Is India going the way of 1930s Germany?
By Arun R Swamy

The recent rounds of violence between religious groups in India do
more than reveal the fragility of India's secular state. They
highlight the inability of Indian democracy to combat what is
essentially a fascist onslaught.
At first glance what is happening in India appears to be another - if
extreme - case of religious passion gone awry. A train carrying Hindu
activists from the disputed religious site of Ayodhya was firebombed
by a mob, killing 58 of the activists. Several days of revenge
attacks by Hindus against Muslims followed in the state of Gujarat,
killing more than 700.
However, India's Hindu nationalists have always resembled 1930s
European fascists more than they do contemporary "fundamentalists".
Members of the core organization of Hindu nationalism, the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded in the 1920s, are given paramilitary
instruction, not religious, and wear khaki uniforms reminiscent of
Mussolini's brownshirts. While the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP),
founded in the 1960s, is mainly concerned with religion, it still
does not prescribe how Hindus should worship or behave - an
impossible task given the diversity of Hindu religious practice.
Instead, like all Hindu nationalists, it is bent on characterizing
Muslims as alien and hostile while seeking to unify Hindus around a
romantic nationalism, in which military prowess plays a central role.
Hindu nationalists' emphasis on international prestige has won them
the support of the Westernized middle class, typically the target of
Islamic fundamentalism. Their focus on demonizing Muslims rather than
promoting Hinduism is illustrated even by the dispute over Ayodhya,
where extremist Hindu groups destroyed a 16th-century Muslim mosque
in 1992, sparking nationwide sectarian riots in which more than 2,000
people died.
Hindu nationalists claim that a temple on the same site honoring the
birthplace of the Hindu deity, Rama, was torn down to make way for
the mosque. For Hindu extremist groups, the claim that a temple was
torn down to build a mosque - for which there is no concrete evidence
- was at least as important as the claim that Rama was born at the
site. The destruction of the mosque was commonly spoken of in terms
of retaking territory that had been lost to invaders.
Hindu nationalists have identified other mosques that they wish to
destroy, claiming that these, too, were built on temple sites. For
none do they claim the sanctity associated with the birthplace of
Rama. Indeed, the purpose of claiming a particular site as Rama's
birthplace - for which there is no basis in theology or tradition -
was to justify tearing down the existing mosque.
It is this fascist ideology, and the fact that a party espousing it
is at the head of the national government, that makes the recent
anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat so much more disturbing than earlier
rounds of riots. As horrific as the recent violence was, more died in
1992. But the political establishment's response this time has been
ambivalent and feeble. The paralysis in the political system is
emboldening the Hindu extremist organizations responsible for the
Gujarat "riots" to press their agenda more forcefully. There are
times when India seems to resemble Germany in the 1920s and early
1930s.
The analogy to the rise of Hitler is not one that should be made
lightly, but there are many parallels. The Gujarat attacks were not
spontaneous expressions of mob rage but were highly organized and
brutally efficient, probably identifying Muslim homes and businesses
through the use of public records. The state government was almost
certainly complicit in the wave of violence that affected the entire
state and saw no effort by the police to control it. The central
government was slow to dispatch the army, and has attempted to put
the focus on the train attack, for which they blame Pakistani
intelligence.
The state government initially sought to limit judicial inquiry to
investigating the train attack, to use its emergency powers only
against those accused of the train attack, and to offer higher levels
of compensation to the (Hindu) victims of the train attack on the
grounds that they were victims of terrorism. Even many liberal
intellectuals and politicians, whose protests forced the state
government to retract some of these measures, have tacitly accepted
the idea that several days of targeted anti-Muslim violence can be
equated with the attack on the train, and even resulted from it.
Worse, there has been no effort by those in power to hold those
responsible for the Gujarat attacks accountable. The national
government, run by the same party as the state government, the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has chosen not to use its
constitutional authority to take over the state's administration
despite having attempted last year to do so on law and order grounds
in another, opposition-ruled state. Although the government has
banned militant Islamic groups, it has ignored calls by parties both
in the opposition and in its own coalition to do this to Hindu
extremist organizations. The involvement of these organizations in
the Gujarat violence is widely attested to, and they were banned
after they tore down the Ayodhya mosque in 1992.
Worse still, even after the Gujarat riots the government negotiated
with the VHP over its plans to begin construction of a temple on the
disputed site. The compromise involved an official in the Prime
Minister's Office accepting possession of two pillars intended for
inclusion in the temple structure. Even though this seriously
compromised the Indian state's claims to religious neutrality, the
government has congratulated itself for defusing a potentially
explosive situation.
To be sure, the government is in a tight spot. BJP members of
parliament have expressed outrage at the government's refusal to let
temple construction proceed until the Supreme Court rules on the
subject. However, statements and actions by Hindu extremist
organizations since suggest that they have been emboldened by the
concessions the government has made. Over the weekend of March 15,
members of several right-wing Hindu organizations stormed and sacked
the legislative assembly of the state of Orissa for unknown reasons,
while the RSS warned Indian Muslims that their safety depended on the
goodwill of the Hindu majority. The next week the VHP indicated that
it had plans to carry the ashes of the train attack victims in
processions throughout the country - an act calculated to incite mob
fury. It later disavowed its plans when many of the BJP's coalition
allies threatened to pull out of the coalition if the plans were
carried through.
The opposition parties and some of the BJP's coalition allies have
succeeded in checking the VHP to some degree. They have called for
Hindu extremist organizations to be banned, and condemned the
compromise with the VHP over the performance of the temple ceremony,
as well as the attack on the Orissa assembly and the RSS' statement
on Muslims. In addition to blocking the alleged plans to carry the
ashes of Hindus killed in the train attack in a procession many have
threatened to withdraw their support if the Ayodhya temple is built.
The BJP leadership has promised to abide by the Supreme Court's
ruling on the temple site. However, the VHP can undertake many
provocative acts short of actually constructing the temple and has
announced plans for more religious ceremonies centering on the temple
issue around the country. There is a limit to how many battles the
allies can fight and win from within the government.
The BJP's allies have been reluctant to withdraw from the government
and indeed voted with the government in passing a Prevention of
Terrorism Bill that will significantly weaken protections for civil
liberties including allowing confessions extorted from prisoners by
police to be admitted as evidence. The act, the provisions of which
are currently in operation as an executive order, was defeated in the
Upper House of parliament where the opposition parties are in a
majority, but it then passed in an unusual joint session of
parliament. During the acrimonious debate, two former prime ministers
charged that the existing ordinance was used selectively against
Muslims in Gujarat, while the current leader of the opposition, Sonia
Gandhi, argued that the law would be used by the national government
to intimidate its opponents and divide the country.
Short-term political calculations keep the government in power. Most
of the BJP's allies are regional parties. The opposition Congress
Party, which has won a string of recent elections, is their local
rival. Similar divisions between the Congress and other opposition
parties have also hindered efforts to form an alternate coalition.
Indeed, some opposition parties are gravitating toward the government
out of tactical considerations even as some of its allies pull away
from it. Meanwhile, the two communist parties, outwardly the most
opposed to the BJP, have announced that they would refuse to support
a Congress government because of differences with that party's
economic policy.
This combination of organized thugs affiliated with the ruling party
who terrorize a minority community and intimidate a silent majority,
with a divided opposition in which the center is getting squeezed
from both sides, is only the most obvious parallel to Germany in the
early 1930s. Over the past few years, the BJP has tried to reshape
the secondary-school curriculum by stealth in ways that fit with
Hindu nationalist ideology and has presided over the slow
militarization of the polity. By casting the Pakistan-supported
insurgency in Kashmir as a crisis of national security, military
expenditures have been increased while social welfare expenses have
been cut. The command structure of the armed forces, which were kept
divided for decades to ensure civilian control, has been unified in
recent years. With the passage of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill,
the government will have most of the tools it requires to gradually
reduce the space for dissent.
There are many factors that could prevent this from happening. The
Supreme Court has blocked both the VHP's plans for Ayodhya and the
release of new textbooks following the social-studies curricula. The
National Human Rights Commission, which in India has some judicial
powers, has rejected the Gujarat government's initial report on the
riots as "perfunctory" and demanded a more thorough accounting. With
the opposition parties controlling the presidency, Upper House of
parliament, most state governments, and therefore the electoral
college for electing the next president this summer, it would be
difficult for the BJP to significantly alter the constitutional
balance or to declare a state of national emergency. Moreover, the
government has a stake in preserving India's credentials as a secular
state, in order to maintain US pressure on neighboring Pakistan to
crack down on militant Islamic groups and in order to develop
economic ties with Islamic countries like Iran. Continued
provocations by Hindu extremist organizations could yet force a rift
between the BJP and its allies or even within the BJP, which is
divided over the temple issue.
However, the difficulty India's mainstream parties have had in
maintaining a united opposition to the BJP's agenda, and the change
in the international attitude toward civil liberties since September
11, make it difficult to feel confident that Hindu fascism will be
defeated. For this to happen, both centrist parties in the ruling
coalition, and India's friends abroad, will need to recognize that
what happened in Gujarat was not just another instance of religious
communities in conflict. Rather, as Indian opposition leaders have
charged, it was part of a broader tendency toward eliminating civil
liberties and scapegoating cultural minorities in an aggressive
effort to impose a unified sense of nationhood on one of the world's
most culturally diverse societies.
Arun R Swamy is a fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.