Paper short abstract:

Approaching election campaigns as social practice in which campaigners act as brokers between the aspirations of politicians and voters, the paper analyzes how political actors navigate between the different and contradictory requirements of national and local politics during the 2014 LS elections.

Paper long abstract:

Elections in India's northeastern state Meghalaya are increasingly characterized by processes of regionalization and ethnicization of politics. National parties like the Indian National Congress (INC) have to navigate between the invocation of equality and unity on the national level and the affirmation of difference and distinctiveness on the regional level. This dilemma not only reflects the diversification of the Indian party system but also the contemporary global passion for difference, confronting politicians worldwide with the question of how to differ between affirming equality and administering difference. Election campaigns become a stage where topics of cultural identity, ethnicity and belonging as well as the relations between the Central State and the Northeast are addressed and utilized to mobilize political support. However, campaigns cannot be understood as a one-way process, in which certain narratives of ethnicity and identity are communicated only "from above". Political actors link their campaigns to ongoing narratives, discourses and imaginations which are produced, re-produced and changed in the everyday life of their targeted voters. Campaigns also provoke to criticize and debate contested narratives of cultural identity, diversity and difference. Drawing on field work data from research during the 2013 Meghalayan Legislative Assembly election and the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the paper approaches election campaigns as social practice in which campaigners act as brokers between the aspirations of politicians and voters, providing insights on how political actors deal with the fundamental dilemma of Indian politics and - in a larger perspective - with the paradox politics of difference and equality.