Politics, Possibility and Utopia

A Tete-a-tete with Ajay Gudavarthy on India and the Emergent Political

Abstract

Author of two successive books from Sage, "Politics of Post-Civil Society" and "Maoism Democracy and Globalisation", Ajay Gudavarthy has plugged the much needed gap of formulating new theoretical ideas and optics in an emerging field of social science studies in India. Almost three years back, he was shot to limelight with his provoking rebuttal of Partha Chatterjee's theorization of Political Society which he found wanting in understanding the non-civil spaces of politics in India. This interview was partly a follow-up of that debate and partly his reflections on the future of Subaltern Studies project, Maoism and the recent spate of Hindutva politics in contemporary India. On behalf of the Kairos Team, Dhritiman Chakraborty took this interview in 2015.