Secularism and Liberalism in India: A Case Study of Modi’s Era (original) (raw)
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CHALLENGES TO THE SECULAR-DEMOCRATIC POLITY OF INDIA: PAST AND PRESENT
The secular-democratic polity of India has been besieged with challenges ever since its birth on 15 August 1947. It was born as an independent nation in the midst of unprecedented communal violence, mayhem and destruction of life and property. The communal polarisation had ravaged the subcontinent even before the birth of an independent Indian nation. The independence of India after many centuries of repressive colonial rule should have been an occasion of great jubilation. Unfortunately, the partition of the country following the Two-nation theory propagated by the Muslim League turned the birth of a secular-democratic India into a dreadful nightmare. Interestingly, this was done in the name of nationalism. However, the people of India, despite the creation of Pakistan on the eastern and western sides of the country on the basis of religion, had a significant reason to celebrate Independence as India chose to be a non-theocratic state and declared its commitment to a secular-democratic polity. Undeniably, there were serious theoretical as well as practical weaknesses in this claim; nevertheless, it was a brave, historic and revolutionary commitment. In a situation where the Muslim League, under the leadership of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, had succeeded in dismembering India ruled by the British, thus legitimizing the thesis that each religious community constituted a separate nation too, the commitment to a secular India was indeed praiseworthy. The partition of a united India was the tragic culmination of a long and ferocious struggle between organizations like the Indian National Congress (hereafter referred to as Congress) and the Muslim League, with the British rulers playing the game of favouring Two-nation theory. The choice of a non-theocratic state by the Congress leadership immediately after Independence was not the result of appeasement of religious minority groups, but rather a continuation of the anti-colonial legacy of the Congress which stood for a secular-democratic India. Congress’s “inclusionary nationalism” challenged the Muslim League’s “exclusionary communalism” believing that nations were not constituted merely out of religious identities. The predominantly Hindu leadership of the Congress, rising above emotional and communal feelings, arrived at a consensus that a theocratic state would be inherently antithetical to democracy and could not guarantee the stability and progress of a nation. There were hard facts available in abundance to prove the veracity of the Congress’ thesis, or that of those who opposed the Two-nation theory. For example, despite the creation of Pakistan in the name of Islam, a majority of Muslims chose to remain in India on the eve of partition. Thus, India became the country with the second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia, a reality that has not changed even today. On the other hand, Nepal ruled by a Hindu King with a population of more than 90% Hindus remained a separate nation. No one claimed that since the populations of both Nepal and India were predominantly Hindus, they should have formed one nation. It is true that the Muslim League’s juggernaut was successful in achieving its objective of dividing India on communal lines but it is also true that all Muslims did not subscribe to its philosophy. There were popular Muslim leaders like Allah Baksh, having a large following among common Muslims all over India, who vocally opposed the Two-nation theory and challenged the very basis of Muslim communal politics. However, the crucial reality should not be overlooked that it was not only the Muslim League which believed in the Two-nation theory. There had been a highly vocal and aggressive section amongst Hindus, long before the Independence of the country, which believed that India was primordially a Hindu nation and only Hindus could be the natural inhabitants of this holy land. The RSS and Hindu Mahasabha were two such prominent organizations. These forces continue to present a serious threat to secular-democratic polity of India. Their game-plan is discussed in details here.
Authoritarianism and majoritarian religious nationalism in contemporary India
World Affairs, 2024
This article examines the Narendra Modi regime in India. Often acerbic political rhetoric is attached to official policies of the regime, creating fear and hopelessness within sections of the population. In this study, five sets of political activities of the government are evaluated. First, cultural authoritarianism became apparent with complicity toward “cow vigilantism,” slapping sedition charges against those showing political dissent, banning the history books of selected progressives, and stereotyping sections of the left and liberals as antinationals. Second, the demonetization policy was implemented without adequately following the economic protocols of the state. Third, the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Bill indicates the thwarting of democratic and federalist ideas. Fourth, the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens exercise in Assam demonstrate the communal-fascist worldview of the regime in profiling population groups. Finally, the sloppy handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the new Information Technology rules show the government's callous approach toward science and privacy. By analyzing such political activities, the article points out that majoritarian religious nationalism, coupled with authoritarianism, has been the ideological expression of the Modi regime, coexisting with both state surveillance and electoral democracy.
An analysis of the narrowing space of secularism in India and its ramifications in the region
Liberal Arts and Social Sciences International Journal, 2022
Indian society was diverse and complex in nature from its emergence and was marred with communal conflicts. Hence, it was inevitable for the founding fathers of the Indian state to adopt an inclusive political system based on democracy, secularism, and pluralism to achieve unity in diversity. Due to the self-centric mindset of succeeding politicians who began to drift away from these ideals, secularism has been declining for a long time. The appalling political behaviour of the ruling elite has been enlarging the gulf between the theory and practice of secularism since the rule of the Indian National Congress, starting from the demise of Nehru. It has been damaging the idea of composite cultural nationalism by narrowing its societal space. That practice has also created an ideological vacuum filled by religious nationalism over time and reached its culminating point when Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came into power in India. This article analytically explores the consequences of the narrowing space of secularism and the resultant rise of Hindutva. It also delineates the destabilization of the domestic environment and an alarming regional security situation affected by the emerging extremist ideology in place of secularism in India.
Citing Jan-Werner Müller’s What is Populism?, the journalist, Amit Varma, was struck by “how closely our own prime minister, Narendra Modi, matched Müller’s definition”. After enumerating Müller’s seven “characteristics” and the three “things” populists did when in power, Varma found these all applicable to India. But can such schematic “characteristics” of populism describe the ghastly daytime murder of 15-year-old Hafiz Junaid on a moving, packed train? And what about the complicit silence maintained during and afterwards by populists, non-populists and anti-populists alike? The question, then, is: are populism and fascism substitutes?
RISE OF THE POLITICAL RIGHT IN INDIA: HINDUTVA-DEVELOPMENT MIX, MODI MYTH, AND DUALITIES
Kaul, N. (2017) "Rise of the Political Right in India: Hindutva-Development Mix, Modi Myth, And Dualities", Journal of Labor and Society, Volume 20, Number 4, pp. 523-548., 2017
We are witnessing a global phenomenon of the rise of right-wing leaders who combine nationalist rhetoric with a claim to challenge the pernicious effects of neoliberalism. But, upon achieving power, they do not oppose the business elite, instead, while paying lip service to the victims of economic processes, they direct the blame for those structural problems upon the minorities and " Others " within the rightwing nationalist imagination. In the Indian context, this is typified by the rise of Narendra Modi. The Modi-led BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) and its coming to power in 2014 has similarities with Trump, and is also different from the earlier incarnations of the BJP. In the first part of this article, I explain the innovative nature of the specific Modi-mix of Hindutva and Development, and outline the toxic impact his right-wing populist government has had on a broad spectrum of Indian society and polity. However, in spite of the visible increase in real and symbolic violence across the country, Modi continues to remain popular and wield great influence. The second part of the article answers this apparent puzzle by providing an account of the work of the " Modi myth " that projects him as an ascetic, paternal, and decisive ruler. This political myth is constantly reinforced through medium, speech, and performance. Further, given the many disparate constituencies with differing concerns that Modi-led BJP addresses itself to, the policy inconsistencies are reconciled by a strategic and systematic use of " forked tongue " speech that presents the different interests as being uniform. A populist right-wing politics is constructed out of keeping these dualities in motion by speaking to the different constituencies with a forked tongue. I conclude by giving three examples of management of such dual domains: corporate/grassroots, national/international, India/Bharat.
Crisis of Secularism and Changing Contours of Minority Politics in India
Asian Survey, 2021
This paper examines the changing nature of Muslim political mobilization in contemporary India in the context of Hindu nationalism’s ascendancy into power and the consequent crisis of traditional Muslim politics. Through an ethnographic case study of the Popular Front of India, we argue that a qualitatively new form of political mobilization is taking place among Indian Muslims centered on an articulation of “self-defense” against a “Hindu nationalist threat.” This politics of self-defense is constructed on the reconciliation of two contradictory processes: use of extensive legal pragmatism, and defensive ethnicization based on Islamic identity. The paper also examines the consequences of the emerging politics of competing ethnicization for even a normative and minimal idea of secularism and how it contributes to the process of decoupling of secularism and democracy in contemporary India.
Sikh Formations- Religion, Culture, Theory, 2019
As the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance returns to power in India, it is appropriate to reflect on the coalition’s first term in office. This paper provides an overview of the government’s performance in key areas, especially vis-a-vis religious minorities, and of the competing approaches through which its policies have been understood. It argues for a need to move away from conventional explanations that have failed to predict the popular appeal of Hindu nationalism. Instead, an interpretive understanding anchored in social constructionism offers a more meaningful perspective on the seismic changes that are reflected in contemporary Indian politics.
HINDU NATIONALIST STATECRAFT AND MODI'S AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM
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In this chapter, we analyze how a majoritarian Hindu nationalism has been inscribed into law in unprecedented ways under Narendra Modi. In doing so, we start from Hindu nationalist attempts at redefining the Indian nation through grassroots mobilization and violence from the 1990s. The chapter then analyzes the more recent attempts by the Modi regime at mobilizing law in order to align the nation with the core tenets of Hindu nationalism. This, we argue, is in effect an attempt at legally locking in Hindu nationalist claims to the nation in ways that make it exceedingly difficult to reverse such claims in the future, and which erodes democratic rights in dramatic ways.
Hegemonic Secularism, Dominant Communalism: Imagining Social Transformation in India
Rethinking Marxism, 2010
Most antimodern and subaltern critiques of ''secularism'' in India work by exposing a hidden, particularist majoritarianism (communalism) underneath abstract secularist universalism; this, however, externalizes communalism to the effects of ''Western modernity'' or secularization. On the other hand, the secularist left also externalizes communalism to feudal, premodern power relations or right-wing forces, or to the lack of left nationalist hegemony, or ''an ethically neutral state.'' What if, however, ''abstract'' secularism is only the form of appearance of an actually existing communal social order? The categorization of (Nehruvian) secularism as ''abstract'' and ''imposed'' glosses over the continuity it provides to this structurally embedded communalism. Dominant communalism's coexistence with hegemonic secularism, otherwise presumed to be anti-communal and already fighting communalism, precludes anti-communalism as part of a larger ('old-fashioned'?) revolutionary transformation of society.
Is There a Future for the Secular Liberal Citizen in India Today CRITICAL EDGES
Critical Edges, 2021
This essay explores two central ideas of B.R. Ambedkar and puts them in the context of India’s contemporary political reality. These two tenets viz. liberalism and secularism figure as constitutive elements among Ambedkar’s contribution to Indian social and political thought. One often loses sight of this aspect even as his role in the drafting of the Constitution of India is celebrated in a mechanistic fashion like a ritual. In India’s highly charged political atmosphere of today, rife with a majoritarian view of how political and social life ought to be ordered, it is ironic to observe these two words becoming political slurs. They are often deployed to discredit dissent, and this eventually leads to an erosion of their significance themselves. It is a paradoxical situation when Ambedkar is sought to be appropriated by the proponents of political Hinduism within a sanitised Constitutional framework. The reason arguably lies in the bonds existing firstly between liberation and politics, and secondly the idea of religion as a reformist concept with secularism as a non-negotiable aspect.