Fractured Narratives: Identities in a Political Vacuum

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Abstract

This article examines the dilemmas that India faced historically in its attempts to construct a coherent national narrative and a shared national identity. It is argued that the decline of the Congress Party and a larger loss of a unifying ideology in the 1980s created a political vacuum that resulted in attempts to shore up political support through appeals to identity-based politics. This in turn has served as an obstacle to inequality being bridged in India in the past decade. The void thrown open by the loss of Congress Party’s longstanding uncontested mandate to rule was seized by political parties that campaigned along cultural lines for political gains, unleashing a divisive and intolerant brand of politics based on competing claims of cultural rights.