A US Think Tank Assesses Role of Hindutva in Indian Politics
Mandavi Mehta

THE VICTORY of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) incumbent Narendra
Modi in the Gujarat state elections of 2002 has left the BJP riding
a new high, while the Congress Party struggles to define itself in
opposition. With upcoming assembly elections in eight of India's
states, this year could be a defining one for both parties, as well
as for the country. The larger question underlying the analysis of
electoral politics is the future of Hindutva - a fundamentalist
socio-political ideology that asserts a unifying Hindu culture for
all Indians – and its implications for India's multi-religious
population.

The significance of the Gujarat elections: The BJP has consistently
fared well in Gujarat polls in the last decade. Its success was not
a major upset, but its landslide proportions were a surprise. The
impact of the communal riots that shook the state from February 2002
was expected to make the Congress a stronger contender in the polls.
In the months that followed the riots, Chief Minister Narendra Modi
waged a virulently communal campaign designed to inflame Hindu
sentiments and by association patriotic zeal. This connection
between being a Hindu and being a nationalist is a central tenet of
the Hindutva ideology, but was used in a uniquely successful way in
this election. While Hindutva was not the sole or even the
determining factor contributing to the BJP's success in Gujarat, it
is significant and will continue to play a role at the state and
national level, in conjunction with and in reaction to a range of
other political drivers.

The growth of Hindutva politics: The politics of Hindutva, as
represented by India's ruling party, the BJP, cannot be separated
from the larger grassroots social movement from which it stems,
though the two aspects of the movement clash periodically. The BJP
belongs to a family of organizations, known as the Sangh Parivar
or "Sangh Family", which collectively represent the ideology of
Hindutva in its many social and institutional forms. The primary
ideological organization within the Parivar is the Vishva Hindu
Parishad (VHP), or World Hindu Council, which is supported by its
youth wing, the Bajrang Dal. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)
provides the organizational backbone of the movement, and is
paramilitary in nature.

The organizational roots of Hindutva go back to 1914, to the
creation of the Hindu Mahasabha, an organization founded to unite
the nation under the banner of Hindu culture. Hinduism is a religion
that is amorphous in its teachings, open to diverse interpretations
and modes of practice, and polytheistic. The Mahasabha saw these
values as a weakness because they provided few means of united
mobilization, and therefore were perceived to offer little
resistance to conquest, either by Muslim conquerors, or by
imperialist powers. The hierarchical social character of Hinduism
that privileges the upper castes, coupled with India's vast regional
and linguistic diversity, were further barriers to cohesion. The
Hindutva movement sought to "re-create" a golden age of Hinduism,
one best epitomized by the rule of Rama, a human incarnation of the
God Vishnu. The ingredients of this golden age, and of a unified
Hinduism, however, had to be created by the Sangh Parivar. The
belief that India's authentic culture lies in Hinduism has bred an
anti-foreign outlook, a definition that encompasses the Muslims and
Christians of India.

During the movement for independence, the Hindutva movement
mobilized against the Congress party's secular and pluralist
platform. The creation of Pakistan was seen as a betrayal of the
principle of a single united Hindu nation. Congress and Mahatma
Gandhi were seen as pseudo-secularists who were eager to pander to
the Muslim minority at the cost of Hindu pride and the Hindu nation.
The themes of injured Hindu pride and of victimization remain
powerful ones in the movement. The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi
at the hands of a Hindu fundamentalist soon after independence and
the uproar it caused were a setback for Hindutva, and the Parivar
fell out of the public eye for almost four decades. Its political
arm, then called the Jana Sangh, was generally a marginal presence
in Parliament.

The devolution of politics and Hindu Majoritarianism: Two related
fractures helped to change this from the 1980s onwards. The first
was the dismantling of the Congress Party's nation-wide political
hegemony, and the resulting fragmentation of Indian politics. Since
the national elections of 1989, no party has won an outright
majority in the polls, and a succession of volatile coalition
governments has ruled the nation. Regionally based parties have
grown in power and prominence, and in the last national elections,
the majority of votes cast were in favor of regional parties. The
end of the Congress monopoly also heralded the end of Nehru's
cohesive vision of India as a state united in its diversity, run in
a highly centralized manner, and based on a Fabian socialist
economic model. Although this opened up the field for regional
parties – including the BJP, which is regional in scope – it also
led to an ideological vacuum, and it was this vacuum that Hindu
majoritarian sentiment helped to fill. In order to compete at the
regional level, the Congress party played religious politics and
relied on an obliquely defined "populist Hinduism", a strategy that
the Parivar emulated with far greater ideological zeal in the
Northern heartland of India.

The second "fracture" came in 1990, with the central government's
decision to implement the Mandal Commission Reforms, an affirmative
action program that created reservations at universities and in
government jobs for the backward castes and tribes of India. This
was the first step towards empowering lower caste politics in India,
traditionally seen as a Congress "vote bank".

The BJP traditionally received the bulk of its political support
from upper-caste urban voters. The empowerment of the backward
castes created a rift in the Hindu community; with backward castes
and tribes constituting over 50 percent of India's Hindus, this was
something the BJP could not afford. The issue that the Parivar chose
to unite Hindu sentiment was that of building a temple to Ram on the
site of a sixteenth- century mosque named after India's first Mughal
emperor, Babar, claiming that the mosque stood on the site of Ram's
birth (janmabhoomi). Sangh Parivar workers eventually tore down the
mosque in 1992. The Parivar, Supreme Court and Central government
have been deadlocked over the fate of the land on which it stood.
The issue, however, has deep emotional resonance for Hindutva to
this day.

Balancing ideology and politics: Although Hindutva gained ground as
an ideology from the 1980s onwards, the BJP was unable to form a
lasting government at the center till 1999. More importantly, the
primary factor enabling the BJP to form the central government after
the 1999 elections was structural, not ideological. The Congress
Party remains national in scope, and competes with regional and
caste-based parties in state elections. This makes it difficult to
build coalitions with them at the center. The BJP on the other hand
has an established electoral presence in only a handful of states,
and is able to build coalitions with regional parties. After the
1999 elections, it was willing to make significant concessions on
its ideological platform to build bridges with secular allies, and
was able to form a government with 23 primarily regional parties.
Prime Minister Vajpayee's image as a moderate BJP leader has helped
to keep the coalition together.

While this has been a successful political strategy for the BJP, it
has caused tensions within the Parivar, most notably with the RSS
and the VHP. The BJP has had to toe a fine line between alienating
its governing coalition and alienating the Parivar. It depends on
both for political power and legitimacy. This tug of war between two
competing needs has led to contradictory statements and policies by
the BJP on a range of issues, including the dispute over Kashmir,
the Babri Masjid issue and, most recently, over the Gujarat riots.
Under pressure from the Parivar, Modi was allowed to remain Chief
Minister of Gujarat despite the law and order breakdown in the
state. The fear following the Gujarat elections is that the BJP
might be tempted to move from its largely centrist policies, and
fully embrace in practice the ideological positions of the VHP and a
new political strategy that political wags are calling "Moditva"
or "Modi-ism."

The ingredients of political success: Such a conclusion is
premature, and Indian politics remain far too complex to respond to
a narrow ideological agenda. Elections in India reflect regional and
community-based issues, and this was true of the Gujarat elections
as well. Several factors set the Gujarat elections apart. Gujarat's
urban density, degree of industrialization, economic priorities, and
the absence of caste politics, all played in favor of the BJP. The
riots played a key role, and it is noteworthy that they did not
spread to any of India's other states. Gujarat's urban centers,
particularly Ahmedabad, Baroda and Godhra, have an unusually bad
history of communal violence, and Modi was able to successfully
capitalize on anti-Muslim sentiment unleashed by the attack in
Godhra that led to last year's riots as well as on a subsequent
terrorist attack on the Akshardham temple in Gujarat.

Moreover, the BJP landslide was not uniform. In 64 constituencies in
Gujarat, the BJP and the Congress were neck and neck and the BJP won
by less than 3 percent; in some areas where the margin between the
two parties was larger, third parties held the balance of the votes
and strategic alliance building could have delivered a different
result. This is a lesson the Congress appears to have taken to
heart; it is now redoubling its efforts to build partnerships with
regional parties and sort out internal dissent within the party.

But Gujarat also highlighted a critical aspect of the Sangh
Parivar's work as an effective grassroots social movement. The RSS
and the VHP have spent years cultivating a base in Gujarat, through
labor unions, social work, building schools, and focusing on
backward communities. If there is a message to be drawn from
Gujarat, it is that the full impact of the Hindutva movement will
bear fruit through its social organizing, not in the short-term
political future of the BJP. Its social organizations occupy a space
in civil society that cannot easily be regulated by the state, and
they will continue to work for their social revolution with profound
consequences for the country.

Looking ahead: There has been a shift towards, and cohesion of, the
religious right in Indian politics in the past decade, but it does
not trump the dynamics of regionalism and coalition building. The
outcome of the upcoming state elections in Himachal Pradesh,
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura
and Delhi will depend on regional factors and the ability of parties
to build alliances. Anti-incumbency sentiment may hurt the Congress,
which is the incumbent in five of these states.

It is too early to start handicapping the national polls due in
2004. Leadership changes in the BJP and the Congress' ability to
adapt to the changing needs of regional politics will have a
powerful influence. But the issues to watch are clear. How will the
increasingly Hindutva-influenced vocabulary of the coming year's
political contests affect India's ability to manage its diverse
population? And what will be the impact of this year's apparent
swing to the right on the character and stability of the next
national coalition? In general, the difference between India's major
political parties on policy issues has diminished in recent years.
Policy toward Pakistan could become more of a political football
than it has been – with dangerous consequences.

Courtesy: South Asia Monitor, published by the Center for Strategic
and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, DC