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Authoritarianism and Resistance in India
The Fight Against Modi and Hindutva in the Era of COVID-19
Editor’s note: New Politics board member Phil Gasper interviewed Samantha Agarwal in April 2020. The interview was subsequently transcribed and edited for length.
Phil Gasper for New Politics: You have recently returned from India. You were there during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and you left a few days before the recent lockdown was put in place. Can you tell us about some of these recent events that have defined Indian politics on a national scale for some time now?
Samantha Agarwal: I flew out from Bombay (Mumbai) on one of the last commercial flights before India’s borders were sealed. I was surprised to see that in Bombay, the epicenter of the pandemic in India, the government was not taking any perceptible public safety or social distancing measures while I was there. In fact, right in the neighborhood where I was putting up, there were b