@article{THESIS,
      recid = {3840},
      author = {Malarvannan, Apoorva},
      title = {Between Refusal and Recognition: Tamil Mass Politics and  Publics in the Age of Hindutva},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {M.A.},
      address = {2022-06-04},
      number = {THESIS},
      abstract = {This paper examines contemporary resistance to far-right  Hindu nationalism, typified by the currently-ruling  Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has maintained a  majority in the Indian national government since 2014.  Hindu nationalism (Hindutva)’s project can be roughly  defined as Hindu majoritarian, privileging a normative body  politic that is upper-caste, masculinist, and chauvinist  (Banaji 2018), towards an imaginary of India’s multivalent  communities standardized under a “Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan”  nexus (Pandey 1992; Pandian 2000). I focus on political  resistance in the contemporary landscape of Dravidian  politics in the state of Tamil Nadu, which, despite the  considerable literature on Hindutva, its project, and its  antagonistic resistances, has been undertheorized. I argue  that recent mass protests in Tamil Nadu articulate  political claims that straddle a liminal space between a  politics of recognition, as theorized by Charles Taylor  (1992), and a politics of refusal, as theorized by Audra  Simpson (2012). This ambivalent politics draws from a long  history of 20th century Tamil resistance and hostility to  the Indian national government for its infringement on  Tamil identity, but departs from it in distinct ways. In  addition to articulating discursive claims between  recognition and refusal, participants in recent Tamil  protests are, I argue, attempting to forge a nascent  paradigmatic shift in notions of Tamil identity itself. By  speaking with dual, simultaneous reference to recognition  and refusal, protesters distance themselves from both the  Hindutva national government and the space of electoral  politics in Tamil Nadu, instead positing Tamil ontology as  a site of ongoing struggle.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/3840},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.3840},
}