Unmasking the Exception: Covid and the Creation of Enemy in India

Abstract

In the contemporary political context, a state of exception refers to the ways by which the major liberal democracies are driven by the growing accretion of discriminatory executive power, increasingly evading existing legislative and juridical institutions. Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben’s work becomes more relevant here. Agamben theorizes the state of exception and claims that it has become a dominant paradigm of government in contemporary politics. Agamben challenges the responses the state had while immediately dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, which is merely normalizing the state of exception as it actually produced a policification of the municipalities and areas in the guise of tackling the virus. The Indian state like others has upholded the concept of lockdown as the only measure to fight the pandemic but the interesting aspect is the designing of enemies to deal with the problem. The paper argues that the Indian state has used the pandemic to blatantly create the “other” in a way pursued the agenda of exception. The method is qualitative, especially focusing on discourse analysis. The conclusion demonstrates that the measures taken by apparently the largest democracy in the name of fighting Covid establishes Agamben’s argument that the world is transforming into a gigantic concentration camp.