, 2006), and highlighting the hybridity and contradictions of management and organizational practices (Dar, 2014; Ibarra-Colado, 2011; Yousfi, 2014)

However, despite these efforts to decolonize MOS, emerging theoretical debates on far-right populism continue to follow similar patterns and biases. To redress this imbalance, we suggest that the theorization of contemporary far-right populism should be situated within the context of the Global South East as a way of decolonizing and problematizing the hegemonic Eurocentric theoretic paradigm (Ngugi, 1986); and questioning its onto-epistemological, ethical, political, and economic implications (Murphy and Zhu, 2012; Prasad, 2003). Instead of using nationalist movements in the peripheral South East as empirical examples to bolster theories proposed for and by the developed North West (Murphy and Zhu, 2012), we argue for an understanding and critique of far-right populism that accounts for the unique political, economic, and sociocultural interests of the South East. This means acknowledging that far-right movements and resistance against them are not novel concepts, critiqued and understood through a predominantly Eurocentric intellectual effort. Such a critique further involves radical decolonization of the MOS literature on the far-right, whereby such movements in the Global South East are understood in their own right and not as a way of confirming the prejudice against underdeveloped, peripheral, third world (Fanon, 2007/1961; Lorde, 2007/1984). This does not mean a complete disconnect between the academic discourse on far-right populism in the Global North West and the Global South East. Instead, we suggest that organizational knowledge developed about far-right movements in the Global South East can—and should—contribute to a pluralistic—and decentered—understanding of such movements where ‘many worlds and knowledges can co-exist’ (Faria, 2014, p. 128). We further argue for overturning the binaries of east/west, enlightened/savage, developed/undeveloped to unpack how narratives of the far-right are linked across the global landscape as part of a global discourse on colonialism (Banerjee and Prasad, 2008).

To this end, the rest of this brief article is organized as follows: first, we discuss the erasure of wider sociopolitical developments from most MOS literature and then discuss the limitations of the limited research that does focus on such concerns. Second, we provide a brief account of the Indian far-right and discuss its intersections with the business world. Finally, we discuss the main implications of our analysis for the academic discourse on contemporary far-right populism.

MOS literature and far-right populism

The business world and the scholars studying it are deeply implicated in the dominant global governing ideologies. Indeed, the ideological primacy accorded to private businesses and market competition by the national and international governing authorities are perhaps the most familiar feature of the neoliberal revolution (Harvey, 2005). The negative consequences of the neoliberal governance model on poverty level and economic growth of developing countries are well documented. Therefore, it is imperative that management scholars acknowledge and study how businesses influence and are in turn are influenced by these macrolevel changes in their political economy (Dunne et al., 2008).

Acknowledging and studying this intersection is even more pertinent in the present case, as dissatisfaction with these effects of neoliberalism are often presented as one of the most important reasons for the rise of the far-right in many regions of the world. However, there has been a characteristic erasure of debates about macropolitical issues in the MOS literature. In fact, the observation of Dunne, Harney, and Parker (2008) that management researchers ‘are not paying any sustained attention to war and violence, racism and sexism, population movements and displacement, mal-distribution of wealth, accidents and ill-health in the workplace or gender and sexuality’ (p. 273) is still relevant more than a decade later. In fact, apart from this journal there has been little systematic engagement in MOS journals with the rise of far-right populist politics in different regions of the world. In this journal, multiple articles have examined populist politics and its implications for MOS, including how newer social changes have changed the values of society (Crossley, 2003), what Brexit might mean for CMS (Bristow and Robinson, 2018; Grey, 2018), and how to define and engage with populism (De Cleen et al., 2018). However, even this limited and otherwise thoughtful research almost exclusively focuses on the dynamics and political ecology of the Global North West. To the best of our knowledge, no article in MOS journals has engaged with the populist movements occurring outside the Western, developed countries.

The situation in leading academic conferences in MOS is slightly better and the issue of populist politics has attracted some interest from the academic community. The Academy of Management Conference in 2017 conducted a workshop on ‘Globalization at the Interface: Brexit, Trump, Le Pen, TPP, TTIP, and the Environment’ and an interactive symposium on ‘Framing debates in the age of Trump and Brexit: Metaphors for international leadership, globalization and education’. The CMS stream in the same conference had an all-academy thematic session on the ‘role of scholarship in support of political activism in the context of the rise of populism across the world’. Similarly, the 10th international Critical Management Studies Conference in 2017 featured an open plenary with 4 panel speakers and a merged stream on Brexit and its consequences for HRD which consisted of 10 papers. One of these papers, authored by Edson Antunes Quaresma Júnior and Alexandre de Pádua Carrieri, compared organizational politics. Apart from this notable exception, most leading conferences either did not engage with broader political issues of populism at all or did so predominantly in the context of the Global North West.

We want to assert that the aim of this discussion is not to diminish the importance of rising far-right movements in Europe and the United States for MOS, nor is it to suggest that academic research on the political and social consequences of such movements constitutes a bias. However, we do want to suggest that broadening the focus on this research to engage more deeply with far-right politics in the Global South East can lead to a more robust understanding of the changing social landscape across the world and its potential consequences for MOS. We also want to assert that the study of populist movements and organizations remains incomplete without acknowledging the colonial context of far-right politics as well as understanding the implications of rising populism for the political economy of the Global South East.

To that end, we take up the case of far-right populism in India to underscore three significant points. First, although many aspects of far-right populism in India parallel similar movements in the Global North West, the Indian far-right embraces both neoliberalism and economic globalization. These distinct features of the Indian far-right populism contest some of the familiar and taken-for-granted features of far-right populism in the Global North West. Second, ascendency of the far-right in India predates many of the recent events. Unlike Europe, where far-right parties have yet to win popular vote and make a government, India’s nationalist parties have been in the government for the past decade and are still going strong. Hence, the rise of far-right politics in India cautions against interpreting these developments as only a ‘moment’. As India’s example shows, once in power, these movements are able to transform the very fabric of society. If this pattern holds elsewhere, we might be moving toward an era and not a moment of far-right dominance over formal institutions of political power. Second, if the recent developments are any indication, just like the model of pacifist resistance against the colonial masters, India may be the site where new counter narratives and political models contesting the far-right emerge that subsequently get adopted elsewhere. Finally, the case of India also illustrates that rise of far-right politics in the Global South East is—and has been—interconnected with the political project of colonization and neocolonization. Despite increasing violence against minorities in India (and China, Myanmar, and Saudi Arabia, for that matter), the complicit silence of Western governments and academia on such development is deafening. Countries in the Global North West are able to turn a blind eye to violence wrecked by the populist governments as long as they remain faithful to the neoliberal capitalist market and its global interests (Frenkel and Shenhav, 2006; Prasad, 2009).

Far-right populism in India

India’s contemporary populist far-right movement is best represented by the rise of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), its religious wing Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and its political wing, the BJP. RSS is an all-male, voluntary, organization in which members receive ideological and paramilitary training daily, through a network of local branches. The BJP—the political wing of the RSS—has made steady political gains using far-right rhetoric in the past three decades and is now firmly in control of the government of India and continues to consolidate its hold on power by resounding victories in provincial elections. RSS maintains a nonpolitical front (which incidentally facilitates its activities and fundraising from outside India), but is almost always intimately involved in setting the political agenda of the BJP (for detailed discussion of RSS, VHS, and BJP, see Basu, 2015). Two of India’s premiers, Vajpayee and Modi were full-time devotees of the RSS. Modi, in particular, has pursued an explicitly nationalist agenda, both when he was the chief minister of Gujarat and since becoming the Prime Minister in 2014. His policies, and his handling of the Hindu–Muslim conflict in Gujarat in 2002, which resulted in more than a thousand fatalities, were widely considered as a form of state-sanctioned terrorism, and a calculated ethnic cleansing premeditated and aided by the state machinery (Nussbaum, 2009).

The ideology underlying modern nationalist populism in India is that of hindutva, the idea that ‘nation is nothing but the physical and emotional outcome of Hindu aspirations … while Christians and Muslims are “outsiders” and can be part of India only after they accept the “national culture”’ (Sharma, 2011, p. 4). The rallying cry that the pure ‘motherland of India’ is being desecrated by foreign invaders and a radical decolonization is required to reclaim a Hindu identity is used by far-right groups like the RSS to gather support behind the idea of an exclusive nationhood (Basu, 2015). This concept of nationhood, which is exclusively reserved for the Hindus, casts Muslims—the second biggest religious group in India—as unwelcome invaders and outsiders (Van der Veer, 1996). The nationalist discourses in India present Muslims as posing a constant threat to the motherland by perpetuating sacrilege against her holy symbols (e.g. against cows by slaughtering them, or the Hindu motherland by destroying temples and erecting masjids in their place). In 2015, this religious fervor over cow slaughter resulted in the public lynching of a Muslim man when public accusations were made from a Hindu temple that he had slaughtered a cow (Kumar, 2017). Modi personally, and the BJP government in general, failed to respond to this despicable act in an effective manner, which was followed by multiple similar incidents later, further cementing the fears of marginalization in India’s minorities, particularly Muslims.

Although Muslims bear the brunt of the nationalist policies of the BJP government in India, its other ethnic and religious minorities are also not immune from the populist majoritarian politics of the far-right. From the low caste Dalits fighting against their social stigmatization (Omvedt, 2006) to the Adivasis fighting against corporate takeover of swidden farmland in India’s Northeast (Lobo, 2002) and the ecological movements have all paid the price of the BJP’s nationalist policies (Mohan, 2015). Similarly, women and feminists in India have accused the BJP of following a misogynist ideology where women are not seen as individuals with rights, but as bearers of their community’s honor (Sarkar & Butalia, 1995). Hindu nationalists use religious doctrines to promote and endorse female subservience and male dominance, as a proper Hindu way of living (Bradley, 2011). Similarly, in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka, Hindu nationalists specifically targeted Hindu women involved in cross-religion romances or relationships (Lulla, 2013). The RSS was also implicated in using gang-rape in the systemic violence that broke out after demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. This pattern was repeated a decade later in Gujarat, where women and girls were directly targeted in communal riots.

It is interesting to note the similarities between the far-right movements in India and in the United States and Europe. The underlying ideology of cultural hegemony and a monolithic nationalist identity, often leading to a widespread program of racism, xenophobia, and gender-based regional and religious antagonism, seems to be a common thread in right-wing populist movements. However, the difference in how the academic community treats these movements is noteworthy. On one hand, the expanding crisis for diversity and inclusion (Brazeal et al., 2017), challenges for human resource management (Bratton and Gold, 2017), and managing international businesses (Cumming and Zahra, 2016) in the aftermath of the rising far-right in the United States and Europe remain a popular concern for MOS scholars. However, at the same time, far-right movements in the Global South East, their impact on diversity, occupational wellbeing, or global trade remain overlooked. The overarching theme, particularly in MOS, remains the fragile status of democracy in the United States and Europe, and the consequences of rising nationalist sentiments for organizations and businesses located in the Global North West. This is a pattern characteristic of what Faria (2014) calls exclusionary inclusion; while the research agendas are critical of racism, anti-feminist, and xenophobia, their critique goes only so far as these sentiments threaten the globalization qua universalization of Eurocentric values (Faria et al., 2010; Guedes and Faria, 2010). Nationalist movements in India, and other countries of the Global South East—while equally threatening for democracy and human rights—are either systemically overlooked or labeled as a problem that can be corrected by development, that is, adoption of neoliberal ideals, Western values, and functioning bureaucracies fashioned after their colonial masters so that they can rise from ‘“primitive” to utopia; and the natural place of “developed countries”’ (Cooke and Dar, 2008).

While the trajectory of nationalist politics has important lessons for critical scholars examining the rise of nationalism, an empirical focus on India is also important because India is also the site where new social responses to the contemporary far-right movements emerge. Although major political parties seem ineffective in challenging the BJP’s narratives, India’s civil society has been actively criticizing the far-right policies of the government. University campuses, led by the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), have particularly become active sites of resistance against the BJP’s nationalist and chauvinistic policies in what some have called the ‘Indian spring’ (Biswas, 2016; Parth, 2016; Singh, 2016). In 2015, the RSS backed student union (ABVP) tried to stop a Kashmiri leader, S.A.R. Geelani from attending an event organized at JNU to support Kashmiri people’s right of self-determination (Sharma and Vijetha, 2016). Although students of ABVP attacked Mr Geelani, he was able to deliver the lecture as students made a human chain around him to protect him. In 2016, students of JNU held a public protest against the capital punishment of Kashmiri separatists Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat. Although the university administration refused to permit the event, students went through anyway, citing their freedom of speech. The ABVP tried to stop the rally, and the resulting clashes between students became violent. In its aftermath, three of the student leaders were arrested and charged with sedition (The Hindu, 2016). This incident galvanized India’s civil society, with journalists, activists, and politicians alike condemning the BJP’s tactics. Since then students have taken to novel ways—including rap music, graffiti, and blogs—to protest the politics of far-right in India (Ferreira and Gonsalves, 2016). While many of the counter narratives and resistance strategies to far-right politics in India are nebulous and not unified at present—perhaps a manifestation of the absence of unified labor class movements in postsocialist politics—if India’s history is any indication, they may get integrated in due time in novel and unexpected ways around triggering events.

Indian far-right populism and the business world

While Indian far-right populism shares many similarities with such movements in the Global North West, there are also some critical differences. Perhaps the most important difference is that unlike far-right populist movements in the Global North West, the leadership of Indian far-right populism not only embraces economic globalization but actively argues against isolationist economic policies. In fact, in his recent opening address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Modi listed backlash against globalization as one of the three biggest challenges facing the world (Chainey, 2018). Modi, therefore, embraces the key features of neoliberal economic and administrative policies in contrast to the standard far-right economic agenda that are actively against the neoliberal paradigm. The Indian far-right populism, therefore, problematizes the taken-for-granted antagonism between contemporary far-right populism and economic globalization. The significance of this critical distinguishing feature of Indian far-right populism and its implications for our international organizations and businesses needs to be further unpacked by future MOS researchers.

Indian far-right embracing neoliberalism might also explain why despite employing similar rhetoric, populist tactics, and divisive social initiatives, Modi and India continue to enjoy a sanitized image in the Global North West media. While we have been repeatedly told to be cautious about the policies of European populist far-right ad-nauseum, liberal leaders of the developed world have gone out of their way to indulge Modi’s nationalist politics as long as it suits their business interests (Associated Press, 2017; Wintour, 2017). He became the first Indian Prime Minister to deliver the coveted keynote speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos, where he defended globalization (Bansal, 2018). He has also been welcomed with open arms at the Silicon Valley and multiple international business forums (Goel, 2015; Lyengar, 2017). The Global North West, it seems, while remaining critical of nationalist sentiment in its own midst, does not mind violence in the name of nationalism as long as it supports the ‘business’. A Eurocentric reading of the contemporary far-right would suggest that neoliberalism is in danger, but the Indian experience suggests that we might instead be witnessing a reconfiguration of global business interests. Hence, while the local context does play a part in determining the actual specificities of the far-right politics in each country, ultimately many catalysts for the rise of the far-right politics may be related to global neoliberal politico-economic discourses.

While the Global North West on the whole and large international corporations benefit from the pro-business agenda of the Indian far-right, local businesses that lie at the opposing end of the ideological spectrum tell a different story. After 1 year in government, Modi signed into law a bill that prohibited the slaughter and sale of beef in Maharashtra. While India’s constitution promises protection to cows, this law extended this protection to oxen and bulls, and added a penalty of a 5-year imprisonment and substantial fine. This effectively put Maharashtra’s beef butchers (almost exclusively Muslim) out of business, and deprived the beef-eating and beef-selling population (which included Muslims, Dalits, and Christians) of important nutritional resource. The Modi government has not only ignored the protests against this law, but has strongly suggested that other states should emulate this example (Gittinger, 2017). According to one estimate, cow slaughter has now been prohibited in more than 80% of Indian states, which accounts for 99.38% of the country’s population (Saldhana, 2017). Early signs indicate that these policies are directly influencing India’s previously growing leather and beef industries with some analysis indicating a stagnation or decline in both these industries in the past 2 years (Kazmin, 2017). These developments highlight the dangers for organizations and businesses that find themselves on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum of government-backed populist movements.

While previous research has noted the significance of populist boycotts for local businesses (Koku et al., 1997; Braunsberger and Buckler, 2011), little research has investigated what happens when such movements control the government apparatus and can enact policy changes against such businesses. As scholars in the Global North West come to terms with the possibility of a far-right government (or at least such governments that have explicit nationalist agendas), particularly in the aftermath of the Trump victory in 2016, an important debate concerns the impact of such governments on industry and private businesses. While some scholars think it will be difficult for the far-right to implement some of its extreme economic agenda after coming into power, others argue that these movements have the potential to change the very fabric of the neoliberal economy. The governance approach of the Indian far-right movement may provide important insights in this regard. Similarly, populist governments in the Global North West often use income, class, and status inequalities of the capitalist society to mobilize popular sentiments against neoliberal globalization and neoliberal elites (De Cleen et al., 2018). The Indian government’s approach toward international business and its favor of globalization questions this broad assumption. This can potentially offer a way to understand populism as a newer sociopolitical arrangement of global capitalism (with variable features) rather than as a movement against neoliberalism.

Conclusion

It seems that recent political events in the Global North West—Brexit, Trump’s ascendance to presidency and his subsequent policies regarding racial and religious minorities, and the increasing popularity of nationalist parties across multiple European countries—have captured the collective academic imagination. Special journal issues, conference panels, and individual papers are being churned out to explain this ‘unexpected’ populist turn in contemporary politics. It seems as if everyone is concerned about the potential impact of such movements on democracy, globalization, citizenship rights, and economic growth.

Given how the rise of the far-right has played out in India, the involvement of far-right government in usurping democratic rights and personal freedoms in the name of establishing a strong nation, using the façade of the anti-elitist agenda while massive wealth transfer occurs to the rich, and the human cost of the resulting conflict, one would assume that India would be a hot topic of academic interest in populism and the rise of the far-right. Yet, one would be hard-pressed to find any meaningful engagement (theoretical or otherwise) with the nationalist politics in India (and the Global South East) in the contemporary mainstream debates on far-right politics. While the world watches Brexit in stunned disbelief, or hurries to dissect the post-truth world one lives in after Trump, the political trajectory of India and the tactic of using religious violence for political gain which has propelled the BJP to power are rarely ever mentioned. Equally deafening is the silence of the political pundits on this issue: while every tweet of Trump is dissected as an example of decay of the democratic process and the elections in France and the possibility of the National Front government are endlessly explored, the beef riots or unrest in Kashmir are not even connected to the same hyper-nationalist far-right sentiment.

Overall, this creates an illusion that the radical far-right is a problem only in the context of Western democracies, and somehow, anti-immigrant sentiments and Islamophobia that have become the hallmark of many far-right movements are merely symptoms of nationalism brought on by economic austerity and resulting loss of job market. This narrowly Eurocentric focus on the far-right populism does not account for the hypocrisy of so-called liberal democratic governments in the Global North West, which tolerate, support, or at least turn a blind eye to nationalist politics in the Global South East, because it is expedient to their neocolonial projects. Importantly, as discussed above, the cultural and geographic variations in contemporary far-right populism have important implications for local and international business. Therefore, there is a need to acknowledge that contemporary far-right populism is neither a geographically nor a culturally bound phenomenon. Considering the rise of the far-right as a primarily Western phenomenon is not only empirically incorrect but also likely to limit a comprehensive understanding of this multinational, multicultural, phenomenon.

We posit that this obsessively narrow focus on the far-right movements and the state of democracy in the Global North West is not accidental. It is indicative of deeper, far more important biases implicit in how democracy, free speech, and freedom are constructed in the popular imagination and in MOS. We want to question the ‘discursive-intellectual binary’ (Asad, 2013) in which secularism, personal freedom, free speech, and the democratic process are considered to be the sole prerogative of the North West, and authoritarianism, religious intolerance, and restrictions on thought and personal freedom are considered ‘normal’ in the Orient. This is the reason why events like Brexit, Trump’s victory, or a Hungarian reporter kicking a migrant man shock the people: it challenges the unquestioning belief that liberalism belongs in the North West. On the other hand, nationalist victories in India are not ‘interesting’ because the presence of violence in India merely reaffirms the position of the illiberal, fundamentalist ‘other’ which the North West has always afforded to its colonies. More importantly, the debates on Trump, Brexit, and nationalism in Europe continue to exclude their interconnection with the nationalism in the Global South East.

The neocolonial biases in the MOS literature are well documented (Banerjee and Linstead, 2004; Murphy and Zhu, 2012) and the CMS community has been at the forefront of contesting the ideological, geographical, and methodological biases in the MOS research. While the MOS literature on populism is still developing, it is critical that it does not suffer from familiar neocolonial biases that have characterized most previous research. We acknowledge the previous thoughtful work done by MOS theorists, especially because they are among the minority that acknowledges the significance of the broader social ecology of MOS research. We certainly need more direct active engagement with such phenomena in MOS research. We, however, feel strongly that theorists must not reproduce the Eurocentric biases of popular press. Even while writing this piece, we were forced to frame our discussion in a way that implicitly treated the right-wing populism in the Global North West as ‘normal’ and the Indian version as a ‘special’ case of this phenomena. Therefore, it is critical to contest this pattern of theorizing the contemporary populist far-right movements. As the center of gravity of contemporary politics in general and neoliberal, in particular, shifts toward the east, such systematic blind spots in our theorizing will prevent a comprehensive understanding of the reconfiguration of the contemporary capitalist order that is currently taking place.

Finally, we must note that we do not claim to provide any definitive evidence or judgment about the contemporary Indian far-right populism. Our argument instead is that it is something worth investigating and the failure to acknowledge it results in systematic blind spots in the academic discourse on contemporary far-right populism. Ultimately, the nature of the Indian far-right and its impact on business, management, and organizing can only be ascertained through empirical inquiry. However, that will not happen unless we start looking.

Footnotes

Notes

ORCID iDs

Ayesha Masood

Muhammad Azfar Nisar

Author biographies

Ayesha Masood is an assistant professor in Suleman Dawood School of Business. She is interested in anthropology of work and care, social policy and organizational research methods.

Muhammad Azfar Nisar is an assistant professor in Suleman Dawood School of Business. His is interested in critical inquiry of public administration, particularly from Lacanian and post-colonial perspectives.

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