What's to be done about Hindutva

Book review of 'Hindutva Rising'

Hindutva Rising   

Achin Vanaik

Tulika Books 

458 pages; Rs 1,200

First the trivia: This book – released last month – has been timed to preface discussions to mark the 25th anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, an event of cataclysmic proportions and in which much of contemporary India’s political discourse originates. Secondly, the book is a reworking or revisitation of the author's previous 1997 work — The Furies of Hindu Communalism, written five years after the demolition. Back then, the political forces that grew electorally through participation in the Ram Janambhoomi agitation were still considered transitory. This despite the fact that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ran the Union government for 13 days in 1996 and had been in government in several states in the early 1990s besides registering its presence in at least one southern state. In 1997, few anticipated the BJP heading a coalition government at the Centre within a year and remaining in the saddle for six years and more. The memory of 1996, when despite offering a share of political power, the BJP failed to attract new partners, made most believe that the episode was an aberration and the party would remain the “shunned other”. 

Much has changed since, most importantly, as the author notes, from an also-ran, the BJP is the first single-party majority government elected since 1984. Since his first volume there has been a sea-change in India and consequently the author altered the book substantially, making it a completely new book that can be evaluated in today’s context. Thirdly, this is an intensely theoretical book in several portions and equally polemical in other sections. 

But the book has another dimension, in that it addresses to those tracking – in varying intensities – the politics of Hindutva and reactions to it. A significant portion of the book is spent making sense of the 2014 elections and events leading to it, the developments and trajectories it spawned. Several deductions by the author provide engaging ways of looking at the unfolding political narrative and ever so often disentangles what appears knotty. Mr Vanaik touches almost all the fault lines in contemporary India and, recognising the comprehensive “fulcrum-shift” to the right, explores the ideas of nationalism, communalism, secularism and details the idea of anti-secularism that, he argues, is the only way communalism can be taken on. 

This book is not just a critical response to the formation of the Narendra Modi government and its policies. Instead, undoubtedly Marxist in his approach, Mr Vanaik unravels political Hinduism or Hindutva, offering multiple perspectives on it emergence. To oppose Hindu communalism much more has to be contested and cannot be done without engaging civil society.

Divided into three parts, the second part being the theoretical core of the book, the compelling volume confronts the irony that much of the daily discourse is shrouded in ambiguity. Secularism for instance, the idea either sworn by or demonised ever so often, has no universally accepted definition even among critics of Hindu communalism. Significantly, the word “communal” has a different connotation in India than worldwide. Mr Vanaik traces it to the use of the word “communal” during constitutional reforms in 1906-09 granting Muslims separate electorates. The author is unsparing in criticism of most secularists and sharper in his indictment of the Congress for failing to prevent the rise of Hindu communalism. He argues that India needs “not secularism, nor Hindu nationalism, but an anti-secularism.” The author elaborates that anti-secularism (not a new idea per se) must attempt efforts as “separating religion from politics and the state, and instead encourage the use of ‘authentic’ resources to sustain a socio-political culture with a deeper tolerance of diversity and pluralism than ‘western secularism’ can ever generate.” 

Of great interest is the author’s assessment of the 2014 election, the events since, and the way ahead. Since Mr Modi’s emergence, Indian Marxist and left-liberal circles have debated if the state is a fascist state or not. The author is clear that this regime represents an authoritarian Hindutva-centric regime but despite not being fascistic, it does not diminish the threat to people’s interest. Mr Vanaik poses that the Hindutva phenomenon is “more deep-rooted…more enduring…and more difficult completely or comprehensively to defeat it”. 

Listing issues that get lost in the ceaseless anti-communal discourse is clearly the book’s strength. He identifies six issues through which – not always because but also despite these – the right has gained in past decades: The continuing rise of OBCs, the emergence of Dalit assertiveness, heightened Muslim anxiety resulting in the emergence of pan-Indian consciousness among Muslims, the expanding stranglehold and growing legitimisation of Hindutva forces, capacity of regional parties to emerge and “hold-on” despite the BJP now targeting regionalism; and, finally, the rise of the middle class. 

Mr Vanaik points that the greatest challenge Mr Modi faces – jobs, the slowing economy – arise from pursuit of neoliberal economic policies and not because he personally leads the Hindutva charge. He provides a blueprint for countering the Sangh Parivar, both in the short term and in the long run. Despite his hope that the Left will step-in and revive the working class movement, which he thinks can provide an alternative in the long term, there are reasons to be sceptical about emergence of reasoned strategy.