India's Lurch to the Right (original) (raw)
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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.
Secularism and Liberalism in India: A Case Study of Modi’s Era
2021
In the recent decade, a sea change from Nehruvian India i.e. liberal, secular and democratic state, to the rise of far-right and illiberal democracy can be discerned after Narendra Modi‟s triumph in two successive Indian elections – the last one in 2019 returning him to power with a thumping two-third majority. Though, Narendra Modi‟s staggering success is the upshot of procedural democracy or political democracy in India, yet his campaign was ridden with right-wing rhetoric and demagogy, and witnessed the rise of jingoism, majoritarian nationalism, marginalisation of minorities and squeezing civil liberties. In the West, development between state and society has been dialectical – that is, through interaction between state and society. Popular struggles from society and enlightened initiatives by the state culminated in congruent development between state and society. In India, on the other hand, most of the modernizing and secularizing transposition was top-down – sanctioned by th...
Unpacking BJP's Hegemony and the Need for a New Left Narrative in India
Today the Right is more visible as the principal actor at the grassroots and in the media. This politics of the Right is shaped by contradictory forces of individual aspirations and resentments rooted in social antagonism of race, caste, and religion. In his new book 2 , Lord Meghnad Desai has taken this ascendance of the Right as evidence of collapsed and collapsing " liberal order. " By liberal order Desai means a " ruling hegemony of ideas and attitudes " favouring social inclusion, market driven globalisation, and cosmopolitanism that consolidated itself in a post-1989 world. I am tempted to say, not so fast Lord Desai! For example, look at how the aspirational politics is faltering under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and a groundswell of opposition seems to be gathering in the country to his economic, cultural, and social policies. To restore politics on an even keel soon, the Left needs a new plan for reinvigoration and resurgence. Any backlash to the ugly manifestations of nationalist politics of the Right on the streets may help. However, this by itself will not restore the liberal order. Yet, we cannot gloss over the fact that we are at a political conjuncture in which a new hegemony 3 of the Right is attempting, if it has not already, to replace the old hegemony of the Left. To restore politics on an even keel soon, the Left needs a new plan for reinvigoration and resurgence. Any backlash to the ugly manifestations of nationalist politics of the Right on the streets may help. However, this by itself will not restore the liberal order. The first step is to acknowledge that we did not arrive at this conjuncture through the course of a single election campaign in India or elsewhere in the world. In India, the Right, since the early 1990s, was chipping-away at the old hegemony carefully constructed by the " Congress System " 4 and the Left-leaning civil society including media, academia, unions, and NGOs. The Right was exploiting the seeming hypocrisy in the praxes of ruling elites that arose from contradictions between politics of exploiting social difference
Indian Elections: Mandate against Religious Nationalism and Neoliberal Reform
Environment And Planning D: Society And Space, 2004
Indian elections: mandate against religious nationalism and neoliberal reform In what was an entirely unanticipated outcome of the recent general elections in India, the Indian National Congress (INC) and its allies defeated the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led government. The verdict that left the world stunned was not predicted by even one newspaper, exit poll, or psephologist. Even as the final phase of polling came to a close on 11 May the Times of India front-page headline read``NDA [the BJP-led coalition] ahead but short of the 272: exit polls''. The historic verdict is an indictment of BJP's politics of religious nationalism and neoliberal policies of economic reform that predominantly benefited the wealthy. Forming the United Progressive Alliance, the INC and its allies won 216 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha (house of the people) whereas the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) got a combined 186 seats. Despite securing the most seats, the INC and its allies were still short of a majority. In order to form the government a party needs to demonstrate the support of at least 272 seats or half the total number of seats in the Lok Sabha. In support of the INC forming the government at the centre, political parties allied with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) added their 61 seats to the United Progressive Alliance, bringing their total up to 278. By the afternoon of 13 May, as the unanticipated results of a complicated and mammoth elections process began to unfold, Sonia Gandhi, an Italian-born woman, was to become India's next prime minister. Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin was a source of often vitriolic criticism by the BJP during and after the elections. However, as the Indian constitution does not restrict the position of prime minister to only those who are`natural-born' citizens, the BJP used the discourse of foreign rule among the electorate only 57 years removed from British colonialism, hoping to evoke sentiments of foreign oppression. The foreign-origin issue led to an interesting public debate on who is Indian versus foreign. In response, Sonia Gandhi's`Indianness' was justified by her stay of over 20 years in the country, married into the Nehru-Gandhi family whose involvement in Indian politics dates back to Independence. Additionally, the fact that she and her party were elected by a popular mandate does indicate that her foreign origin was not an issue of contention among the voters. Six days after she was elected, however, Sonia Gandhi declined the post of prime minister and suggested Manmohan Singh in her stead. The drama of the Indian elections represents a complicated verdict involving multiple parties and reflecting differing regional and national affiliations. In examining the election results at multiple scales (constituencies within cities, within states, and at the national level), what emerges is a clear mandate against the sectarian politics of the BJP and against the neoliberal policies of reform. If we understand the mandate at these different scales, there emerges a particular spatial arrangement to the defeat of the BJP. At the national level, BJP and its allies lost in the northern part of the country and in the south. It is only the central states that voted the BJP in. Of the 162 seats in the central states the BJP won 90 and its allies won 23, making a total of 113 seats, almost a two-thirds majority. The central states are Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Orissa (Raghuraman, 2004). These central states have historically been a BJP stronghold. At the state level the defeat of key BJP allies in the south significantly contributed to its overall loss. Moreover, the verdict in these Guest editorial
Hindu Nationalism in Action: The Bharatiya Janata Party and Indian Politics
South Asia-journal of South Asian Studies, 2015
India went to the polls in a general election in AprilÀMay 2014. The prime ministerial candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Narendra Modi, was pitted against Rahul Gandhi (great-grandson of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru), who led India's long-standing party of government, the Indian National Congress, which had headed a coalition government over the previous ten years. Mr. Modi was a controversial figure because, as chief minister of the state of Gujarat (2001À14), he had been in charge of a government that was widely considered to have been responsible for the deaths of many Muslims in 2002 in the most serious outbreak of violence between Hindus and Muslims that independent India had experienced. The events of that year have been described as a 'pogrom'. But, drawing on his considerable rhetorical skills, 1 and the reputation he had established for the success of the Gujarat 'Model for Development', as he called it, 2 Modi successfully projected himself as capable of delivering on the promise of national economic development after what were represented as years of stagnation and corruption under the Congress. Christophe Jaffrelot, in his contribution to this special issue, refers to the description of Gujarat's economic success under Modi as 'miraculous'. This panegyric was suggested by Arvind Panagariya, professor of economics at Columbia University and appointed as the first vice chairman of the NITI Aayog, which has now replaced the Planning Commission 3 (a change discussed in her article here by Mitu Sengupta). The promise of rapid economic development, together with the idea that he would promote 'Minimum Government, Maximum Governance' (discussed in this collection by Sanjay Ruparelia), was a message that was very successfully projected to the electorate, via Modi's own speeches across the country and through a skilful use of media, including social media. This effort was massively funded by major corporate groups. The BJP campaign was focused around Modi and resembled that of an American presidential candidate in a way that had never happened before in India. It was supported by the extent of the control exercised by the BJP over a significant fraction of the media. In the event, Modi won an extraordinary victory. The Congress was reduced to a small rump in the new parliament, and for the first time in a quarter of a century, a single party secured an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament. This confounded the expectations of many astute observers who had reckoned that the coalition arrangements entered into by strongly-supported regional political parties would continue to 1 Modi's rhetorical skills are widely applauded in the press, but not recognised by all. It has also been said that he reverts to rustic sarcasm in a way that is unbecoming of a national leader (Andrew Wyatt, personal communication, 10 July 2015). 2 'How did Gujarat Emerge as a Model for Development?' [http://www.narendramodi.in/how-did-gujaratemerge-as-a-model-for-development, accessed 7 July 2015).
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.
Neo-Liberalism and the Rise of Right-Wing Conservatism in India
2017
This paper assesses the origins and the consequences of the decisive right wing shift in Indian politics ushered in by the 2014 elections. Tracing this to long-term but not linearly developing tendencies in Indian politics, the paper relates these with the distinctive nature and history of capitalist development in India, particularly the sharply polarizing growth and accumulation regime of the neo-liberal era and the crisis it now confronts. Asserting that the electoral success of the Narendra Modi-led BJP was based on it being the political agent of not change but of a reassertion by India’s economic elite, the paper explains the challenge of managing sharply contradictory interests that this places in the path of the consolidation of the new regime.
Botched-up Development and Electoral Politics in India
Economic and political weekly, 2014
The debates about the general election campaign in India have often pitted “development” against secularism. In the process, questions about the emergence of alternative political formations have been pushed to the sidelines. This article argues that a development versus secular polarisation of national debates reflects a gross simplification of the politics of development in independent India. Through an examination of the historical antecedents of the contemporary dominance of the political right in Gujarat and by drawing on recent research, this article makes two interrelated arguments. First, it shows that the success of the right is inextricably linked to the botched-up development priorities of the past several decades. Second, it points to the inadequacy of the pro-poor policies and programmes promoted by the left-of-the-centre political coalitions. It is useful to re-read this analysis in light of the ongoing debates about the 2019 general election in India, where the opposition is mounting an effort to expose the failures of Modi government. It remains to be seen if they already lost too much time engaging in the same secular versus communal politics dichotomy that led to their discursive failures in the 2014 election campaign.