to sustaining a political project beyond electoral cycles. This does not mean merely aligning one's ideas with prevalent common-sense, but also trying to remould it

'the Bipin Chandra school' which generations learnt in schools, the Hindutva narrative survived (and resonated) through drawing room conversations etc. There is also a lesson here for any counter-hegemonic movement : the terrain of mass common-sense is absolutely central (cont)

More disclaimers: We do not mean that ideas of pluralism/secularism were marginal, but rather, they failed to achieve the same ideational resonance (probably because of the partition). This is also borne out by anecdotal evidence. Despite the decades of nationalist history (cont)

where the mass popularity of Hindu nationalism (which was always a structural force within Indian society) has also received elite buy-in - or rather, Hindu nationalism has achieved success both at the elite and mass level (this is an extrapolation from our data, t & c apply)

This contradiction also means that the first few decades of Indian nationhood were essentially characterized by political domination without hegemony. Conversely, this means that the present era represents the first hegemonic moment in Indian politics (cont)

For instance, many of the box-office hits of the time, while paying lip service to Gandhian-Nehruvian non-violence, showed an affective inclination towards Bose and his ideas, as our common-sense data shows (also see screenshot from the film Samadhi (1950):

We also analyzed ideas of Islamic cosmpolitanism, such as those espoused by Maulana Azad, but they were rendered to the margins after the partition. The main tussle was between INC's plural nationalism, and Hindu nationalism.

At the same time, Hindu nationalism faced the reverse: their ideas resonated with mass common-sense, but had little buy-in from the pol elite (not discounting support within INC), esp post Gandhi's assassination. Using Williams we developed a typology of ideational resonance:

Hello, could I be added to this?

Also could you add the brilliant @jasdeep.bsky.social to the list