Srirupa Roy, "The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism" (Stanford UP, 2024)

Defying the dire predictions that attended its birth as an

independent nation-state in 1947, the Indian republic is more than

seventy-five years old. And yet, it is a place where criticisms of

actually existing democracy are intense and strident. In recent years,

the trope of victimized people suffering at the hands of a predatory

elite and political dysfunction has reaped rewards. The populist

language of redemptive outsiders pledging to combat a corrupt system has

been harnessed in successful electoral campaigns, like the majoritarian

regime of Narendra Modi.

Tracking the shift from postcolonial nation-building to

democracy-rebuilding, Srirupa Roy shows how the political outsider came

to be a valorized figure of late-twentieth century Indian democracy,