Hindutva's dash for power

Last week's poll results in four key states of India have belied the expectations of Indian commentators. It was generally thought that Congress would more or less easily retain three states of Delhi, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan while Madhya Pradesh had seemed wobbly. In the event, BJP has been swept to power in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, leaving only Delhi to Congress, where CM Sheila Dixit's excellent stewardship of the Capital area had paid off. What does this portend?

There are some easy explanations, of course. Incumbency factor can be cited; people had become tired of Congress rule that could deliver so little. This factor was known to all commentators. How could they be so sanguine as to go on holding that Congress was likely to retain Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, not to mention Delhi, almost to the last? They obviously under-estimated the attractiveness of BJP's stock in trade: Hindutva.

Much has been made of so-called real issues for the voters: "bijli, pani aur sarak" (electricity, water and roads). Doubtless these are crucially important to both rural and urban voters. But are the results shaped mainly by this criterion? The record of Congress' long rule almost everywhere is known and has been largely lacklustre; the party is known for its corruption, factionalism and neglect of the common voters, though it has a well-oiled election machine with more or less enough resources. In comparison, BJP was an outsider though it had much going for it in these polls: a friendly government at the centre, the steel framework of RSS organisation, claims of being a different and clean party, abundance of funds and above all the heady slogan of Hindutva based on Hindu cultural nationalism.

Doubtless, the Congress defeats in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are significant. The former was being run by the ever-active Mr. Digvijay Singh with claims to personal charisma and the ambition of making MP his redoubt from where he can rise to power in Delhi in the fullness of time. All observers thought he would trounce the BJP by his responsiveness, good governance and his recent metamorphosis from being an uncompromising secularist into one who pedalled 'soft Hindutva' -- a sort of me-too-ism. He should now be a more sober politician because the MP voter put his trust mainly in the BJP. In a house of 230, BJP has captured 173 seats and Congress could retain only 38 seats. Digvijay Singh's personal PR was at least as good as his record of being alert in listening to people's problems. And yet voters deserted him and the Congress. Why?

On a somewhat lesser scale, the same holds for Rajasthan. No serious Indian observer had any misgiving of Congress not retaining this state, the CM of which remained firmly secular in the face of concerted onslaught of the Sangh pariwar. Led by a reasonably efficient CM, Rajasthan had seemed like a Congress fort. But it too crumbled. Not that any BJP-ruled state could show a better record in terms of bijlee, pani aur sarak or better governing. Except Gujarat, where Hindutva showed its militant face, and UP and Bihar, no BJP-ruled state was able to resist Congress in earlier state elections, although it did deploy Hindutva everywhere. But this time the BJP could trump whatever Congress could say. Strange, isn't it?

Uptil recently, the Congress was the only show in town for most of India. But it was a banyan tree under which nothing else grew. What was its historic role? It was always an ambiguous broad church that accommodated all shades of ideologies from soft left to hard right. Nehru, the Fabian socialist, came to represent all non Communist left, and combining it with enlightened nationalism, he had the foresight to see that all communalisms, Hindus, Muslim or others, will be destructive to India's unity and integrity. Hence his insistence on secular as well as democratic politics. Nehru ruled India for the initial 18 years and imparted his own image to both India and Congress. But both needed qualifications.

At no time was Hindu communalism -- or call it today's nationalism -- absent from India. Even in the heyday of Nehru, the Hindu communalists or nationalists always had a presence in politics -- parliament and on the platform. BJP is the recent name of the party that was earlier known as Hindu Mahasabha which later became Jana Sangh, always shot through and through with persons owning allegiance to Rashtrya Sewam Sevak Sangh (RSS). It always polled a sizeable chunk of the urban Hindu vote even when Nehru's fame and power outshone everyone else's. The Congress image remained secular for some time after Nehru. But the six years of Mrs. Indira Gandhi in 1970s heavily compromised it, though articulation of secular identity continues. Even during Nehru's own day, Babu Rajinder Prashad, Radhakrishnan, Sardar Patel, even Rajaji and many others shared secularism rather partially.

There is no reason why most Hindus should not take pride in their ancient civilisation. But making this a militant cultural nationalism and a basis for seeking power, in preference to a distinctive social, political and economic programme, implies many things: it is a basic ideological denial of the democratic idea; all Indians might be equal in the inherited law but Hindus are more equal -- and more Indian -- than other Indians. Which is where Fascism, the ideological retreat from the democratic idea, rushes in. That, given the huge diversities that is India, such a cultural nationalism necessarily runs foul of democracy -- without which there is no way to keep the allegiance of all Indians intact.

The trouble with Hindutva, like its Islamic rough counterpart -- Nizam-i-Islam -- is that the Hindu has to be defined to be favoured and empowered by the state. The moment you try to define a Hindu, as is the case with the Musalmans, a thousand smaller and more ethnic or realistic (caste) identities of the Hindus begin clamouring for primary allegiance. Just as a simple homogenised Musalman gets pushed out by a Sunni or Shia or the poverty stricken or a Sindhi, Baloch or Pathan, similarly there may be no uncomplicated, synthesised or homogenised Hindu. India is chockfull of identities based on ethnicity, caste or faith. Already Hindutva seems less attractive to people with cultural heritages of their own in peripheral regions while in 'central' or Hindi-speaking areas Hindutva seems to have much attraction, though at the cost of the political rise of new caste identities, subverting simple Hindutva of higher castes. The conclusion is valid for India as well as Pakistan that religion-based identities produce their own nemesis -- and soon.

What the soft left, including Nehru's, has achieved is largely known. Nehru's land reforms laid the foundations of India's true industrialisation. Undoubted achievements in politics and economics had left 50 per cent of Indians dirt poor. Congress and BJP have the same economic programme of implementing the globalisation agenda. While the underdevelopment of the society remained the Achille's heel of the Congress rule, BJP with its communal Hindutva plank -- conceived to deprive the Muslims their privileges -- now seems to be poised to win power at the Centre on its own. The stragglers of the soft left, typified now by George Fernandes and earlier by Ram Manohar Lohia, are bag carriers of BJP. They can scarcely be distinguished from other Hindu communalists.

Simple majoritarianism, conceived in religious terms, is destructive of good governance and equality. A majority can only be empowered or favoured at the cost of minorities, religious as well as others. It is based fundamentally on the inequality of men, women and children. Its determined pursuit can only be possible if minorities are deprived of not only their rights but the opportunities of protest. Authoritarianism is thus woven into the warp and woof of religion-based politics. If the minorities fear BJP, it is only natural.

Rise of BJP in India underscores the fact that the Left in India has not been able in 57 years to make its presence felt in the huge Hindi-speaking belt. It is not easy to understand the complex and complicated mind sets that were produced in areas in widening circles around the centres of Medieval and Colonial power; hard left was too great a slave to what the Comintern approved. They never evolved their own policies and objectives based on objective realities on the ground. Where they did succeed seems to be where the general Comintern line happened to coincide with the needs and sensitivities of people in specific situations.

The big problem of Indian politics is that Congress had grown politically flabby; the loss of UP and Bihar should be taken to mean that it is in a terminal decline. After a series of setbacks it appeared that South and Central India will remain in the Congress fold. Now no one can be so sure about the chances of both BJP and Congress next year as a result of complicated interpenetration of the caste with Congress' secular nationalist appeal as well as with Hindutva. For some time after BJP's accession to power, it seemed Congress might somehow stage a come back -- after all it still ruled 14 states. Now, few can be too sure; Congress, historically speaking, has played its role and should now yield primacy to a new force. It does seem as if BJP does not fit that bill despite its three stunning victories in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

India seems to need a substantially new political force that can rise above religious and caste divisions while meeting the real challenges made sharper by the much-acclaimed recent economic successes. The old communist left is more or less at sea these days. Followers of the Fourth International, shorn of sound and fury, are not much better in evolving new solutions to old problems. There is need for a new Left -- not like Blair's New Labour -- that studies concrete problems of Indian society and produces solutions to resolve concrete problems.

The World Social Forum, with its all too diffused focus, is soon meeting in Bombay. There is also another Forum meeting there that wants to focus more sharply at the concrete problems created by the progress of globalisation. The two are said to be complementary to each other. One would wish all national chapters to grapple with the concrete problems being aggravated by the globalisation agenda. It is in this context that new political forces in South Asia can be conceived and hopefully grow.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.