Mixed-methods analysis reveals civilisational nationalism embedded in India's renewable energy leadership, suggesting authoritarian undercurrents behind centre-right green governance.
This article examines the intersection of Hindu nationalism and climate politics in India, focusing on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the far-right RSS, and the centre-right BJP-led government. It contends that Modi employs a calculated polyvocality, blending Hindu nationalist rhetoric with global climate leadership to consolidate political legitimacy. While the government projects India as a renewable energy leader, its policies remain corporatised, centralised, and exclusionary, aligning with RSS. Drawing on a mixed-methods analysis of archival, textual, and policy materials spanning between 2001–2022, the study reveals how India’s climate discourse fuses ecological modernisation with Hindu majoritarian symbolism, deploying claims to global environmental leadership as a vehicle for civilisational nationalism. The findings highlight the contradictions of centre-right environmental politics, where green capitalism coexists with coercive governance. By highlighting the ambivalences and authoritarian undercurrents of India’s climate nationalism, the article offers a non-European perspective on the far right’s entanglements with climate politics.
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Mukul Sharma (2026) studied this question.
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