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The Hindutva elections

For Hindu nationalists ranging from spaced-out RSS leader Bal Thackeray to the more human face of BJP’s PM nominee Atal Behari Vajpayee, these elections are a make-or-break scenario to take the veil off secularism and get acceptance from the world for their extreme right wing colours. Confronting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) juggernaut are a collection of disparate regional parties misnamed as the United Front (UF) and the once-mighty Congress, brought to its knees by internal feuding and infighting. Analysts earlier had pointed to an easy BJP walkover, by election day it had become a three-way horse race, a resurgent Congress brought back to life by Rajiv Gandhi’s widow Sonia, rapidly closing the electoral gap, albeit most of it at the expense of the UF but poised to garner enough seats to deny BJP a chance to make the Central Government. For BJP, which had run a sophisticated sleight-of-the-hand campaign by seemingly deviating from its Hindutva ideology (one people, one nation, one culture) to woo regional parties on one hand and the large Muslim bloc on the other, failure to acquire power may have unfortunate consequences, including possible disintegration. Laloo Prasad Yadav’s alienation in Bihar and formation of another UF-clone alliance will severely cut UF seats in Parliament. Predictions were 240 seats for BJP in Parliament, almost 50 more than the last elections. Sonia Gandhi may drastically reduce BJP’s original estimate to less than 215.

Given the disparate nature of the religions, sects, ethnicity, communities, etc secessionist movements based on religion (Kashmir, Punjab, etc) and ethnicity (Gorkhaland, Bodoland, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram, Assam, Tripura, etc) have proliferated. As the fabric holding the tenuous society together, secularism is being dumped by Hinduism’s upper class for the more potent rightist ideology of Hindutva to try and inculcate a national spirit. Prior to the appearance of Muslims (1500 years ago) and Christians (500 years ago) to rule in succession, India was one homogenous Hindu nation with a fairly large Buddhist community. In their frustration at the never-ending problems, even people opposed to religious-based nationalism have turned to Hindutva believing that solutions can be found by gingerly embracing nationalism. On the mass level this concept has been fairly successful, at the intellectual level secularism has still got moral force to sustain it. While anything which negates equality can be said to be regressive and backward, there is a concerted effort to give it a more humane face from the intellectual plane down to the masses. Since such a premise of unequal status militates against every concept of democracy, the Hindutva movement has no real political thought among its available literature. Intellectual mobilization is non-existent and as such the movement is sparsely served in this area. One cannot have a cultural and/or political movement without an intellectual base to back up its pretensions. Lacking this, considerable money and effort is being made to make Hindutva’s past and future bright, at least in intellectual terms, appealing to the masses desperate for change in their economic lives and who are finding a new spirit in Indian nationalism. Very cleverly BJP has stoked the ambitions of the youth to mesh with the frustrations of the old, using disaffection among the electorate against long ruling Congress Party and other mainline politicians, the years of misrule having shown them up to be bankrupt of fresh ideas vision and/or hope. For the Muslims, who have been scarred by decades of brutal behaviour by Hindu nationalism and who are well aware that it was BJP’s initiative that led to the destruction of the Babri mosque, the failure of the then ruling Congress to stop the sacrilege has been cleverly exploited by the BJP. Fear of retaliation and subjugation if they did not come into the BJP fold is acting as a negative incentive for the Muslims.

Realizing that they had reached a plateau of sorts that would always give them a majority vote but would not allow them to form a government in the Centre even in a coalition, BJP the political wing of the secretive and militant RSS, seriously started courting the regional and minority vote against the grain of their stated ideology. They set up commensurate alliances in the North West, in the East and in the South, looking particularly to the Muslim bloc as the great swing vote. This is nothing but blatant hypocrisy, a clear-cut politics of convenience that could backfire and is already unravelling. The party faithful, rank and file, are more blunt about treating the Muslims as serfs and have militated against this clear deviation from their so-called beliefs and principles. With an inclination to compromise their way to power in bringing known criminals among the legislators into the cabinet in alliances for their government formation in Uttar Pradesh (UP), BJP made a mockery of their assertions that they would never ever sacrifice principles for power. This expediency because of a taste for power has made them vulnerable. A cold blooded view recognizes that BJP represents a divisive rather than an unifying force. Unifying a broad section of Central India BJP leaves the rest in tatters. In essence BJP may act as a catalyst to the eventual break-up of India into four separate identities. A wide range of intellectuals and secularist forces in India seem to believe that Hindutva will mean the collapse of India as one federal entity. Officially this is why a seemingly reluctant Sonia Gandhi was virtually compelled to enter the fray to shore up a teetering Congress. The Sonia Gandhi factor was not expected to cause much of a flutter given the initial BJP lead as well as the Congress apathy but the Nehru charisma is something else and as South Asia knows, we believe in generational politics. Moreover, in South Asia, widows and daughters of dead Presidents/PMs seem to have special place of appeal to the electorate, e.g. Srimavo Bandranaike, Chandrika Kamaratunga, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Khaleda Zia and Hasina Wajed. Instead of her Italian lineage becoming a handicap as the BJP had hoped when it attacked her on this count as a “foreigner”, it was counter-productive crowd-puller. In the eastern culture a girl is believed to be adopted by the husband’s family. In their panic the BJP resorted to overkill and thus messed up in its attempts to counter the Sonia Gandhi factor, giving the minorities and regional voters a reason to rally around the Congress, something which they were finding it almost impossible to do under the present Congress President Sita Ram Kesri, a superb wheeler-dealer behind the scenes but no ball of fire as a charismatic leader in the South Asia mould. And why has Sonia Gandhi entered the cauldron? On Rajiv’s death, her children Rahul and Priyanka were still young, too early to enter politics. She gambled that Congress would survive as an entity till they came of age and made their own decision to join politics or otherwise. The prospect of being shut out by a BJP victory and a revival of the Bofors scandal galvanized her into action. Earlier she state-managed the downfall of the UF Government from behind the scenes through Sitaram Kesri in order to keep wraps on the Bofors issue. To keep it a closed matter she must ensure BJP remains out of power by emerging as a king-maker for the Coalition that comes to power.

The Sonia Gandhi factor is likely to raise Congress from its estimated count in the 130s to maybe about 180, the increases coming mostly at the cost of the United Front, significantly also some projected BJP seats. As the party getting the third place in number of seats the last time around, Congress felt compelled to support UF from outside the government, as the second largest majority they should be able to convince the UF to form a coalition government with them or give it the same support they did for the UF the last time around. BJP may be given first crack at forming the government, it is also apparent that the Congress and the UF, whatever their differences, would never allow a BJP government over their combined majority. Bihar’s Laloo Prasad Yadav remains a wild card, what he does with his projected 20-25 bloc of seats may tilt the balance in BJP’s favour. Pakistan would be much happier with a BJP Government, at least we would know where we stand with them. Furthermore, after years of Muslims being labelled as fanatics, it would be interesting to see how the west copes with Hinduism’s class-ridden viciously parochial society where human beings are not considered equal, in fact a vast majority of men and women are considered untouchable. As individuals or in coalition, Congress and/or the UF victory will mean more of what Pakistan has faced for the past 50 years. A BJP Government would show the Hindutva movement for the extremists that they are and take the camouflage off the face of rabid nationalism based on religious obduracy of the most blatant kind.

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