The Political economy of Communalism
Some Observations on the Contemporary Political Discourse in India
- V.
Krishna Ananth
The
increasing resort to the religious idiom and the use of the other denominational
identities such as caste and the mobilization thereof on the basis of such
idioms in the past two decades continues to rattle the political discourse in
India. It is also significant that this development, where such issues as
hunger, poverty and other manifestations of an equal economic order are being
pushed under the carpet in the national political discourse during the same
period. This development, it is important to note, stares at our face
particularly in the two decades since 1980.
The conspicuous
absense of such basic issues in the political discourse particularly at a time
when such aspects of the welfare state -food subsidy, health care and other
social security measures- are sought to be abolished clearly points to a
pattern.
The political class is no longer circumvent about
advocating an end to the subsidy regime. The sole note of dissent in this regard
comes from the various left groups including the mainstream Left parties as the
CPI(M) and the CPI. The only area where they ( the political masters) want the
subsidy regime to continue is with agriculture. All these cannot be mere
coincidence. Instead, it points towards a dangerous development.
The
civil society in India is at crossroads. A nation, born out of a long drawn
anti-imperialist struggle and hence could give shape to a secular and democratic
governing structure is now witnessing the rise of fascist tendencies threatening
to dismantle its institutions of Democracy.
The Republican
Constitution that drew its strength primarily from the pluralist and democratic
spirit of the anti-imperialist struggle is sought to be distorted. If this (the
efforts to distort) is essentially an integral part of the political project of
the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh(RSS) through several of its outfits ( the BJP
being its arm in the electoral arena), the others in the political
spectrum(particularly the Congress (I) as a party) have been refusing to take
the battle on in right earnest.
More than a mere refusal,
the Congress as a political party had played and continues to play a role that
has only aided the rise of such forces, apart from compromising with the
Hindutva forces, the Congress party had, on several occasions in the past,
attempted to appropriate the right-wing slogans. The opening of the locks
(through a court order manipulated by the then Rajiv Gandhi Government), the
conduct of shilanyas at the site where" the Babri Masjid stood and the passive
row played by the Narasimha Rao Government when the sangh parivar hordes
demolished the structure on December, 6, 1992 are all part of the political
folklore. These, however, were only the visible or much pronounced occasions
where the congress party aided or rather participated in communalizing the
political discource in India.
A nation that was born out of
one of the mightiest battles against colonialism and where normality (from
sectarian strife) could be restored within only a couple of years after the
worst communal violence of the time ( the mindless killings, arson and looting
that were witnessed in several parts of the country in the wake of partition)
witnessed very recently the "celebration" was orchestrated by the political
class, cutting across party lines, to kindle, what was being described, the
spirit of nationalism.
Any appeal for peace or even a
private statement at that stage that meaningful efforts to ensure de-escalation
of hostilities between India and Pakistan and not a conflict was the need of the
hour was soon branded as anti-national; and by extension those who said so were
abused for being a Pakistani agent.
In other words,
nationalism in India is sought to be constructed on a new plank ; rather than
the ethos or the tradition of anti-imperialism, the basis of Indian nationalism
is now being sought to be located and constructed on the basis of a perpetual
conflict with Pakistan.
And only because the core of the
nationalist movement had remained secular, the flames(lit by the communal
violence in the wake of partition) were doused within just a couple of years;
and far more significantly, independent India matured soon into a Republic whose
construction was rooted in the pluralist tradition of the freedom movement and
democratic principles, emulated essentially from the bourgoise socio-political
order that had matured in Western Europe around the same time.
This basis is now being challenged. And the challenge is no longer weak. "They"
are not just on the fringes of the civil society; not only have "they" entered
the mainstream but have grown in size to the extend that they are beginning to
hegemonies the political discourse. "They" represent the Golwalkar-Hedgewar
tradition, now being identified in the Indian political discourse as Hindutva;
the thrust of their ideological position is that Indian nationalism must look
back for its roots in the ancient empires that existed such as the Guptas and
the Mauryas and that this "nation" was invaded and colonized by Ghazni, Ghori
and later on by the Moghuls; and by this definition, the Marathas, the kings of
Vijayanagar and all those who fought against the moghul rule were the first of
the nationalists.
In short, the ideologues of this brand
insist upon locating Indian nationalism in the Aryan kingdoms established and
sustained on the basis of the Vedic tradition.
The fact that
Delhi Sultans or the Moghul Emperors were no different from the Guptas or the
Mauryas or any other Hindu rulers when it came to perpetuating an oppressive
economic order and that all these setups drew their legitimacy to oppress the
masses from the social order(based essentially on the Vedic tradition) does not
appeal to this school. Similarly, it does not appeal to them that nationalism is
essentially a modern concept and that it evolved in the struggle against
colonialism.
Indeed, resistance to the British rule in the
form of armed battles by native rulers are part of recorded history; the most
important of such battle was the armed rebellion in 1857. But then, it is also a
fact that most of these battles were guided or led by the native rulers and
their vision could hardly go beyond defending their own interests. After all,
the outcome of the 1857 revolt was the crowning of Bahadur Shah Zafar, an
inheritor of the Moghul empire that was in any case a decadent and backward"
looking dispensation; in other words, the end game turned out to be restoring
Monarchy. Notwithstanding the valour and sacrifices by the participants in the
battle, one certainly cannot threat the uprising of having been nationalist.
Instead, Indian nationalism evolved only a few decades after 1857 and the basis
of its evolution was a critique of colonialism as a process. The first ever
systematic critique in this sense was Dadabhai Naoroji's "Un-British Rule of the
British in India." No doubt the thrust of this treatise was to appeal to the
"good sense" of the emerging bourgeois intellectuals, which indeed was the
`dominant ideology' in Britain towards the end of the 19th Century to reform.
Indeed, the colonial structure by its very nature - the dependence of the
metropolitan bourgeoisie on the spoils from the colonial hinterland - had
rendered bourgeois intellectuals in Britain insensitive to such appeals from
Dadabhai Naoroji or for that matter from the Indian National Congress in its
initial years. And it was the realization of this reality that triggered the
growth of Indian nationalism, not merely as an intellectual critique of
colonialism but also in the nature of an anti-imperialist struggle.
It is now a well established fact of history that the basis of Indian
nationalism was the conflict of interests between the metropolitan bourgeoisie
on the one hand and the colonial people on the other. And the metropolitan
bourgeoisie and more so its agent (the British administration) constituted the
"other" in the making of the nationalist consciousness. In other words, the
basis of nationalism in India ( and this includes present day Pakistan too) was
the colonial structure and the resistance to this structure, whose cause was
located in the exploitative mode of production. There was hardly any place for
such other symbols as religion or any glorious past in the making of Indian
nationalism.
Thus it is clear that even while the
nationalist leadership in India resorted to glorification of the past, they were
conscious about the need for a forward looking ideology and opposed to any kind
of return to the past. Nationalism, hence, was a forward looking idea; and the
Indian National Congress, in the course of defining swaraj, was conscious of
this imperative. The Republican Constitution was indeed the manifestation of
this long and drawn out debate carried out in the context of the
anti-imperialist mobilization of the masses as citizens rather than as Hindus
and Muslims.
