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In Hailing the State, Lisa Mitchell explores the methods of collective assembly that people in India use to hold elected officials and government administrators accountable, demand inclusion in decision making, and stage informal referendums. Mitchell traces the colonial and postcolonial lineages of collective forms of assembly, in which-rather than rejecting state authority-participants mobilize with expectations that officials will uphold the law and fulfill electoral promises. She shows how assembly, which ranges from sit-ins, hunger strikes, and demands for meetings with officials to massive general strikes and road and rail blockades, is fundamental to the functioning of democracy in India. These techniques are particularly useful for historically marginalized groups and others whose voices may not be easily heard. Moving beyond an exclusive focus on electoral processes, Mitchell argues that to understand democracy-both in India and beyond-we must also pay attention to what occurs between elections, thereby revising understanding of what is possible for democratic action around the world.
List of contents
A Note on Transliteration and Spelling ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction. Hailing the State: Collective Assembly, Democracy, and Representation 1
Part I. Seeking Audience
1. Sit-In Demonstrations and Hunger Strikes: From
Dharna as Door-Sitting to Dharna Chowk 43
2. Seeking Audience: Refusals to Listen, “Style,” and the Politics of Recognition 67
3. Collective Assembly and the “Roar of the People”: Corporeal Forms of “Making Known” and the Deliberative Turn 94
4. The General Strike: Collective Action at the Other End of the Commodity Chain 122
Part II. The Criminal and the Political
5. Alarm Chain Pulling: The Criminal and the Political in the Writing of History 151
6. Rail and Road Blockades: Illiberal or Participatory Democracy? 168
7. Rallies, Processions and
Y¿tr¿s: Ticketless Travel and the Journey to “Political Arrival” 197
Conclusion. Of Human Chains and Guinness Records: Attention, Recognition, and the Fate of Democracy amidst Changing Mediascapes 216
Notes 225
Bibliography 265
Index 287
About the author
Lisa Mitchell is Professor of History and Anthropology in the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of
Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue.
Summary
Lisa Mitchell explores the historical and contemporary methods of collective assembly that people in India use to hold elected officials and government administrators accountable.
