Caste and class: the rise of Hindu nationalism in India.

Amrita Basu

IN THE THREE YEARS from 1989 to 1992, India experienced the phenomenal rise in influence of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Many observers assumed that the BJP's influence would be short-lived, for Hindu nationalism violated the principles of centrism, socialism, and secularism that had governed Indian political life since independence. But contrary to their predictions, the BJP emerged as the single largest party in the 1996 parliamentary elections, far surpassing the mainstream Congress party that had ruled India almost every year since 1947. Although its electoral platform was broader than it had been in 1991, it continued to define itself as a Hindu nationalist party. In its rise to national power the BJP overcame the obstacles that have traditionally hindered the growth of religious parties.

The BJP's success lies in its having become the major voice of opposition to incumbent governments at national and regional levels. Beyond this broad generalization, most other explanations for the BJP's growth differ by region, constituency, and period. Indeed, one of the BJP's greatest skills is its ability to speak in many voices. In the early 1990s it was a vehicle for upper caste resentment at the growing political influence of the lower castes. It also gave voice to the economic aspirations of the industrial middle classes, who sought freedom from state control to collaborate with foreign capital. However, by 1996, the BJP had gained lower caste support in many states. It had also become an outspoken critic of the Congress party-led government's neo-liberal policies and had come to speak on behalf of the workers and small producers who were disadvantaged by the reforms. The BJP has increasingly occupied the space created by the decline of Congress.

The period preceding the BJP's rise in the mid-1980s was marked by considerable protest from below, directed primarily at the state. Groups in the Punjab, Kashmir, and the northeastern areas called for the devolution of power and resources, while agrarian movements sought more favorable terms of trade and lower castes demanded greater representation in state institutions. The Congress government's response to these demands reflected its greater commitment to its own survival in office than to democratic practices.

The BJP captured public fears of political instability and national disintegration. At the same time, it channeled public attention toward one among the many biases Congress displayed, namely its tendency to "appease" conservative Muslim groups. The issue that the BJP saw as symbolizing the Congress party's opportunism was the 1985 Shah Bano case in which a Muslim woman demanded alimony from her former husband. In April 1985 the Supreme Court granted her demand under the Criminal Procedure Code and issued some disparaging comments about Muslim personal law. Muslim fundamentalists were outraged. To assuage them, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi overturned the court's decision and passed a bill which denied Muslim women the possibility of redress under secular law. The Shah Bano case has become a symbol of the compromises Congress was willing to make to gain support from Muslim leaders.

The decline in Congress was in part the outcome of a long-standing tendency toward the erosion of political institutions; by the late 1980s, the bureaucracy, military, police, and the Congress party itself had all suffered a loss of authority. Although there are numerous reasons for these trends, the most important concerns Indira Gandhi's role as prime minister. Indira Gandhi steadily sought to secure her own leadership at the cost of political institutions. She centralized power in the executive branch of government, thereby weakening other branches of government. As she felt her popularity wane, she appealed to the Hindu majority for support. The BJP was quick to take advantage of the growth of majoritarian sentiment that Indira Gandhi had fostered by presenting itself as the rightful representative of Hindu interests.

In 1989, a wave of anti-Congress opinion swept the left-leaning Janata Dal party into power. The Janata Dal sought the BJP's support to form the national parliamentary government, giving the BJP an unprecedented opportunity for national power. In the next two years, the BJP, again riding the anti-Congress wave, won regional elections in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh. The result was that at the state level, the BJP was governing almost a third of India's population, mainly in India's Hindi-speaking heartland.

In the 1990-1991 legislative assembly elections, the BJP tapped growing resentment toward the Congress party, faring best in states where it represented the major opposition to Congress and worst in states which were not dominated by Congress. In Kerala, Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh, in which alternatives to Congress existed, the BJP failed to achieve major gains. By contrast, it gained control of state governments in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh, where regional parties were relatively weak, and other parties did not provide serious alternatives to Congress.

The dependence of the BJP on anti-Congress and anti-establishment feelings was shown by its electoral defeats in subsequent years. In Uttar Pradesh, the largest Indian state, BJP rule was short-lived after the formation of a new political party, the Samajavadi Janata Party (SJP) headed by Mulayam Singh. This group, which established itself as a party after breaking away from the Janata Dal, provided an alternative to both Congress and the BJP, and brought about the BJP's defeat. Anti-Congress sentiment may have helped bring the BJP to power in 1990-1991, but was insufficient to get it re-elected. Between 1989 and 1991, when new elections were held, the BJP's parliamentary seats declined in Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. Even more important were the results of the state assembly elections in 1993; the BJP lost in Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh and won narrowly in Rajasthan. Only in New Delhi, where elections were held for the first time, did the BJP win by a large margin.

Where it could not present itself as the only alternative to Congress in the 1990 elections, the BJP appealed to Hindu interests. In Himachal Pradesh, where the BJP was the only alternative to Congress, Hindu nationalism was unnecessary for obtaining political support. At the other end of the spectrum was Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP traditionally had a narrow social base of support. It was here that the BJP most freely and militantly voiced Hindu nationalist appeals in order to attract the mass support that it could not otherwise attain.

In 1995, as in regional elections two years earlier, Indians voted decisively against the incumbent government, and the BJP suffered reversals in all of the states where it had been elected in 1993. Significantly, the BJP was defeated in states where there were other alternatives to Congress, and elected only in Maharashtra and Gujarat, where the Janata Dal had collapsed. In Maharashtra, the BJP allied with a more militant Hindu nationalist party, the Shiv Sena, and came to power with a one percent majority over the Congress vote. In Gujarat, the BJP came to power with a comfortable two-thirds majority but six months later suffered a major internal crisis which led to its replacing the chief minister. Shortly thereafter, a coalition between the BSP and the BJP in Uttar Pradesh collapsed and the national government placed the state under direct rule.

The Congress government responded to the BJP's campaign in Ayodhya, in much the same way it had responded to regional movements, alternately placating and ignoring them. In the case of the BJP campaign, the Congress government ignored threats that the BJP had been making since 1989 to demolish a sixteenth century mosque which a Muslim ruler had built at the birth place of Lord Ram. In mobilizing support for the movement to replace the Babri Mosque with a temple in Ayodhya, the BJP and its affiliates fostered numerous riots between Hindu and Muslim communities in large parts of northern India. That the violence assumed the proportions it did can be attributed in large part to Congress passivity. The national government took no measures to protect the mosque in Ayodhya from destruction. Similarly, in virtually all the cities and towns where riots occurred, the local administration was either inactive or complicit in the violence. In the aftermath of the riots, the guilty officials were seldom demoted, let alone fired or punished more severely. Whether the Indian national government deliberately abdicated its responsibilities, suffered paralysis, or was communalized itself, its inaction during the riots displayed its extreme weakness.

The BJP and Identity Politics

The period of the BJP'S growth coincided with shifts in government policies that had important implications for both class and caste relations. During this time, Congress governments sponsored a shift in India's closed economy toward encouraging private foreign investment. As in the political arena, the BJP provided a principal alternative to the Congress party in the economic sphere. It gained the support of the business classes by supporting liberalization during a period when other political parties were subscribing to state socialism. Once Congress ushered in the economic reforms, however, the BJP's position became more complicated.

To maintain support among its traditional constituencies--traders, businessmen and shopkeepers--the BJP continued to support the lifting of state controls, abolition of licenses, and devolution of power to the states. However, the BJP realized that it was no longer expedient to provide wholesale support for liberalization when it had more to gain by criticizing it and representing those groups that the reforms had adversely affected. The BJP denounced Congress for having failed both to achieve significant growth and to address the poverty, unemployment, and inflation that followed in the wake of liberalization.

The BJP's economic platform also changed because economic liberalization conflicted with its nationalist aura. Under the influence of the Hindu revivalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP has embraced swadeshi ("self-reliance") which favors Indian over foreign investment in high technology and infrastructural sectors. "We want foreign companies to give us computer chips, not potato chips," L.K. Advani proclaimed at the BJP's national convention in Bombay. To dramatize the dangers of foreign exploitation, the BJP-Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra canceled a project awarded to the US company Enron by the previous Congress government. The BJP administration in Delhi similarly canceled a license to Kentucky Fried Chicken.

At the same time as economic changes were occurring at the national level, there were important developments underway in the rural areas. The rise of the BJP was preceded by the growing politicization of the lower and middle castes which sought to better their economic and social status through agrarian mobilization. In Uttar Pradesh, the middle castes (termed the "other backward classes") threw their support behind a farmers' movement which eroded the traditionally hegemonic position of the Congress party. The Janata Dal party which came to power in 1990 decided to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations, which, developed many years earlier but neglected by previous governments, reserved jobs in public education and employment at the national level for these middle caste groups.

The first BJP-led procession to Ayodhya took place in 1990 in response to the Janata Dal government's decision to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations. Although the BJP officially supported these recommendations in order to avoid antagonizing the lower castes, it opposed them in practice, particularly at the state and local levels. To the other backward classes, for whom employment prospects in the lucrative private sector are limited, public sector employment is key to upward social mobility. The government's adoption of the Mandal recommendations unleashed upper class Hindus' accumulated resentment at the state for making special concessions to the lower castes. In the fall of 1990, over 159 youth poured kerosene over their bodies and attempted suicide in a number of cities in northern India. One hundred people were killed in police firings and clashes that accompanied widespread unrest. Underlying the appearance of Hindu support for the Ayodhya movement was widespread upper caste opposition to caste reservations.

The Mandal recommendations posed a serious threat to the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, where a powerful backward caste movement had already challenged Congress party dominance. The Janata Dal's implementation of the reforms further strengthened the coalition Mulayam Singh had been forging of backward castes, Muslims, and scheduled castes (the lowest caste). When Singh attempted to hinder the BJP from marching to Ayodhya in 1990, the BJP branded him anti-Hindu. Tapping upper caste resentment at the growing influence of Uttar Pradesh's lower castes, the BJP defeated the Janata Dal by a wide margin in 1991. However, the BJP's defeat in 1993 showed that the alliance of Muslims with lower class Hindus remained a formidable political force in Uttar Pradesh. These forces were also responsible for the BJP defeat in Uttar Pradesh in 1996.

The BJP benefited from caste politics in other states as well. In Madhya Pradesh, for example, the BJP leadership cultivated the support of scheduled castes and tribes by appealing to their economic interests. Whereas Muslims constitute less than five percent of Madhya Pradesh's population, scheduled castes and tribes together account for 34 percent and other backward castes for 48 percent of the population. Congress gains in the 1993 elections came largely from these constituencies. In return for their support, Congress appointed a scheduled caste member as deputy chief minister and introduced quotas for the lower castes at the state level. Both the Congress party and BJP, therefore, used caste politics to their advantage.

The BJP gained another important constituency during its meteoric rise to power by cultivating the support of women. It did so in part by proclaiming itself a champion of women's interests, especially by supporting a uniform civil code which would expand women's rights within the family and eliminate distinctions in personal law between religious communities. By decrying the failure of the Congress government to pass a uniform civil code, the BJP sought to demonstrate the depth of its commitment to both women's rights and secularism. Arun Jaitley, a solicitor general and important BJP functionary, argued that the BJP's support for a common civil code demonstrated that it alone among political parties respected the constitution.

Compared to other political parties, the BJP created greater opportunities for women's active participation. It carved out an important role for women in its election campaign, particularly in 1991 when the Ayodhya issue was on its agenda. Since women are commonly assumed to be more devout than men, the BJP depicted women's support as evidence of its own religious commitment. Women also found in Hindu mobilization opportunities to transgress norms of sexual segregation and seclusion to which middle class women are especially subject. The BJP ensured that women played highly visible roles in the course of the Ayodhya movement.

As these examples suggest, the BJP succeeded in transcending the narrow framework of party politics. Organizationally, its close links with the revivalist RSS and VHP enabled it to gain access to activist networks outside the electoral arena and to associate itself with religious and cultural issues. By bringing questions of religious faith into politics, the BJP challenged the boundary that usually demarcates private from public life. The agendas of most political parties are too narrow to address the hopes, anxieties, and fears of groups who feel themselves dislocated by the economic and political changes that India is experiencing in the late twentieth century. But by making the mosque at Ayodhya symbolic of "Hindu hurt," the BJP legitimated the aspirations and resentments of groups who felt marginalized because of class, caste, or gender. It also empowered them by according them important roles within electoral campaigns, riots, and the mobilization around Ayodhya.

The Future of Hindu Nationalism

The BJP grew between 1989 and 1992 because it provided a vehicle for the expression of grievances against the state and for the mobilization of groups which felt victimized by the political system. In some contexts, antistate sentiment was inextricably linked to anti-Congress sentiment, and the BJP created an alternative to Congress rule. A pattern emerged in which the BJP's national standing improved with success in state elections but declined when its tenure in office eroded some of these gains in the next state elections. Still, even in states where it suffered defeat in 1993, the BJP remained the major opposition to the incumbent government and a serious contender for power in subsequent elections.

The BJP provided leadership to groups which felt marginalized by the system. With the RSS and VHP it created a context which encouraged the self-expression of diverse Hindu social groups. For many Hindu women, the BJP provided a thrilling opportunity to become active in the political arena with the sanction of their families; for the lower castes and classes, riots were a means of settling scores with shop owners and erstwhile employers; and for upper caste BJP supporters, Hindu nationalism signaled a rejection of the growing political power of the backward castes.

By 1993 the intense period of Hindu nationalist mobilization was over. Public support for BJP militancy subsided after the destruction of the mosque in Ayodhya. The BJP's ability to overcome caste divisions through religious appeals could not be sustained, as demonstrated significantly by its 1993 defeat at the hands of the backward caste-scheduled caste-Muslim alliance in Uttar Pradesh. Responding to these electoral reversals, the BJP saw fit to moderate its stance. At its national council meeting in Bangalore in June 1993 it downplayed religious issues and concentrated instead on economic liberalization and political corruption. BJP leader Advani affirmed his commitment to a secular state and depicted the BJP as a responsible alternative to Congress. In contrast to the aura of militant Hindu nationalism that surrounded its election campaign in 1991, the BJP was determined not to present itself as a single-issue party in 1996. Instead it addressed a range of issues, concerning corruption, economic reforms, the uniform civil code, immigration policy, and national security. Subject to the restrictions imposed by the Election Commissioner, it refrained from explicitly issuing religious appeals.

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the BJP had simply abdicated militant Hindu appeals. Even during the period when the BJP projected a militant posture on the national level, it demonstrated moderation in the policies it pursued in the states which it ruled. Conversely, during the current period of moderation, it has sought to keep alive its more militant inclinations. Before the April elections, a journalist asked Atal Behari Vajpayee, who became prime minister after the BJP's victory, how the BJP could expect to win the elections in the absence of the fervor generated by the Ram Janambhoomi movement. Vajpayee responded that the BJP had every intention of building a temple in Ayodhya if it came to power, strenuously resisting the suggestion that this would rekindle communal tensions. Even the BJP's broader platform often aligns the interests of the nation with the interests of the Hindu majority. Its references to national security are often veiled allusions to threats from Pakistan, its references to immigration policy apply exclusively to Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, and its support for a uniform civil code expresses hostility to Muslim law.

Compared to its public persona of five years ago, the BJP has sought to moderate and soften its stance. That it has done so is testimony to the pressures the electoral system exerts on national parties to adopt centrist positions. However, if the BJP is under pressure to moderate its stance, it also experiences pressures to reissue periodically Hindu nationalist appeals. One reason is that is must maintain the support of the urban middle classes who have become increasingly committed to majoritarian nationalism. Paradoxically, at the very time that the Muslim intelligentsia has become increasingly critical of fundamentalism and committed to secularism, the Hindu intelligentsia has become more openly communal. It has become quite acceptable for middle class Hindus to depict the Muslim minority as the cause of India's most serious problems, from overpopulation to the oppression of women to national disintegration.

In certain respects, Hindu nationalism is now more useful to the BJP than ever. The longer the BJP is a major actor in state and national politics, the more likely it is to be weakened by charges of corruption, factionalism, and maladministration. If the BJP cannot claim with as much certainty as before to provide a more ethical alternative to Congress, it can still call on its distinctive identification with Hindu nationalism. On the other hand, the BJP may find Hindu nationalism more cumbersome; as a member of the opposition, the BJP could use religious appeals to transcend caste and class divisions within its Hindu constituency. But as a party that will increasingly occupy power, it must prove its responsibility to the entire citizenry. The BJP has learned while governing at the state level that it is easier to oppose than to propose. In becoming a party of national governance, the BJP may find that this dilemma will come back to haunt it.