Modi’s BJP rooted its future vision in caste divisions and past violence

Evidence

Bourdain’s episodes filmed in Rajasthan offered an aspirational portrait of the India that could be, and what its forefathers envisioned it might be, one day, if their successors steered it away from its bloody past of enshrined caste and internalized colonialism. That history that is very much a lurid and living part of India’s present. Modi, India’s new strongman, had an appetite for a different kind of nation, and for revitalizing caste in the modern image of religious populism. His Bharatiya Janata Party’s vision of the future was rooted in the past, and caste, partition, and cross-religious violence would determine the flavor of his regime. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 393

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: BJP religious populism ‘revitalizing caste’ echoes the reader’s sacrifice article on how ritualized stratification stabilizes societies.