Category: Political Economy

(This article was published in BodhiCommons online portal. Link for the article- http://bodhicommons.org/bjp-hindutva-nationalism-populism-neoliberalism )

“Nations are not something eternal. They began, so they will come to an end”, said Ernest Renan in his celebrated article ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?’ In the contemporary period, the perversion of nationalism by stressing ethnic politics has damaged the post-colonial legacy of nationalism and is now considered a problem in the general academic discourse and the public as well. Amidst the surge of Hindu Nationalism and Populism, set up using the state apparatus in contemporary India, it’s vital to discuss the role of the state, political party, market, and relationally embedded individuality. It is also equally important to understand whether a newly emerging Indian Nation, itself a modern imagined community, has anything to do with neo-liberal aspirations of individuals.

Certain parameters have been instrumental in shaping nations and, subsequently, nationality and nationalism. The foremost among them is ‘territoriality’, which is an essential component to build up the narratives of nationalism; second is ‘identity’, with the help of which masses could be galvanised and consolidated, and the third is ‘homogeneity’ within a society, embodied in that particular nation-state to sustain this model based on nationalism, populism and majoritarianism.

Today’s narratives of nationalism and populism of the RSS-led BJP government are far newer and, to some extent, different from those of RSS-patriarchs like Savarkar, Hedgewar and Golwalkar. Savarkar’s nationalist narratives based on Hindutva were more of an ‘identity’ approach, which sought to assert ‘Hindutva’ in a territorial sense, i.e., in terms of ‘son of the soil’ and the ‘Vedic fathers’. Whereas Golwalkar and Hedgewar’s Hindutva-nationalist narratives were based on ‘spirituality’, embedded within the religious ideas of ‘Hinduism’ and ‘cultural’, which endorsed religious identity and the practice of the ‘Sanatana-Dharma’ as well.

However, to impregnate such majoritarian-nationalist narratives in the minds of the masses, one does not only need rhetorical building, but also institutional and organised support. RSS does the work of rhetoric-building and organisational support, and the BJP was/is supposed to provide institutional support. This is why it becomes essential to look at Modi’s populist politics of nationalism through the prism of the state—its policies, political party, service it provides, and the market that endorses and sustains such politics and the individuals who become its foot soldiers.

We would first examine the role of the state in this article, which plays a vital part in defining and asserting the politics of territoriality. To provoke the masses and capture their imagination, the BJP, since it came to power in 2014, has continually used territoriality to inspire them to become part of its political project of Hindutva nationalism. The hyper-nationalist narratives have been employed for this purpose, like Uri “Surgical Strike” (subsequently a movie on it), making Pakistan the enemy state, passing the ruptured legislature on Indo-Bangladesh Border issues; recently, revoking Article 370 and the NRC Bill, et al. This is how the BJP systematically sought to leverage territoriality to attract mass support. Secondly and most importantly, the BJP came up with innovative ideas to reach the masses using the state apparatus itself. The factor that distinguishes the BJP’s nationalism from that of Indira Gandhi is that it can successfully use both institutional and procedural mechanisms. It has become evident that fascist forces find it easier to incorporate ideas within a bourgeois democratic framework, whose institutions and procedures are integral parts. Indira Gandhi could only use institutions to advance her politics of nationalism and populism, but never could (or never wanted to) hijack the procedural mechanisms that still survived within the democratic framework in India. Nonetheless, the BJP could do it, bending and moulding procedures in its own way to establish the politics of populism through measures like demonetization, passing the Aadhaar Bill as a money bill, and invoking Article 356 (President’s Rule) in various states, undermining precedence and procedures. If, for now, we take the example of JNU and how the government is using the institution and procedures as well, to suppress the free voices of students and label dissent as treason and issue certificates of anti-nationals. Here, in the JNU case and in other educational institutions, the BJP is not only using institutions to control power through the appointment of compliant personnel but also flouting established constitutional and procedural norms, such as failing to involve students’ unions in crucial decision-making, controlling the curriculum, and censoring the speeches of critics.

The role of the BJP as a ‘political party’ can be better understood in terms of rhetoric-building with the RSS’s help. The majoritarianism of the BJP as a party combines cultural nationalism based on identity and othering the rest of the communities, which also includes cultural conservatism, intensified misogyny, and a firm grip on societal forces using services. This cultural nationalism of RSS-BJP demand homogeneity in the society, most of the times which can be brought about only with ‘ascribed-identities’. And to achieve this, it tries to build grand narratives to subsume all other small, regional, and local identities; one such narrative is ‘Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan’. This kind of narrative not only encourages the upper castes and upper classes to be a part of its political project but also has the capacity to subsume large numbers of OBCs, Dalits and tribals as well. This galvanisation of masses is done through services provided by RSS itself and its on-the-ground offshoots, such as various ‘prabodinis’, ‘vanseva samitis’, ‘shakhas’, etc. Such offshoots do the work of ‘Sanskritisation’ and ‘Hinduisation’ of communities other than the upper castes, which ultimately helps the required homogenization of the society to build its own hegemony. Jairus Banaji says, in India, the growth of fascism has been a gradual, step-by-step process where the fascist elements penetrate all sectors of society and emerge having built up that groundwork.

Thus, it becomes very important to understand how this mass base is constructed. What allows for the construction of a mass base by radical right-wing parties? Generally, fascism presupposes a worldwide economic crisis, but in the case of India, the BJP’s majoritarian nationalism presupposed (before the 2014 elections) the moral crisis in terms of corruption, and that is how Anna Hazare’s protest was hijacked by RSS-BJP. We could also say that such fascist majoritarianism was not the creation of RSS-BJP, but the victory of BJP in the 2014 general elections (and any election BJP won thereafter) was the creation of majoritarianism that came out of an ‘imagined’ moral crisis. The Commonwealth Scam, Coal-gate Scam, Anna’s protest against corruption, orchestrated attacks on minorities in Orissa in 2007 and 2008, and in Muzaffarnagar in 2013, and many more such events served as precursors to a moral crisis that captured public imagination, helping the BJP win elections in a big way. Beyond this, as Christophe Jaffrelot says, the BJP, as a political party, has also been using innovative communication techniques—repeated ad nauseam — catchy, vague slogans that attracted the masses, though all were empty signifiers, for example, ‘Acche Din Aanewale Hein!’. There has also been the use of certain religious artefacts, myths, rituals, and symbols through which deification is achieved. For example, the posters of fiery Hanuman, angry Shiva, Rama on the battlefield, such symbols we see, helped assert the putrid ‘purushartha’ (virtue of being male), which ends up being glad/satisfied in doing ‘mob-lynching’. These are also called ‘stormtrooper tactics.’ Banaji again says—’hate propaganda clears the ground for physical attacks and mass killings by producing a ‘climate’ of violence where communal ‘riots’ (i.e. pogroms) can ‘flare up’ (be organised) at any point of time. The “climate” is worked matter, the object of a concerted praxis.’

The schools, the job-places, the families, and the whole society become the factories of ‘reactionary ideology’ of which whataboutery becomes the merest weapon. However, such tactics produce societal homogeneity based on hatred and jingoism; subsequently, the market helps sustain such politics. To understand this, we need to go back to the period around 1991, when three instrumental forces were at play, which enabled the BJP to capture public imaginations and consolidate mass support for its every wrongdoing. These forces were market, mandir and Mandal. It amazes us how RSS-BJP could get such mass support, being known as an upper-caste Brahmanical organisation, especially from OBCs and Dalits. For me, the reason lies in the opening of the economy in 1991 with the New Economic Policy, generally known as the Liberalisation-Privatisation-Globalisation (LPG) reforms, and in the subsequent Neo-liberal framework. It is also evident from many surveys that the BJP has the largest vote bank of OBCs, the middle class, and new entrants to the middle class.

The question of locating individuality within discourses of nationalism in India must be considered pertinent in the context of the historical development of populism post-independence, which intersects with state policies and later with the advent of the neoliberal framework in Post-reform India. If we look at the historical trajectory of development of OBC block as a political power and economical pressure group, we could see rise of OBCs initially in post-independence period with fragmentation of land, subsequent green revolution and new technological innovations in farming; their entry into new services sector on the advent of reforms and free market—this could help OBCs to uplift themselves as an economic force. The Mandal Commission gave them a chance to uplift socially as well; reservations in education and government jobs could do wonders for them. Nonetheless, mandir politics could not remain separate from them. For the first time, OBCs had the chance to rub shoulders with the upper castes (especially Brahmins), and we could see them adopting Brahmin rituals, sacred thread ceremonies, and other practices. This was not happened in isolation; in effect it went beyond OBC block too, this miraculous rise of OBCs inspired other communities too.

The combination of the promise of economic prosperity, political power, and social upliftment created a neo-middle class and inspired the masses to be part of this joint-venture project of Mandir and Market. People’s aspirations rose since then, yet no one could see or understand that there would always be a gap between aspirations and achievements. In effect, OBCs, Dalits and other marginalised communities started playing a role as individual hyper-consumerists. In addition, neoliberalism created a space for such individuals to serve as precursors to hyper-nationalist narratives. The narrative of “development” although an empty signifier, culminated in suppression of cultural anxieties, and populism lying between that void space of aspirations and achievements, thereupon pacifying the public outrage against any illiberal, autocratic move of the current government.

Harsh Mander has said that this neo-middle classes are today socialised in not one but three normative systems which justify every act of BJP government—caste system, ‘refined’ lifestyles’ and rise of neo-liberal-market-led growth with ‘socialist guilt’. That is why it is very important to understand nationalism not only as an isolated project but also its connections with the conspicuous lethal project of the BJP as a political party and state-backed neo-liberalism, which has galvanised masses to be a part of it, and this poses an immense threat to the very social fabric of Indian society. Hence, we need to understand this whole structure, develop a critique, and act accordingly.