Sanjay Kumar
The last three and a half years of
Modi government have made many Indians acutely aware of the threat Hindutva
poses to whatever little democracy exists in the country. Minorities and Dalits
have been physically assaulted by supporters of Hindutva with full state
patronage. The bureaucracy and criminal justice system, which were already
autocratic and corrupt, have been systematically infiltrated to communalise
them further. Critics of Hindutva like Gauri Lankesh have been murdered in
broad day light.Social media, which has emerged an important medium for
country’s urban youth to form and express opinion, is dominated by troll armies
of Hindutva that spread hatred and openly threaten people challenging Hindutva,
or Modi government. Large sections of traditional media have become mouth
pieces of the regime and brazenly pander to Hindu communal sentiments. The
leader reigns supreme. The chaterrati in the media even applaud his mindless
actions like demonetization. Opponents of the regime are openly branded
anti-national, and brazen lies are spread about them. All sensible people of
the country realise that the hatred, public violence, and communalization of
state institutionsby Hindutva organisations are taking country towards
disaster, and if it is to be saved Hindutva needs to bedefeated politically.
The disaster India faces is that of a successful fascism. In times like these
politically aware groups also have an additional responsibility.Hindutva
does need to be defeated. However, this does not mean that the extant liberal
mode of governance threatened by it be accepted uncritically.To the extent that
the Hindutva is not a conspiracy, and roots of its success lie within Indian
society and politics, it is also necessary to critically examine accepted
notions of Indian democracy and society.
At this critical time in the life of
liberal democracy in India,the dominant non-Hindutva forces, anti BJP political
parties, liberal intelligentsia etc.appear to be curiously silent aboutthe social
basis ofHindutva’s success. This silence is not surprising. Success of Hindutva has comelargely throughmeans
considered legitimate under liberal mode of governance. Even its criminalities
have been tolerated by successive non-BJP governments in the past.Notice
two facts in this regard: a) The movement to destroyBabri mosque in Ayodhyawas
the largest popular mass mobilisation in the post independence India, andb) everywhere,
governments of the Hindutva party have come to power through elections, via
popular mandates. Liberal democracy in India is facing a crisis not just
because the anti-liberal, anti-democratic party of Hindutva is in power, but
because the liberal order itself is in crisis. This crisis of the liberal
order is little appreciated, or even understood.
This presentation touches three
themes. First we register the popular character of fascism, which distinguishes
it from other forms of authoritarian rules. Second we look at some of the blind
spots of the practice of democracy in India, which over time have created space
for Hindutva, and should help us understand why significant number of Indians
after nearly seven decades of formal liberal democracy are giving their
allegiance to a fascist project. Finally, we will look at the relationship
between caste and Hindutva. Hindutva is not a project to reestablish
hierarchical Brahmanical social order, yet at the current moment it is most
suitable for Savarna castes to maintain their social and ideological hegemony. However,
it acquired a mass character only after it was able to draw in Shudra and Dalit
castes under its fold. The neo liberal order ushered in the past three decades
has provided political economic support structures to Hindutva. This much more
dynamic form of capitalism in India has increased domination of corporate
capital, weakened state welfare institutions and altered the balance of class
forces, and also altered characteristics of certain classes. However, this very
important basis of the success of Hindutva will not be discussed here.
I
Fascism as Popular Authoritarianism: Fascism is an authoritarian political
project.Its politicsis closely united with very specific social, cultural and
moral agendas, much more than the other ‘normal’ politics under capitalism. It
is authoritarian because power and domination are its primary themes in all
spheres. Socially powerful get drawn to it because it valorizes domination and
is ready to use violence against those who challenge existing structures of
power. However, even though it is supportive of existing power structures,
like state bureaucracy, caste, patriarchy etc. it is not conservative. In fact
it presents itself as a radical alternative which will bring a better
ordered society, a stronger nation, and economic development (all of which are
present in the BJP propaganda under Modi). Its authoritarianism is a direct
threat to core democratic requirements of freedom and equality. What
distinguishes it from other authoritarian rules such as military dictatorships is
that it consciously attempts to draw popular legitimacy.This important
character of fascism, which is the source of its strength,is little noted
by its critics.
Liberal ideology understands Fascism
as the direct and complete opposite of itself. It claims to stand for freedom;
fascism is seen as totalitarian, controlling all aspects of social life under a
violent dictatorship. Reality is far more complex. Liberal democracy, as for
instance enshrined in Indian constitution, and fascism should be seen as ideal
extremes of capitalist state power that attempts to be hegemonic and relies on
popular legitimacy.In reality, any hegemonic power relies on both consent
and coercion, and hence, any capitalist state power relying on popular
legitimacy will have elements of both democracy and authoritarianism.
Liberal democracy starts with the
assumption of rights bearing equal citizens who come together to govern
themselves. In this ideal form it is an inclusive project. Fascism in contrast
is an authoritarian project that relies upon public violence against selected
minorities, or war to create and sustain a political community. Nationalism,
race, religion, civilization, etc are some of the grids which fascism uses to
cement this political community. The fact that fascism uses violence and
extreme forms of coercion against selected minorities and its political
opponents does not mean that it does not enjoy, or does not care for, and does
not try to create, popular legitimacy for itself.
We see it clearly how Hindutva is
cleverly creating a majoritarian politics, which calls upon 'the people of
India' (actuallyHindus of India who form 84% of Indians) to target their
selected enemies: minorities, leftists, anti-national liberals, etc. What Nehru had warned against, a majority
communalism masquerading as nationalism, has grown right before our eyes. This
is no longer a conspiracy, or a plan of RSS headquarters in Nagpur, but an
embodied reality inpopular attitudes, modes of behaviour and values. We can
compare and contrast the situation with the 1975-77 Emergency when Congress
under Indira Gandhi became the symbol of anti people authoritarianism. Then,
the idea that if given a chance, people will throw out the authoritarian leader
seemed reasonable; and that is how indeed it turned out in 1977 elections. Now,
the nature and modus operandi of Hindutva authoritarianism are different. How
do you challenge a 'popular' authoritarianism, whose kit bag also contains
legitimate 'democratic' tools. In any democratic project, it is ultimately the
people themselves who assert their democratic rights and make society and state
democratic. How do we address the people who are supporting anti-democratic
politics?Old assumptions and methods will not work.
II
Blind Spots of Liberal Democracy in
India
People like Dr.Ambedkar were deeply
aware that in an unequal and divided society democracy will not be a
spontaneous development. It was not that once a liberal democratic constitution
is in place, the state and society will merrily start chugging along the path
of democracy. Rather than paying attention to Ambedkar’s premonitions, Indian
political parties and people have generally adopted apopulist notion of
democracy.
1. Democracy as Majority Rule: The
populist understanding of democracy easily slips in to an equation of democracy
with majority rule. Liberals at best demand adequate protection of minority
interests. This ab initio justification of majority rule is completely blind to
the very reason which justifies majority having more value than minorities. Majorities and minorities in a democratic
order are created by simple accretion of uniform and equal units, as for
example in the formula: one person one vote. The political valueof majority
arises from supposedly inherent and equal value of these units. It follows that
the majority carries value only as long the condition which gives it value in
the first place is observed.Majoritarian politics undercuts this very condition
byattackingthe political value of minorities, as for example is happening with
Muslims and Dalits in India. Hence, the majority created by Hindutva is
anti-democratic. Liberals who argue for special protection of minorities, miss
the point that majoritarian politics is actually against the democratic
interests of every one, including members of the supposed majority.Democracy
is preferable not because it allows people forming majority to rule, but
because it creates condition in which everyone is equally free and carries
equal value. This argument is missing from political discourses in India,
including radical ones. It is not difficult to see that this failure has
contributed greatly to the popular success of Hindutva argument that since
Hindus form the overwhelming majority of Indians, India should first of all be a
country for Hindus.
2. The other blind spot in the
practice of democracy in our country is community based electoral politics.
There is no doubt that the past nearly seventy years of electoral democracy
have expanded and deepened the stake people feel in elected governments. Over
time, many oppressed and deprived sections of the society, which could not vote
in earlier elections, have been mobilised, and in India we actually witness an
interesting phenomenon that larger percentages of deprived and oppressed people
vote than the privileged and the rich. Another important fact is that this
mobilisation has occurred at the level of community, mainly caste. It has been
generally believed that participation of oppressed castes has broadened and
deepened democracy in India. While this is true, another parallel process has
been overlooked. All communities which become active during elections are
actually 'created' communities, called into action by leaders, parties and
their ground level workers. If communities like these become the main mode of
address to an average voter, then it is only a matter of time that an organisation
gets successful in mobilising the largest such 'community' , the Hindu
religious community. This follows from the logic of the 'arithmetic' of
electoral politics in our country. For some time many of us had thought
that the pluralities of caste, language, and regional variations in India will
not allow mobilisation of people around a monolithic Hindutva identity to be
successful. Actually, it seems that in states like Asom and UP, Hindutva has
gone around this problem. In UP it managed to mobolise non Jatavdalits and non
Yadav OBCs by specifically targeting them against BSP and SP. In the process it
managaed to disempower Muslim voters, who constitute nearly 18% of all voters.
In Asom it managed to disempower nearly 30% of Muslim voters. Actually this
exercise of dis empowering a significant minority is not unique to India. In
the US, in the past four decades, the Republican Party has evolved a programme
which systematically disregards interests to 12 percent African Americans. And,
in all presidential elections the majority of white voters have always voted
for republican candidates. This was the case even during 'landslide' Obama
victories.
3. Among the blind spots of Indian
democracy we must also touch upon its hugely compromising notion and practice
of secularism. The unique brand of secularism in India has been called 'sarvdharmsambhav', which literally
translates as equal attitude towards all religions. Opportunistic politicians
have translated it to 'equal respect for all religions'. An idea like the
latter is completely against the spirit of secularism. Secularism in a
democracy has two assumptions. The first assumption is that the fundamental
democratic values, those of equality and fundamental rights, are not based upon
any religious belief. In this sense the basic democratic values are secular.
The second principle, that a secular state will not prefer any religion over
others is a requirement of the principle of equality. A consequence of the
secular basis of democracy is that any religious practice which violates these
principles, for instance the principle of equality, can be outlawed. Indian
state did outlaw untouchability, even though for many Hindus it was an article
of faith. So a secular democratic state power can not follow a formula like
equal respect, or equal attitude towards all religions. Yet it does not mean that
secularism is anti religion. It does not interfere in the sphere of personal
beliefs, nor does it deny believers the right to associate on the basis of
their religion. Rather, it is the only basis on which believers of all
religions can enjoy equal freedom to practice their religion.
III
Caste and Hindutva Fascism
As is well known Hindutva is a
project to develop a political community of Hindus. Hindu society has been, and
to a significant extent remains, a caste society. Liberal democracy in India has
failed to save Indiansfrom the scourge of caste. This would not have surprised
Ambedkar. He was clear that radical social change was not in the interests of
the savarna leadership of the Congress of his time, that freedom movement, and
post Independent Indian state would prove to be convenient tools for savarna
castes to maintain their social hegemony, and that even if universal adult
franchise could usher in a government of the people, as long as caste exists in
the public life of Hindus, it would not be a government by the people, and for
the people.
At the current moment Hindutva is proving
to be the most successful means for savarna castes to maintain their
ideological and political hegemony. However, the re-establishment of old
Brahmanical ritual based caste hierarchy is not its aim. It does not mind an OBC Prime Minister, a President belonging
to a Dalit caste, and can not publicly support untouchability. Hindutva is also
comfortable with the politics of oppressed castes in electoral politics. In
fact the inherent divisiveness of caste in politics makes it imminently
suitable for social engineering under a hegemonic project. The relationship
of Hindutva and caste is actually complex, involving both mutually supportive,
as well as antagonistic elements.
Hindutva and caste are different but
they share common characteristics and derive strength from common social
practices.Some of
these common characteristics and practices are :
(a) Imperviousness to the calls of
universal humanism, without
which modern democracy is impossible.
(b) Caste and Hindutva both
consciously articulate themselves as above, or alien to the law. Hindutva does it openly by its claim
that the existing liberal secular order of law is against Hindu interests. For
castes, it is the understanding that asself governed entitiesthey need not
follow external rules. Khap panchayats are a clear illustration.
(c)The third overlap between caste
and Hindutva is religion. Both operate with a sense of obvious naturalness to their demands. To
the extent that the idea of self and community for an average Hindu is still
largely religious, it helps both caste and Hindutva become effective in
everyday life.
Such overlaps however do not mean
that caste can be readily incorporated in the political programme of Hindutva. Caste ridden Hindu society is not
easily amenable to community wide calls of political nature. Congress achieved
it under a basically liberal project that had place for at least a formal
critique of caste as part of the reform of Hindu society. Hindutva can not take
any anti caste stance due to the centrality of the idea of a Great Hindu
civilization/religion in its programme. This explains why for many decades
after its initiation it remained confined to savarna castes.
The two key events in the growth trajectory
of Hindutva were one, when it became the common political sense of savarna
castes, and second when it managed to draw in sizeable sections of Shudra
and untouchable castes.
The first was achieved when the
Congress formula of broad coalitions of social groupings unraveled in the
absence charismatic leadership, and savarna castes found that it is unable
to counter rural dominant castes. Savarna castes now form the core voter base
of Hindutva.
The success with Shudras and
untouchables is the real tour de force of Hindutva, which helped it become a mass
movement. This was facilitated by the preponderance of religion in the cultural
and community life of Hindus. Hindutva exploited this religiosity through two
complementary tactics. RSS affiliated organisations facilitated, encouraged and
organized events of mass religiosity. The Hindutva touch was given by a certain
kind of aggressive occupation of public space with a clear lumpen character.
These organisations also calibrated their programmes by incorporating specific
caste centric gods, temples and religious programmes within a Sanskritising
narrative. The success of this strategy was based on the continuing hegemony of
Brahminical cultural norms at the molecular level, where the penetration of
suitable counter narratives, either anti caste Periyarite or Ambedkarite, or
the mores of modernisation, was weak. It succeeded most dramatically in the
‘cow belt’ heartland of Northern India.
As mentioned earlier, the re-establishment
of old Brahminical ritual based caste hierarchy is not an aim of Hindutva. However, it is dead against any anti-caste
movement, because that can challenge existing power relations in society,
as BhimSena is trying to do in Saharanpur. It can incorporate non-Jatavdalit
castes in UP, and can hope to manage a Hardik Patel. It can not stand a
RohithVemula whose anti-caste stand was inspired by a deep and universal
conception of human equality, and a JigneshMevani who has deftly combined his
anti-caste politics with concrete socio-economic demands.Their politics is not
only anti-Hindutva, but has the potential to knock the bottom out of Hindu
caste order. Hindutva provides a safe haven for all hierarchical caste
prejudices, of savarnas against OBCs and Dalits, and of OBCs against Dalits. A
radical Dalit who has courage to stand against all, is its public enemy number
one. More than ever before, it is the time to challenge the Hindu caste order
in India.
Summing Up
A successful counter to fascism has
to target sources of its popular base. This requires bringing into open its
contradictions with other interests of the people. The argument that Hindutva
is bad because it threatens minorities will not do. We have to prove to the
members of the so called majority that it is against them too.
Many Marxists claiming to follow a
class motivated understanding of society fail to notice relative autonomy of
the state and politics under it, and see fascism simply as an instrument of the
rule of the capital. They claim it to be just another variant of class
dictatorship, thereby failing to register specifics that distinguish it from
other forms of politics and state under capital. They even fail to appreciate
that under suitable circumstances bourgeois state can actively follow policies
aiming popular legitimacy. Economic exploitation under capitalism occurs within
laws of commodity exchange. Hence, once conditions for the commodity exchange,
including ‘free’ labour, are in place, capitalist exploitation does not require
direct political coercion. This creates the space for relative autonomy of
politics and state, which means that far from being a mere instrument of
capital these develop their own dynamic. Elections and electoral politics under
universal franchise have emerged as the main means for popular legitimacy of
bourgeois states. Even socially and economically backward countries like Nepal,
or India have opted for elected governments. Indian state has close to three
million elected representatives from village panchayats to the national parliament.
This is number larger than ever for any country in the human history.
Hindutva project is working on many
domains simultaneously. Besides open violence against minorities and Dalits, it
also involves extreme centralization and communalization of state institutions,
and systematic interventions in popular ideology. It needs to be countered in
all domains. Given Indian social and political realities, one strategy, one programme
of action, or one set of alliances will not work in all domains. For
instance, almost no mainstream political party is likely to come out openly
against Hindu communalization of public sphere. However, they may be in
conflict with the Hindutva party politically, and against its specific policies.Anglicised
liberal sections of Indian elites do show opposition to the chauvinistic
agendas of Hindutva in popular ideology. However, given their class position
they are not likely to oppose economic policies of the Modi government. Such
considerations help untangle complex questions which often do not have simple
either-or answers.
One such complex question is directly
political, related to support to non-BJP parties during elections. For many
decades Congress has played opportunistic communal card. It presided over the
destruction of Babri Mosque. Before the last elections, SP in UP too played
dirty communal politics and failed to protect minorities in Muzaffarnagar and
at many other places. Nor is it now, when Hindutva is politically dominant,
that these parties have become anti-communal. However, due to their own
interests such parties do remain politically opposed to BJP. The two alternate
set of reasons from anti-Hindutva positions can be these. 1. Given that
Hindutva is dominant, and poses immediate threat of whatever democracy exists,
the more important thing is that its march be halted. Any battle, no matter how
small, won against Hindutva punctures the arrogance of power which leaders like
Modi display. 2. The alternate argument is that these parties have never been,
nor can be consistently non-communal. Principled anti-Hindutva politics can not
be expected from them. The second argument misses the fact that under given
circumstances the electoral politics is not the primary arena of democratization
of society. Defeat in elections weakens Hindutva dominance in state institutions,
and affects it political legitimacy. It does not necessarily mean a decline in
its social basis. Social struggles which challenge existing power structures
directly:anti caste, feminist, working class movement, democratic rights
movement,etc. counter the authoritarian core of Hindutva much more effectively
than electoral politics, and these should remain primary areas of activity of
progressives. This however, does not that mean that electoral politics has no
place in anti-Hindutva mobilisations.
Another question relates to the role
of religion in the public sphere. Hindutva has always tried to show the
secularism in against Hindu interests. More worrying fact for progressives
should be that despite a secular constitution, state institutions have been communal.
Hardly anyone has been punished for gross violence during communal pogroms, or
destruction of Babri mosque. An activist in Gujarat was reprimanded and fined
by Gujarat High Court for bringing a PIL alleging that religious havan with
Sanskrit shlokas and pandits during the inauguration of the new court building
violated constitutional provisions of the constitution. Almost all police
stations in northern India at least, have temples with Hindu deities. An
important conceptual distinction exists between a communitarian defence of
secularism (as best suited to protect minority interests) and a citizen centric
defence which lays emphasis on the basic values of personal freedom and
equality; even while in many practical contexts the two are similar in their
demands. Progressives need to bring the later in public domain, because a
sphere of increasing freedoms which enriching for every
one can be brought about only on its basis.
(Based
upon presentation and discussion during Workshop on Understanding and Resisting
Fascism - Indian Context organized by
Jan Chinthana Kendra and Karnataka KomuSouhardaVedike in Benagluru, 27 Jan,
2018)
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