Phrases like ‘identity politics’ ‘caste politics’ and ‘communal politics’ are routinely used to denigrate any effort at acknowledging disadvantaged or marginal communities… Yet the unabashed strategy to consolidate and empower the upper caste Hindu vote bank is not only exempted from such criticism, it is often spoken of as a transcendence from such fractured politics. Dibyesh Anand explores the sinister double standard.
The victory of the rightwing BJP and its allies in the most recent elections has sent out a few clear messages to the Indian public as well as the outside world. Commentators and supporters often represent the message of the victory in terms of the end of identity politics, vote against corruption and for development, support for decisive leadership, and thus a maturing of democracy. This could not be further from the truth. There is a serious crisis of credibility for the Indian democracy with Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister.
The clear mandate for Narendra Modi comes less from the share of popular vote and more from the anomalies of the first past the system where with around 31% of vote, a party secures more than 50% of seats. Given that this is the electoral system in India and all parties have signed up to it, there is not much one can do about it without comprehensive reforms – which are unlikely to be supported by the existing stakeholders. Neither the BJP nor the Congress would allow it.
The conservatives and liberals have something in common. They see their positional advantage as the universal norm, as free from specificity of identity. They see their critics and those they patronise as wedded to the particularities of identity politics. The commentators who see the victory of Modi as a moving beyond caste and religious identity and vote bank politics conveniently and dubiously ignore the fact that Modi won due to consolidation of upper caste Hindu votes in Northern and Western India and that a new (upper caste) Hindu vote bank has been created. The VHP may not be in the forefront during the campaign but its efforts since the 1990s to create a Hindu Vote Bank has been successful. The vocabulary of Modi was never post-identity but one that encouraged hegemony of one Hindu identity. What explains his party’s reference to ‘illegal Bangladeshi Muslim migrants’ and the need to ‘throw them out’ while welcoming Hindus from all over the world? ‘Indian’ for Modi and his brand of politics is Hindu and Hinduised. There is no evidence to suggest that he is interested in treating all religious and ethnic communities in the country as equal without erasing their specificities.
Media propaganda focused a lot on corruption under Congress rule during the election as if BJP’s own hands were clean. Is it not interesting to ask the question that if the vote against Congress was indeed about corruption, why did more people not support AAP which was mostly explicitly fighting corruption? What does welcoming back into BJP of B.S. Yeddyurappa tell us about the hypocrisy of the BJP when it comes to acceptance of corrupt practices?
With Narendra Modi’s development politics in Gujarat as the model, we can expect heavier investment in infrastructure, a free hand to big business and foreign investment, and an emphasis on GDP growth without care for environment, social and human development. A certain kind of macho market excitement is built around the Gujarat model and alternatives are denounced as lacking. As the international community wonders ‘will India do a China?’ and fantasises about rapid economic growth, even the lip service paid to human rights becomes increasingly rare. China is indeed a model of growth for Modi– an authoritarian, anti-minority, power intent on using economic growth to buy loyalty of the middle classes, and disallow dissent.
It is rather odd that the apologists of Modi credit Modi with decisive leadership while at the same time excuse his presiding over the massacre of many hundreds of Muslims in 2002 by insisting that he was not responsible. Either he was a weak leader who failed to prevent the massacre or he was a strong leader who consciously allowed the massacre to take place over many days. We notice that such basic questions are no longer asked in the mainstream media. There is an attempt to forget without any gesture toward justice, recognition, truth or reconciliation. India has elected a party and a Prime Minister who until recently was known mainly for anti-Muslim pogrom.
There are hardly any Muslim and Christian MPs in the governing coalition. BJP could not find more than a couple of non-Hindus to stand in the elections because their criterion of ‘merit’ is exclusive. For the first time in many decades, there has been a complete disenfranchisement of religious minorities. What message does it give? That Muslim and Christians do not matter. Whether Muslim and Christians voted for BJP or not does not change the fact that a politics that is majoritarian and treats minorities as de facto subjects and not citizens has won. Since 1990s, the Congress and BJP both ensured that commitment to socialism that is enshrined in the Constitution became irrelevant. Now with Modi in power, same would happen to the commitment to secularism. India will therefore become merely a sovereign, democratic republic. Democracy can survive without socialism. But it cannot survive without secularism. India 2020, if the vision and politics of Modi and the RSS become successful, will be a republic where – as a de facto, if not a de jure, matter – concepts like ‘socialist’, ‘secular’, and ‘democratic’ will be treated with contempt by the ruling classes.
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