O'Connell, Alex Paul (2018) The Arithmetic of Anxiety: ‘Demographic Aggression’ Narratives in Majoritarian Mobilisations in India and Northern Ireland. Masters thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.

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Abstract

For my thesis, I want to compare Hindu nationalist and Northern Irish Protestant fears about the rising population of Muslim and Catholic minorities respectively. Both areas have very well established state-enshrined communal divisions and a long history of demographic paranoia. These fears have a grain of truth in that the growth figures are slightly higher for Indian Muslims and Northern Irish Catholics, but overall the threat is greatly exaggerated. I want to look how these discourses are constructed, and how ‘demographic aggression’ is measured in both instances. Northern Ireland was set up as a Protestant majority region and the population of Catholics within its borders has always been an issue. Now that Catholics are established in civil society they are thought to be in the ascendant and their higher population adds to this, fuelling fears of a disintegration of ‘Protestant Ulster’ in the next few years. In India the Muslim population is regarded as a homogenous, virile and aggressive group by Hindutva ideologues who allege that Muslims are attempting to dominate the country with their deliberate overbreeding. I want to compare how both shape their threat as homogeneous fecund and innately threatening/antagonistic. I want to see how they measure this aggression and use their ‘sites of contestation’, how the symbolism is appropriated, maintained and developed. I want to see how such discourses are countered or subsumed by the minority group, whether they acquiesce to these generalisations, resist them or incorporate them in any way.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Keywords:	Arithmetic of Anxiety; Demographic Aggression; Narratives; Majoritarian Mobilisations; India; Northern Ireland;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Anthropology
Item ID:	16810
Depositing User:	IR eTheses
Date Deposited:	06 Jan 2023 14:42
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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