Law, Disinformation, and Majoritarianism in South Asia

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The papers in the proposed panel trace the emerging trajectory of law and majoritarianism in South Asia. The papers highlight how states in the region have mobilized the law to fuel disinformation, deploy epistemic violence and physical coercion, and reframe ideas of ‘national security’ and ‘internal enemies.’ The panel emphasizes these contested and contradictory trajectories of law and majoritarianism with a focus on disinformation, claim-making, and national security. Using methodological and thematic diversity, the papers look at the cases of Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka. The panel will be chaired by Dr. Rina Williams (University of Cincinnati), and Dr. Karie Riddle (Pepperdine University) will serve as discussant.

Since the period of decolonization in the twentieth century, South Asia has had a checkered history of democratic transition and consolidation. The region has witnessed inter-state warfare, military coups, military intervention, and ethnic conflict. The last two decades in the region have been particularly tumultuous as countries have gone through civil war, democratic upheaval, increasing democratic decline, and a pronounced rise in majoritarianism. In this context, the law has emerged as a key instrument of majoritarian statecraft in these countries. While there is a prominent history of judicial activism and law as a site of claim-making for minorities in the region, we are concerned with majorities and their use of the law.

Dr. Zainab Alam (Howard University) studies the emerging patterns of online censoring in the Pakistani twitter-space and its consequences for gender and ethnic minorities. The paper identifies four key types of censors in the Pakistani Twittersphere: liberal activists or journalists, hyper-nationalists, establishment agents, and Twitter employees. Through an online ethnography and content analysis, Alam explores the consequences in terms of freedom of speech for ethno-nationalist rights groups like the Pashtun and Baloch, as well as supporters of the women’s rights movement, the Aurat March.

Dr. Madhavi Devasher (University of New Hampshire) and Yash Sharma (University of Cincinnati) are concerned with the slate of anti-conversion and anti-cow slaughter legislations introduced by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) amidst the growing shift towards Hindu nationalism in the current period. Devasher’s paper examines the shifting strategy of India’s opposition parties and argues that these parties have deprioritized advocacy for marginalized groups like Dalits, Christians, and Muslims while attempting to mimic the BJP’s exclusivist Hindu orientation. It suggests that the weakness and complicity of the opposition in India contribute to the erosion of minority security. The paper thus offers insights and contributes to the research on majoritarianism and the rights of minorities in a democracy.

Sharma’s paper is concerned with how the anti-conversion legislation acts as a source of disinformation and everyday insecurity for inter-faith couples who are subjected to a nexus of administrative, police, and vigilante violence. In outlining how anti-minority violence in India has moved from ‘spectacular’ and ‘conjunctural’ outbursts towards a climate of state-sanctioned militarism through persistent, quotidian, and low-intensity violence, the paper highlights the transformational impact of everyday militarism on social relations, political agency, and the possibilities of democratic futures.

Shatakshi Singh (University of California-Santa Cruz) traces the enfeebling of the right to protest through the Indian Supreme Court's engagement with two prominent protest movements in the country. Through textual analysis of court proceedings and judgments, Singh argues that the Court’s restrictions on popular protest serve as an ostensible endorsement of statist interests while also restricting protests to passive, gendered, and ‘museumized’ spaces. The paper shows the ways in which the courts in India act as sources of legal repression and their emerging ideological alignment with the BJP government.

Prateek Srivastava (University of Cincinnati) outlines how the Prevention of Terrorism Act in Sri Lanka, temporarily implemented during the Civil War, continues to be used as a source of violence against minority Muslims and Tamils, as well as a tool for creating a majoritarian national identity. The paper underlines how the rhetoric of national security and terrorist threat grounded in disinformation, rumors, and smear operations is deployed by the government to institutionalize violence and advance an exclusionary national identity grounded in Sinhala supremacy. Thus, our proposed panel will interrogate themes that are relevant to the growing literature on the rise of right-wing nationalist movements, ethno-religious nationalism in the Global South, emerging majoritarianism and democratic decline in South Asia, and understanding law and disinformation within and beyond formal politics.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Cosponsor

• Division 44: Democracy and Autocracy

Individual Presentations

• Pakistani Twitter’s Minority Censors: Causes and Consequences - Zainab Alam, Howard University

• India’s Opposition Parties and Anti-conversion and Beef Ban Legislation - Madhavi Devasher, University of New Hampshire

• (Mis)rule of Law: Indian Judiciary and the Politics of Protest - Shatakshi Singh, University of California

• Law, Prevention, and Promoting a Sinhala National Identity in Sri Lanka - Prateek Srivastava, University of Cincinnati

• Hindutva, Militarism, and Everyday Insecurity in Contemporary India - Yash Sharma, University of Cincinnati

Chair

• Rina Verma Williams University of Cincinnati

Discussant

• Karie Riddle Calvin University