Fieldwork Entanglements in Today's India

This roundtable invites five scholars who hail from different social positions and academic rank to reflect on recent shifts they have experienced in the ethnographic research process in India (and in the United States with Indian communities) – especially vis-à-vis increased efforts by the current Indian government to quiet voices in opposition to Hindu Nationalist narratives about India's history and social and religious landscapes. As a gender non-conforming and transfeminine Indian researcher studying India and affiliated with an American institution, our first roundtable participant will think through the predicament of never quite being at home when “home.” When “home” is a site of injury, where, and how, does one belong? The question of social disguise has also come to animate this participant’s ethnographic work with a religious community that, though enumeratively Hindu, has in recent years had to reckon with its indelibly Islamic inheritances. As majoritarian efforts work to delimit ways of religious and social being, how might so-called ‘transgressive’ communities and their researchers confront risks of reprisal, and what, crucially, can disguising identities actually ensure? Drawing on over two decades of fieldwork experiences in South India, our second participant considers ethnographies of violence and trauma among new generations of Muslims in India – specifically among 18 to 25 year olds. Despite their continued adherence to local devotional practices, these communities (with variation across rural and urban spaces), are deeply influenced by various dimensions of nationalism, religious polarization, and contested pan-Indian identity formations, especially since the 1990s. When engaging with such interlocutors – many of whom have witnessed violent incidents, such as the post-Babri Mosque demolition, Gujarat genocide and the rise of majoritarianism – the researcher must use an increasingly nuanced vocabulary to articulate their own reflexivity and social positions and to elicit discussion on issues of belonging and identity among their interlocutors. Our third participant will delve into the rising number of difficulties they have faced over the past several years at each stage of the research process: beginning with applying for a research visa, answering questions from the consulate, completing foreigners registration in India (via the Foreigners Regional Registration Office, or FRRO) and ultimately overcoming skepticism, worry, and refusals from participants in the field. This participant will especially focus on their latest project – a multi-state study of Hinduism and politics in India, which is an increasingly contentious topic in today’s Hindu nationalist-dominated India. Our fourth contributor asks what the ethical implications are of ethnographic work that depends on fostering long-term relationships with pro-Hindutva religious leaders in and beyond Gujarat. The anthropology of Hindutva is often characterized by hermeneutics of suspicion, defensive interlocutors, and accusations of so-called Hinduphobia. In this discussion, however, our fourth roundtable participant will share their disorienting experiences of building rapport and gaining access to openly pro-Hindutva religio-political spaces, namely in Gujarat, Illinois, and New Jersey within the Swaminarayan Hindu movement, which has broad-based support for the BJP among its leaders and followers. How does the anthropologist uphold ethical research commitments to “do no harm” while also accessing religio-political milieus that promote harm toward others? What responsibilities, and to whom, do we bear while speaking and writing about personal relationships with pro-Hindutva actors? Finally, our fifth participant focuses on the involvement of state government and regional bureaucratic offices in the administration of Hindu temples in Himachal Pradesh and connects it to contested relationships between regional and national politics. Historically, the politics of Himachal Pradesh was dominated by the Indian National Congress until it was challenged by the BJP in the 1990s. This suggests that the state has seen competition between two national parties with very little presence of regional parties. Focusing on the regional elements of Indian politics, this roundtable participant will present on the impact of national level Hindutva politics in different regions of Himachal Pradesh. They will also share insights from their fieldwork, which began in August 2021, to elaborate on experiences with local inhabitants, including bureaucrats, lawyers, politicians, and local Hindu devotees, who often find themselves variously disconnected from and at odds with politics at the national level. Our five roundtable participants draw our attention to a series of critical issues ranging from the precarity of the ethnographic researcher, their fieldwork, and their interlocutors vis-à-vis gender, national, political, and religious identities to the ethical implications of scholarly reliance on relationships with proponents of Hindutva and the Indian state itself. In doing so, this roundtable aims to provide a forum for both panelists and attendees to openly discuss a set of urgent overlapping questions that animate many scholars’ work in and about religion in India today.