The Irregular’ and the Unmaking of Minority Citizenship

The Rules of Law in Majoritarian India

Bibliographic Data

ID12282980
AuthorsM Mohsin Alam Bhat (0000-0001-8256-0367, Queen Mary University of London, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume33
Issue5
Pages690-721
Publication date2024-04-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Legal Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0964-6639 • E-ISSN: 1461-7390
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/09646639241238427
OpenAlexW4394784480
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited62

This article focuses on the important aspect of India's democratic decline, the ascendance of the Hindu majoritarian state, and its relationship with the law. It argues that the law is central to the Hindu majoritarian project but often in obscurely informal ways. India's majoritarian state seeks to radically reconfigure the law in Indian social life by making the rule of law inapplicable to its minorities. Through a series of examples drawn from the everyday socio-legal life in contemporary India, the article shows how arbitrary and extralegal state violence is endorsed, affirmed, and acquiesced on grounds of serving ethnonationalist values and interests. It theoretically develops the novel interpretive framework of ‘the irregular’ to capture the practices of the ethnicization of the law, ethnonationalist legitimisation of extra-legality through intense political mobilisation, and the production of subordinated minority citizenship without the formal incorporation of graded citizenship

Citizenship · Democracy · Hinduism · Political science · Politics · Principle of legality · Rule of law · Sociology · State (computer science · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Law · Philosophy · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies