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Paper short abstract

How Hindu nationalist networks offer Indian university students material security through transactional and emotional belonging, shaping who belongs in contested urban campus spaces.

Paper long abstract

As Indian universities become sites of intensified political contestation, young people navigate institutional precarity through affiliations that promise material security alongside ideological belonging. Drawing on interviews with university students across genders, caste, class, and regional backgrounds, this paper examines how Hindu nationalist politics and networks shape youth claims-making within urban campus spaces.

The paper explores how the framework of the 'good Hindu citizen' operates as a mechanism of inclusion and exclusion within universities, determining whose claims to institutional resources, i.e., hostel accommodation, safety, social networks etc. are legitimated. For students from North East India, South India, and non-dominant caste backgrounds, negotiations of belonging reveal how Hindu nationalism creates internal hierarchies even among those ostensibly included in the nationalist project. Political affiliation becomes transactional: youth trade loyalty and participation for tangible benefits that enable their survival in competitive institutional environments.

This research complicates narratives of youth activism as inherently progressive by revealing how insecurity and institutional gatekeeping drive young people towards organisations or groups that offer both material advantages and symbolic belonging. Universities emerge as contested urban spaces where regional, caste, and class differences shape who can successfully perform the 'good Hindu citizen' identity and access institutional support structures.

By examining ethno-nationalist mobilisation from within, the paper contributes to understanding how youth solidarities form not only through shared progressive visions but through pragmatic negotiations of power in institutional contexts where formal mechanisms of support prove inadequate.