Felix Pal
Biographic Data
| ID | 215949 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Felix Pal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Felix |
| FAMILY NAME | Pal |
| SIGNATURE | PAL F |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Western Australia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8750-0512 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Quiet Mainstreaming of Transnational Hindutva: Long Distance Nationalism and the Australian State
This article seeks to advance the scholarship on the Indian diasporic mobilisation of Hindutva by organisations linked to the Hindu nationalist movement. It does so by focusing not on typical accounts of civil society coordination, but rather on the case of Australia to explain how states that receive migrants actively facilitate the growth of the nationalist Sangh network’s influence outside of India. Focusing on these pull (rather than push) fa…
Seeing like the Sangh: Akhand bharat and the cartographic affectations of the Indian far right
The folk cartographies of the Hindu far-right revolve around producing maps of akhand bharat (undivided India). The last few decades have shown a revival in Hindu nationalist interest in the idea of akhand bharat . Moving beyond territories like mainland Southeast Asia as territories of Hindu cultural legacy, Hindu nationalist authors now push the borders of akhand bharat out to Iran, Egypt, North Australia, and even Siberia. In this paper, we ex…
Mistrust, covert communities and health policy evaluation: Evidence from vaccine hesitancy research in Western Australia
During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world enacted vaccine mandates to drive vaccine uptake, limit infection transmission, and prevent overwhelm of health systems. Implications of mandate policies, however, included reduced community trust in government, more prolific vaccine disinformation, and social unrest driven by demands for greater freedom from institutional intrusion. It is vital to understand the impacts of these social p…
Similarity Heuristics in the Indian Far Right: How the RSS Obscures Its Operational Scale
To conceal their activities, far-right networks manipulate similarity heuristics that suggest their constituent organizations are discrete and coherent. When an organization crafts a public image indicating that only those who wear the same uniforms and march in the same marches are part of an organization, it implies that those who do not, are not. This use of cognitive shortcuts assists far-right organizations in crafting their organizational b…
Hindu nationalism in South India: The rise of saffron in Kerala
Taking ideology out: Finding the diasporic Hindu far-right down under
Common understandings of what the far-right is revolve around ideological commitments to nativism, anti-democratic sentiment and authoritarianism. However, the assumption that the far-right is best comprehended through ideological positions is undermined by extensive evidence that within far-right mobilisation ideological commitment is uneven, ambiguous, and sometimes absent. In this paper, we argue that this tension presents a fundamental obstac…
Organizational Diffusion: What India Tells Us about How the Far Right Wins
Presenting a world-first data set of 2,831 constitutive organizations of history's largest far-right interorganizational network, this article presents a new explanation for far-right normalization: organizational diffusion. Providing, for the first time, empirical evidence of the large network characteristics of the Indian far right, this article paints a picture of what this network actually looks like, how far it has spread, and what explains …
Far-right reflexology: A periphery-to-centre approach for the study of the far-right
To address the problem of participant access, central in the study of the far-right, scholars of far-right mobilisations navigate between a methodological rock and a hard place. Either scholars produce in-depth qualitative accounts, putting their safety and ethical commitments at risk, or scholars study far-right mobilisations from a distance and produce limited externalist accounts that centre large surveys, quantitative studies and electoral an…
Leaving the Hindu Far Right
Why do people leave the world’s largest far-right organisation? In this article, we analyse six autobiographical defection accounts of ex-members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the apex organisation of the Indian Hindu nationalist movement. Compiled here for the first time, an analysis of these accounts reveals that even the most disciplined and ideologically coherent far-right organisations suffer from internal organisational messines…
Resisting Hindutva in the digital Indian diaspora: Notes from Australia
The study of how ethnonationalists mobilize digital media is not matched in size by an investigation into the progressive activists digitally mobilizing against them. This is especially true in diaspora communities, which form the focus of this work. In this paper, we discuss diasporic online progressive activism against one form of ethnonationalism, Hindutva. Situating our argument in the context of the Indian Australian diaspora, we argue that …
The shape of the Sangh: Rethinking Hindu nationalist organisational ties
The Indian Hindu nationalist movement is largely sustained by a network, hundreds of organisations strong, linked in greater or lesser degrees to a central organisational node: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. In this paper I propose a new, critical, definition of this network: That which is constituted by organisational sites through which a central executive may exert authority, (a) through existing institutionalised communication channels, and…
Syncretism in the Hindu Right as Intentionally Incomplete Proximity
Religious syncretism can function as an instrument of inter-group control and domination. Rather than consistently promoting cross-religious forbearance and knowledge, syncretism enables a proximity that allows forms of violence otherwise inaccessible to religious majoritarian groups. By choreographing performances of syncretism between themselves and a subordinate religious community, organizations like the Indian Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swa…
Why Muslims join the Muslim wing of the RSS
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the paramilitary corps that animates the contemporary Indian Hindu nationalist movement – increasingly relies on its Muslim wing to bolster its denials of extremism. The RSS claims hold that crowds of Muslims join its Muslim wing, the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, through organic nationalist awakenings that imply tacit acceptance of the RSS’ Hindu nationalist agenda. Based on a year of interview-based research in…
The shape of the Sangh: Rethinking Hindu nationalist organisational ties
The Indian Hindu nationalist movement is largely sustained by a network, hundreds of organisations strong, linked in greater or lesser degrees to a central organisational node: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. In this paper I propose a new, critical, definition of this network: That which is constituted by organisational sites through which a central executive may exert authority, (a) through existing institutionalised communication channels, and…
Why Muslims join the Muslim wing of the RSS
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the paramilitary corps that animates the contemporary Indian Hindu nationalist movement – increasingly relies on its Muslim wing to bolster its denials of extremism. The RSS claims hold that crowds of Muslims join its Muslim wing, the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, through organic nationalist awakenings that imply tacit acceptance of the RSS’ Hindu nationalist agenda. Based on a year of interview-based research in…
Organizational Diffusion: What India Tells Us about How the Far Right Wins
Presenting a world-first data set of 2,831 constitutive organizations of history's largest far-right interorganizational network, this article presents a new explanation for far-right normalization: organizational diffusion. Providing, for the first time, empirical evidence of the large network characteristics of the Indian far right, this article paints a picture of what this network actually looks like, how far it has spread, and what explains …
Syncretism in the Hindu Right as Intentionally Incomplete Proximity
Religious syncretism can function as an instrument of inter-group control and domination. Rather than consistently promoting cross-religious forbearance and knowledge, syncretism enables a proximity that allows forms of violence otherwise inaccessible to religious majoritarian groups. By choreographing performances of syncretism between themselves and a subordinate religious community, organizations like the Indian Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swa…
Why Muslims join the Muslim wing of the RSS
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the paramilitary corps that animates the contemporary Indian Hindu nationalist movement – increasingly relies on its Muslim wing to bolster its denials of extremism. The RSS claims hold that crowds of Muslims join its Muslim wing, the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, through organic nationalist awakenings that imply tacit acceptance of the RSS’ Hindu nationalist agenda. Based on a year of interview-based research in…
Resisting Hindutva in the digital Indian diaspora: Notes from Australia
The study of how ethnonationalists mobilize digital media is not matched in size by an investigation into the progressive activists digitally mobilizing against them. This is especially true in diaspora communities, which form the focus of this work. In this paper, we discuss diasporic online progressive activism against one form of ethnonationalism, Hindutva. Situating our argument in the context of the Indian Australian diaspora, we argue that …
The shape of the Sangh: Rethinking Hindu nationalist organisational ties
The Indian Hindu nationalist movement is largely sustained by a network, hundreds of organisations strong, linked in greater or lesser degrees to a central organisational node: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. In this paper I propose a new, critical, definition of this network: That which is constituted by organisational sites through which a central executive may exert authority, (a) through existing institutionalised communication channels, and…
Syncretism in the Hindu Right as Intentionally Incomplete Proximity
Religious syncretism can function as an instrument of inter-group control and domination. Rather than consistently promoting cross-religious forbearance and knowledge, syncretism enables a proximity that allows forms of violence otherwise inaccessible to religious majoritarian groups. By choreographing performances of syncretism between themselves and a subordinate religious community, organizations like the Indian Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swa…
Far-right reflexology: A periphery-to-centre approach for the study of the far-right
To address the problem of participant access, central in the study of the far-right, scholars of far-right mobilisations navigate between a methodological rock and a hard place. Either scholars produce in-depth qualitative accounts, putting their safety and ethical commitments at risk, or scholars study far-right mobilisations from a distance and produce limited externalist accounts that centre large surveys, quantitative studies and electoral an…
Leaving the Hindu Far Right
Why do people leave the world’s largest far-right organisation? In this article, we analyse six autobiographical defection accounts of ex-members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the apex organisation of the Indian Hindu nationalist movement. Compiled here for the first time, an analysis of these accounts reveals that even the most disciplined and ideologically coherent far-right organisations suffer from internal organisational messines…
Similarity Heuristics in the Indian Far Right: How the RSS Obscures Its Operational Scale
To conceal their activities, far-right networks manipulate similarity heuristics that suggest their constituent organizations are discrete and coherent. When an organization crafts a public image indicating that only those who wear the same uniforms and march in the same marches are part of an organization, it implies that those who do not, are not. This use of cognitive shortcuts assists far-right organizations in crafting their organizational b…
Hindu nationalism in South India: The rise of saffron in Kerala
Taking ideology out: Finding the diasporic Hindu far-right down under
Common understandings of what the far-right is revolve around ideological commitments to nativism, anti-democratic sentiment and authoritarianism. However, the assumption that the far-right is best comprehended through ideological positions is undermined by extensive evidence that within far-right mobilisation ideological commitment is uneven, ambiguous, and sometimes absent. In this paper, we argue that this tension presents a fundamental obstac…
Organizational Diffusion: What India Tells Us about How the Far Right Wins
Presenting a world-first data set of 2,831 constitutive organizations of history's largest far-right interorganizational network, this article presents a new explanation for far-right normalization: organizational diffusion. Providing, for the first time, empirical evidence of the large network characteristics of the Indian far right, this article paints a picture of what this network actually looks like, how far it has spread, and what explains …
The Quiet Mainstreaming of Transnational Hindutva: Long Distance Nationalism and the Australian State
This article seeks to advance the scholarship on the Indian diasporic mobilisation of Hindutva by organisations linked to the Hindu nationalist movement. It does so by focusing not on typical accounts of civil society coordination, but rather on the case of Australia to explain how states that receive migrants actively facilitate the growth of the nationalist Sangh network’s influence outside of India. Focusing on these pull (rather than push) fa…
Seeing like the Sangh: Akhand bharat and the cartographic affectations of the Indian far right
The folk cartographies of the Hindu far-right revolve around producing maps of akhand bharat (undivided India). The last few decades have shown a revival in Hindu nationalist interest in the idea of akhand bharat . Moving beyond territories like mainland Southeast Asia as territories of Hindu cultural legacy, Hindu nationalist authors now push the borders of akhand bharat out to Iran, Egypt, North Australia, and even Siberia. In this paper, we ex…
Mistrust, covert communities and health policy evaluation: Evidence from vaccine hesitancy research in Western Australia
During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world enacted vaccine mandates to drive vaccine uptake, limit infection transmission, and prevent overwhelm of health systems. Implications of mandate policies, however, included reduced community trust in government, more prolific vaccine disinformation, and social unrest driven by demands for greater freedom from institutional intrusion. It is vital to understand the impacts of these social p…
Political science (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Nationalism (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Hinduism (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Religious studies (6 works) · Hindu nationalism (5 works) · Religious Studies (5 works)