‘Barah sau saal ki ghulami ki maansikta humein pareshan kar rahi hai. Bahut baar humse thoda ooncha vyakti mile, to sar ooncha karke baat karne ki humari taaqat nahin hoti hai.’

(The slave mentality of 1,200 years is troubling us. Often, when we meet a person of high stature, we fail to muster strength to speak up.)

– PM Narendra Modi (Lok Sabha, 9 June 2014)

 

GIVEN that there is a framework of battling ‘1200 years of slavery’, some may say enough time has not lapsed from just 2014 for a clear-eyed look. Possibly. But BJP’s innings at the Centre is readying for close of play. 2019 will be upon us in a year.

There are several prisms through which the ascent of the Republic’s first majority government in this millennium can be looked at. This essay hopes to discuss how ideas once regarded as fringe, too hot to be mainstreamed, as best put on the back-burner or officially set aside when the first BJP-led NDA government was formed in the mid-1990s, are now sought to be pushed into the heart of the Indian project – legally and formally. If fully successful, this would mark a fundamental shift in the discourse. Not just in the ‘narrative’, but the very idea of Indian citizenship too would change.

Three ‘core issues’, the repeal of Article 370, the construction of a Ram Mandir at Ayodhya and the Uniform Civil Code – themes that were central to the RSS commitment to politics in the late-eighties and the nineties – were seen well outside the pale of what was acceptable to other secular Indian parties. They are now sought to be pushed into the mainframe of the Indian system.

There is no denying that 2014 marked a major rupture in India’s political fabric. With a vote-seat multiplier of 1.67, the BJP bettered the Congress record of 1952, of 1.65.¹ The rupture was not only because India confronted a tireless and charismatic campaigner after a long time, but the ideology he represented. He was able to take along the BJP’s basic core support, add new numbers to it and push the combination way ahead of the finishing line.

Two dimensions of this rupture need to be considered – the kind of politics it represented and the way it was swung formed the basis of how the election was contested by those who won it. The naming of a CM as a ‘PM candidate’ with Narendra Modi’s relentless journeying/criss-crossing the country helped take the battle well beyond the boundaries of what was conventionally seen as BJP territory (North and western states). It is another matter that the seats won gave the BJP a majority almost purely on the basis of their sway over North India; of the 282 seats, three-fourths come from the North, central and western states. The plebiscitory nature of how the BJP managed to gain 12.3% over its 2009 vote share by adding another 166 seats makes for a riveting story, in particular the welding together of a formidable electoral machine and the innovative use of social media to create and sustain a buzz.

 

The BJP’s electoral victory march, however, did not quite end in 2014. The methods deployed in how subsequent elections were fought too deserve a brief mention as they continue to shape the Indian political landscape. KHAM, AJGAR or Harijan-Muslim-Brahmin – the success story of Indian politics is fertilized with innovative ways of stitching together groups, often disparate and possibly in social conflict as well, but joining hands to make common electoral ground.

But, in the case of the BJP, especially as exemplified in the victory in the UP state assembly in March 2017, the campaign went well beyond an overhauled and well oiled election machinery. The political mosaic was broken down and rearranged, but this time with consequences of an altogether different order. In UP, the call was not to bring together, but actively disregard and exclude certain groups in order to cement a loyal vote. For example, to actively court a non-Muslim vote (not one of the tickets in 403 seats was given to a Muslim), a non-Yadav backward vote and a non-Jatav Dalit vote signalled a new aggression and a desire to make politics out of older resentments, offering not conciliation but a regime excluding others. The long-term success of such a strategy remains to be seen.

Also, the aggression in the North East, deploying dubious ethical and strongarm measures to somehow wrest control of governments, as witnessed in Goa and Manipur or Bihar in 2017 represented the hunger for a ‘Congress mukt Bharat’, political innovation and an energy almost unprecedented so far.

The hows of campaigning, the deployment of new media techniques and the use of new online tools, combined with an effective and well resourced election winning strategy of offline engagement relying on cannibalizing people and resources picked from the opposition (witnessed in Hemanta Biswa Sarma or Mukul Roy or even N.D. Tiwari or S.M. Krishna) – no stone was left unturned to vacuum all available moss.

So while politics has changed in a visible way, and the BJP has led from the front, other, far more serious changes have been initiated which will have a deep impact on India and Indianness. The principle appears to be to devise means and methods to ensure that what was once seen as too radical to be countenanced, will soon have a law, a court order or something ‘constitutional’ to back it legally.

The process of the fringe being slowly drawn into the Indian system, is in progress.

 

The idea of India as a Hindu homeland has long been invoked indirectly by the BJP and its ideological ancestors and mentors. In more aggressive times this was done by calling all non-Hindus non-Indians and in calmer times by calling everyone who is an Indian a ‘Hindu’. Defining Hindutva as ‘a way of life’, the Supreme Court judgement in 1995 went some distance in vitiating the atmosphere, helping grow the acceptability of the phrase ‘Hindutva’. But now, an aggressive equating of citizenship with Hindu-ness is being witnessed.

At least two developments make it clear that the ‘cultural nationalism’ that L.K. Advani sought to advance as a proposition is unfolding with alarming speed – the project to define an Indian citizen differently.

 

A Bill introduced in 2016 seeks to amend the Citizenship Act 1955, to make illegal migrants who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, eligible for citizenship. This draws a link between citizenship and religion, a fundamental violation of Article 14; but more pointedly, it is about the Muslim being not quite Indian. The concept of an India where belonging or citizenship is not contingent on any sense of race, creed or religion – the fundamental offer of our transformational document, the Constitution – stands belied. Any push given to this understanding is not merely a blip of regress but a fundamental breach in the very idea of citizenship that India offers.

Another set of events, of settling the question of the so-called ‘outsiders’ in Assam, while having its genesis in the 1980s, has experienced a quickening and a feverish pace ever since the BJP formed its first government in the state in May 2016. The D-voter (D for ‘Doubtful’) became prominent in 1997, but the advent of the BJP government has put the exercise in overdrive.

According to Guwahati-based lawyer Aman Wadud, till December 2016 a total of 4,68,934 cases were referred to various Foreigners Tribunal. Of them 2,69,522 cases were disposed off and 80,194 persons declared foreigners. Altogether 26,026 cases were decided ex parte. And till August 2017, the number of declared foreigners had gone up to 89,395.

The BJP being voted to power seems to have intensified the problem. Himanta Biswa Sarma campaigned in the assembly polls on the ground that in 35 seats, it was ‘Bangladeshi immigrants’ who were in a majority and Indians in a minority. The fact remains that in 35 seats Muslims are in a majority. This is nothing new, with ‘Bangladeshi infiltrators’ being an old BJP trope. But after the BJP won the elections in May 2016, Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal met all 100 members of the Foreigners Tribunal and said that they now had a golden opportunity to work for a national cause which they should not let go. In June, 19 members of the Foreigners Tribunals were shown the door for their ‘under-performance’ over the last two years.

 

Further, the home department also issued a strict warning to another 15 members of the Foreigners Tribunal, asking them to work more efficiently. The end game appears to be to locate more and more persons as foreigners, who are mostly, if not entirely, Muslim. More than a thousand people who have been declared ‘foreigners’ have already been detained in six detention centres across Assam. A large number of these so-called ‘foreigners’ placed in detention centres are women. Says Wadud, ‘Many will spend the rest of their life in detention without parole, as they will never be deported to Bangladesh. The Government of India has no treaty with Bangladesh, and Bangladesh will never accept Indian citizens held as "foreigner" or "Bangladeshi". Hence more people will end up in detention centres.’ India’s response to the Rohingya crisis, speaking in many voices, terming a whole set of people as ‘terrorists’ is another dog-whistle that fuels the sense of who an Indian is, based on how (s)he prays.

 

In a year that marks 25 years of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the dramatic shift in the mood and tenor around the Ayodhya issue – compared with the atmosphere in the country when the masjid was brought down – is evident. After years of the VHP speaking of the importance of aastha or faith, and ‘out of court’ settlement or dialogue as a way forward, BJP MP Subramanian Swamy (without any locus in the matter) has been persistently pressing the courts to hear the matter on a day-to-day basis. The matter – the appeals to the Allahabad High Court verdict (which partitioned the land into three) – was finally listed for an urgent hearing on 5 December. That did not take off, but the fact of it not being possible was milked to the utmost by leaders as high up as PM Modi in the Gujarat campaign. From saying that faith is not something that should be in the dock and in court, to insisting on a speedy trial, clearly betrays a growing confidence in getting the courts to green flag a key principle.

The attempts of Sri Sri Ravishankar to broker ‘negotiations’ may have been laughable, but what sent alarm bells ringing was the VHP’s assertion that there wasn’t any need for talks. It maintained that the temple would be made and that there was no space for a masjid there. The problem of dealing with a masjid that had been razed to the ground does not need a mob now, as courts, ‘mediation’, Parliament and the assembly – all institutions representing democracy – are theoretically united in speaking of building a temple; the title suit getting primacy over the demolition of the masjid cases, witnessed relatively recently by thousands, is a clear indicator.

The second of the ‘core issues’ having been put on the back-burner in an earlier avatar of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was Kashmir and the demand for the repeal of Article 370. Article 35A of the Indian Constitution, a provision that empowers the J&K legislature to define ‘Permanent Residents’ of the state, is a major hurdle to the assimilation project of the Hindu Right/BJP. Says Muzamil Jaleel, among the finest journalists and writers on Kashmir, ‘The Sangh and its affiliated groups have long viewed the Muslim majority demography of J&K as the primary problem – and believed that settling people from outside the state, with rights to acquire land and property, and the right to vote in assembly elections, is the only way to permanently end the Kashmir dispute.’

The matter reaching the courts courtesy an NGO affiliated with the RSS, and being fanned by the BJP in power, has again meant that another issue, once considered outside political consideration, is now sought to be presented as something that can get legal sanction – the idea that Kashmir must be ‘like any other state’. A Constitutional bench is to hear it and a repeal of this would mean that in many ways the spirit of the RSS/BJP demand to ensure that Kashmir’s special status is destroyed would be made possible – legally.

 

Uniform Civil Code (UCC) was also a core article of faith in the BJP scheme of things when it first came to power in 1998, but it was set aside in order to draw in other parties into the coalition, who were more reticent about the full embrace of an RSS agenda while wanting to enjoy power.

The Rajiv Gandhi years saw Parliament enact a law in 1986 to reverse a Supreme Court verdict awarding greater compensation to a Muslim divorcee, Shahbano, more than what Islamic law allowed. The move was seen as succumbing to pressure from the Muslim, male, right wing that made it possible.

 

The new enactment provided perfect grist to the mill for an enraged, ascendent Hindu right, already licking its wounds with Jawaharlal Nehru having managed to codify and modernize aspects of Hindu law (disabling multiple wives and enforce some modern inheritance laws). It was believed in 1956 that similar treatment would soon be meted to all personal laws, but the spectre of making Muslims insecure so soon after Partition always ended up postponing the day when modernizing Muslim personal law would be possible. ‘Shahbano’, throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, therefore, had become a slogan, shorthand for ‘Muslim appeasement’ which could perhaps be alleviated only by the enactment of a ‘UCC’ which would essentially translate as Hindu law for everybody.

In the current tenure of the Modi-led regime, the government while speaking in limited ways of the UCC, managed to draw focus on the terrible practice of instant ‘triple talaq’ amongst a section of Muslims. The Supreme Court’s attention to it – a five-judge Constitution bench outlawing it and then talk of a law to render it a non-bailable offence with a three year jail sentence – provided a perfect cover for using this as a campaign tool. PM Modi used it to the hilt in UP and continues to raise it as a campaign issue.

Yet, the talk of a UCC appears a cover. The Law Commission despite being presented with a draft UCC (with progressive secularization, gender sensitive) was careful to say that it does not want a UCC but modifications in personal law (read Islamic personal law). Yet, despite the Chairman of the Law Commission clarifying that was not being spoken of, modifications in personal law remains the desired aim.

 

The first stint of the NDA, a six year phase, brought with it a Constitution Review Commission headed by the former Chief Justice of India, M.N. Venkatachalaiah. The Indian Constitution adopted in 1950, granted the idea of citizenship to Indians irrespective of caste, creed, religion, colour or shape of the god prayed to, was an anathema to the Hindu right, which would have much preferred to mirror the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The RSS took till 2002 to fly the tricolour and continued to insist, even when public opinion was stridently against it, that Hindu and Indian were synonyms.

The Constitution Review Commission did not succeed in seeding the idea of rewriting the Constitution but provided vital clues to what the BJP saw as the end game. Of particular annoyance remain Articles 25 to 30. These fundamental rights ensure that democracy does not become about majoritarian rule. By ensuring nuanced and adequate support to demographically smaller groups so as to guarantee security to their identity, while melding into the larger idea of being Indian, has always enraged a traditional Hindutvawadi.

So with a full parliamentary majority for the first time ever in independent India, the business of rewriting the Constitution is, expectedly, already underway. Govindacharya, now back as a key ideologue for the Sangh says, ‘For instance, the 1946 Constituent Assembly was not instituted by the people who were in the interim government; it was initiated by the British at the start of the process in 1935. So the constitutional exercise also has its own background and naturally a dispassionate discussion on all that happened at the time is necessary.’

Speaking of how methods outside Parliament would be used to alter the Constitution, he elaborates: ‘First those who have studied the Constitution will come together. Then we will look at the social realities, and see how to incorporate them. For example, in "Bharatiya" society, family is the basic brick of society, and as in the Cuban Constitution, it is not the individual but family values that are crucial. Likewise, the exercise will begin to see what all can be included; it should not just be confined to issues like reservation.’

In the same interview, the dismissal of the radically modern Indian Constitution as ‘western’ is damning. ‘Our Constitution is so vague, non-specific and basically a continuation of western philosophies of Hobbes, Locke and Kant. It is individual-centric and focused on his physical well-being. Our civilization goes back 4,000-5,000 years.’²

The job of rewriting the Constitution, or hard-wiring Hindutva into what lawfully constitutes India and therefore changing the plumbing, is what those committed to a ‘Hindu Zion’ would want to do. Till then, though, there is the business of pushing crucial Hindutva slogans and principles into the law.

 

With the P-word having caught the fancy of academics and political theorists the world over, a raft of similarities between Donald Trump, Erdogan, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Narendra Modi and others are sought to be established. The failure of economics to deliver to the last woman in the line, being seen as responsible for anger and the desire to see populists go over and above processes and smash the ‘broken’ system to create a brave new world, are some of the popular explanations offered for the rise of ‘populists’.

Jan-Werner Muller’s much discussed What is Populism³ is a thoughtful though somewhat dense work. He identifies populists as critical of elites, anti-pluralist and as representing a form of identity politics. The emphasis remains on understanding the individuals who appear to ride the wave of discontent and anger.

The difference between the Indian experience and that of others might be critical. It lies in the deep wellsprings the BJP is unabashedly seeking to drink from. Narendra Modi is no Lone Ranger, but someone who has made a mark, drawing from the bounce of an old but durable trampoline. The strains in modern Indian politics that he represents may not have been the only reasons he won in 2014. But once having come to power, Narendra Modi is making sure those aspects get strengthened, and consequently will leave an indelible mark on the very shape of India.

The simplicity of this regime articulating ‘One Nation, One Language, One Election, One Man’ only reflects a turbulent encounter with an ideology and thought that was (mistakenly) believed to have been consigned to the bin after the Constitution was promulgated. Now, using political power and grievance of its varied people (for a variety of reasons) and bottling them all into one vial of Hindutva appears to be the target of the Modi regime. The coming year will see a quickened pace of the unmasking of the agenda. This may make it easier to recognize and therefore battle. Indian nationalism, a concept way beyond its time as it took shape in the 1940s, is currently facing its toughest ever challenge in the seven decades since independence.

 

Footnotes:

1. As pointed out by S. Palshikar, S. Kumar and S. Lodha in Electoral Politics in India: The Resurgence of the Bhartiya Janata Party. Routledge, Delhi, 2017.

2. https://thewire.in/43846/rss-ideologue-govindacharya-we-will-rewrite-the-constitution-to-reflect-bharatiyata/

3. Jan-Werner Müller, What is Populism? University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.