Populism in India

������ ��� Populist political forces have played significant roles in Indian politics, and have varied in their vision of political community, in the social groups they targeted, in the policies they pursued, and in their impact on democracy. The Indian National Congress had populist aspects in the interwar period, and then again under Indira Gandhi’s leadership from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. Movements and parties that represented particular language and caste groups also employed populist rhetoric and methods of mobilization, and pursued populist policies. The nature of the populist organizations influenced the effect of populism on democracy. While Indira Gandhi’s populism weakened Indian democracy, leading to a period of authoritarian rule, the populism of many of India’s language and caste parties strengthened democracy. Populism is likely to continue in Indian politics, and is particularly significant currently in the mobilization of the lower castes. T wo conflicting claims periodically surface in discussions of mass politics and policymaking: one claim is that the era of populism is over and the other claim is that populist discourses, populist patterns of mobilization, and populist policies are once again resurgent. Populism was declared dead in American politics after the decline of the agrarian populist movement in the early twentieth century, in East European politics after peasant populism declined in the interwar period, in Latin American politics after the shift from import substitution industrialization in the 1960s and the 1970s, and in much of Asia and Africa after postcolonial regimes consolidated from the 1950s to the 1970s. However, populism returned to these regions, as demonstrated in the politics of figures such as Huey Long in Louisiana, Andreas Papandreou in Greece, Alan Garcia and Alberto Fujimori in Peru, Carlos Menem in Argentina, Fernando Collor de Mello in Brazil, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike in Sri Lanka, Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan, Mujib-ur-Rehman in Bangladesh, Indira Gandhi in India, and Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada in the Philippines. If populism lives, the claim that populism has ended must rest on some misunderstandings.