Proto-fascism and State impunity in Majoritarian India: An Interview with Teesta Setalvad

This interview with Teesta Setalvad was conducted in the wake of the February 2020 anti-Muslim violence in North East Delhi. Drawing on her vast experience as a human rights activist, journalist, and peace educator, Setalvad’s responses map the continuum — across years, anti-minority pogroms and ruling parties with divergent ideologies — of the cultures of hate, and the practices of state repression and impunity in a proto-fascist India. Setalvad offers an interrogation of the ideology of the Hindu right, delves into the historical trajectories of the rise of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). She also charts the repeating patterns of police and media complicity in fomenting anti-minority hate and critically analyses the contradictory role of the criminal law and the Constitution of India in both enabling and resisting communal violence. In conclusion, she offers hopeful strategies for keeping alive the promise of secularism.