Neoliberal organizing actively makes place for the politics of hate.
One might even argue that neoliberal transformations are integral to the production of wholesale hatred, while at the same time, surviving on hate to fuel further reforms.
The majoritarian politics of hate that forms the backdrop for the hegemonic emergence of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-linked Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the broader climate of hate targeting India's Muslim minorities, and the active political-institutional support for policies such as the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that are directly targeted at India's Muslim minorities thrive on the ongoing neoliberal reforms across India, especially the privatization of public spaces and the normalization of individualized greed as the basis of identity.
The reforms have been at the core of the production of the upwardly aspiring Indian, structured on the values of self-centeredness, greed, and self-aggrandizement.
The public sphere has been re-organized under self-serving logics, where looking out for oneself is the halmark of success. In this public sphere, the Indian that has succeeded is one that has by hook-or-hook figured out how to manipulate processes, structures, and systems to serve his/her self-interest.
Mediated narratives are rife with the imagery of the self-serving, self-seeking Indian, that has arrived. This Indian is measured by the number of apartments he owns in metropolitan cities across the globe, the number of investments he has, the number of foreign trips he makes, his designer clothes, and the designer branded accessories that loudly announce his success. The Prada bag, with the Prada label loudly announcing itself, the vacation to Bali with seaside pictures uploaded on Instagram, and the designer car, these are the markers of the self-serving Indian who has achieved and arrived.
This self-serving spirit that defines success is also devoid of integrity. Principles such as social justice, fairness, equality don't matter, or worse, are projected as phony postures, because you know, "every human being looks out for himself or herself." The public sphere therefore is quickly suspiscious of any claims to equality, labeling such claims as being against the interests of the nation.
Principles written into the Indian constitution, socialism, secularism, and democracy are dirty words, words that get in the way of the successful India. Lies and spin are the everyday basis of life, with private and public spaces organized on the legitimization of communicative inversions.
Toward the extent you are not actively pursuing narrowly-defined self-serving interests, you are anti-national, a loser, a traitor.
This looking out for oneself and one's own interests is the very basis of majoritarian politics in contemporary India. The Hindutva ideology of hate deeply roots itself in the promise of protecting the self-interest of the Hindu majority, placing this self-interest in opposition to the interests of the "Muslim other."
The Hindu majority of neoliberal India, configured into the politics of self-pursuit places itself in full force behind a political party that promises to protect and deliver on Hindu self interests. The politics of hate produces the other as threatening the interests of the Hindu self, producing the image of the growing numbers of the "Muslim other" as taking away resources from the Hindu majority, thus projecting the "Muslim other" as a material threat to the self-interest of the neoliberal Hindu.
The broader climate of communicative inversions thrives on this public transformation of self-interest. Truth does not matter. Accuracy is irrelevant. Easy heuristics can be projected in the service of self-interest. The "Muslim other" is an easier threat to self-interest than the climate of corporate pilfering, corruption, unemployment and price rise.
When the blind seduction of self-interest drives everyday desires in private and public lives, the neoliberal Hindu Indian is organized wholesale as the champion of hate politics. Self interest is aligned with national interest, with the national interest itself being defined in xenophobic terms.
The Prada-trotting, BMW-riding self-interested Hindu Indian is emboldened to express his anti-Muslim hatred on private and public platforms, championing the cause of the nation. The work of neoliberalism on the Hindu psyche is also then the work of Hindutva, creating an ecosystem of hatred that thrives on the destruction of integrity, the petty quest for self-interest, and the desire for success by hook or crook.