The Ideas of Justice and Politics of Victimhood in India

 Dr. Hilal Ahmed

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Abstract 

This lecture explores the idea of justice from the vantage point of competitive electoral politics. It examines the ways in which two crucial constitutional imaginations of justice—nation-building and inclusiveness-- are interpreted as intellectual resources to produce an ever-evolving notion of political victimhood. The lecture revolves around three identifiable moments: the 1950 moment when political identities are defined in overtly electoral terms; the 1990s moment when political identities are officially recognised as permanent victims; and finally the 2010 moment when a new politics of competitive victimhood began to take shape. 

About the speaker

Dr Ahmed is Associate Professor, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. He works on political Islam, Muslim politics of representation, and politics of symbols in South Asia. His first book, Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India: Monuments, Memory, Contestation (Routledge 2014) explores these thematic concerns to evolve an interdisciplinary approach to study Muslim politics. His volumes, Siyasi Muslims: A Story of Political Islam in India and Democratic Accommodations: Minorities in Contemporary India (With Peter R. deSouza, and Mohd. Sanjeer Alam, 2019) further elaborate these themes. His recent works include Companion to Indian Democracy: Resilience, Fragility, Ambivalence (With Peter R. deSouza, and Mohd. Sanjeer Alam, Routledge, 2021).

Dr. Hilal Ahmed is currently working on a book project on the politics of Muslim political representation in postcolonial India. He is also editing a Hindi Reader of Sudipta Kaviraj’s writings.

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