The Congress could not have defeated Narendra Modi without grasping why Hindutva is so uniquely powerful in Gujarat and without confronting it at its roots.
AS the Congress licks its wounds after its mauling in Gujarat, all manner of explanations are being trotted out for its poor electoral showing: divisions in the anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) vote in a dozen northern Gujarat constituencies because of Congress rebels, the Bahujan Samaj Partys spoiler role in Kutch and Saurashtra, over-reliance on discredited BJP dissidents, and poor campaigning tactics.
There is doubtless some validity in these explanations. It is also true that the Congress lost about 20 seats by margins as narrow as 2,000 votes. Focussed campaigning and aggressive debunking of Narendra Modis extravagant claims about development and good governance, along with a projection of equitable pro-poor alternatives, would probably have yielded improved results.
However, the sad truth is that these factors could not have countered fully the powerful pull of aggressive Hindutva in Gujarat, strengthened under Gujarats ultra-conservative upper-class savarna (upper-caste)-dominated ruling social coalition.
The Congress deluded itself that the election would be a normal contest in which the arithmetic of caste, class, ethnicity and region would prevail. It would have to do nothing special to counter the challenges posed by Narendra Modi through his virulent Hindu communalism, appeal to Gujarati hubris via a chauvinistic sub-nationalism masquerading as Gujarati asmita (self-respect), and an authoritarian personality cult.
The Congress refused to counter Modis core-agendas and instead caved in by adopting a soft Hindutva posture and ducking all issues pertaining to the pogrom of 2002 and after, including the States continuing victimisation and exclusion of Muslims. It did not question Modis Gujarati-chauvinist orientation. Even on development and governance, it failed to mount a convincing campaign offering alternatives favourable to working people.
Consider development. Despite high GDP growth, Gujarats rank in areas such as health, literacy, education, and hence human development and gender empowerment, has been slipping, according to the official Human Development Report (2004). Nothing bears more eloquent testimony to Gujarats unbalanced and warped development than the fact that 74.3 per cent of its women and 46.3 per cent of its children are anaemic.
Gujarats indices of patriarchy are frightening. The sex-ratio is an abysmal 487:1000 in the 0-4 age-group and 571 in the 5-9 age-group (national averages, 515 and 632 respectively). Gujarats health indices are barely higher than Orissas. The proportion of children under age 2 who receive complete vaccination fell from 53 to 45 per cent between 1998-99 and 2005-06. In social sector spending as a proportion of public expenditure, Gujarat ranks a lowly 19 among 21 major States.
Gujarat boasts good-quality highways, including the gleaming Ahmedabad-Baroda expressway. But so high is the toll for using the expressway that the bottom half of the population is forced to use camel- or bullock-carts. The road has cut off villages from one another and caused flooding by blocking natural drainage.
Gujarat is rapidly industrialising. But the industries that have flourished the most are all highly hazardous or polluting: poisonous chemicals (Vapi is among the worlds 10 worst toxic hubs); textile dyeing; ship-breaking; and diamond polishing, which turns people blind in their thirties. Gujarat has not still recovered from the de-industrialisation of the 1980s when its textile mills closed down. Its performance on labour rights is appalling. On minimum wages, it ranks eighth among all States, much below its per capita income rank (fourth).
The Congress did not criticise adequately this deplorable record or demand inclusive, people-centred development. It went along with Modis dualistic growth model. Its failure to counter Modis core appeal was even more damaging to itself and to Indian society. It refused to understand or acknowledge the strength of Hindutva in Gujarat, which goes far beyond the BJPs 17 years in power, including 12 years on its own.
The BJP has won close to, or more than, 50 per cent of the vote in two Assembly elections in Gujarat unlike in any other State. Its associates are also well entrenched. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has a presence in each village with a population exceeding 500. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) claims to have a branch in every town and village.
Communalism runs deep in Gujarats veins. It was the site of modern Indias first recorded communal riot, in 1713. Another landmark was the Hindu-Muslim violence of 1893 at Somnath, whose effects were felt nationally, leading to the famous Hunter Commission. This partially involved the politics of revenge for perceived past injustices. (For the complex story, see Romila Thapar, Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History, Viking, 2004). Under the impact of competitive politics, Hindu-Muslim differences over religious identities grew even more sharply.
The ground for this was prepared by the invention of an Aryan identity, which attracted the emerging Brahmin-Bania middle class like a magnet. Its principal author was the writer-historian-scholar Narmad, long a social reformer, who turned against reform to embrace indigenism. He defined Arya as high-born, noble upper castes who came first and settled in India.
Dayanand Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, was a Gujarati and toured the region in the late 19th century glorifying the Vedic Age and Aryadharma, and opposing it to Paradharma (alien religions). His legacy was carried on by Shraddhanand with his shuddhi (re-conversion of Muslims) campaign.
Even the freedom movements mobilisation strategies used religious metaphors: the Non-cooperation Movement was dharmayuddh; and British rule, Ravan raj. Hindutva was aggressively propagated through cow protection societies and Ganesh festivals.
Communal violence had become endemic and recurrent in Gujarat by the early 20th century. Major freedom movement events such as the Bardoli Satyagraha and the Dandi March happened to the accompaniment of Hindu-Muslim clashes. The riots of 1969 were remarkable for their ferocity and led to Muslim ghettoisation and disenfranchisement.
Hindutvas strength is also related to the influence of Right-wing ideas in Gujarats business-oriented society, which places a premium on commercialising all human relationships. Politically, the Rights influence goes back to Gandhis withdrawal in 1930 from Gujarat, and the inflated importance of Vallabhbhai Patel.
Three major factors have further shaped Gujarat against this backdrop. The most important is the early consolidation of a powerful alliance between patidar farmers and Brahmins and Banias in the cities. This divided the State between Bhadra Gujarat and Aam Gujarat, say social scientists Achyut Yagnik and Suchitra Sheth, and authors of The Shaping of Modern Gujarat (Penguin, 2005). The expanding and modernising middle class of Gujarat has been looking for a new identity to validate its present and protect its future.
Hindutva furnished this identity and helped the dominant castes thwart demands for power-sharing with the underprivileged majority. Gujarats social conservatism is thus an amalgam of Hindutva and upper-caste domination.
It is noteworthy that Gujarat is Indias only major State where there has been no successful Dalit or OBC self-assertion. An attempt was made at this when the Congress put together the KHAM (Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim) social coalition in 1980 and won a record 140 Assembly seats.
The upper-caste elite reacted violently to this and launched a powerful street agitation against reservations for Dalits. The myth of Gandhis Gujarat peaceful, tolerant and non-violent exploded, say Yagnik and Sheth.
The OBCs faced a similar violent savarna agitation in 1985-86 for demanding affirmative action. Remarkably, one of the agitations main leaders was Narendra Modi. The personnel who participated in it were mobilised yet again in 2002 in the post-Godhra pogrom.
While the ideology of Hindutva was gaining ground, say Yagnik and Sheth, moderate voices were getting weaker. By the early 1990s, community leaders no longer wielded any authority over their youth. These youngsters have grown up on a diet of anti-minority invective and the voices of moderation, of liberal thought and tolerance have been missing from their environment.
A second factor is the influence of conservative ideas through the non-resident Indian (NRI) community. Gujarat has the highest representation of any Indian State among professional NRIs living in North America. Their reactionary long-distance nationalism feeds Hindutva. They are more orthodox and backward-looking than their resident Indian counterparts, but provide the role model for young Gujaratis.
The third factor is Gujarats weak liberal culture. Gujarat has certainly had a tradition of tolerance, and peaceful co-existence of Hindus, Muslims and Parsis. But tolerance is not the same thing as modernist liberal respect for pluralism. One reason for a lack of this is the weakness of Gujarats labour movement. Once militant, this was compromised by the imposition of the pro-employer mazoor-mahajan union based on the romantic notion of trusteeship: industrialists as the trustees of labour, not its exploiters.
The labour movements disarming at an early stage meant that Gujarats elite was under little pressure to make human rights and other concessions, or to respect liberal values. As historian E.P. Thompson often said, a liberal culture does not come out of thin air; it arises from the peoples struggles, from fights at the barricades. This did not happen in Gujarat.
Since the early 1990s, the bhadraloks aggressiveness has increasingly taken the form of xenophobia and crude Hindu chauvinism. It is in Gujarat that textbooks were first severely rewritten to distort history by glorifying everything Hindu and maligning everything non-Hindu. The effects have been aggravated by changes in the social geography of cities like Ahmedabad and the creation of Hindu and Muslim ghettos, resulting in declining social interaction between communities.
Gujarats Muslims, probably the most culturally integrated minority in India, have been turned into the bhadraloks villains. Ironically, this happened although the penetration of Islam in Gujarat was remarkably peaceful. Traditionally, Gujarats Muslims were divided into 130 different communities disparate in descent, occupation, lifestyle and customs. For instance, the Bohras and the Khojas were severely persecuted by Sunni Muslims, not Hindus. Hindutva has been as blind to differences among Muslims as to divisions among Hindus.
Finally, what explains the virulence of Gujarati sub-nationalism and the Modi personality cult? Gujarats middle class has long nurtured a grievance over the loss of Mumbai caused by the reorganisation of the old Bombay State in 1960. It also convinced itself that the whole nation was prejudiced against Gujarat because it did not quickly sanction the Narmada dam projects. Parties across the spectrum built a mystique around the dams as the key to limitless progress and prosperity, despite their high economic, human and ecological costs.
When the Narmada Bachao Andolan launched an agitation against the Sardar Sarovar dam for displacing vulnerable people without rehabilitating them, Medha Patkar was vilified as Gujarats enemy; defence of the underprivileged was demonised; and militant sloganeering about Gujarats glory took over the public discourse.
Modi cynically constructed the Gujarat Gaurav plank from these negative and xenophobic sentiments. During the election campaign, he depicted all those who demanded justice for the victims of 2002 as violators of Gujarats self-respect: for his followers, the 2002 anti-Muslim carnage never happened; only Godhra and Akshardham did.
Ultimately, Modi won because he projected, like a true demagogue, an appeal based on militant Hindutva, Gujarati hubris, and a despotic personality that respects no democratic values or norms of decency but is admired for its strong will, determination and decisiveness although these may be directed to achieve elite objectives and in undemocratic ways, such as coercive land acquisition for special economic zones (SEZs) and gross violations of human rights.
The admiration this ruthless decisiveness evokes among the middle classes testifies to a horrible cult of personality, and of a quasi-fascist personality at that. So, thousands of Modi supporters chose to suppress their own identities by wearing masks imitating his face. The bulk of the middle class does not feel even an iota of remorse for what happened in 2002.
All this speaks of a deep social pathology in a State that has graduated from a Hindutva laboratory into a large-scale Hindutva factory. At any rate, Modi will now seek a larger, national-level role for himself. The Sangh Parivar, always a worshipper of power, will find it hard to contain him.
That task has fallen to all those who believe in secularism, freedom and inclusive growth. We must not fail these ideals.
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