Abstract
This article examines the concept of schizophrenia as a cultural metaphor in order to analyze the Hindu Right’s contradictory language-framing politics within the public domain, particularly in relation to building mega dams on rivers Narmada and Bhagirathi. In so doing, it intends to examine the nature of the public domain itself that enables such framing politics within the context of late 20th-early-21st-century global capital. Language battles in the public domain have intensified during this period, especially through various forms of digital media. In India, the various groups that form the Hindu Right have often mixed the languages of religion and capitalism to embrace free market policies that conflict with environmental concerns. This paper focuses on their mixing of such languages regarding dam-building, encapsulating all contradictions of national development when land is submerged, indigenous cultures are uprooted, aquatic flora and fauna are lost, subsistence agriculture becomes market-oriented, and inter-state water conflicts erupt. This article is divided into four parts. The first part discusses the Hindu Right’s differential treatment of the two dams. The second investigates the politics and context for mixing languages. The third investigates the connotations of the term “schizophrenia” in the light of its use by scholars in describing the Right’s language framing politics. The fourth part examines the public domain.
Recommended Citation
Ghosh, Nandita.
"Damn the Dams: Framing ‘Schizophrenic’ Discourses of the Hindu Right."
Critical Humanities
3,
1
(2024).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33470/2836-3140.1072
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