 "Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses a public meeting at Kedarnath in Uttarakhand. Photo: PTI")
Identity politics are a pervasive feature of the modern world. From caste-based politics in India to the rise of xenophobic Christian nationalism in Italy and Hungary, people are mobilising to defend perceived ethnic and religious group identities.
The strength of identity politics is surprising. Post-war modernisation theories argued that inherited ethnic and religious identities would weaken under modernisation, or at least for their “groupness” to diminish.
Urbanisation, education, mobility and communication technology were all supposed to weaken people’s identification with “primordial” ethnic or religious groups.
Challenging modernisation theories
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