Why does an organisation of violently Islamophobic Hindu nationalists, the RSS, have a Muslim wing?
Drawing on their fieldwork with this Muslim wing, the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, in North and West India between 2018-19, Felix explores the relationship between ethno-majoritarian organisations and performances of pluralism.
Asking why bigots act like pluralists, Felix proposes that bigoted organisations like the RSS choreograph performances of pluralism to solve a political problem of simultaneously appealing to supposedly mutually exclusive audiences: Bigots and pluralists.
Felix argues that this is only possible because, counterintuitively, pluralist performances appeal to bigots as much as they do to pluralists. This is because pluralist performances like interfaith prayer, mutual aid and diverse representation, have the capacity to strengthen ethno-religious hierarchies, thus appealing to bigoted audiences like the RSS.
The focus of this dissertation is how pluralist performances reinforce bigotry, and Felix argues that they do so through weaponised pluralism, an organisational strategy that relies on the mechanisms of ritual subservience, categorisation and co-optation.