Hailing the State: Indian Democracy Between Elections

by Lisa Mitchell

Overview

In Hailing the State, Lisa Mitchell explores the methods of collective assembly that people in India use to hold elected officials and government administrators accountable, demand inclusion in decision making, and stage informal referendums. Mitchell traces the colonial and postcolonial lineages of collective forms of assembly, in which—rather than rejecting state authority—participants mobilize with expectations that officials will uphold the law and fulfill electoral promises. She shows how assembly, which ranges from sit-ins, hunger strikes, and demands for meetings with officials to massive general strikes and road and rail blockades, is fundamental to the functioning of democracy in India. These techniques are particularly useful for historically marginalized groups and others whose voices may not be easily heard. Moving beyond an exclusive focus on electoral processes, Mitchell argues that to understand democracy—both in India and beyond—we must also pay attention to what occurs between elections, thereby revising understanding of what is possible for democratic action around the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478018766
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	04/05/2023
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Lisa Mitchell is Professor of History and Anthropology in the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue.

Table of Contents

A Note on Transliteration and Spelling  ix
Acknowledgments  xi
Introduction. Hailing the State: Collective Assembly, Democracy, and Representation  1
Part I. Seeking Audience
1. Sit-In Demonstrations and Hunger Strikes: From Dharna as Door-Sitting to Dharna Chowk  43
2. Seeking Audience: Refusals to Listen, “Style,” and the Politics of Recognition  67
3. Collective Assembly and the “Roar of the People”: Corporeal Forms of “Making Known” and the Deliberative Turn  94
4. The General Strike: Collective Action at the Other End of the Commodity Chain  122
Part II. The Criminal and the Political
5. Alarm Chain Pulling: The Criminal and the Political in the Writing of History  151
6. Rail and Road Blockades: Illiberal or Participatory Democracy?  168
7. Rallies, Processions and Yātrās: Ticketless Travel and the Journey to “Political Arrival”  197
Conclusion. Of Human Chains and Guinness Records: Attention, Recognition, and the Fate of Democracy amidst Changing Mediascapes  216
Notes  225
Bibliography  265
Index  287

What People are Saying About This

Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy - John Dunn

“Lisa Mitchell’s intensively researched and impressively perceptive book shows something of fundamental importance about the reality of India’s democracy that has escaped any previous interpreter: just how actively and inventively it is realized through the energies of its own citizens.”

Screening Social Justice: Brave New Films and Documentary Activism - Sherry B. Ortner

“Hailing the State asks us to think beyond collective action as ‘resistance’ and to consider instead the ways in which such action seeks to elicit recognition from and access to the state. Packed with richly detailed ethnographic and historical examples, the book offers an alternative perspective on the relationship between popular action in the streets, electoral politics, and state authority.”

Unconditional Equality: Gandhi’s Religion of Resistance - Ajay Skaria

“By being attentive to and stressing the various forms of hailing the state, Lisa Mitchell has produced a richly textured and theoretically nuanced study of how democracy is practiced in those long stretches between elections, the stretches that are arguably the most important aspect of how ordinary people participate. Conceiving of democracy in terms of its everyday practices and what it means for nonelites, Mitchell makes a distinctive and important contribution to a materialist political theory of democracy.”

Editorial Reviews

"A critical intervention in socio-political thought."

Contemporary South Asia - Chinmaya Lal Thakur

"In this lucidly written book, Mitchell offers a novel approach to reading collective actions as interpellating the state, particularly with her descriptions of the intimacies of embodied democratic acts. . . . Hailing the State offers compelling insights into democratic theory and practice and would be particularly useful for scholars of postcolonial theory, performance and politics, and the Global South."

Performance Research - Rashi Mishra

"In redefining democratic practice to include collective assembly, Mitchell weaves an intricate picture of how people understand themselves as democratic citizens. Deftly combining approaches from anthropology, history, and political theory, she brings alive the mosaic of actions that they employ in what she terms “hailing the state.” She draws on very rich archival and ethnographic material to tell us the ways in which people have and continue to hail the state."

Lipika Kamra

"Peppered with many arresting photographs of protests and political posters, the book allows one to feel the energy and almost hear the loud chants of the demonstrators as they go about “hailing the state.” Although the book’s empirical data come primarily from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, and parts of Uttar Pradesh, its analyses and findings are relevant for all of India and indeed beyond."

 

Zaheer Babern Ethnologist

Michell’s book is historically rich, ethnographically grounded, and theoretically innovative. Her intervention is at once timely and cautionary for Indian democracy, as it highlights and situates the stakes of political recognizability for marginalized populations. Readers interested in political anthropology and history and subaltern and South Asian studies will no doubt find this book insightful.”
 

Exertions - Roderick Wijunamai