Libori Summer School 2026: 30.07. Keynote Session of Priyanka Jha in the Session „Women Philosophers and Global Culture“

Dissent as Survival and Resistance in Global Populist Cultures: Herstory of Women’s Voices and Grammars in Indian Academia

One witnesses the rise of right-wing populist governments globally, reinforcing the patriarchal and masculine order, assaulting rights, dignity and selfhood of the most marginalised. The justification of oppression, in a series of violations of human rights, finds its source in the populist claim of ‘Making Nations Great Again’, the constant reinforcement of a problematic return to the past, and the oppressive traditions are reinforced. Across the sites of one’s being, the home and the outside, the presence of the state can be felt, through its umpteen policies in the garb of protecting the national interest or shaping the normative of the society. The politics of hatred, othering, sectarianism, communalism, and gender-based violence are the anchors on which the edifice of populist government stands tall. The democratic, inclusive way of politics is replaced by the politics of deception, in which the media plays a crucial role.

The central argument of this lecture is that feminist dissent and resistance challenge the gendered nature of populist governmentality. These global feminist movements—from the USA to India and beyond—raise issues such as bodily autonomy, equality, safe workplaces, sexual rights, and the rights of refugees and immigrants. Despite various approaches, the core of these movements resists a return to oppressive traditions rooted in the cultural matrices that have historically denied women selfhood. Feminist scholars, including Mrinalini Sinha, Nevidita Menon, Seyla Benhabib, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Uma Chakravarti, help unpack how cultural narratives reinforce subjugation, with women positioned as both bearers and victims of tradition.

This lecture contends that, rather than emphasising only the gendered challenges of populism, the focus lies on defiance, resistance, resilience, and hope. Despite mechanisms of control and violence, women around the world refuse silence, becoming vocal and agential in confronting populist regimes. Their dissent—including resistance, protest, and assorted movements—forms the heart of the response to the populist assault.

This keynote is interested in bringing her stories of resistance and dissent against the right-wing populist Government in India, the NDA coalition that has been in power since 2014. This regime is in the name of national interest and a return to the good old days of being ‘Vishwaguru’ (Source of Global Knowledge/Wisdom from Ancient times). The conservativism that foregrounds many of its policies, especially with regard to women and the LGBTQ community, has been called out, protested and dissented. From big movements and protests to everyday resistances, led by women and other gendered communities, have become crucial in the global herstory of resistance.

Focusing on Indian academia, this lecture illustrates the main argument by examining three pivotal movements in universities. These movements—led by students, faculty, and non-faculty—resisted intensified surveillance and conservatism, demanding equity for women and other gendered individuals. The three movements are:

1. The first movement concerns resistance to changes in the academic syllabus and pedagogy beginning in 2015. Opponents challenged actions such as the closure of the Women and Exclusion Studies programme and significant alterations to history courses, which were perceived as attempts to limit diverse perspectives and promote a restricted view of the past.
2. The second movement, the Me Too movement in 2018, arose in response to sexual harassment, focusing on the demand for safer academic environments. It expanded to include concerns about the precarious positions of untenured women faculty, recognition of invisible labour, and resistance to the silencing of women faculty and students in academic spaces.
3. The third movement, Pinjra Tod (Break the Cage), began in 2015 as a campaign across Indian universities against discriminatory hostel regulations for female students. It advocated for equal rights and freedom within university spaces, with notable actions at institutions such as Banaras Hindu University in 2018.

Examining events at JNU, Jamia Millia Islamia, and Banaras Hindu University, these academic movements reveal diverse grammars of dissent and resistance. They demonstrate how challenges to the populist state take form within educational institutions, reinforcing the central claim that women’s collective resistance counters patriarchal and populist oppression.

About the Speaker: 

Priyanka Jha is Assistant Professor at the Banaras Hindu University, India and Visiting Felllow at the University of Oxford. Her area of work and research lies in the intersectionality of Political theory, thought and Intellectual history of ideas. She works and engages with writings and corpus of work that women thinkers contributed towards in Modern India and South Asia. In the larger context of gendering the manner in which values and concepts in the normative of nation came to be established. The aim is to identify, explore and engage with large number of women thinkers, who have been invisiblilised and marginalised from the larger national imagination and psyche. With this as the larger ambit, the attempts are towards decolonizing and gendering the pedagogy and syllabus which is constructed and narrativised with male gaze, celebrating solely the male thinkers and their contributions, as if women were absent from making history and contributing towards the human condition.

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Interested in seeing the Lecture live? Then sign up here for the Libori Summer School 2026: https://indico.uni-paderborn.de/event/157/

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