In this year of elections, what can we learn about India and from India given its recent national elections? For example, what do the world’s largest and longest elections tell us about democracy? The quality and survival of democracy in India have attracted much scrutiny. This presentation will draw on the 2024 Indian election campaign and its outcomes to offer some reflections on themes related to democratic politics. 

Professor Amit Ahuja is an Associate Professor of Political Science at University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on the processes of inclusion and exclusion in multiethnic societies. He has studied this within the context of ethnic parties and movements, military organization, intercaste marriage, and skin color preferences in South Asia. Professor Ahuja’s book, Mobilizing the Marginalized: Ethnic Parties without Ethnic Movementspublished by Oxford University Press was the winner of the 2020 New India Foundation Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Book Prize. He has coedited a volume with Devesh Kapur, Internal Security in India: Violence, Order, and the State published by Oxford University Press. He is currently working on a book-length project titled, Building National Armies in Multiethnic States. In 2022-23, he is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington DC. Professor Ahuja was awarded The Margret T. Getman Service to Students Award in 2015. Professor Ahuja’s research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Institute of Indian Studies, the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, the Hellman Family Foundation, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Michigan.

Location: Athenaeum