Hindu Nationalism: From
Ethnic Identity to Authoritarian
Repression
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Baed on :-
Hindu Nationalism: From
Ethnic Identity to Authoritarian
Repression
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
1. Every strand of politics that tried to think outside of the majority/minority framework was
relegated to the margins. Two strands that could have been possible alternatives to the majority–
minority framework.
( 1) One was simply thinking in terms of equal individual rights and freedoms for
all citizens, protected by constitutional guarantees that did not require thinking in terms of a permanent
majority/minority framework in politics. But this strand, which could have taken a liberal form, was
seen as an ‘anti-minority’ strand, because it aimed at dissolving the significance of group identities
for political purposes. It did not, so to speak, take the problem of power sharing between groups qua
groups seriously.
(2) The second strand to dissolve the majority–minority framework was to pluralize the notion of
‘minority’. India has too many cross-cutting cleavages. It is a collection of minorities (Ambedkar, 1945).
At a descriptive level, depending on the identity you choose to privilege, this might be true. But this
move had its own political limitations. The first is that the idea of cross cutting cleavages of caste and
region was never thought to be sufficient to displace the importance of ‘Muslim’ identity as a political
category (Ambedkar, 1948). By the 1940s this was becoming clearer. Ironically, then the attempt to see
India as a collection of minorities was then seen as a covert assault on Hindu identity; an attempt to deny
that despite plurality, cross cutting cleavages, regional and ideological variations, there could be such a
thing as Hindu identity
2.Why the idea of power sharing failed
From 1857 to 1947, one of the challenges of democracy was framed as the sharing of power between
Hindus and Muslims, through the representative process (Shaikh, 1989; Singh, 1987). But the problem
was that there was never an equilibrium solution to the problem of power sharing, through the process of
representation.
1. If representation to minorities was given in excess to their numbers; or they were given
‘veto’ powers, the ‘majority’ felt aggrieved.
2. If representation was not given in ways that gave minorities
effective power, perhaps even a ‘veto’ on certain issues, they would feel disempowered.
In a tragic irony,
the negotiation over power sharing, increased rather than decreased the gulf between the political
leadership of the two communities in two ways.
a. It reinforced the premise that the communities had some
distinct interests that could not be adequately protected through a language of individual rights and
common citizenship. And it probably failed to build trust, and put the communities in a competitive
dynamic in relation to each other.
b. It also highlighted the fact that emphasizing strands of ‘common
culture’, the emergence of a civilization that had the imprint of all religions on it, was pretty weak gruel
with which to combat an actual political problem of power sharing. Appeals to shared culture cannot be
an answer to the problem of political power sharing.
3. State of affairs from 1947 to 2014
1. After partition, the question of power sharing between Hindus and Muslims through the formal
process of representation was put off the agenda.
2. But in an informal way, the argument continued
through the electoral process. It was important to Congress self-image that it be seen as representative
4 Studies in Indian Politics
of Muslim interests at any rate.
3. Until 2014, it was almost an article of faith that any ruling dispensation
in Delhi would require either the electoral support of Muslims, or of parties that claimed to respond to
their interests. In some senses, the mathematics of the electoral system would provide the conduit by
which Muslim interests were protected. Political coalitions would, given the fragmented nature of
Indian politics, seek out electoral support of Muslims. It led to creation of what might be called ‘electoral
secularism’, where parties had no particular concern about representing or empowering Muslims, but
needed them to forge electoral coalitions.
4.This kind of minimal political responsiveness was quite
compatible with social, political and economic marginalization of Muslims. The Congress, secular
parties and the Indian State were Janus faced. On one hand, they were symbolically solicitous towards
Muslims, by selectively directing benefits that protected their identity interests: protecting minorities
from some forms of targeted violence, overturning judicial scrutiny of personal laws, or preventing
Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses from being circulated, for example. On the other hand, the same
parties could also selectively benefit from targeted communal violence at the local level, often to
reinforce the message that Muslims could not rely on the rule of law, but needed the discretionary
4. Consequences for Muslims
This created a vicious circle:
1. the less Muslims could acknowledge public economic and political life
as their own, the more they fell behind other communities on a range of empowerment indicators. But
the more they fell behind, and were alienated, the more it was used as a sign against them; they were
figured as a community singularly uncooperative when it came to integrating into India’s modernity. In
the case of Muslims, the resources of the state, when they were directed towards them, were meant to
reinforce their status as a distinct minority, not to fully empower them in the political process. Muslims
remained locked in a dilemma not quite of their own making.
2. The more Muslim leadership (which in its
lack of political imagination was willing to oblige those who were constructing them as a supplicant
minority), emphasized their status as a minority, the more the conditions were created for a majoritarian
backlash.
3.On the other hand, the wider political culture was doing its best to prevent Muslim integration
into wider society, in the same breath as it was demanding it. This account is a simplification, one that
obscures the complex realities of Muslim politics in India. But the net result was the majority-minority
framework got reinforced even more strongly in Indian politics (for splendid accounts of the complexity,
see Ahmed, 2019; Wahab, 2021).
4. Arguably with a significant Muslim political elite having migrated to
Pakistan, elite level interaction of the two communities in common institutions was probably even less
in the 70s and 80s than pre-partition India. The partitions of the mind were also becoming deeper
sociological realities, allowing Hindu Nationalists to construct the ‘Muslim’ as an abstract figure, an
object of suspicion. The deep roots of Hindu nationalism were not in the overt triumph of the BJP. It was
in the covert commitment to deepening the majority/minority framework.
5. The year 2014
was a watershed in this respect, for it showed that minorities could be made electorally irrelevant.
While other political parties may not go so far as to target minorities, marginalizing them will become
the default mode, the common sense of Indian politics. All parties will, to varying degrees, emphasize
majority cultural privilege.
5.Consolidation of Hindu Identity
1. In the
nineteenth century ‘Hindu’ began to become a consolidated legal identity as a result of two processes:
(a)the process of codification and (b) the process of reform.
(a) The process of Codification
☝The logic of imperial rule, was to govern
communities partly indirectly, through what they understood to be their own systems of personal law.
But these systems of law began to be codified in news ways in the nineteenth century, partly as a result
of the British need to understand an administer these laws. But the process of codification itself created
a more homogenous legal identity for Hindus—or even more broadly for Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and
Sikhs, who were grouped under a single legal identity largely to contrast it with Muslim and Christian
personal law. But the process of social reform, the slow correction of caste and gender injustices in these
traditional systems of law by the state, meant that the state and the legal identities of the communities got
increasingly entangled (Larson, 2002; Menski, 2008).
👆When the state enacted reforms of Hindu law, it
was performing a dual function. On one hand it was acting as a modern state trying to nudge Hindu law
into reform. It was able to do that because of the organizational character of Hinduism. With no central
authority, no central text, the only ways in which Hindus could settle their need for reform was through
democratic institutions, which happened to be institutions of the state. The Indian State was acting not
just as a secular state reforming Hindu law, it was acting as a State of the Hindus who were, collectively
through its institutions reforming their own laws.
👆This applied even to matters of temple administration,
for example, where the state could take over, reform administer and supervise the running of temples.
The spectre of a secular state, managing thousands of temples, through properly organized government
departments, is an anomaly from the point of view of secularism (Smith, 1953). The distinction that the
state manages the secular aspects of the temple and not its religious aspects can be hard to maintain.
Hindu nationalism is partially correct that liberals sometimes worry too little about the statism implicit
in the state running temples.
👆If democratic institutions of the state,
parliaments, and state legislatures were going to be the forums through which Hindus would govern their
legal identity, and undertake the process of reform, what is the relationship of these institutions to
minorities and their legal identities? Did parliament have exactly the same authority to reform personal
laws of other communities? Formally, in a constitutional sense it does. But politically the answer was
always fudged. Would a parliament exercising authority over Muslim Personal Law or Wakf Boards be
an instance of a majority exercising power over a minority? Or would it be an instance of a secular
parliament exercising authority in these matters over all communities, as it should? (Chatterjee, 2008).
Hindu nationalism accused the secular state of acting in bad faith: acting as if it had only jurisdiction
over Hindus. So, the process of Hindu legal consolidation through the democratic state led to the
emergence of a Hindu legal identity. But is also allowed that identity to play victim by claiming that the
state had asymmetrically exercised authority over the majority.
👆This bland rendering of the political project of Hindu nationalism does not of course do justice to
the underlying furies that fuel it. At the core of its sensibility is the idea of victimhood, and the
community of memory required to nourish that sense of victimhood. Hindus are perpetual victims, a
status that can be overcome only by consolidating Hindu political power. They were first the victims
of Islamic invasions, which Hindu nationalism sees as one monolith subjugating Hindus. Then they
were victims of British colonialism that at one stroke invalidated all the knowledge claims of a rich
and complex civilization. They were then victims of the Nehruvian State. Hindu nationalism sees its
marginalization at the hands of the Nehruvian State as an even deeper affront, because it was
marginalization at the hands of a state where power was in Hindu hands. The vehemence against the
Nehruvian State is even deeper than against the British State, not just for the obvious reason that the
Congress Party is still an active political force, and the attack on Nehru is also an attack on its
provenance. The Nehruvian State is seen as an act of multiple betrayal of Hindus. It was not a state
that in the dominant discourses of the time, which could even acknowledge the reality of past Hindu
subjugation; it actively repressed these popular memories and narratives. It presented Medieval India
as a tale of the emergence of a syncretic civilization rather than seeing it for what it was: an era of
conflict and Hindu subjugation, which a few episodes of liberality and syncretic patronage could not
negate (Dasgupta, 2019; Naipaul, 1988). The mistake of the Nehruvian imagination was that it played
on the territory that Hindu nationalism wanted to play: the territory of history. For a secular nation it
was important to tell the history of the past as a secular history. The problem with this move was that
it was always going to be empirically contestable.It also legitmized the idea that beliefs about the past
or debates in historiography have to serve the function of legitimating present political identities
(Bhattacharya, 2008). It provided less space to acknowledge a history of conflict, and believe at the
same time that a new social contract has been written, in which past conflicts are irrelevant. The larger
debate about the lens through which India’s past is understood will remain an animating impulse on
Hindu nationalism.
(b) Theory of Victimhood- Idea of Victimhood as a tool to achieve the aim of Hindu Rashtra
👆While it(BJP) adopts the cultural grammar
of Hinduism, its main interests are neither religiosity, culture theology or the deep variety and
capaciousness of Hinduism.
👆Its main interest is the construction of a unified ethnic identification with
Hindutva.
👆The core of this identity is the sense of victimhood, and acquiring political power over other
communities.
👆The victimhood has a number of tropes, in addition to a sense of being historically
colonized. It is reinforced by partition, the vivisection of India’s sacred geography.
^_^ It was then reinforced by the perception that the Nehruvian State, in its fidelity to constitutional values and its concern to
prevent further political violence after partition, was simply not pushing the logic of partition to its
ultimate conclusion.
The truth is it is hard to argue that Hindus or Hinduism were victimized by the state
in post-independence India. But victimhood narratives of nationalism just need pivotal and symbolic
events on which to hang onto the psychological comforts of victimhood. And the state did oblige them
from time to time. For example, the Shah Bano case, the expulsion of Kashmiri Pandits, the global
discourse on terrorism, and the alleged marginalization of Indian knowledge systems were all strung in
a narrative of victimhood.
👆This kind of victimhood is that requires a perpetual diet to nourish it. Which is why Hindu
nationalism will not rest content with settling a limited set of issues. For instance even after the
triumph at Ayodhya, the matter of reclaiming sites on which Mosques were built is not a closed matter,
as the demands for Kashi and Mathura indicate. The purpose of reclaiming these shrines is not
religiosity. The purpose of claiming it back is to claim that Hindus have power qua Hindus and they
can now show Muslims their place. It is to use a sacred place of worship as a weaponized tool against
another community (Mohan, 2008).
6.Hindu nationalism - a product of democratic process
Hindu nationalism is, in some senses, born with the modern Indian democratic project. It is not an
aberration, but accompanies it like a shadow. It can operate within the uneasy secular political settlement
of 1950, just as easily as it can decide to smash it open. The only question is what are the conditions
under which the shadow becomes long enough to ominously darken the horizon of democracy? A full
analysis of what enabled the rise of the BJP would require a more complex analysis of the conjunction
in 2014 and 2019: the economic context, global political trends, changing preferences of Indian capital
more willing lean on authoritarian repression, the nuts and bolts of political organization, the availability
of new information technologies and many other contextual factors. But two points are worth making in
a way that speak centrally to Hindu nationalism’s complex connection with forms of democratic
empowerment.
7.Role of the Congress Party in rise of Hindu Nationalism
(a)The rise of the BJP was facilitated by the decline of the Congress, which arguably declined due to its
own internal contradictions (Vaishnav & Hintson, 2019).
(b) In the 1970s, Congress crafted the first major
legitimization of the RSS by declaring the Emergency. There was some support for the Emergency in the
RSS, but it was the anti- Congress front during the Emergency that rehabilitated the RSS.
(c)In the 1980s,
Congress’ dalliance with Hindu nationalism in the 1980s alienated minorities; its undemocratic party
structures did now allow it to incorporate newly mobilized political groups like Dalits into its fold.
(d) It
managed to come to power in 2004, and then in 2009 as the head of the United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) alliance. But it could not use the decade in power to regenerate the party. From 2004 to 2009, it
had a remarkable economic record, and made even modest steps towards regenerating institutions of the
state. But in its second term it could not shake off the charge of being a closed plutocracy.
(e)The BJP’s
victory in 2014 itself took place against an overwhelming concern with plutocracy. The anti-corruption
movement, which now turns out to have been a of the BJP, delegitimized the Congress and
the BJP stepped into the breach.
(f) An honest introspection requires us to concede that the Left was right in
pointing out the destruction Modi could bring. But, equally, it must be conceded that India’s ancien
régime had also been so delegitimized that it was bound to collapse, in the absence of serious party and
leadership reform. The Congress had a governance record it could build on; but the party had no will for
institutional regeneration left.
(g) The BJP managed to convert anti-Congressism into an effective political syndrome, where the contempt for Congress far trumps their fear of anything else. In this sense, a
consistent and thorough going anti-Congressism is the bete noire of Hindu nationalism.
8.Role of caste in rise of Hindu Nationalism
(a) . For secular parties, extolling caste-based mobilization became a kind of
mantra. The idea was that these cross-cutting cleavages of caste would prevent the consolidation of a
more unified Hindu political identity; Mandal would prevent Mandir. But this valorization of caste
politics, paradoxically, created the conditions for the rise of the BJP.
(b) But the BJP did not so much as do away with caste politics, but subtly and fairly effectively repositioned
it within a Hindutva framing, keeping on board its social justice impulses, while enlisting it in a larger
identity. In part it was able to do this because of the availability of a leader who could do this more
credibly. Narendra Modi’s personal biography, as a leader who did not come from privileged circumstances
in economic or social terms, allowed the possibility of sections of marginalized groups identifying with
him in a way that would have been impossible a decade ago. The vote concentration of the BJP amongst
the upper castes is still the higher than amongst any other group, but Narendra Modi allowed the BJP to
expand its social base quite dramatically.
(c) (I) Parties like the BSP, SP, and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) were consolidating
different jatis (castes) into an agglomerative political consciousness defined by larger categories like
Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST). But this strategy had run its course.
(II) With rolling back
of reservations now off the agenda, there was no focal point for this mobilization. But the internal
differentiation of these groups also caught up with the politics of caste. Partly as a result of economic
growth and some occupational change, different subcastes were differently positioned to gain benefits
from reservation or from economic growth more generally. This greater internal differentiation, made
the agglomerative logic of caste movements more difficult to sustain.
(III) Now the logic was pointing
towards deagglomeration—distributing benefits within these caste formations, through sub-quotas for
instance. This allowed the BJP to wean away particular subgroups within these otherwise potent caste
formations. Larger economic and cultural changes are slowly disembedding voters from fixed social
formations and making them available for new forms of mobilization (Narayan, 2021)
9. CONSOLIDATION OF IDENTITY AS A SOURCE OF HINDU NATIONALISM
( a) The BJP, on the other hand, has a generative conception
of identity. Identities can be reconfigured through the work of propaganda, outreach, providing services
and political mobilization.
(b) It also understands that political violence can alter political identifications by
creating the conditions where one identity can be suddenly made more salient.
(c) It also has the advantage
of organizations like the RSS, whose agenda is certainly electoral. But it is also more than electoral. It is
to bring about a long-term cultural shift in people’s default identifications, to generate new forms of
identification which might not have existed. On this front, the BJP’s ground strategy has been long term,
subtle, and more effective.
(d) Two recent books on the BJP document this in full measure. Tariq Thachil
(2014), for example, argued that the social service wings of the BJP were responsible for creating almost
a silent revolution in generating new forms of identification with the BJP by providing services. and
Arkotang Longkumer’s brilliant book, The Greater India Experiment: Hindutva and the North East
(2020), also makes a similar argument about the BJP’s unlikely success in the Northeast. There in
addition to providing services, making themselves part of the cultural fabric, the RSS tapped into local
memories of victimization and violence to create new identities
(e) The lazy assumption that caste would check Hindutva was a product of a sociological imagination
that did not understand either caste or Hindutva.
(f) The sociologist M. N. Srinivas had in almost
Brahminical vein argued that there were two competing models through which traditional caste social
mores would be overcome: Westernization or Sanskritization (Srinivas, 1962). It was always assumed
that the BJP or RSS would prefer Sanskritization: the imbuing of high caste sensibilities and mores in the
general population.
(g) While this still remains an ambition for Hindu nationalism, it has in practice settled
for something more capacious: Ethnicization. This simply involves identifying as a Hindu in demographic
terms, and becoming part of the project of political Hindutva. It is compatible with a wider cultural
grammar—which is why it has been so easy for the RSS to incorporate everything from local forms of
worship of Dalit communities, to every member of the nationalist pantheon from Ambedkar
to Vivekananda.
10. Role of Hindi in consolidation of Hindu Nationalism
(a) The one final element that has to be taken into considerations is the role of Hindi in the ideological
imagination of the Hindu nationalism.
(b) there is a profound sense that Hindi has
been marginalized at least in terms of status. ......... But in Hindi
speaking areas, the sense of resentment that English was a marker of political privilege, that Hindi was
no longer a conduit of knowledge production, or that one signalled status by a distance from Hindi is
quite acute. This is why, even without the grand ambition of imposing Hindi on the rest of the nation, the
question of the status of Hindi is not without political resonance.
(c) The marginalization of Hindi, always
meant that there was room for a party to occupy that vernacular space. This is something the BJP did with
aplomb in Uttar Pradesh (UP)
(d) In fact, one simpler explanation of Congress’ decline in UP is that it does
not have even a handful speakers who can command an audience in Hindi. The marginalization of Hindi
could then be mobilized as a sign of the marginalization of a whole vernacular culture.
11. Distinction between Hindu Nationalism and Hindu Rashtra
Arguments in favour of the theory
It is a commonplace to argue that Hindu nationalism is a theory of the Nation, not a theory of the State.
As RSS ideologues from Ram Madhav (2020) and Swadesh Singh (2019) like to put it liberal critics of
Hindu nationalism do not get the distinction between Hindu Rashtra (nation) and Hindu Rajya.
(1) Hindu nationalism is no different from other nationalisms that are legitimized all over the
world. Most nations in the world often appeal to potent principles of cultural unity. The basis of India’s
unity is not simply an allegiance to constitutionalism; it requires recognition of our common identity as
Hindus.
(2) Hindu nationalism is not reactionary; it is a way of reassuring
modernist Hindus that the project of producing cultural unity does not imply a regression to a religious
or a theocratic state. In fact, a Hindu Rashtra can have as modern a state as it wants.
(3)to
reclaim the story of India’s identity and to posit the existence of a Hindu nation back into the deep
recesses of India’s history, one that transcends the flow of time, the changes in political regimes, and the
existence of social division.
Arguments against the theory
But this distinction between a Hindu Rashtra and a Hindu Rajya is ultimately unsustainable. What
it requires of citizens, especially minorities, is not just an allegiance to the terms of the social contract
as set out in constitutional principles, or to the institutions and processes of the state.
(1) It requires
everyone to acknowledge the symbols of Hindu unity, such as the sacredness of territory, the importance
of symbols such as Ram, and the overall glory of Hindu civilization.
(2) What
it requires of citizens, especially minorities, is not just an allegiance to the terms of the social contract
as set out in constitutional principles, or to the institutions and processes of the state. It requires
everyone to acknowledge the symbols of Hindu unity, such as the sacredness of territory, the importance
of symbols such as Ram, and the overall glory of Hindu civilization.
(3) But where the distinction between Hindu Rashtra and the Hindu Rajya is blurred is that the
enforcement of the script of nationalism requires the deployment of state power. The project of Hindu
Rashtra is articulated, enforced, and propagated through the aegis of the State. The project of Hindu
Rashtra cannot be realized without the state curbing freedoms or in some cases institutionalizing
discrimination.
Examples:--
(a) The laying of the foundation stone at Ayodhya was both the apotheosis of Hindu Rashtra, but
also its alignment with state power through majoritarian assertion.
(b) The Citizenship Amendment Act and
accompanying discussion on the National Register for Citizens made explicit the idea of India as a
homeland for Hindus. The purpose of the Citizenship Amendment Act was to grant persecuted minority
refugees from neighbouring states a fast track to citizenship status. This aim was reasonable enough. But
the Act enshrined a principle of religious discrimination in India law by excluding the possibility that
persecuted Muslims could also seek citizenship through this particular law. The surrounding political
discourse raised the spectre of creating a National Register of Citizens where all citizens would be asked to prove their citizenship. But everyone understood that this process would involve a differential burden
of proof for Muslims and non-Muslims
(c) Several states are enacting what are now known as ‘love jihad’ laws. Many states already had laws
regulating religious conversion. But the new laws break new ground. Amongst other things, they require
a two month notice to the state before any religious conversion can take place. They shift the burden of
proof on the citizen to demonstrate that their conversion is not a result of force or fraudulent means. They
allow the annulment of marriages where the state comes to the conclusion that the objective of the
marriage was to convert the woman. In effect, the purpose of these laws is to severely discourage
interfaith marriages. These laws are an incredible infringement on individual freedom and give the state
the power to regulate the most consequential and intimate choices human beings make about their
own lives.
But these laws illustrate that the distinction between Hindu Rashtra and Hindu Rajya is bogus. These
laws alter the character of the Indian State, not just the character of the Indian Nation. The function of
the state now is to give expression to the core anxieties of the Hindu Rashtra. It gives expression to the
vilest ideological trope in Hindu nationalism, of young Muslim men, being a threat to the nation, since
they might seduce helpless Hindu women. This idea has moved from being a cultural trope to being the
basis of state policy.
(d) Many states had cow protection laws. Cow protection,
like personal laws, has always been one of the many ambiguous compromises the Indian Constitution the
secular state made with religious identities. There are attempts to justify cow protection on secular
grounds, but there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the ban on cow slaughter is underpinned by the
ideology of Hindu Rashtra.
(e) , the normative case for the abolition of triple talaq, on liberal grounds is quite strong. The
BJP brought legislation to this effect. But by criminalizing, and not merely invalidating triple talaq,
the BJP not just wanted to reform; it also wanted to use the case to stigmatize Muslims.
(f) ......scrapping Article 370. But doing it, while at the same time partitioning Jammu and
Kashmir without the consent of the Assembly and, for the first time in Independent India’s history,
downgrading the state, and depriving its citizens of civil rights, was again meant to be a show of
majoritarian power. Incidentally, the subtle majoritarian assertion on federalism is manifest in the fact
there every proposal to divide the one state that needs to be broken down into smaller states, UP
(which has a population the size of Brazil), is shot down for fear of creating a state in western UP,
where Muslims might, because of the demography, be able to exercise more representative power than
they do in a large state.
(g) India’s free speech jurisprudence has always been fraught with inconsistencies. It has to be
admitted that the politics of free speech was in part shaped by interpretations of Section 295 of the
Indian Penal Code, which gives the state the power to ban speech that intentionally offends religion.
This has functioned as a version of blasphemy law in India. It was first enacted by the Punjab
Legislative Assembly, in response to the Rangila Rasool case, a book that was an offensive depiction
of the Life of Muhammad. The detailed history of the applications of section 295 need not detain us
here. But the political dynamic of the section is interesting. It encourages political mobilization on
behalf of censorship, since you know there is already an acceptance of the principle, and you can
expect the government to respond. In a society comprised of different group identities, this identity
has a competitive dynamic. If you have three religious communities ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’, and if a piece of
art or novel offensive to ‘X’ is censored, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ will also often measure their recognition of their
community identity by asserting similar claims. If offensive novels or cartoons about the Prophet
Mohammed can be proscribed, why not about Basavanna, Shivaji or Nanak? If Satanic Verses can be
deemed offensive why not the Kannada novel Dharamkaarana? Communities begin to measure their
power—and comparative self-esteem—by what they can silence or have banned. It is striking in the
politics of censorship, how little people are interested in theology or ideas. But the idea is to provoke
a demand for censorship or retaliation by a community to put them in bad light or stigmatize them. In
the politics of free speech, Hindu nationalism argues, it is the assertion of community power, not just
legal standards that have governed the regulation of speech. This is an area, where the state was also
accused of giving minorities a veto—the claim was that Indian free speech jurisprudence has not had
the courage to be liberal in order to accommodate Muslim concerns over Mohammed. Again, there
might be a plausible liberal argument to be made here. But Hindu nationalism uses this as a pretext not
to expand the boundaries of free speech but to expand the circumference of offense (Mehta, 2015).
The Indian state’s track record of impartial dispensation of justice after communal riots has always
been patchy. The judicial and investigative aftermath of the horrible pogroms of 1984 and 2002 are the
most striking examples of this dismal failure. Riot and terror investigations have often been
communalized or been conducted through a partisan frame. All of this is facilitated by the fact that the
investigative agencies, the police, and the prosecution are often not independent. If the evidence of the
aftermath of the Delhi riots of 2020 or the probes after recent lynchings are any indication, we will see
an eve
12 The Authoritarian Moment
(1) India is, at this moment, haunted both by the twin spectre of
majoritarianism and authoritarianism. These have a deep elective affinity, but they are not identical.
Hindu nationalism—and the threat it poses to democracy
(a) Anti-Muslim prejudice
The one constant element to its articulation is an anti-Muslim prejudice that gives it a
propelling power.
(b) Control and violence
There is a deeper transformation of the political culture that threatens
to unleash a combination of control and violence that is unprecedented in Indian democracy.
(c) control the information order
.Hindu
nationalism has a compulsive desire to control the information order. In some ways it is consistent with
its political style to insist that command of the information order is central to its political project. Hindu
nationalism managed to control significant sections of the broadcast media in ways that are unprecedented
to be conduits of its ideology. A lot of this would not have been possible without the willing cooperation
of Indian capital.
It exercises control over and mediates all of civil society. It will exercise this mediating power over media,
academia, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) even possibly the professions.
Its governance style are that it would love to embrace a party state
model—where the party becomes the final arbiter of right and wrong.
(d) ‘Moral Cretinism’ (The term ‘moral cretinism’ was perhaps first used by Alan
Bullock in his biography of Hitler (Bullock, 1952).
It referred to a condition where our ordinary sense of compassion and decencies get
immobilized. They get immobilized to the point where a total inversion of values becomes possible: the
‘other’ is demonized to the point where their basic humanity disappears from plain sight, the truth is an
object of contempt. The ordinary moral terms that should be positively valued—pity, compassion, sympathy, civility—become terms of contempt, supplanted by new virtues like pitilessness, indifference,
antipathy, and incivility.
What is distinctive about Hindu nationalism under Modi is that cretinism
itself becomes a high moral standard. It is hard to imagine a time in recent history where political leaders
openly support a culture of violence without compunction or any trace of self-consciousness, public
discourse routinely carpet-bombs fine distinctions with a view to making any nuanced moral responses
impossible, and sympathy is routinely so partitioned along partisan lines that the possibility of any
human response to tragedy and atrocity seems like a distant gleam.
(g) Cult of Personality
👆 He(Modi) displayed, like all authoritarian
characters, the sheer will to power, a ruthlessness that is itself part of the attraction. He came across as
effective for the sheer energy and single-mindedness he put into his political pursuits. Confronted with
opponents who had, it seems, almost lost the will to pursue power, his will stood out. The second element
was his ability to produce affective identification. He managed to portray himself as India’s success
story, the everyman who could fight adversity and rise to the top on his own effort.
👆 He had a visceral dislike of the Gandhi dynasty but, in the critique of dynastic politics, he positioned
himself against a corrupt and entitled order. The more moral and intellectual contempt that was heaped
on him, the easier that identification became.
👆 Third, he positioned himself as a moral paragon—in whom
self-interest was not even possible. In India, it is very common for kinship relations to override any
conception of public and private. But paradoxically, it makes the appeal of someone who stands apart
from kinship—and who thereby claims to have no self-interest, only a concern for the general good—all
the more resonant. This is not simply the virtue of the allegedly celibate pracharak, it is the virtue of a
leader who did not inherit a family mantle and will not leave one.
👆 Fourth, this was a speaker for whom
identification was created by his locutionary campaign. The truth is made through the act of speaking; it
is not an independent test of veracity. The very thing that commentators find a weakness, the refusal to
answer questions or seriously face a press conference, was the very thing that shored up his power. acknowledge someone else’s questions is to cede possibility to the idea that someone else might have the
truth. The fusion of truth and conviction is the hallmark of Hindu Nationalists politics: the perfect
antidote to liberals who cannot take their own side in an argument.
👆And finally, there was at least in 2014
the ability to cleverly craft messages, the ability to tell different audiences that he was speaking to them.
He made himself the Representative of the Nation, with all his contradictions enfolded within him. His
followers made him the ultimate apotheosis of the Indian nation.
(h) Populism
👆 Hindu nationalism has, under Modi, latched on to the language of populism. These two languages
have an elective affinity.
👆 Both posit an already constituted people in whose name the leader or the party
speaks. Both operate on the assumption that there is a singular account of the public good, and the leader
or the party is the custodian of that good.
👆 Any disagreement, is to be therefore understood as a betrayal.
Dissent is closer to act of treason.
👆 Both have a suspicion of the fragmentation of power: they say it as a
ruse to prevent the consolidation of a singular purpose or identity.
👆They are therefore contemptuous of
all checks and balances, all formal constraints on power. Almost all the important checks and balances
of Indian democracy have been eroded. Independent institutions like the Supreme Court have not held
the state accountable in basic matters of civil liberties and habeas corpus; anti-terror laws and sedition
laws continue to be used against dissenters; academic freedom is increasingly in peril, and almost all the
formal constrains of constitutional and administrative procedure can be put aside at will.
👆 Hindu
nationalism’s biggest casualty has been the Indian Constitution. The interpretation of the constitution,
and its custodianship by important institutions, is now so capricious that no one can tell you with a
straight face what the Indian Constitution actually is.
12 Can it be defeated?
(1) At one level, this is an easy question. Electorally defeating Hindu
nationalism depends on contingent political conjunctures. One can overtheorize this question. But the
mathematical truths of Indian politics still afford opportunities to defeating the BJP. Simply put, states
where the opposition can provide a single or united alternative to the BJP are states where the BJP will
struggle. Its vote share to seat conversion ratio has been facilitated by the fragmentation of the opposition.
So in part, the answer to this question depends on opposition electoral strategizing and capabilities.
(2) The
BJP could weaken because of its own lack of performance. Its economic performance before the
pandemic was middling at best, on the most generous interpretation.
13. Dangers ahead
(1) Hindu
nationalism’s transformation of Indian civil society is deep and far reaching. The open justification of
communal prejudice, the empowering of right-wing vigilante groups, and susceptibility to a moral
cretinism are not going to be easy to put back in the bottle. It is hard to estimate this, but it might also be
the case that Hindu nationalism has now made enough inroads into the state, planting enough committed
elites in key positions that even the hue of the state might not be as easy to change with just an
electoral defeat.
(2) What is Hindu nationalism’s commitment to electoral democracy? If electoral
democracy ceases to legitimize Hindu nationalism, how will it respond? The structure of the party, and
the fact that a kind of violent vigilantism is institutionalized in the party especially in states like UP
should alert one to the prospect that a transition of power may not be entirely peaceful. Or even if there
is, there may be constant attempts to subvert constitutional democracy by extra-constitutional or even
violent means. Will such defeat inflame the victim complex that Hindu nationalism trades on, to the
point that all bets are off in terms of the kind of communal polarization possible? Hindu nationalism has
tested Indian democracy to a dangerous point while in power; it might test it even more in days to come.
But defeating nationalism will require engaging with the long arc and deep fissures of Indian history
since the nineteenth century.
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