Pedagogical Anti-Politics: An account of middle-class experiments with party-formation in India

• In Event: 30421 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 9. Parties, Populism, and Protest

Abstract

Existing work on middle-class politics characterizes it as a general disdain towards lower classes and for politics writ-large as corrupt and inefficient. Following the case of the Aam Aadmi Party in India, this paper showcases the quick flattening of these attitudes when middle-classes try to organize themselves into a party to do formal electoral politics. Using ethnographic methods the paper shows how middle-class individuals in New Delhi from diverse professional backgrounds banded together to form a new party in order to instill political discipline in lower classes and their practices of democracy, namely “voting for the right reasons”, but end up absorbing right-wing and traditional ways of doing politics in India. I argue that middle-class party workers jumped into politics with an incorrect analysis of the problems at play and aimed to teach and correct the masses, this opens them up to a natural slide to right-wing politics. Looping this full circle of pedagogical anti-politics shows how systems of marginalization remain intact when political projects start with middle-class desires to sanitize politics.

Author

• Hera Shakil, University of Chicago