It is often noted that the social production of the political space is fast losing its ground along with the concept of modern Nation- State. Instead, transnational/hybrid political entities are emerging in the global horizon, challenging existing political space formations through alternative forms of resistance. Across the globe from Egypt, Turkey to Greece and Brazil a clarion call of “Absolute Democracy” (Hardt & Negri) has culminated in an autonomous, horizontal, non-hierarchical, reach out of the “Multitude” (Hardt& Negri). These unpredictable ruptures are radical in so far as they carve out a profound re-thinking of the contemporary political movements. In India too, the Anna-Hazare movement against corruption, Delhi-gang rape protests, the rise of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its transformative potencies that opened up debates on comprador democracy, politics-buisness nexus, transparency and electoral representation signaled the emergence of a new political subject attempting to reconfigure the claims of direct democracy of the constituent masses. However, with AAP taking the plunge into governance and performing the same “hegemonic” politics of antagonism that has captured the political imaginary of the postcolonial democracy, the question as whether one can look for alternative paradigms in the representational democracy of India has come back to haunt us. This article aims to explore whether a post-national model of the Negrian kind can sustain in the hegemonic paradigm of postcolonial democracy with its palimpsestic micro-histories. This is what we need to perhaps keep in our mind while attempting to radicalize the model of democracies in the global south, especially India.
Absolute democracy, AAP, Hegemony
