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Slouching Toward Ayodhya. From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics
The three essays in this volume, focussing respectively on the international, national and regional aspects of Hindutva, provide three successive pictures of Hindutva, each, as it were, closer up than the one before, each probing progressively deeper into its dynamics. They analyse the structural basis, historical roots and political entrenchment of Hindutva, and assess the size of the task before the forces who oppose it.
163 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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About the author
Radhika Desai
19 books40 followersRadhika Desai is Professor of Political Studies at the University of Manitoba, Canada. She is the author of Slouching Towards Ayodhya (Three Essays Collective, 2004) and Geopolitical Economy (Pluto, 2013).
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April 19, 2016
In 2002, Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujurat during a series of murderous pogroms and riots against Muslims.
'About 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, are killed. Some 20,000 Muslim homes and businesses and 360 places of worship are destroyed, and roughly 150,000 people are displaced.
The two biggest massacres are in Naroda Patiya, where more than 90 people are killed, and at the Gulbarg Society, a Muslim housing complex where a rumor encouraged by a World Hindu Council leader incites a mob. Muslims take refuge in the home of Ehsan Jafri, a former member of Parliament from the Indian National Congress party. While the attacks continue for more than six hours, Mr. Jafri calls a number of influential people for help, but none arrive. Sixty-nine people are killed, including Mr. Jafri, who is hacked to pieces and burned.
There are widespread allegations that the B.J.P., which leads the state of Uttar Pradesh and the national governing party, and the World Hindu Council — both part of the same Hindu nationalist family — were complicit and in some cases instigated the mobs. The party and the council both deny the charges.
The day after the train attack, for example, police officers in Ahmedabad do not arrest a single person among the tens of thousands of angry Hindus.
A top state official tells one investigation panel that Mr. Modi ordered officials to take no action against rioters. That official was murdered. Thousands of cases against rioters are dismissed by the police for lack of evidence despite eyewitness accounts. [1]
In 2014, Modi becomes Prime-Minister of India after the BJP sweep the board at the elections. What's important here is that although the BJP had been in power at the national level before, this was the first time they had returned with a majority.
Desai's book provides an accessible outline and analysis of the global, national and regional factors that have led to ascent of Hindu chauvinism in contemporary Indian politics, it's class basis, and why, without serious resistance, it won't be disappearing anytime soon.
From essay 3 - Hindutva's Gujarat: The Image of India's Future? (2002)
'However, Gujarat and Western India in general, which have witnessed the development of fairly strong support for Hindutva in recent decades, are, in another sense, categorically different from the Hindi heartland. In contrast to the bulk of the regions comprising the latter, Western India is in the forefront of capitalist industrial development in the country. Barring Maharashtra, Gujarat has been the most industrialised state in the country. Maharashtra's still large peasant agriculture, and vast backward regions, dilute the gains of Hindutva in this region. Furthermore, much of its industry and finance are concentrated in Bombay which has greater organic links with Gujarati capitalism than with Maharashtrian. From this point of view, Gujarat's geographical specificity may lie not just in the peculiarities of its socio-cultural heritage – its caste and communal structure and what not. These are undoubtedly important, but they acquire their political salience within a larger context of its contemporary political economy.
Gujarat is paradigmatic of the politics of Hindutva in its intersection with successful development. As such, it may well mirror the country's future. Gujarat has been simply ahead in the form of capitalist development combined with upper and middle caste and class Hindu assertion which has become so widely accepted as the way for India.
It would not be too fanciful, I think, to see Gujarat's place within the emergence of Hindutva in India as analogous to that which Marx attributed to England within the larger context of the development of capitalism in Europe. In his preface to the first edition of Capital, he warned Germans not to feel superior of sanguine about the depredations of capitalist development in England:
'The physicist either observes physical phenomena where they occur in their most typical form and most free from disturbing influence, or, wherever possible, he makes experiments under conditions that assure the occurrence of the phenomenon in its normality. In this work I have to examine the capitalist mode of production, and the conditions of production and exchange corresponding to that mode. Up to the present time, their classic ground is England. That is the reason why England is used as the chief illustration in the development of my theoretical ideas. If, however, the German reader shrugs his shoulders at the condition of the English industrial and agricultural labourers, or in optimist fashion comforts himself with the thought that in Germany things are not nearly so bad; I must plainly tell him, “De te fabula narratur!” [It is of you that the story is told. – Horace]
Will the tale of Gujurat be that of India? Political predictions are a mug's game. We can, however, trace the logic of developments and try to see where, uncontested, they might well lead.
Prima facie. The phenomenon of Gujarat having become the avowed 'laboratory' of Hindutva seems incredible, counter-intuitive. The land of the Mahatma? That paragon of Congress culture? The famously civil society of Gujarat, with its peaceable commercial culture of centuries? The Gujarat of civic and welfare associations? More approximately, the turn toward Hindutva in the 1990's seems very surprising after the 1980's during which two successive Congress governments sat in Gandhinagar. During this decade, the vote share of the Congress was back over 50%, and in the State Assembly of 1985 the Congress almost bested the highest ever vote it had ever got in the state – 55.55% compared with 57% in the 1957 elections. And even the record of the 1990's, when the BJP has indeed emerged as the most powerful force in the state, does not seem unambiguous. Civic elections to local bodies two years' into the BJP's term produced strong majorities for the Congress, majorities which have led people to take comfort in the prospect of a return to Congress to power in the state at the State Assembly elections due in 2003.
There is, however, an underlying story which these surface developments, and the electoral data focusing on nominal party performance, do not tell. It concerns the consolidation of an upper and middle caste/class constituency, and its hegemonisation by Hindutva. And there is a corresponding story of the relegation of Congress to a predominantly lower caste/class and minority constituency which it has correspondingly failed to secure and stabilize. This is the Gujarati version of a political Ramayana which has been playing all over the country. Its parameters are set by the main political developments which can be observed over half a century of liberal democratic politics in India. In Gujarat its outcome so far has been the hegemony of Hindutva, and Hindutva's murderous Ram Rajya. Will it be different elsewhere? Will it end here for Gujarat? Is another ending possible?
You can download a PDF of it here -
https://www.academia.edu/167749/Slouc...
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/20...
'About 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, are killed. Some 20,000 Muslim homes and businesses and 360 places of worship are destroyed, and roughly 150,000 people are displaced.
The two biggest massacres are in Naroda Patiya, where more than 90 people are killed, and at the Gulbarg Society, a Muslim housing complex where a rumor encouraged by a World Hindu Council leader incites a mob. Muslims take refuge in the home of Ehsan Jafri, a former member of Parliament from the Indian National Congress party. While the attacks continue for more than six hours, Mr. Jafri calls a number of influential people for help, but none arrive. Sixty-nine people are killed, including Mr. Jafri, who is hacked to pieces and burned.
There are widespread allegations that the B.J.P., which leads the state of Uttar Pradesh and the national governing party, and the World Hindu Council — both part of the same Hindu nationalist family — were complicit and in some cases instigated the mobs. The party and the council both deny the charges.
The day after the train attack, for example, police officers in Ahmedabad do not arrest a single person among the tens of thousands of angry Hindus.
A top state official tells one investigation panel that Mr. Modi ordered officials to take no action against rioters. That official was murdered. Thousands of cases against rioters are dismissed by the police for lack of evidence despite eyewitness accounts. [1]
In 2014, Modi becomes Prime-Minister of India after the BJP sweep the board at the elections. What's important here is that although the BJP had been in power at the national level before, this was the first time they had returned with a majority.
Desai's book provides an accessible outline and analysis of the global, national and regional factors that have led to ascent of Hindu chauvinism in contemporary Indian politics, it's class basis, and why, without serious resistance, it won't be disappearing anytime soon.
From essay 3 - Hindutva's Gujarat: The Image of India's Future? (2002)
'However, Gujarat and Western India in general, which have witnessed the development of fairly strong support for Hindutva in recent decades, are, in another sense, categorically different from the Hindi heartland. In contrast to the bulk of the regions comprising the latter, Western India is in the forefront of capitalist industrial development in the country. Barring Maharashtra, Gujarat has been the most industrialised state in the country. Maharashtra's still large peasant agriculture, and vast backward regions, dilute the gains of Hindutva in this region. Furthermore, much of its industry and finance are concentrated in Bombay which has greater organic links with Gujarati capitalism than with Maharashtrian. From this point of view, Gujarat's geographical specificity may lie not just in the peculiarities of its socio-cultural heritage – its caste and communal structure and what not. These are undoubtedly important, but they acquire their political salience within a larger context of its contemporary political economy.
Gujarat is paradigmatic of the politics of Hindutva in its intersection with successful development. As such, it may well mirror the country's future. Gujarat has been simply ahead in the form of capitalist development combined with upper and middle caste and class Hindu assertion which has become so widely accepted as the way for India.
It would not be too fanciful, I think, to see Gujarat's place within the emergence of Hindutva in India as analogous to that which Marx attributed to England within the larger context of the development of capitalism in Europe. In his preface to the first edition of Capital, he warned Germans not to feel superior of sanguine about the depredations of capitalist development in England:
'The physicist either observes physical phenomena where they occur in their most typical form and most free from disturbing influence, or, wherever possible, he makes experiments under conditions that assure the occurrence of the phenomenon in its normality. In this work I have to examine the capitalist mode of production, and the conditions of production and exchange corresponding to that mode. Up to the present time, their classic ground is England. That is the reason why England is used as the chief illustration in the development of my theoretical ideas. If, however, the German reader shrugs his shoulders at the condition of the English industrial and agricultural labourers, or in optimist fashion comforts himself with the thought that in Germany things are not nearly so bad; I must plainly tell him, “De te fabula narratur!” [It is of you that the story is told. – Horace]
Will the tale of Gujurat be that of India? Political predictions are a mug's game. We can, however, trace the logic of developments and try to see where, uncontested, they might well lead.
Prima facie. The phenomenon of Gujarat having become the avowed 'laboratory' of Hindutva seems incredible, counter-intuitive. The land of the Mahatma? That paragon of Congress culture? The famously civil society of Gujarat, with its peaceable commercial culture of centuries? The Gujarat of civic and welfare associations? More approximately, the turn toward Hindutva in the 1990's seems very surprising after the 1980's during which two successive Congress governments sat in Gandhinagar. During this decade, the vote share of the Congress was back over 50%, and in the State Assembly of 1985 the Congress almost bested the highest ever vote it had ever got in the state – 55.55% compared with 57% in the 1957 elections. And even the record of the 1990's, when the BJP has indeed emerged as the most powerful force in the state, does not seem unambiguous. Civic elections to local bodies two years' into the BJP's term produced strong majorities for the Congress, majorities which have led people to take comfort in the prospect of a return to Congress to power in the state at the State Assembly elections due in 2003.
There is, however, an underlying story which these surface developments, and the electoral data focusing on nominal party performance, do not tell. It concerns the consolidation of an upper and middle caste/class constituency, and its hegemonisation by Hindutva. And there is a corresponding story of the relegation of Congress to a predominantly lower caste/class and minority constituency which it has correspondingly failed to secure and stabilize. This is the Gujarati version of a political Ramayana which has been playing all over the country. Its parameters are set by the main political developments which can be observed over half a century of liberal democratic politics in India. In Gujarat its outcome so far has been the hegemony of Hindutva, and Hindutva's murderous Ram Rajya. Will it be different elsewhere? Will it end here for Gujarat? Is another ending possible?
You can download a PDF of it here -
https://www.academia.edu/167749/Slouc...
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/20...
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