[It’s easy to see this turmoil as the product primarily of local politics. Some root causes are unique to India, but many have wider resonance. The electoral success of the BJP has been smoothed by trends familiar across the globe: resentment of a liberal elite, the implosion of the old order (represented in India by the Congress party), anger at the impact of globalisation and inequality, the rise of radical nationalism and the exploitation of sectarian divides.]
By Kenan
Malik
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Trade
unionists chanting anti-BJP slogans on a march in Bengaluru last week.
Photograph:
Jagadeesh Nv/EPA
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It’s the largest democracy in the world. It’s
also one of the most fragile, one in which dissent has often been curtailed and
communal divisions inflamed. At no time have the vulnerabilities of India’s
democracy seemed more exposed than they are now.
The return to power last year of the Hindu
nationalist BJP, under the leadership of prime minister, Narendra Modi, has
polarised politics. Modi clearly now feels empowered to pursue unyieldingly
reactionary policies. The revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and
the military lockdown of the state, the passing of the Citizenship (Amendment)
Act (CAA), which openly discriminates against Muslims, and the unleashing of
thugs on to streets and campuses to intimidate dissenters all bear witness to
this agenda. At the same time, opponents of the BJP have discovered a new voice
in recent weeks, millions taking to the streets in protest, defying the
violence, official and unofficial.
It’s easy to see this turmoil as the product
primarily of local politics. Some root causes are unique to India, but many
have wider resonance. The electoral success of the BJP has been smoothed by
trends familiar across the globe: resentment of a liberal elite, the implosion
of the old order (represented in India by the Congress party), anger at the
impact of globalisation and inequality, the rise of radical nationalism and the
exploitation of sectarian divides.
In the decades after independence in 1947,
the Congress party, which had led the struggle for liberation from British
rule, governed India almost as the family fiefdom of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
Until the 1990s, popular disaffection found no national voice. It was the
sectarian BJP, rooted in the philosophy of Hindutva, or Hindu chauvinism, which
eventually became the vehicle of anti-Congress rage.
Liberalisation of economic policy from the
1990s led to increased growth. More than 270 million Indians moved out of
poverty between 2005 and 2015. But the fruits of growth have become
increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. In the 1980s, India’s richest
1% took 6% of national income; today, it purloins 22%. That 1% now owns more
than half the country’s wealth; the poorer half of India scrambles for a mere
4.1% of national wealth.
The BJP has seized upon anger at such
disparities, presenting itself as the champion of the ordinary citizen against
the cosmopolitan elite while swaddling that anger in chauvinist hatred.
Long before the BJP came to power, the
Congress party had shown itself willing to exploit sectarian politics for
electoral gain. A turning point, as the historian Dilip Simeon observes, was
1984, the year that prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh
bodyguards, angered by the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
Gandhi’s assassination led to pogroms against
Sikhs, many fomented by Congress politicians. At least 3,000 Sikhs were killed.
The violence, Simeon notes, “set a new standard for the normalisation of
brutality and lawlessness in the Indian polity” and acted as a “force
multiplier” for the BJP.
Three decades on, many Congress politicians
continue to pursue what one MP, Shashi Tharoor, denounces as “Hindutva-lite”
policies. Far from shoring up Congress’s support, it has only helped strengthen
the BJP. Who needs Hindutva-lite when you can have Hindutva-strong?
If the turmoil in India raises questions
about democracy at home, it also holds lessons for political battles elsewhere.
The key question today, it reminds us, is about who gives shape to popular
disaffection.
Alienation from the old political order is a
global phenomenon, whether that order is expressed in corrupted liberation
movements, as in India and South Africa, or through faltering conservative and
social democratic parties, as in Europe. Opposition movements giving voice to
disaffection are often sectarian in form – a sectarianism that may be rooted in
religious or ethnic identity, as in India or Turkey, or expressed in hostility
to migrants and Muslims, as in much of the west. Everywhere, there is a hole
where a national progressive movement should be. Which is why the nationwide
popular opposition in India to the CAA, and to the violence meted out by BJP
thugs, is so heartening.
The turmoil in India should also be a warning
against any attempt to win back support from reactionary populists by stealing
their illiberal clothes. What has really challenged the BJP is not the
appeasement of sectarian sentiment but nationwide protests against bigoted laws
and chauvinist violence. It’s a lesson for those in the west tempted to stem
the growth of rightwing populists through harsher rhetoric about migrants or
Muslims. If we really want to challenge divisive politics, it’s a temptation to
resist.
Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist