The Modi Government as an Exponent of BJP Secularism

(Now that the Annual Conference of the American Academy of Religion is only a few days away, let me present the abstract plus explanation I sent in for last year's conference. It was written in February 2015 and draws attention to an important phenomenon with a strong and hitherto unrefuted predictive power, viz. the BJP variety of secularism. The AAR's "experts" were not interested, preferring their prestigious delusions to the hard facts.)

AB Vajpayee's NDA Government (1998-2004) heavily disappointed the experts who had predicted "all Moslims into the Indian Ocean" or similar doomsday scenarios -- or rather, it put them squarely in the wrong. Hindu "fascism" as a threat to democracy? When Vajpayee narrowly lost a confidence vote, he meekly stepped down. War against Pakistan? Though Pakistan unilaterally invaded India (Kargil 1999), Vajpayee forbade the Army to strike at the invaders' base across the border, and later opened a peace process, making symbolic concessions which Congress had always refused. Isolationism? He threw the Indian media market open to foreign media ownership, a move opposed by India's entire political spectrum. The only "Hindutva" thing the NDA ever did was HRD Minister MM Joshi's clumsy overhaul of the recommended history schoolbooks, changing nothing dramatic and easily reversed. When the Government created a Chair for Indic Studies in Oxford ("saffronization!"), it selected an outspoken opponent for the job, in the vain hope of receiving a pat on the back from its declared enemies.

With the hindsight knowledge of historical reality, it would be embarrassing to reproduce the predictions by Indian and foreign experts. Today, anti-BJP discourse is less shrill, but still confidently classifies the BJP among the "Hindu Right". This implies a prediction that once in power, the BJP would pursue distinctly pro-Hindu policies. However, in the light of our experience with the Vajpayee Government, it is no surprise that the present Government led by Narendra Modi fails to live up to this learned prediction, at least for now. (Of course, this paper will be updated by November as new developments take place.)

In spite of having a more homogeneous majority, it is reluctant to do anything pro-Hindu or perceivable as anti-minority. On the contrary, one of its first acts was to decree a new subsidy to Islamic schools. The stray Hindutva statements by loose cannon (Akshay Maharaj, Jyoti Niranjan) were followed by retractions, condemnations by Government spokesmen, and indignant innuendos by Modi-friendly journalists (Tavleen Singh, Swapan Dasgupta). Public reconversions by the allied VHP, heavily publicized and demonized by the media, were promptly discouraged by the Government. Having learned from Vajpayee's 2004 defeat, though, Modi does “keep the pot boiling”, does regularly throw crumbs of inconsequential Hindu symbolism to his support base, all while not formally changing anything. 

However, if many BJP workers are disappointed with this Government, is not for what it does but mainly for what it persistently fails to do. Thus, it inducted no figures with a strongly ideological profile (Arun Shourie, Subramanian Swamy). Likewise, some public figures who had crossed the floor (e.g. Madhu Kishwar) were conspicuously not rewarded -- a fact not considered here for disgruntled ego reasons but for illustrating the BJP's lack of strategy: it doesn't put people who have actually sacrificed for the BJP to any use, while awarding positions of influence to unreliable newcomers motivated by sheer opportunism. While some things on the Hindu agenda are either useless to Hinduism (e.g. declaring a "Hindu Rashtra") and others would arouse violent protests for which the media are sure to blame Modi (e.g. a Common Civil Code, though "secular" par excellence), others are perfectly feasible and, moreover, turn out to be the most consequential for the flourishing of Hinduism.

In particular, the amending of Constitutional Articles 28 and 30, which (de facto c.q. formally) discriminate against Hinduism in education, does not take away any rights from the minorities, yet lifts an enormous burden from Hindu organizations investing in education and eliminates a major reason for Hindu sects (Arya Samaj, RK Mission, Lingayats, Jains) to have themselves judicially declared non-Hindu minorities. Similarly, eliminating the legal basis of the discrimination against Hinduism in temple management, with rich temples (but not mosques or churches) nationalized and their income pocketed by politicians or diverted to non-Hindu purposes, would give an enormous boost to Hindu religious and cultural life, without impinging upon the rights of the minorities. It has to be noted, however, and it buttresses my case for "BJP secularism", that temple management is partly a competence of the States, and that BJP State Governments have not made the difference. At any rate, there are meaningful things a BJP Government could do specifically for Hinduism without endangering its non-religious agenda (development, cleaning India etc.) or its international standing, yet it chooses not to do them.        

As for the Hindutva fits and starts of some BJP members, now considered extremists but in fact only representative of what the erstwhile Jan Sangh (1952-77, predecessor of the BJP) stood for, it should be easy to bring them in line around a more reasonable but still credibly pro-Hindu programme. It is here that the BJP is most conspicuously failing -- conspicuous at least to insiders, for 99% of the outside literature about the BJP never mentions this phenomenon. Contrary to a consensus among academic and journalistic India-watchers, the supposed “Hindu extremist” party has no Hindu agenda. It relies on pro-Hindu workers to do the campaigning legwork, but once in power it cold-shoulders them, it publicizes and pursues an agenda of economic development only, and it tries to curry favour with the secularists.

The main reason is the long-standing deliberate lack of investment (pioneered by MS Golwalkar) in an intellectual and strategic vision of its own, the spurning of any analysis of the forces in the field and of the potential and limitations of the situation. It therefore also lacks competent personnel for the ideological struggle, e.g. for a textbook overhaul or, now, for nominating politically friendly new Vice-Chancellors. Consequently, most BJP leaders have an enormous inferiority complex vis-à-vis the secularists and, even when in office, try to live up to the norms laid down by their opponents.

This is hardly the impression created by most experts; but the primary data, the only source to which this paper pledges loyalty, tell a clear story: the present BJP is only termed a Hindu party in deference to the distant memory of its initial orientation.

Abstract

Like the previous BJP Government, the present one fails to live up to the oft-heard predictions of strident pro-Hindu and anti-minority policies. This is due to a phenomenon insufficiently realized by most India-watchers: a desire to live up to the norms upheld by the secularists and an interiorization of the disinterest in "outdated" Hindu concerns, not just among the numerous opportunists who have flocked to the new party in power, but even in the loyal core of the BJP's personnel. Based on insider sources, this paper enumerates the data establishing the reality of "BJP secularism" and analyses the reasons for this emerging phenomenon.

Read more!

Modi, the RSS man

 

In the ongoing campaign to throw at Narendra Modi whatever dirt one can find, Ramachandra Guha (“Degradation of Discourse”, Times of India, 6 Jan. 2014) accuses him of yet another flaw: the use of foul language against political opponents. His article is illustrated with a photograph of Modi chatting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Now, maybe Modi has improperly called Rahul Gandhi a spoiled mama’s boy, which we all know to be untrue: from poor beginning, Rahul climbed his way up, and he only reached his present position by virtue of hard work. It is just slander to suggest that his family had anything to do with it. Yet, for foul language, the prize undoubtedly goes to Manmohan Singh. He has just recently accused Modi of being guilty for the post-Godhra riots; the allegation itself is worn-out, but the platform from where it was made, was higher than usual. Most people would rather be accused of a privileged birth than of responsibility for a massacre.

Singh thereby ignored and overruled several Courts that have acquitted Modi of any such allegations. We might expect such contempt of court from leftist agitators like Teesta Setalwad, herself embroiled in judicial proceedings for riots-related deceit, as it simply illustrates the usual self-righteousness of the left. We might also expect it from foreign press correspondents, babes in the wood who trustingly borrow from the less than truthful media accounts they are fed by their Indian sources. But such contempt of he judiciary is simply unbecoming of a Prime Minister.

So, others propose different allegations, this time based on reality. They say, for instance, that after all, “Modi is an RSS man”. Having been groomed in the RSS ranks, Modi will find it hard to refute that one.

 

Vajpayee

In the 1990s, the prospect of the BJP coming to power led to some shrill reactions. It was going to throw a hundred million Muslims into the Indian Ocean, come down on women and Dalits, and more such horror scenarios. The “experts” concerned can count themselves lucky that this was just before the internet age, because today the quotations would come to haunt them. They would be laughed out of court for relying on their “secularist” contacts and parroting the dirtiest propaganda. At any rate, at august gatherings like the Annual South Asia Conference of Madison, Wisconsin, many professors grimly predicted the worst. Not that they were concerned about the prospective victims: the more the better, for they would only prove what a monster this BJP was.

Those few who sincerely wanted to minimize the damage which the BJP was sure to do, pinned their hopes on A.B. Vajpayee, the “moderate” contrasted with the “extremist” L.K. Advani. Alas, the specialist Prof. Paul Brass dashed all their hopes: “I think Vajpayee is a dyed-in-the-wool RSS man.” So, the man upheld in 2014 by Guha as a model of civility contrasting with the foul-mouthed Modi, was thought in 1996 to be another Hitler sure to work a catastrophe. That is why he ended up abolishing Parliament and killing all those millions when he served as Prime Minister in 1998-2004. Or, wait a minute, did he fail to do that? Was the consensus of the experts proven wrong by reality? Maybe the RSS is not such a predictor of inhumanity after all. (But it is true that Vajpayee in person thwarted Congress secularism in action when he helped Sikh taxi-drivers during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.)

All the same, Modi’s beginnings in the RSS did not stand in the way of his economic breakthroughs. They did not prevent his innocence in the post-Godhra riots, as certified by the courts. They did not even keep a number of Muslims from voting for him. The reason is that the RSS is not altogether evil.

 

Relief

The role of the RSS in saving Congress politicians’ lives  during the Partition, or holding the Srinagar airport until the troops arrived, thus making the reconquest of Pak-held territories possible (1947), or the RSS’s services in the defence against the Chinese invasion (1962), have largely been forgotten. What Modi has consciously experienced, however, is the RSS’s opposition against the Emergency dictatorship (1975-77). Many secularists like to ignore this episode because they themselves do not have such clean hands. Indeed, being naturally despotic, the Nehruvian secularists used precisely this intermezzo to insert “secular, socialist” into the text of the Constitution. The declaration of India as a “secular” republic, without a proper parliamentary debate, is thus the only part of the Constitution that is historically undemocratic.

Even closer in time is the frequent and large-scale RSS intervention in relief work after floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters. While the relief work of a Mother Teresa or a Graham Staines is always highlighted (and their ulterior missionary motives purposely ignored), journalistic or academic publications on the RSS somehow always forget to acknowledge its charitable work.  

While the RSS has many mediocre and unimaginative people in its ranks (but committed and disciplined enough to do the abovementioned dirty work), it also has its success stories. Among these, Modi is no doubt one of the most spectacular.  Whether he will do anything to further the Hindu agenda remains to be seen. If Guha now praises Vajpayee, it is in the hope that Modi will emulate Vajpayee in only being a time-server who sets aside all Hindu concerns once power has been attained. But the amount of persistent slander that Modi has had to face for twelve long years, now culminating in a condemnation by the Prime Minister, may finally have convinced him of the utter viciousness that characterizes India’s “secularists”. With him, at last, there is a real chance that he will spite them by getting serious about Hindu interests.

Read more!