The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia, Brown University, USA and Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS), Chennai are jointly organising a Workshop on ‘State, Citizenship and Mobilisations in Contemporary India’ on August 8th-9th, 2026 at NLSIU, Bengaluru.

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia, Brown University, USA and Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS), Chennai are jointly organising a PhD Workshop on ‘State, Citizenship and Mobilisations in Contemporary India’ on August 10th-11th, 2026 at NLSIU, Bengaluru.

Addressing a large gathering of young women in Pune during a student outreach programme called ‘Chhatron Ki Goonj’ on 22 August, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that an “adarsh naari” — an ideal woman — in India is “put in three boxes”. She is seen only “as a daughter, as a wife, or as a mother.” Gandhi added that there was “nothing wrong with being seen as one of these, but it cannot be your only identity”.

Over five weeks this summer, my travels have taken me to Delhi, Chennai and Sri City, Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune. I arrived roughly two weeks before the Jantar Mantar march to Parliament. The sea change after that march is unmistakable. The public sphere is freer, and the discussions far less constrained by fear. I would normally have predicted that the Hindu nationalist elite would lambast the protests of the young — their mockery, their satire, their choice of words and images for India’s post-2014 establishment — as Bharatiya sanskriti ke virudh (against Indian culture), even an insult to it

Yamini Aiyar is a Visiting Professor of Practice at Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

In The Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru made an observation about MK Gandhi, capturing a feeling that was experienced widely but never articulated as sharply. To slightly paraphrase Nehru: “The dominant impulse in India under British rule was that of fear; pervasive, oppressive, strangling fear; fear of… the police; fear of the official class; fear of the laws meant to suppress and of prison… And then Gandhi came… Suddenly, as it were, the black pall of fear was lifted from the people’s shoulders.”

Federalism is not just about institutional arrangements; it is about accommodating India's many identities. The erosion of that principle of accommodation helps explain many of the institutional problems we see today.

We have a unique opportunity to rebuild an education system worthy of our youth

The linking of SIR with welfare benefits is the final act in the slow remaking of the Indian from citizen to labharthi. The rights-bearing active claimant is now a distant memory

For several years, an argument has been making repeated rounds in political circles — especially in Hindu nationalist ones, though even those not particularly
sympathetic to Hindu nationalism have sometimes expressed the same view, if less often and less emphatically. The argument is that, for all practical purposes, members of the “Gandhi Dynasty” — Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka — have become unwitting promoters of Narendra Modi’s ascending political fortunes.

The BJP is commemorating a new political “milestone”. On 10 June, wrote Ram Madhav, an important Hindu nationalist ideologue, Prime Minister Narendra Modi “will complete 4,399 consecutive days in office, overtaking Jawaharlal Nehru’s record of 4,398 days after the first general election”. To underline the political significance of the| occasion, the BJP officially celebrated the occasion under the leadership of the party’s National President Nitin Nabin and Home Minister Amit Shah at Bharat Mandapam. Modi ruling India longer than Nehru is an iconic moment for the party and its ideology, Hindu
nationalism.

The realm that is the intersection of politics and economics is encountering a weighty paradox in India. The Modi government is exercising mastery over the
political domain, but the problems of the Indian economy are growing worse. The chasm between increasing political domination and deepening economic frailties may not be bridgeable without serious reform.