Rahul Bhatia on India’s turn towards authoritarianism: Southasia Review of Books podcast #22

2025-04-21

A conversation with the Mumbai-based journalist on the roots of Hindutva, the proliferation of Aadhaar and the surprising origins of India’s identification project. Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan speaks to the Mumbai-based journalist Rahul Bhatia, joining us to talk about his new book, The New India: The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Dem...

A conversation with the Mumbai-based journalist on the roots of Hindutva, the proliferation of Aadhaar and the surprising origins of India’s identification project.

Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan speaks to the Mumbai-based journalist Rahul Bhatia, joining us to talk about his new book, The New India: The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Democracy (Abacus/Context/PublicAffairs, August 2024).

Ten years ago, Rahul Bhatia started hearing the people he once loved revive centuries-old communal disputes and spout venomous slurs directed at Muslims. How was it, he wondered, that “the old norms of secularism and equality—however flawed their execution—were being cast off”?

His new book is his attempt at an answer; to find out “where the poison was coming from” by speaking to those responsible for, and those victimised by, a virulent strain of Hindu nationalism that has swept through India in the last decade. By doing so, he provides a clear-eyed account of “the unmaking of the world’s largest democracy” since Narendra Modi’s premiership in 2014.

The New India chronicles the rise of the supremacist RSS movement, and the tensions around questions of citizenship. It sounds the alarm on how the push for a national identification project and its stated purpose – to curb corruption and improve welfare delivery – could be used instead to “deliver oppression more efficiently.”

This episode is now available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/DUt5T55jHs8

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