Pan-Hindutva and the Discursive Practices of Digital (Counter)Publics around #SupportCAA 1

Abstract

Abstract In December 2019, the Indian parliament implemented the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that gives non-Muslim immigrants from the neighboring countries an easy access to Indian citizenship. Across India, the CAA has garnered support and provoked protests in equal measure. This paper examines how #SupportCAA constantly negotiates between two parallel objectives: first, to achieve a pan-national unification of non-Muslim “Indians” (practically, Hindus); and second, to reconfigure India as a site for the pan-Hindutva communion against the Muslim Other. It seeks to understand: How does #SupportCAA as a platform furnish pan-Hindutva discourses, while rendering agency to an “imagined community” of pan-national CAA supporters? How do the CAA ideologues function as “networked publics,” and then go on to territorialize certain online spaces/fora? What does the CAA bequeath to the “imagined community” in question? What vocabulary of political partisanship does such territorialization furnish? How does it draw on the discourses of religious nationalism and remain nearly impervious to any dissent?