Politics in the times of hegemony
SUHAS PALSHIKAR
THE parliamentary elections of 2019 did not merely ensure a second term for the Modi government, its outcome also signalled three aspects: first, the near-complete takeover of the electoral arena by the BJP; second, the cluelessness of the BJP’s opponents about what this signifies; and third, a clear indication of the stabilization of a majoritarian approach to the nation and state. This essay seeks to elaborate the third factor.
Criticisms of Narendra Modi have been numerous. But it is not just about Modi the person; what has emerged over the past five years is a new regime altogether. We might call it the ‘Modi regime’ to underscore the central role he has played in its evolution, popularity and execution. Modi has made clear his ambition to usher in a ‘new’ India. Together with his style of politics, and the ideas that this politics has brought about, one could also say that there is a Modi model in operation currently. While a couple of the characteristics of this model have already been noted – such as personalization of authority and the successful superimposition of perceptions over performance – not enough attention has been paid to what the rise of the BJP means.
At least four important characteristics of the Modi model may help us better appreciate the true gravity and scope of the changes underway in our politics: a shift in popular attention to abstract all-India issues (not exactly new, since Indira Gandhi attempted this); the constant rhetoric of nation and nationalism, with an emphasis on the singular – homogenization; rejection of India’s democratic past or its delegitimization; and the polemic of anxiety and hope as the language of public discourse. While Modi’s popularity and his personalized style of politics often bring the persona of Modi into the limelight and tend to deflect attention from the larger impact of these other features, that same popularity has allowed the BJP (and its many allied social forces outside the party) to define the way in which people will identify themselves and the way in which we collectively understand India.
There could be some dispute about whether this amounts to ‘hegemony’ – after all, the distortion of institutions and application of private violence and state repression still continue to be instruments of sustenance for the current dispensation. However, it would be a mistake to ignore or underestimate the breadth and depth of consensus on many critical dimensions of public life that the present regime has managed to shape and strengthen. Elsewhere I have described this development as the crafting of a new hegemony.
1 The electoral outcome of 2019 underscores the existence of that hegemony and has also further facilitated its advance since May 2019.
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ver and above the big victory won by the BJP in 2019, the positive reception to its broader approach – discourse on terrorism, its claims of taming Pakistan, its emphasis on aggressive nationalism, post-election initiatives such as criminalizing triple talaq or ‘reading down’ Article 370 – indicates that beyond electoral victory, the BJP has also been able to carve out an acceptability to its larger worldview and ideological claims. Similarly, the response to the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya judgement – not so much in its acceptance but more in terms of a consensus that having a Ram temple was indeed an all-India aspiration representing national identity which will now be fulfilled – should leave us in no doubt about the overall acceptability of the Hindutva narrative. And the identification of all these measures with the idea of national assertion helps make the narrative appear even more acceptable.Thus, we are faced with a strange situation: on the one hand, there is a complete coupling of the ideas of nation and Hindutva; but precisely because of that coupling, ‘Hindutva’ as a contentious claim has almost disappeared from public debate. By ensuring that the debate would not be about Hindutva but about the ‘nation’, the BJP has succeeded in setting the terms of the discourse.
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t is also useful to remind ourselves that this new narrative of political Hindutva did not emerge all of a sudden or only with the advent of Modi in 2014. A more complex context has produced the shift in the way Indian citizens now look upon themselves and understand ideas of nation, religion, majority and culture. When the history of the post-1980 period is written, the origins of this new narrative will be properly traced. Elsewhere, I have argued that this shift characterizes a new political culture.2While the collapse of the previous dominant party system and the interregnum of multiparty coalitions signify the electoral moment when the shift began to occur, one should not forget the long-term genealogy of the present hegemony. Throughout the period of Congress dominance a constituency of Hindu middle class existed which always found elements of Hindu nationalism appealing – irrespective of whether they voted Congress or Jan Sangh/BJP. Coupled with this, Hindutva organizations made every effort to keep the Hindutva claims alive even when the then existing consensus appeared to disapprove of it.
Also, today’s Hindutva and its hegemonic claims have travelled a long distance from Golwalkar’s ideas. The renovated Hindutva of the post-Golwalkar phase presented a mixture of religious and cultural claims as the basis for collective identity. The combined appeal of religio-cultural claims and aggressive idea of nationalism emerging at the cusp of a heightened crisis of globalization, ensured that it would expand beyond the middle classes. The rise of a populist leader as the mascot and instrument of this new-old narrative facilitated the large-scale popularity of many elements of the new hegemony so much so that it is hard to fathom where majoritarian politics ends and personalized populist authoritarianism begins.
Politics in the coming decade will thus unfold in the threefold context of a new hegemony, a dominant party system, and the personality cult – a combination that makes it tough for its challengers to pose an ideological as also an electoral challenge. What shape is politics likely to take in these times?
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short-term response seems to be emerging mainly from the economic mess India finds itself today. Agrarian distress and joblessness, coupled with the slowing down of the economy, has already unnerved both ends of the economic spectrum. The poor and the rich both appear to have reason to be worried about the way the economy is sliding downward. The success of the BJP both in 2014 and 2019 hinged on a promise of ‘development’ which meant different things to different social sections, but was an attractive promise nevertheless. If the opposition were to succeed in mobilizing the masses on questions of economic hardship and narrowing down of the opportunity structure, it would surely put the BJP on the back foot.But this strategy has three limitations. In the first place, as the elections of 2019 showed, objective factors indicating an economic slide down could be trumped by the subjective factor that Modi is doing enough to tackle this and will somehow deliver. In other words, besides the hard economic reality, there has to be a crack in people’s confidence that this government will definitely do something. Second, both the pre-election surge in nationalist rhetoric, and post-election policy measures to deflect attention away from the economy, have similarly underscored the ability of the Modi regime to shift the discourse away from economic issues relatively easily.
Third, even if the opposition forces succeeded in getting people to think of the economy, there are limits to their ability to engage the present government on questions relating to the economy. Over the past quarter of a century, a consensus has emerged among political parties over the broader contours of economic policy, except on matters of detail and the issue of selling the economic policies to the electorates. This reality will severely constrain opposition parties in their efforts of cornering the BJP on the question of the economy.
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f course, even within this consensus, there are two critical dimensions of handling the economy. One is the issue of actual delivery of welfare, and the other is regulation of private capital. Unless opposition parties come up with something very different on these two dimensions, they will not be able to really leverage the present economic crisis to effectively challenge the BJP. Also, given the fact that many non-BJP parties are in power at the state level, and their record on both these critical aspects (welfare delivery and regulation of private capital) does not have much to write home about, the only effective mobilization on the economy can come from movements and groups on the periphery of competitive politics – groups which are well intentioned and ideologically ‘correct’, but politically ineffectual.So, paradoxical as it may seem, in the short-term, the challenge to the BJP can come from the field that is marked by consensus in the arena of competitive politics. The flip side of this paradox, however, is that this challenge is hardly likely to engage the BJP over the critical aspects of its hegemony; the challenge would only end up helping the BJP consolidate that very aspect – the emotive majoritarian pre-disposition as a prism through which people will be asked to understand the economic crisis.
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oth in the short and mid-term sense, it is inevitable that electoral politics will occupy a position of primacy. While combating hegemony would certainly require long-drawn struggles and nuanced ideological interventions, one need not grudge electoral politics its place of primacy – in fact, notwithstanding all the limitations of electoral politics, this is a critical terrain of struggle. In the context of representative democracy, the relationship between hegemony and formal political power is complex. As I have argued earlier, hegemony thrives on electoral successes and ‘…while electoral upsets may not easily forestall the shaping of the new discursive terrain, electoral defeat alone can puncture the BJP’s resolute march toward crafting a new hegemony.’3 Therefore, electoral politics will not only assume a place of significance, it also has the potential of either stalling or strengthening the emergent hegemony.It is equally inevitable that the opposition parties would like to imagine a combined ‘anti-BJP’ politics.
4 This would be reminiscent of the non-Congressism of yesteryears. The results of 2019 have convincingly shown that no single non-BJP party is able to take on its electoral might. Even at state level, except for states where the BJP is a relatively new entrant, state parties have not been able to forestall its march. At the all-India level, no party seems to be in a position to even challenge the BJP, leave aside match its strength. This reality necessarily encourages the path to a larger coalition of non-BJP parties.
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he experience of non-Congress politics may however offer some lessons. Ironically, non-Congress politics really thrived only after the self-inflicted downfall of the Congress party began. Therefore, much of the success of non-Congressism, as also many of its excesses, took place when the idea had become irrelevant. Nevertheless, two basic lessons still resonate. The first is that non-BJPism (like non-Congressism) is not an ideology, and the other is that unless there is clarity as to what is wrong with the BJP, there is no point in making a virtue out of the political inability to defeat the dominant party. While sincere criticisms of emergent anti-BJPism are already making the rounds, it is necessary not to reject anti-BJPism as a tactic of limited possibilities. Rejecting it altogether can only make electoral opposition diffuse and moreover, allow the BJP unhindered access to state power, which would be crucial for the expansion of its hegemony.
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he two key pillars on which the BJP’s hegemony stands today – majoritarianism and the routine undermining of democratic practice – often remain understated. Unless the non-BJP parties agree on characterizing the BJP and articulating what is wrong with it, there is no point in blindly talking of a grand coalition. Keeping the BJP away from power is indeed critical and yet that tactic must be informed by, and imbued with, a sound critique of the core of BJP’s hegemony. One fears, however, that under compulsions of a dominant party system, there will be abortive efforts to forge coalitions without much thought.One can imagine two types of non-BJP coalitions. There could be some pre-election coalitions as the UPA or the SP-BSP alliance in 2019, and then there can be post-election alliances as in Karnataka (a tame failure), or a weaker attempt like the one that has shaped in Maharashtra. To the extent power is a lifeline of parties, post-election alliances cannot be entirely wished away nor can they be summarily frowned upon. But they need to be understood only as necessary tactical moves. Such tactics would bring the non-BJP parties temporarily closer to power while keeping the BJP away from power. In view of the hegemonic aura surrounding the BJP today, this would be no mean achievement.
So, while bringing together non-BJP forces is likely to be far too inadequate, yet it is likely to be the first move by most non-BJP parties. In the near future, therefore, there will be continuous and renewed attempts to forge a non-BJP front, explore all kinds of combinations and efforts to bring together half-baked and inconsistent alliances. These would have varied outcomes – occasional successes and frequent failures. However, the real problem is not that the non-BJP parties may indulge in rash anti-BJP alliances; the challenge lies in their intellectual laziness to identify what is wrong with the BJP. And this limitation will be a major feature of politics in these times of new hegemony.
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n the arena of electoral competition, currently, three types of party formations exist besides the hegemonic force represented by the BJP. The Congress, which vainly sees itself as the legatee of an erstwhile hegemony and representative of an eclipsing vision of India, looks upon itself as the main challenger to the BJP. Congress also believes itself to be an all-India party like the BJP. This self-perception of the party is at variance with the reality: it lacks any sharp anti-hegemonic position and increasingly, the Congress is becoming only a multi-state party because it has lost relevance both at the all-India level and in a large number of states. Electoral setbacks have pushed the party to ideological uncertainty, and demoralized its cadres to such an extent that even on questions of livelihood, the party is unable to mobilize the masses.Then there are the state parties, mainly confined to one state and therefore more concerned with state-specificities than all-India issues. They relate to the new hegemony through the prism of their respective states. Only when their state level concerns dictate, these parties take an anti-BJP position. Otherwise, they either align with the BJP or remain aloof to the larger political struggles over questions of hegemony. That is why practically all state parties have at one time or the other aligned with the BJP over the past three decades (RJD being an exception).
State parties do not necessarily constitute a natural non-BJP constituency; the only reason they are at odds with BJP is because in its expansion drive the BJP has to confront state parties and erode their social bases. Given the BJP’s limited success in winning state elections, this might appear as an important resource for non-BJP politics, but it is doubtful whether it would be a genuine opposition to the ideas represented by the Modi regime or by the new hegemony.
Then, there are a large number of smaller parties which operate at very limited spatial terrains; mostly small parties based in sub-regions of states or caste based parties, besides of course smaller parties trying to break the threshold of electoral viability when the dominant party forestalls competitors like multi-state or state level parties. By their very nature, they are often ambivalent about questions of hegemony and, if anything, are bound to take advantage of the present moment to expand and become electorally viable without getting entangled in larger questions vis-ŕ-vis hegemony. Some, by taking a high moral ground, may mount an ideological assault on the BJP, but would refuse to collaborate with ongoing efforts to encircle the BJP.
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hen the social universe is marked by hegemony, initially, it defines politics. Therefore, the language, idiom and texture of politics for some time to come will surely be determined by the new hegemony. All parties will appear to be talking in that same language. The beauty of hegemonic politics is that it shapes a consensus around what is to be debated and what is beyond debate. It also sets boundaries within which political contestations take place and the broader norms about what opposition can legitimately talk about and challenge. (For instance, however nuanced, a contestation over BJP’s nationalism becomes untenable in the present circumstance; any defence of the minority’s right to identity or livelihood gets distorted as minority appeasement; and so on.) Therefore, the first and perhaps the only objective of non-BJP forces for a long time to come would merely be to strip the BJP of state power.
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ven as the electoral arena is likely to witness uneven and unpredictable developments, we need to pay attention to a key factor related to the new hegemony. Hegemonies are not unknown in representative democracies. But the new hegemony that India is witnessing has a distinctive feature. Both because of its majoritarian nature and its populist tilt, the new hegemony, by definition, is bound to severely constrict democratic space. Institutional space will shrink, the rights regime will get diluted (recall the sudden lessons on ‘duties’ vis-ŕ-vis rights that everyone has started giving), but above all, popular support for democratic politics is bound to shrink. This problem goes beyond the more schematic distinction between the liberal and democratic dimensions;5 instead, it hints at the possibility of less democracy. Irrespective of the anti-elite rhetoric that characterizes populist regimes, there will be less support for the idea of continuous popular control of the political elite. The edifice of public opinion and media will be constructed in such a manner that legitimacy of criticism and popular interventions will remain limited.In this somewhat uncomfortable scenario, in order to gain momentum in the long run, competitive politics vis-ŕ-vis hegemony will need to attend to the threefold tasks (from the rather mundane to the more audacious) that alone can challenge the new hegemony.
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overnance: Today, explicitly anti-BJP parties run governments in many states – crucially in Kerala, West Bengal, Punjab, Rajasthan, MP, Chhattisgarh and so on. Unless these governments, as also other non-BJP governments, attain minimum standards of democratic governance, which can distinguish them from the BJP, there is no way popular trust in non-BJP politics can be enhanced. This might seem a bit of a comic expectation and that is where the tragic dimension of the so-called anti-BJP struggle comes to the forefront. Many of these governments would not pass the test – neither on democratic parameters such as transparency or pro-people administration, nor on governance parameters of welfare delivery and efficiency. This would only lead to disinterest among voters about any counter-narrative, and cynicism about criticisms of the BJP as being anti-democratic.The question of governance is important for another reason. Since 2014, the BJP has not found it easy to win states on the basis of the Modi magic. A key limitation of the current hegemonic project has been that in spite of its wide popularity, it has been unable to keep state-particularities at bay. In other words, there has been a disjunction between popular endorsement of hegemonic ideas and the BJP’s ability to translate that electorally at the state level. But if bad governance marks states where non-BJP parties are major players, it would enable the BJP to take over control at the state level too.
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nstitutional restoration: In each of India’s democratic crises, the failure of institutions has always been central and glaring. This, too, is less about the ‘liberal-democratic’ axis and more about limiting the meaning of democracy. This failure of institutions feeds into a popular endorsement of populist styles of functioning, which in turn makes it more difficult to resurrect the discourse of institutional democracy – producing popular contempt and cynicism for institutions and procedures. The populist elements of the current hegemony thrive on this cynicism. Any democratic movement, therefore, must bring the issue of institutional restoration to the table. This is where both non-BJP parties and most of our movements would require to reinvent themselves.Political parties generally have been partners in the crime of institutional decay while movements often display an unhealthy contempt for institutions. The BJP has used this context to convince the people to ignore or condone its transgressions. Unless the opposition comes up with a robust agenda to combine popular assertions, electoral outcomes, constitutional constraints and democratic practices as a broader meaning of institutional restoration, their struggles are unlikely to evolve a culture of democracy. While this is a much broader task, the least that needs to be done is to institutionalize parties and ensure that the powers of the legislative mechanisms of the parliamentary system are strengthened. Those small steps would greatly enhance the possibilities of the culture of institutions to become important in discussions of democracy.
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he counter-narrative: The most complex task before politics in the times of hegemony is to evolve and popularize a counter-narrative. This would need architects, a popular content and political agency. For now, there seems to be an absence of all three. Even as non-BJP forces grope in the dark about correctly identifying what is wrong with the BJP, they also fumble on this question of developing a convincing counter-narrative. Merely claiming to be committed to the Constitution is not adequate enough to present an alternative to the hegemonic narrative. In the same manner, merely remembering Gandhi or Nehru or the freedom struggle as signifiers of democratic counter-narrative will be far too inadequate.It is not likely that mainstream political parties will have the patience to evolve such a counter-narrative. Therefore, the task will essentially be left to peripheral forces though they lack the ability to popularize it. Unless elements of such a counter-narrative are picked up as an agenda in mainstream politics, no challenge to hegemony can emerge. But the more serious challenge is about the contents of such a narrative. It must avoid the outworn clichés of the nineties, which lack political traction or relevance today. In fact, the present hegemony is erected on the rubble of the discourse of the nineties. Questions of caste, community, religion and class continue to be relevant though the paradigm of politics has substantially changed from the nineties and hence these issues need to be reframed. The intertwining questions of livelihood and identity do pose a huge challenge for the framing of a counter-narrative.
At a deeper level, the current political discourse also poses questions about the content of India’s nationalism and the direction that the country’s democracy is taking. The counter-narrative, therefore, will have to robustly grapple with, and search for ways to save nationalism from nationalists and seek to re-democratize politics.
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hese are, of course, tough tasks and non-BJP parties appear not to be up to doing the hard work required. They seem to be more comfortable pursuing short-term tactics and therefore, politics under the new hegemony is likely to be conducted on terms dictated by the dominant party, within the framework that is of its choice, and in a manner that will not dent the hegemony. This possibility further complicates the journey of democracy in India. We have already noted the inconsistency that Indian democracy experiences. The absence of a challenge to hegemony would further add to that inconsistency.In the last instance, then, whatever shape politics takes, the most likely outcome of hegemony is bound to be the shrinking of democratic space and therefore, politics in the times of hegemony has to be a politics for democracy – redefining democracy, identifying the social bases of democracy, searching for political configurations that might strengthen democracy, and watchfully exploring spaces that can be turned into democratic practices. Rediscovering the lost magic of democracy must, therefore, be the central pillar on which the real politics in times of hegemony has to firmly pitch itself.
Footnotes:
1. Suhas Palshikar, ‘Towards Hegemony: BJP Beyond Electoral Dominance’, Economic and Political Weekly, 53(33), 18 August 2018, pp. 36-42.
2. Suhas Palshikar, ‘The Political Culture of ‘New’ India: Some Contradictions’, in Niraja Gopal Jayal (ed.), Re-forming India. Penguin, New Delhi, 2019, pp. 346-62.
3. Op. cit., fn. 1, p. 42.
4. Writing before the last parliamentary elections, I discussed some of the operational and ideological issues haunting anti-BJP politics, and also hinted at the crux of the matter, viz., the majoritarian turn in India’s politics. See Suhas Palshikar, ‘Where is the New Politics?’, Seminar 713, January 2019, pp. 47-51. Some of those concerns find a resonance yet again, a year later. If this seems repetitive, one reason for that is as we trudge along, things remain more or less the same. Nevertheless, while last year the focus was more on the immediate context of the Lok Sabha elections, this essay is more about what scenarios might develop over a period of time, and what durable challenges lie ahead.
5. Ashutosh Varshney has recently juxtaposed the distinction between India’s electoral vibrancy and its record on liberal dimension (‘Modi Consolidates Power: Electoral Vibrancy, Mounting Liberal Deficits’, Journal of Democracy, 30(4), October 2019, pp. 63-77). However, it is perhaps equally necessary to probe into how the meaning of democracy gets redefined in contemporary popular perceptions. While almost 90% would support democracy, if simultaneous support for some non-democratic forms were excluded from this, only fewer than 20% would qualify as strong democrats (Sandeep Shastri, Suhas Palshikar and Sanjay Kumar, State of Democracy in South Asia: Report II, 2017. Jain University Bengaluru and Lokniti, CSDS, Delhi, pp. 22-30). Thus, besides the disjunction between liberal and democratic, are we witnessing an emergent distinction between support for an abstract idea of democracy and support to democratic practices?