Revisiting the Populist Moments in Postcolonial India

This paper is an attempt to explore the two prominent populist moments in postcolonial India, namely Indira Gandhi's and Narendra Modi's politics, to understand the formation, transformation, and repercussions of populism at different historical conjunctures. To move beyond the existing accounts that have either tended to reduce populism to a rhetoric style or a campaign strategy or failed to address the dynamic relationship between populism and nationalism, the paper draws on the discursive-theoretical approach developed by Ernesto Laclau and scholars influenced by him, which sees populism as a political logic, with a specific focus on the distinction and articulation between populism and nationalism. Through a nuanced analysis of Gandhi's and Modi's populist politics, the paper hopes to shed light on the entanglement between populism and nationalism, or between “the people” and “the nation” in different forms that has continued to characterize the political landscape of India until today.