Thursday, July 20, 2006

 

Post-Godhra Revisited: Death and Politics beneath the Saffron Veil

What’s common between an electoral defeat in the world’s largest democracy, and religious-fundamentalist violence in the same? Give up? The answer is one word: power.

A few weeks before the post-Godhra riots, India has witnessed both events. Four Indian states- Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttaranchal and Manipur- went to the polls, and all four delivered a crushing mandate against the ruling party in these states– the BJP. Within 48 hours of this catastrophic event for the BJP, sectarian violence erupted in a fifth state- Gujarat- where there were no elections, but where the BJP’s ascendancy is presently unchallenged. Could this be a coincidence?

To answer this question, it is insightful to look at the BJP’s rhetorical position or the ideological stilts upon which it is propped up. Hindutva, or the Hindu way of life, is the clarion call that the BJP and its political family (the Sangh Parivar) echo at every election, presumably to attract to themselves the vast majority of this theoretically secular nation. The Congress Party’s political capital has been steadily eroded since the time Indian independence from colonial rule (but of course, the trend would seem to have been reversed in 2004 after 8 years of the party being in the opposition). Ever since the untimely electoral debacle suffered by this erstwhile leviathan in 1996, the era of coalition governments- mostly those led by the BJP- seem to have taken root. In this light, the strategy of the BJP, some would argue, was, during these 8 years, by and large successful. Of course, this precludes its increasingly anti-poor, pro-urban stance that culminated in the hollow but much touted ‘India Shining’ campaign in 2003-04. In any case, those who would suggest that the BJP was prudent in adopting a majoritarian line would base their evidence on the fact that the party enjoyed power at the central government for two terms, albeit with some perilously close shaves. They would be right- but they would be missing the deep irony of their argument.

The biggest problem that any political party faces is India is that constituencies of political support are not time-independent. That is to say, the ability of rival parties to pull out the political rug from under the feet of any government in power creates an environment of uneasy watchfulness between elections, and furious bickering, horse-trading and murder when it comes to poll-time. The Congress had to deal with this issue immediately upon securing Independence from a battle-weary Britain in 1947. Jinnah had built a strong base among certain Muslim leaders in the Punjab and Bengal, and was able to appeal to their identity as Muslims over their identity as Indians. With good reason of course- the spoils of the skulduggery and machinations between Jinnah, Nehru and Mountbatten was none other than the glorious state of Pakistan (if we forget for the moment that ironically Jinnah was not really aiming to found a state in the first place). In any case, the same problem of fluctuating loyalties plagues the leaders of modern India.

The caste system plays no small part in this process. Caste in India is a powerful source of identity that can build coalitions and fragment them, moving like the tide with the gravitational pull of the political moon. To illustrate the basic point, if a caste-neutral leader (obviously hypothetical in the case of India!) were to claim representative rights over a particular region, then his power base is likely to be quickly eroded by more localised leaders who appeal to caste identities and promise their supporters a larger share of the spoils.

To find the classic example of political manipulation of the caste system for electoral gains (and one that backfired rather punishingly), we need go no farther back in time than 1991. Under huge amounts of political pressure (mostly because of the risk of economic collapse under the weight of a dangerous imbalance in the balance of payments), the then Prime Minister, VP Singh, attempted to alter the reservation quotas for certain backward castes in government jobs, educational institutions and so forth, in an ill-planned move to attract voters. The results of tampering with this institutionalised system of ‘positive discrimination’ were disastrous- for a number of student protestors who undertook self-immolation, for numerous victims of the riots that broke out across the nation, and certainly for Singh, whose fragile 10-month coalition crumbled to dust. The interesting link between this example and the analysis of Sangh Parivar politics is a link that is shocking, and yet representative of permanent conditions in India.

The link is the fact that the Sangh Parivar’s right-wing, jingoistic majoritarianism, dangerous as it is per se, is under present circumstances nothing more than a massive mind-job, a fabricated social gel that is a means to building transactional alliances in an environment of fluctuating political loyalties. In other words, like caste, religious fundamentalism is another source of ‘imagined identity’, easily translated into political coalitions and the spoils of office. Why? Because here is a very basic problem that India faces- most of it’s inhabitants are dirt poor, and they have suffered this state of degrading deprivation for more than the fifty years that the country has been politically free. Leaving aside for the moment the details relating to resource allocation mechanisms that perpetuate this state of mass poverty, we can link this phenomenon to our current discussion easily, if we just look at how it is possible for inequality of this extreme kind to go unpunished in a democratic framework. After all, if the majority were poor and a minority were fabulously rich (as they are in India), a democracy ought to be the perfect political system to fix this problem right? Wrong.

The very same flexibility of the political system that makes the power base of any regime perilously thin also facilitates the economic dominance of the elite in India. The simple reason for this is that the poor are never able, or willing, to vote along class lines. That is to say a poor ‘backward caste’ farmer and a poor ‘other backward caste’ farmer would each vote for a backward caste and other backward caste leader respectively, rather than vote together for a representative of the poor. They never follow the second strategy for several reasons. For one, the leaders of the caste group appeal to a more localised audience, and hence can promise a larger share of the spoils per supporter than the leader who hopes to represent the poor. Second, the traditional hierarchical system of social dominance and deference makes it possible to build and sustain alliances within the caste group, as opposed to the class group.

Enter Hindutva, and all the pot-banging, the trident-waving and the saffron brigade’s most glorious hour. What better incentive to unite the poor man in the village with his rich, educated counterpart in the cities than their collective rage against the ‘other’- the Muslim? Thus begins the mind-job, and the rest is history. In fact history itself corroborates this line of thinking. The use of religious identity to mask deeper divides and perpetuate the dominance of a few is not a new trick pulled out of this democracy’s top-hat. When the Garibi Hatao (‘Eliminate Poverty’) programme of the Congress failed to generate adequate momentum during the 1980s, the party helped sow the seeds of communal hatred by appealing to the ‘interests of the majority’. All it was really doing was helping to sustain the investment drive for big industry, to achieve which political stability was necessary. If this could not be achieved by appealing to the poor (for then the rich would lose out, and that, of course, was unthinkable), then the easy alternative was to appeal to the Hindus to stand up for the collective rights of their brethren.

The connection with the present situation, in which more than 500 Hindus and Muslims have been killed in the span of a few weeks, is straightforward to see. The fatal loss of power in the prior state elections, and especially in the state’s stronghold- Uttar Pradesh- meant that the time had come for the Sangh Parivar to take up arms again, to prey upon the minds of unemployed, often illiterate youth, and recreate that illusion of a deep gash between Hindus and Muslims upon the soil of religious tolerance that India was so well known for in previous centuries of this millennium. The most obvious source of conflict that they could draw upon was of course the simmering cauldron of the Ayodhya issue (where a mosque was razed by fundamentalists in 1992, on the grounds that millennia ago, a Hindu God was born on the same spot- a much disputed claim). So now there is a media frenzy about Ayodhya, while this deep festering issue, involving the lives of deprived and dying individuals all across rural India is not even mentioned during ‘normal’ times.

Some would argue that this line of thinking is excessively conspiratorial, but I suggest to you it that it is not- based on the following evidence (to supplement what has been presented already).

If the Ayodhya issue is at the heart of the dispute, then why did the violence erupt deep in Gujarat, and not in Uttar Pradesh, where Ayodhya is, and from whence the slogan-chanting ‘activists of the Sangh Parivar returned by train (and were fatally burned)? The fact is violence along the lines of a particular theme, requires systematic planning, and planning requires control. If the BJP and its allies attempted to instigate violence in Uttar Pradesh, chances are that it would be quelled too soon, or, even worse, it could fail in its aim to create ‘the other’- and instead of Hindu-Muslim violence, the killings could take on an inter-caste character. On the other hand, Gujarat presents a fine opportunity to enlist the help of state functionaries, including police, to channel the violence along desirable lines, so as to bring maximum rewards in the future to the trident-wavers. Thus does the BBC report that “Aside from the mob onslaught, the police stand accused of callous inactivity last Thursday and Friday as the riots and killings grew in intensity” (‘Eyewitness: Muslims Under Siege’, by Adam Mynott, BBC Online). And that there was meticulous organisation behind the violence is no longer in doubt: it is alleged that “[Mohammad Hussain] Kalota was the mastermind behind the incident. According to eyewitness accounts, Kalota was present at the scene from the beginning to the end and was seen goading the mob” (‘Evidence Behind The Godhra Carnage Uncovered’, by Shai Venkataraman, NDTV.com, linked to MSNBC.com).

This evidence, and much, much more that emerged after the dust settled, combines with the arguments made previously to present the case against a deadly alliance of elites that is responsible for several horrific injustices in India. At one level, the outcome of this masked repression is ‘sectarian’ violence, wherein innocents are massacred. And more insidiously, the very same power alliances that underpin the outbreak of such carnage are responsible for uncountable numbers of silent deaths in the countryside. That they have escaped the sword justice thus far is a small achievement, considering the institutional support that they may expect to receive for many years to come.

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