Where is India, the World’s Largest Democracy, Headed?

Thursday, March 7th, 2024 | 8am EST / 2pm CET / 6:30pm IST

To rewatch our event, click here.

As India gears up for the May elections, the prevailing sentiment suggests Narendra Modi’s reelection is imminent, reaffirming his statesmanship and aspirations for great-power status. However, beneath the surface lies a historic narrative of political and cultural pluralism being overshadowed by the populist majoritarian ideology. This online roundtable aims to dissect the implications of Modi’s triumphalism, the erosion of India’s federal system, and how will this impact India’s international aspirations.

This event will be held under the Chatham House Rule.

FEATURED SPEAKERS:

–> Mujibur Rehman (Jamia Millia Islamia)

–> Ananya Vajpeyi (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies)

Chair: Nicola Missaglia (ISPI, Italian Institute for International Political Studies)

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Mujibur Rehman is Assistant Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy (Jamia Millia Islamia). He is a political scientist by training and works at the interface of identity politics and development politics. Dr. Rehman is the editor of The Rise of Saffron Power: Reflections on Indian Politics (2018); Communalism in postcolonial India: Changing Contours (2016), subsequently republished in 2018 with a new introduction by Romila Thapar and afterward by Dipesh Chakrabarty. He is currently working on another book project on The Political Future of Indian Muslims.

Ananya Vajpeyi is a scholar and writer and works at the intersection of intellectual history, political theory, and critical philology. She is the author of Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India published by Harvard University Press (2012), which won the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize (2011), the Crossword Award (2013), and the Tata First Book Prize (2013). Dr. Vajpeyi is a Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, and a Research Consultant with the Nilgiri Archaeological Project, University of Ghent, Belgium. Most recently, she has been a Visiting Professor at Ashoka University (Fall 2023) and a Visiting Fellow at CRASSH, University of Cambridge (2019-20). She has been involved with Reset DOC since 2012, was the scientific coordinator of the Venice Delhi Seminars 2016 and co-edited Minorities and Populism: Critical Perspectives from South Asia and Europe (Springer, 2020).

Nicola Missaglia is the Head Communications and Publishing at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), Italy’s leading foreign policy think tank. He also is a Research Fellow at ISPI, in charge India Desk. Before joining ISPI, he has worked at Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations. He has extensive experience in managing projects across West and South Asia and his research interests focus on India’s foreign policy and geoeconomics, as well as on the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific and Global South-Global North relations.

Cover photo: A man is watching the Ram temple ahead of its opening in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India, on January 19, 2024. (Photo by Indranil Aditya / NurPhoto / NurPhoto via AFP)