Bovine meat, authoritarian populism, and state contradictions in Modi's India

Abstract

While authoritarian populism and its relationship to the rural world have gained analytical prominence recently, few have attempted a systematic exploration of how various authoritarian populisms emerge from, and are embedded within, dynamics of capital accumulation, state, and class struggle. Drawing on Poulantzas' approach to “state contradictions,” we focus on the ways by which bovine meat figures in Narendra Modi's authoritarian populist project in contemporary India. On the one hand, violent authoritarianism in the country uses beef eating as a powerful tool for subjugating subaltern groups to Hindutva rule. On the other hand, the country houses a rapidly expanding beef meat agro‐industry, accounting for as much as 20% of global exports and based on corporate concentration around dominant class interests. We argue that this points to state contradictions in Modi's India witnessing strained accumulation patterns. These contradictions, we emphasize, have distinct ramifications for India's classes of labour in the countryside, as certain groups experience what we describe as a process of “double victimization.”

Progressive politics and populism: Classes of labour and rural–urban political sociology—An introduction to the special issue

“…In doing so, they raise significant issues about the nature of agrarian alliances and agrarian populism (Aftab & Ali, this issue; Engels, this issue; Monjane, this issue; Pye & Chatuthai, this issue; Sankey, this issue). Some of the special issue articles also assess the contexts that shape possibilities for, and responses to, mobilization—addressing historical and contemporary state violence, or showing how forms of government are linked to dynamics of accumulation, both nationally and internationally (Bush, this issue; Jakobsen & Nielsen, this issue; Karataşli & Kumral, this issue; White et al, this issue). Kalb's article in the Special Issue, meanwhile, explores why significant numbers of people belonging to classes of labour support right‐wing populism—a vital political question in the search for a progressive politics, and one of the key mechanisms through which capitalism divides and rules.…”

“…Social reproduction is increasingly stretched spatially, and the contributions to this special issue reflect that. Most of the articles point to daily, temporary, and longer‐term movement between the countryside and the city for work, and most outline a progressive politics that is neither rural nor urban, but both simultaneously (Bush, this issue; Engels, this issue; Jakobsen & Nielsen, this issue; Karataşli & Kumral, this issue; Pye & Chatuthai, this issue; White et al, this issue).…”

“…As well as relatively more endogenous aspects of class relations and dynamics of accumulation and reproduction (e.g. Jakobsen & Nielsen, this issue), the articles in the special issue also analyse countries' locations in broader world‐historical dynamics. For example, forms of populist and authoritarian national government are linked to dynamics of accumulation (Karataşli and Kumral; Jacobsen and Nielsen; also Bush; White et al)—just as, more generally, increased numbers of populist governments have been linked to crises of accumulation, such as those of 2008 and 1929, during which ruling blocs tend to be destabilized and re‐formed.…”

“…Like all forms of capitalist government, it mediates the distribution of surplus value, shapes perceptions of what constitutes socially necessary labour time, and tends to maintain or increase class, gender, and race‐based inequalities (e.g. Jakobsen & Nielsen, this issue). Racist nationalist populisms, and their coercion and violence, are not isolated phenomena but ‘are systemically rooted, interlinked, produced by an uneven bundle of global, scaled, social and historical forces … incorporated within a variegated and therefore differentiating terrain of national political theatres’ (Kalb, this issue; see also Hart, 2019, p. 310).…”

“…Discussion of populism's different forms links to broader debates on neoliberal government: Populism can be used as a means of preserving the interests of capitalism contra neoliberalism, or it can seek to sustain neoliberalism despite the damage it wreaks on classes of labour. For example, India's BJP government uses nationalist and communal rhetoric as a counter‐weight to ‘jobless growth’ and low social spending, trying to advance neoliberalism while drawing in cross‐class Hindu support by targeting a ‘corrupt elite’ linked to competing ruling class interests, and through ideological and violent attacks on religious minorities (Chacko, 2018, p. 544; Jakobsen & Nielsen, this issue). Saad‐Filho and Boffo (2021), meanwhile, argue in relation to Brazil that neoliberalism, as populism, can be more or less authoritarian.…”