Staging Hate: The Political Mobilization of Hindutva Processions in India

This paper examines how the far‑right in India mobilizes a distinctive political culture of extremism through religious processions that increasingly operate as staged performances of majoritarian hate. Moving beyond electoral or institutional explanations of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism, the paper argues that these processions constitute a cultural infrastructure through which the Indian far‑right produces, circulates, and naturalizes a shared repertoire of symbols, affects, and embodied practices. These practices cultivate a visceral sense of grievance, entitlement, and righteous victimhood among participants, enabling the normalization of anti‑Muslim hostility as a legitimate expression of populist self‑defense. The analysis foregrounds the performative techniques that transform traditional religious processions into what can be described as a “dramaturgy of hate.” Drawing on performance studies, music studies, and the political sociology of the far‑right, the paper shows how choreography, costuming, sonic aggression, and spatial provocation operate as techniques of what the German theater‑maker Bertolt Brecht—writing in the context of the theatricality of fascism—calls Regie, or direction and stage management, which script the political violence of the participants. The processions are carefully orchestrated events in which bodies, objects, and sound are arranged to produce a heightened affective atmosphere. Saffron iconography, stylized body markings, and deliberate costuming dissolve caste and class distinctions, generating a temporary sense of masculine equality and bravado within the majoritarian chorus. The “hate machine”—a mobile sound system mounted on trucks—functions as a sonic director, using high‑volume Hindutva pop and repetitive beats to choreograph aggression, synchronize movement, and intensify extreme emotional arousal. Spatial tactics further amplify the political charge of these performances. Routes are deliberately chosen to pass through Muslim‑majority neighbourhoods, where processions halt near mosques to stage confrontational displays. These spatial provocations convert public space into a mise-en-scène of intimidation, where the boundaries between ritual celebration and political violence collapse. The resulting scenes—dancing men wielding sticks, swords, and saffron flags, accompanied by blaring hate music—produce a spectacle that both enacts and legitimizes majoritarian dominance. The processions thus operate as affective laboratories in which participants rehearse and embody the ideological scripts of Hindutva. The paper argues that these performative infrastructures play a crucial role in the Indian far‑right’s broader project of authoritarian consolidation. By channeling economic precarity, social frustration, and masculine anxieties into choreographed displays of aggression, the processions deflect criticism from structural elites and redirect discontent toward vulnerable minorities. They also blur the boundaries between fringe extremism and mainstream politics, enabling hateful rhetoric and practices to circulate with increasing legitimacy. In this sense, the Hindutva processions operate as mechanisms of far‑right contagion, moving hateful narratives from the margins into everyday political life, where they are absorbed into dominant constructions of Indian national identity. By centering political culture as a staged performance, the paper contributes to debates on extremist culture‑making, the performative dynamics of populism, and the embodied infrastructures of far‑right mobilization. It demonstrates that the political power of the Hindutva far‑right in India is enacted, felt, and reproduced through the aesthetic intensities of staged public performance.