The rise of autocratic governments worldwide has created a global wave of polarisation among individuals, societies and communities. The last decade has been portentous in deepening schism among communities at a very large scale. South Asia has not been unaffected by the global shift towards authoritarianism. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka witnessed majoritarian governments headed by populist leaders encashing on uncertainties on employment, housing and natural resource distribution. This was fuelled by fake news and constructed information to aggravate hatred among people and in this social media played a critical role. Given the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual histories of South Asia, the present authoritarian spree towards homogenisation through narratives of religious nationalism is a massive challenge to reckon with. While the violent police action, attacks on civil rights and minorities are increasing day by day, South Asia also witnessed increased civil resistance and urban protests springing from discontentedness towards public policies, collective feeling of discrimination and negligence, and categorical attack on dissenting voices. The fees must fall protests by universities and demonstrations against the Citizenship Amendment Act of India 2016-2020; the Aragalaya in Sri Lanka 2022; protests in Pakistan due to the arrest of the former Prime Minister Imran Khan in 2023. The ongoing Bangladesh university protests being the recent addition in a long list of protests that emerged in South Asia.
The objective of this panel is to initiate and engage in conversation around questions of the possibility of re-democratising autocratic states through opening conversation on democratising the civil society, how to open negotiations between parties to negotiate towards peaceful co-existence and trust-building measures. How can contesting communities driven by communal and religious hate be reconciled? The panel also aims to examine autocratic government, construed as the result of authoritarian political processes across South Asia. The panel thus also engages with background processes that have retained and accentuated the embedded social differences despite institutional politics being (largely) participative and democratic.
The panel invites papers which address the issue of authoritarianism and rise of the autocratic states in South Asia including research utilising varied methodologies from case studies, ethnographic methods, auto ethnographies, visual and media research, student protests, discourse analysis.