Making India Hindu:
Community, Conflict, and the Politics of Democracy.
Preface to the Second Edition.
Oxford University Press, Delhi. Fall 2004.
(prepublication semi-final
draft)
Conceived in
the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition, Making India Hindu
compiles writing by thirteen scholars in various disciplines that elucidates
genealogies, politics and affects of Hindu majoritarianism. This edition
reprints the original volume exactly as it appeared in 1996, but its context
has changed dramatically since then. We had composed the volume to help explain
how Hindutva rose to prominence after 1980, but now the book can also help to
explain how Hindutva operates inside India’s political mainstream.
In
1999, the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) became the leading party in a National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
coalition government that held power until May 2004. By leading India’s first major non-Congress national government, Prime
Minister Vajpayee and colleagues opened a new political era. The BJP outgrew
its underdog identity. The Sangh Parivar came
center-stage in national life. The NAD included as many as twenty-four parties,
so the BJP was not as dominant as Congress had been for thirty years after
1947. The BJP was in fact a new kind of dominant party as a pivot of national
coalition building. Its Sangh brethren the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) also
moved from margins to mainstream by occupying the Prime Minister’s office and
all national ministries. Hindutva acquired official respectability as a
national party ideology.
This volume
indicates that Hindutva was here to stay in 1996, despite its precarious
fortunes, small minority backing, and long history on the sidelines. When we
compiled the book, we could not have known how Hindutva would fare in the
future. Now we have a better idea. Since 1996, our topics have become more complex
and challenging. Themes, analysis, arguments, and information in this book have
acquired new value amidst the national and international mainstreaming of
Hindutva and the capture of institutions by its devotees and collaborators,
which makes it academic study more difficult and more critical.
Our
new context includes many old trends and patterns. The upward trend of BJP
power continued into the new millennium, with one dip following Ayodhya violence and another larger dip at the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, which may
mark a shift in the trend, but only time will tell. Essays in this volume (by T.Sarkar, M.Hasan, R.Fox, and S.Sarkar) show how Hindutva’s spreading and deepening influence has draw
sustenance from cultural trends that permeate modern Indian history and from
multifarious media that propagate Hindutva (R.Davis, V.Farmer, W.Pinch, and P.Manuel). The Sangh Parivar has
attended especially to cultivating Hindutva public culture. The Rath Yatra now seems but one episode in an epic Sangh media
blitz, where Ram, kar sevaks, rioters, police, judges, sadhus, journalists, movie stars, novelists,
publishers, priests, scholars, politicians, and even the Archaeological Survey
of India -- which claimed to have found remnants of a temple under the Babri
Masjid -- all play parts. Hindutva is media-savvy and hi-tech; it floods the
worldwide web.
With
the BJP in power in New Delhi, the media’s professional penchant for quoting
people in high office propagated Hindutva ideas on every subject of public
interest, while Sangh researchers and communicators worked the gamut of
information venues from ministry briefings to broadsheets, bestsellers, and
academic tomes. Public and private sponsors finance academic research,
teaching, and publishing, to give Hindutva with many voices, in many languages,
in India and abroad.
The Sangh took control of countless government agencies and offices,
doling out public as well as private funds.
In New Delhi, in all Indian states, and in districts, towns and
villages, RSS cadres educated, inspected, recommended, promoted, and assigned
public servants. The Sangh captured the Indian Council of Historical Research
and Ministry of Education to make government schoolbooks and exams require
students to learn that Hinduism is indigenously Indian and that Islam and
Christianity are aliens. Government schools enforced the idea that Muslims and
Christians conquered and exploited Hindu India. Official Hindutva gave
communalism cultural validity that made Hindu violence against Muslims seem a
natural manifestation of Hindu rage.
International
trends have continued to inflect Hindu majoritarianism. Indian politics are
increasingly sensitive to India’s experience of globalization. WTO negotiations and
world markets now affect Indian politics along with the US war on terrorism. Hindutva seems to have benefited
particularly from the inflammation of Indian relations with Pakistan after Kargil and terrorist
attacks on Indian Parliament. US wars in Muslim countries enhanced US support for the NDA and BJP support in America, where Indian lobbyists found the BJP a natural ally
as the NDA claimed Kashmir was under attack by the same Muslim terrorists who
threatened America.
Ethno-religious chauvinism in other countries has made Hindutva seem
more credible and Hindu-Muslim conflict part of a global clash of
civilizations. On the other hand,
mounting desires in India for peace with Pakistan, for a peaceful world business climate, and for India to play a constructively independent leadership role
-- for example, in poor country WTO alliances -- would seem to diminish the
desirability of ethno-chauvinist Hindutva ideology among India’s national leadership.
Inside India, Hindutva long ago settled into the bumpy roller
coaster and dizzying vote calculus of the world’s largest, most diverse
democracy. Hindutva’s political geography continues
to distinguish the BJP northern heartland states -- toured by the Rath Yatra in 1990 (R.Davis) -- from southern and northeastern states, which
remain BJP frontiers. Most media analysts of Indian politics continue to focus
on the national opposition of BJP and Congress, but head-to-head battles
between Congress and BJP typify elections only in eight states (Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal
Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, and
Chhattisgarh) plus Delhi, while other patterns of party competition typify
twenty-one states with three-fourths of India’s population.
2004
elections established a Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
government in New
Delhi. But six
months earlier, the BJP toppled Congress in Legislative Assembly elections in
Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh. Thus in December 2003, the number
of BJP-run states increased from four to seven; the percent of India’s
population in BJP-run states increased 47%; and the percent of the population
under BJP regimes in the states with head-to-head BJP-Congress battles jumped
from 19% to 70%. In May 2004, the
percent of voters living in Indian states with BJP (25%) and Congress (27%)
governments was about equal, while almost half (48%) of the Indian citizenry
lived in states run by neither Congress nor BJP, in northeast (Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram, Sikkim), south (Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu)
and north (Bihar, West Bengal, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh).
In aggregate
national voting statistics, BJP and Congress are evenly matched. Both depend on allies to win. In 2004 Lok Sabha polls, each alliance
received about 35% of the total vote, and total votes
for NDA and UDA parties declined compared to 1999 (by 3.62% and 2.36%,
respectively), while non-aligned parties increased their vote share, most
notably the Bahujan Samaj
Party (BSP) in UP. The 2004 change in national government came not from a voter
shift away from the BJP but from a few key Congress victories and many good
Congress alliances with victorious regional parties, which together with
“outside support” gave the UDA over 320 Lok Sabha votes, more than the NDA ever had, and drove the NDA
into Lok Sabha minorities
in all but five Indian states.
The
UDA is much bigger than Congress is strong.
Congress remains marginal in major states -- Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu
-- while its votes continue to dip in Karnataka. The only big Congress
victories in 2004 were in Andhra Pradesh and Delhi. Shifty allies swell the UDA. Several partners had joined the non-BJP,
non-Congress United Front government in the 1990s, and one, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhakam (DMK), had joined the NDA. Alliance shifting makes sense for regional parties
that care more about regional rivals than about national leadership, as most
emphatically in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.
Communist parties in West Bengal and Kerala disdain both BJP and
Congress, but more so the BJP, and thus can live with Congress as outside
supporters to bolster the UDA.
The UDA
government, like its NDA predecessor, depends on decisions by voters an politicians who seem to respond most visibly to
short-term assessments of practical self-interest. Expert analysts attribute
electoral success increasingly to effective promises of good government and now
typically argue that ideologies are of decreasing importance compared to
perceptions of politicians’ competence to serve voters. For example, when
Sheila Dixit’s Delhi government won, in 2003, experts attributed her
success to her reputation for the efficient provision of public services,
earned by keeping onion prices in line at election time and by launching the
Delhi Metro (a project begun under the BJP). In 2003, successful BJP candidates
in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh castigated Congress failures to
deliver development, but the BJP also adorned voter self-interest with
resplendent saffron. Holy men sermonized that the RSS guaranteed good
government. Hindutva superstars Uma Bharathi and Vasundhara Raje rallied voters and became BJP Chief Ministers in
Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Sangh Parivar cadres covered Chhattisgarh to
convince Adivasis that tangible pay-offs would reward
BJP votes. The BJP promise that good government serves the Hindu majority has
acquired a viable niche in Indian politics. L.K. Advani
duly proclaimed that 2003 election victories endorsed good governance by the
BJP and NDA.
The BJP
believed Advani, the media believed the BJP, and the
BJP believed the media; so the BJP called early 2004 Lok
Sabha elections, and lost. The NDA’s “India
Shining” advertising campaign flopped among voters left in the dark by
liberalization, globalization, and hi-tech development policies. In Andhra
Pradesh, high unemployment rates led educated young urban voters into the
Congress camp. In Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and
Karnataka, shortages of drinking water and irrigation sent villagers to
Congress and its allies. In Bihar, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) alliance, led by Laloo Yadav, rallied lower castes by promising dignity, not “bijli, sadak aur paani” (electricity,
roads, and water), but a victorious Laloo also
demanded that government restore farm subsidies and lower kerosene and diesel
prices. In 2004, the voting majority apparently
believed that the incumbent NDA had failed to provide adequate practical
benefits, and so the UDA came to power as a collection of opposition candidates
rallied around Congress.
Political
economy wedged itself between Hindutva and voter interests. This poses a
dilemma for those who would make India Hindu. Most poignantly, the BJP has lost
more ground in UP, where the VHP dream of building a Ram temple in Ayodhya realistically requires a BJP government. In 1990,
Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav
stopped assaults on Ayodhya with police shootings,
and two years later, Kalyan Singh’s BJP government
let kar sevaks demolish the
Babri Masjid, but then again, in 2003, Chief Minister Mulayam
Singh Yadav arrested 30,000 kar
sevaks en route to Ayodhya. In the early 1990s it seemed the BJP might
win UP by making Ram an electoral force.
But ever since, the BJP has lost ground to regional parties representing
numerically predominant agrarian castes.(Z.Hasan) In 2004, the BSP and Samajwadi
Party (SP) together won 54 of UP’s 80 Lok Sabha seats and BJP seats dropped from 25 to 10, one more
than Congress retained from 1999, to maintain its minority status amidst BJP
decline. In 2004, the BJP even lost Thakurs and Brahmans who had previously controlled the UP
sector of the BJP heartland, and who defected to the SP and Congress,
respectively.
Anti-incumbent
victories tarnished the BJP’s saffron glow in 2004,
but the Hindutva synergy of practical self-interest and religious passion may
again do effective political work when the Sangh Parivar finds suitable targets.(A.Basu) Such targeting often
entails violence. Indeed, saffron never looked more like political gold than in
2002 and 2003, when it colored communal violence, election campaigns,
subsistence struggles, faction feuds, criminal gangs, and personal ambitions,
all at once.
Once again,
as in 1992, the targeting of Muslims in 2002 occurred in a BJP-run state, this
time, Gujarat. On the morning of 27 February, a crowd of Muslim
protesters surrounded the Sabarmati Express at the Godhra rail station and someone burned two bogeys, killing
fifty-eight people, mostly kar sevaks returning
from Ayodhya. Even now, the
cause of the fire is unproven, but on that very day, Gujarat Chief
Minister Narendra Modi came
to Godhra to declare it a Muslim conspiracy. The next
day, well-armed, organized gangs began raping, plundering, and killing Muslims
across Gujarat. Several thousand Muslims died; many thousands lost
homes and livelihoods. BJP governments in Gujarat and Delhi did very little to stop the mayhem as local officials
colluded in attacks on Muslims. Police, lawyers, judges, and thugs then stymied
prosecution of rapists, arsonists, and murders. In the famous case of Best
Bakery murders, the Supreme Court observed on 12 April 2004 that, “When a large
number of witnesses have turned hostile it should have raised a reasonable
suspicion that the witnesses were being threatened or coerced … [and yet] …
public prosecutors did not take any steps to protect the star witness….” Thwarting
prosecutions that implicate government became easy as the BJP romped to victory
in 2003 state assembly elections under Narendra Modi’s campaign slogan, “Gujarat Unlimited,” promising law
and order and investment opportunities for jubilant business supporters.
Gujarat killings
represent a distinctively new cultural moment in the long history of Indian
communal violence. (S.Freitag, P.van
der Veer.)
Sikh massacres in 1984 were targeted politically, but quite limited by
comparison. In 1992, the Ayodhya assault was planned but the widespread violence
that followed was not, and Hindus and Muslims attacked one another haphazardly
across many Indian states, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. By contrast, Gujarat mobs targeted Muslims across the state and mass killings acquired a
definite appearance of deliberate strategy. Human Rights Watch researchers quickly
concluded that, "What happened in Gujarat was not a
spontaneous uprising,” but rather, “a carefully orchestrated attack…. planned
in advance and organized with extensive participation of the police and state
government officials." Moreover,
Ayodhya violence had cost the BJP dearly in 1993 polls in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya
Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh, but in 2002 and 2003,
the BJP and allies won Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, where
voters seem at that moment to have accommodated state-assisted killings in
positive assessments of the BJP’s capacity to serve
voter interests. Narendra Modi’s
protection of Hindus made him a model of good saffron governance.
Investor-friendly BJP leaders won praise from big business, for instance, at a Bombay gala celebrating “Gujarat Unlimited” where one tycoon
reportedly dismissed Gujarat killings as “a storm in a teacup.”
Gujarat massacres
again raise the question posed by Amrita Basu in this
book of whether we should understand Hindutva as a
top-down “elite conspiracy” or bottom-up “mass movement.” As she argues, some combination of the two is
required. Today, the top-down approach now has higher heights to climb, deeper
depths to plumb, and more intermediary linkages to explore than it did in 1996.
Consider the career of one RSS man, L.K.Advani. In 1977-80, he served the Jana Sangh as
Minister of Information and Broadcasting under India’s first non-Congress national government, led by the Janata Party. In the 1980s, he became BJP strategist for
the Ayodhya campaign. In 1990, he rode the Rath Yatra on a
route planned by RSS comrade, Narendra Modi. In 1992, he rallied mobs to destroy the Babri Masjid.
In 1999, he became Home Minister, and in 2002, Deputy Prime Minister. A man who rode a truck around India, posing as Ram, sparking riots and courting arrest to
catch media attention -- who could have faced criminal indictment for
instigating communal violence -- became the national minister responsible for
law and order. Soon thereafter, violence
against Christians escalated and provoked murders of missionaries. His response
was not to condemn or prosecute but to call for a national dialogue on
religious conversion. The RSS justification of religious minority killing as a
defensive response by an aggrieved Hindu majority thus entered the highest
ranks of Indian state authority. This mode of moral reasoning seeped down to
the grassroots under the NDA regime, most thoroughly in Gujarat, the state
ruled longest by the BJP, where in 2002, Advani’s old
RSS colleague, Chief Minister Modi, reportedly
stopped police from suppressing what he called “the Hindu backlash,” declaring,
“there would be justice for Godhra.”
Top-down
analysis must investigate intermediate levels and linkages though which
top-down mobilization activates the grassroots, as bottom-up approaches explore
not only specific localities but also upward connections. Some pervasive
cultural elements facilitate linkages from top to bottom. Nationalism is one.
Ethnic and religious cultural identities are also active at all levels of
politics. Globalization has spread the discourse of market freedom and
consumerism during a worldwide replacement of state redistributive institutions
by growth-centred, market-based economic policies. A
new field of opportunity has thus opened up for competitive activists at all
levels of politics. Who flourishes in this field of opportunity -- when, where,
why, how, and to what effect -- is a pressing concern for scholars. Rather than
imagining that obedient party funtionaries form links
between India’s national elite and local grassroots, it is more
realistic to imagine a floating population of acquisitive actors seeking
opportunity from various sources at all levels.
In India today, the top and bottom levels of politics are
intricately connected. Under BJP governments, local Hindutva shock troops
swelled as elite Sangh Parivar leaders bought recruits among poor Dalits and Adivasis who played
prominent roles in Gujarat. The BJP has used flexible top-down strategies to
court local interests: it has tactically highlighted and downplayed Hindutva
and deployed Sangh brethren who suit the task, according to local context. Its
economic policy makers use Swadeshi to attract weak,
defensive capitalists and farmers, and they use free-market globalization to
attract aggressive capitalists and urban consumers. The contemporary
development mantra of “growth above all” works at many levels: it suits most
Indian parties, as well as the World Bank, IMF, major Indian capitalists,
overseas investors, and India’s expansive urban middle class, whose share of
national wealth has steadily increased along with its support of Hindutva.
Voters,
campaigners, and coalitions form flexible linkages between top and bottom
levels of Indian politics, making any so-called ruling party in Delhi much less powerful than it seems. Congress and BJP alike bow to a economic policy framed by the World Bank. They both operate amidst trends of weakening
state power, coalition dependency, regional party fracture, and votes floating
free of party loyalty. Yet national power is an asset that BJP and Congress can
use to move the tenor of Indian politics one way or another. The NDA did its best to use that power to
make India Hindu. It remains to be seen what the UDA can do to alter that
trend. Good indicators might be
prosecution of criminal cases stemming from Gujarat massacres and effective amelioration of the victim’s suffering. In any case, politicians at the pinnacle of
national power remain hostage to shifting loyalties among voters and
politicians who remain targets of opportunity for the opposition.
Research
on Hindutva thus needs to focus attention not only on the Sangh Parivar but
also on everyday environs that imbue Hindutva with diffuse meaning and
substance. Scholars need to look closely at where Hindutva takes root,
prospers, withers, dies, lives in surrogates, or never arrives. Places to study
include foreign sites, which we barely touch upon here. In the US, Republican Hindutva is growing. Elsewhere too, ethno-religious bigotry
dissolves, merges, and mutates into other idioms. 2004 elections in India suggest that struggles against Hindutva may not be
its undoing and that Sangh Parivar activism does not guarantee its own success.
Hindutva may not be one singular thing at all, but rather disparate bits of
ideology lumped together by specific groups in specific times and places.
Hindutva has many histories, and maybe as many
meanings as locations. We might usefully imagine Hindutva as being like the
NDA, a pragmatic alliance of disparate forces, coming together in some
settings, under its own media spotlight, only to fragment and dissipate
elsewhere. Hindutva may find various
sources of support under Congress-led government, as it has in the past.
We
should think about Gujarat not only as an Indian state where the Sangh Parivar
mobilized genocide and won elections, but also as a place where local,
regional, national, and global influences converged to generate those outcomes.
Here and elsewhere, BJP voters have had diverse motivations, options, and
strategies, and by itself, Hindutva does not explain much. Various trends help
to explain Gujarat killings and their immediate election aftermath.
In the
1980s and 1990s, the Gujarat textile sector collapsed, and in Ahmedabad
alone, over 100,000 unemployed industrial workers hit the streets. At least a
million people found their family incomes and subsistence security dramatically
reduced. This impoverishment came with retrenchment that also made workers more
dispensable and insecure in villages and towns across Gujarat. For decades, industrial unions
had served a culturally diverse urban working class. Under the flexible
production regime fostered by liberalization and globalization, the state
abandoned its commitment to industrial workers, reduced the role of unions, and
boosted business profits along with economic growth. Improving the business climate became the
central government concern. At the same time, the organization directly serving
Dalit interests, the Dalit
Panthers, collapsed. Growing economic
disparities among Dalits pulled potential leaders
away to pursue enterprise in the entry ranks of the middle class. Meanwhile,
thriving middle class and business families financed Hindu sectarian
organizations that promoted Hindu unity with Sanskritization,
which stressed patriarchal authority to raise the status of low caste families.
Many Hindu organizations embraced the RSS, helped the BJP win elections, and
won patronage in return. Also in the 1990s, far from the city, conflict arose
between Adivasis and Muslim moneylenders. To repay
usurious loans at 120% annual interest, many Adivasis
fell into petty crime, including liquor smuggling in India’s only prohibition state.
Free-market
insecurity, fear, ambition, poverty, class anger, criminality, patriarchy, and
communalism joined hands when Sangh Parivar recruiters used spiritual,
political, and business connections to procure support from Dalits
and Adivasis by giving jobs, loans, and other
assistance. After the deadly spark at Godhra -- a
place with a local history of Hindu aggression -- Adivasis
killed Muslims in villages all around Godhra. Thus at one stroke killers eliminated the Adivasis’ creditors and the Banias’
Muslim competitors. In towns and cities
across Gujarat, Dalits looted Muslim shops
and homes, to reap the plunder of class war as they liberated real estate for
Hindu investors. Well-heeled high caste women in high heels followed mobs into
broken Muslim shops for riot season bargain hunting, while most of the middle
class stayed home with doors locked. Fearing violence, even the Sabarmati Ashram, founded by Mahatma Gandhi, closed its
gates to Muslims fleeing killer mobs. Mass rapes drove Muslim families from
villages and neighborhoods in disgrace and fear. Muslims then stayed away from
the polls. In 2002, the 55% BJP electoral majority in Gujarat included people who engaged in pogroms, people who feared them, and
people who only valued economic stability they attributed to the BJP
regime.
Gujarat may be unique. Its record of communal violence
certainly is: the Justice Reddy Commission found almost 3,000 Gujarat incidents of communal violence in the 1960s alone. Events in Gujarat may indicate nothing about India. Each Indian state has a specific collection of local
and regional issues, factions, and social forces. International influences
arrive in each state differently. Law and order and economic development are
primarily state subjects. Language, culture, and history inscribe state borders
with potent meanings. At Lok Sabha election time, each
state seems disconnected from others and connected only to New Delhi. Each Legislative Election operates in its own
universe. As a result, national
strategists must target each state separately. State politicians must look up
to New Delhi and down to localities, but not across state lines.
In this context, most Indian parties remain state-bound.
We can thus reasonably
imagine two very different Indias. One is unitary. In this India, the line between top and bottom of the political
system is variously complex, state-by-state, but all localities are
influentially connected to the central government. In this unitary India, Congress and BJP contest the future. Another India, however, is composed of regions. State borders so
heavily transect lines connecting Centre and localities that each state
constitutes a separate polity. In this regional India, national trends are illusive, deceptive, or
irrelevant; only state politics matter, even as each state is separately
connected to the Centre.
A
combination of top-down and bottom-up views of unitary and regional India forms a useful perspective for studying Hindutva. In
a top-down view of unitary India, the BJP and Congress fight for national supremacy
and for power to define Indian nationalism.
A bottom-up view of unitary India reveals, however, that neither Congress nor BJP
nationalism holds voters’ loyalty. Voters easily defect. Hindu and secular
loyalties bind a small proportion of voter.
Most BJP voters ignore Hindutva and many Congress voters could embrace
Hindutva. Combining top-down and bottom-up views of unitary India, we can
conclude that national struggles for political power depend on combinations of
ideology and performance, and that India now demands a national coalition
government that appears to deliver benefits of economic development to the
voting majority. BJP and Congress
provide two different styles of national leadership, which lean Right and Left,
respectively, but are both malleable in the face of bottom-up demands and
obstacles.
By contrast,
a top-down view of regional India pictures the BJP and Congress as regional parties
vying for votes in regional languages from people in regionally specific local
communities. The BJP thrived initially only in states where no other regional
party emerged to oppose Congress. In UP, the BJP faded as soon as indigenous
regional parties rose to challenge Congress. Only in Gujarat has the BJP become truly indigenous and dominant. Most states remain
fertile for BJP and Congress alliances.
In a bottom-up view of regional India, only local issues and people matter; BJP and
Congress are abstract representations of a distant national administration. In
localities, voters have more to think about than voting, and party strength
comes from the toil and influence of local activists who address a range of
local concerns. Internal diversity inside regions has led to an increasing
fragmentation and localization of regional parties.
Combining
top-down and bottom-up views of regional India, we can see that the Sangh Parivar promotes Hindu
unity to attach Hindu identities to BJP votes. By targeting Muslim or Christian
adversaries -- even in such symbolic settings as cricket matches or beauty
pageants -- the Sangh Parivar generates a group feeling and public appearance
of Hindu unity. When local conflicts of any kind become communal, they
advertise the RSS idea that India is still wracked by Hindu failure to purify Bharat as a Hindu homeland. Metaphorically, communal
conflict anywhere affirms that Hindu India lives forever at odds with its alien
others.
This volume
shows how social conflict attending social change has produced sites for
communal mobilization since the days of the Cow Protection Movement. (S.Freitag, R.Fox, S.Sarkar) The salience of social change for communalism
increased in the 1970s, when a Home Ministry study concluded that “the
persistence of serious social and economic inequalities in the rural areas has
given rise to tensions between different classes which may lead to a situation
where the discontented elements are compelled to organise
themselves and the extreme tensions building up with the ‘complex molecule’
that is the Indian village may end in an explosion.” Potentially explosive localities provide the
Sangh Parivar targets of opportunity for mobilizing communal antagonism. To
understand such sites, we had best abandon the idea that each locality is a
miniature of the Indian nation. For in
addition to regional identities, localities inhabit spaces that open across
international borders. Gujarat would not be Gujarat without Gujaratis overseas.
Under globalization,
localities experience social, economic, and cultural trends that escape the
nation. In this perspective, we can study places inside and outside India,
side-by-side, and we find that violent discrimination against minorities
typifies many countries, rich and poor alike, in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the
Americas. We can also find opposition to ethnic chauvinism in other countries
with lessons for India. For example, in nearby Bangladesh, Jyotrinda Bodhipriya has long struggled against Bengali domination as
Chairman of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Regional Council, and on 22 December 2003, he called for securing minority rights by saying,
“Only a secular, progressive and democratic system of government can ensure the
equal rights of all citizens.”
The future
of Hindutva will unfold inside social change that no one controls. Activists
who would design India’s future navigate history with at best a precarious picture of their
own location and with no means to escape events pushing this way and that. Scholars
can help by providing perspective. We
can never rise above history’s turbulence. We can never be non-partisan. We can
merely work to identify people, forces, interventions, effects, and
trajectories that help to explain where history is moving and why. We hope this
new edition of Making India Hindu helps to establish a useful
perspective for those who would improve our future.
Additional
supplementary material and updates are available at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dludden/hindutva. I thank Shapan Adnan, Amrita Basu, Victoria
Farmer, Bela Malik, Thomas
Mathew, Dina Siddiqi, and Narendra
Subramanian for insight and information
that I have used liberally here. I thank
all the authors in this volume and numerous other correspondents, including Ashok Chowgule, for improving the
additional bibliography.
David Ludden
Dhaka
15 August 2004