India After Modi

by Ajay Gudavarthy

  Intractable Symbolism

  Further, the Right has built a repertoire of issues for which the progressive-seculars have no easy answers and at best remain silent and at worst reject the social narrative and mobilization strategies of the Right as ‘backward’. The Right has articulated the question of, for instance, the poor and marginalized within the dominant castes and majority religion, not perhaps out of compassion for the weak but to reinstitutionalize the hegemony of the dominant. The issue of reservations for the economically weak among dominant castes such as the Patidars, Marathas, Jats, Kapus, and even Brahmins foregrounds what I refer to as ‘intractable symbolism’.3 What is the agenda of the progressives for such marginalized groups except to argue that in a relative sense, these groups are better off?

  Similarly, at a more generic level, the dominant castes are in decline due to the assertion of Dalit-Bahujans, women, the landless, and other marginalized communities, and are in no position to accept the changing power equations. The Right has ‘successfully’ mobilized them into the fold of Hindutva, politicizing the ‘Hurt Pride’ these groups suffer from. They further realize that this is a sentiment that has the potential not only for political conflict but also at times, criminalized counter-violence. The hatred precedes the target. It appears that the violence against Muslims that we have witnessed does not necessarily emerge because of what Muslims do but due to the caste dynamics inherent in the Hindu society.4 Therefore, progressive-secular angst against public display of Muslimness does not answer the question of violence against them. Even if Muslims were made to be invisible, there is no guarantee of their security because the violence does not happen because of what Muslims do. I have, therefore, argued that in India, there is, in fact, no Islamophobia but possibly an a priori hatred for which Muslims become the appropriate targets, perhaps because ‘Muslims are the Safest Enemy to have’. The genesis of that hatred emerges from the hurt pride of the dominant castes, which can also be reproduced by the Dalits and Bahujans as a generic anxiety after the neo-liberal reforms.5 What is the political agenda for the dominant castes in decline by the Left-progressives, except to dismiss these anxieties as signs of backwardness and symbols of feudal remnants? How do we alternatively politicize these ‘legitimate’ anxieties for the purposes of progressive transformation? Far from answering, the Left-liberals have not even begun to articulate such issues, leaving the field wide open for the Right to mobilize. Would it, as I suggest, provide the progressives an alternative template if they begin to legitimize some of these concerns, and instead of dismissing their demands, begin to articulate them as those of a ‘mezzanine elite’ that is precariously perched at the edge of an uneven social and economic structure? Similar is the issue of Kashmiri Pandits in the public memory in India. They remain what I call the ‘Precariats of Democracy’, abandoned by the Left and subjugated by the Right.6 Kashmiri Pandits are socially dominant and spatially dislocated. Their social status allowed them to reclaim economically secured lives but that did not compensate for their hurt pride or pathos. What are the modes of politicization of compassion available in the suffering of the Pandits? It is not necessarily polarization, but their suffering could hold clues to more universal compassion, provided we see them not in the immediate context reducing them to their identity but as ‘victims of circumstances’. The Left seculars, however, remained caught in the quicksand of the ‘intractable symbolism’ produced by the Right.7

  The Right has been the face of both corporate globalization and community anxieties that are triggered due to the undermining of the community it brings with it. It talks of bullet trains, Smart Cities and also responds to the demands of Kshatriyas in Rajasthan, claims the scientific knowledge in Vedas as a symbol of the greatness of Hindu civilization. The Right is pro-corporate but anti-modern. It has initiated a unique conflict between economic elites and cultural subalterns. Economic issues of inequality are being addressed through cultural assertion. The ‘transference’ happens at multiple levels. The question of growing economic inequalities is leading to more justification of corporate capitalism, and the anxiety and anger of a declining economic standard of living has turned into demands for relative mobility; at times, it turns against those who are poor and vulnerable within each community, or against the mobility of those from hitherto marginalized communities such as the Marathas demanding scrapping of the reservations for the Dalit-Bahujans. In other words, Marathas are essentially an agrarian caste; however, due to sustained crisis in agriculture began to demand the status of ‘backward class’, reservations in jobs and higher education, scrapping of reservations for the Dalit communities, and scrapping of the SC/ST Atrocities Act as it is susceptible to misuse. The Marathas wish to retain their social status that is threatened due to declining prospects of agriculture and growing assertion of Dalit-Bahujans by demanding reservations for themselves and scrapping the same for Dalit-Bahujans.8 In another context, the economic crisis and perceived decline in social status can take the shape of protests for re-claiming a glorious past, as we witnessed with regard to the Rajput community and the street mobilization surrounding the release of the film Padmaavat.9

  Further, in the era of corporate globalization, the symbolism of the vulnerability of being poor and the power of being rich and powerful are being simultaneously appropriated by the Right. Although from a humble background, Prime Minister Modi now leads a life of power and ostentatiousness, which prompted Rahul Gandhi to refer to Mr Modi’s rule as the ‘suit-boot ki sarkar’.10 Modi claims the legacy of the poor and the marginalized based on his past and the power of the rich and the corporate based on his current stature. This symbolizes the journey of a self-made man, and at another level, justifies aggressive corporate growth and lifestyle. He attempts to forge continuity, not a dichotomy between the two.

  Strongman and Mob Violence

  The strongman phenomenon that lies at the core of populism operates through a complex maze of symbolic gestures. However, one could wonder how the claims of a strongman—who is in absolute control of things—can coexist with mob violence that signifies anarchy? The leader claims a decisive decision-making capacity without being restrained by the niceties of liberal institutionalism. The legitimacy here is mobilized because of the available discontent against dysfunctional institutions. However, he is also a chaiwala, a dass (servant), and a chowkidar who is working against the establishment representing the interests of ‘the people’.11 This idea of the ‘people’ however, is selective, sectarian, and refers to an authentic core that stands with and not against the leader. Outside the fold of this authentic constituency, the leader is not expected to extend similar humility, but contrarily, is understood to be strong, intolerant, and ruthless.

  When protests in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) took place in the name of national versus anti-national, the manner in which protestors were treated demonstrates how the core constituency expects them to be treated in order to further consolidate the leader’s followers. Being anti-democratic here, in the popular domain, is considered both legitimate and valid. It is considered truthful and in the national interests. Further, the strongman phenomenon is all about taking responsibility that in turn justifies the silence on violation of law and the use of violence. In order to deliver, it could well mean that one may need to violate the law and use violence. Street violence and mob lynching are connected to the ability of the leader owning up to the responsibility for his decisions. In the neo-liberal condition of a faceless political system in a post-Westphalian context, the leader becomes the only identifiable entity. Taking sole responsibility and projecting a singular identity and leading the governance in the name of the leader, and not a collective, becomes a powerful way of building credibility and trust.12 This singularity is then compensated not through available institutional means of participation but is assumed through extra-institutional modes such as lynching and mob violence. One reinforces the other—more the violence, more the need for a strong leader; more the strong lea
der sticking out his neck, more the need to express loyalty through occupying the streets. It is a throwback to the latent demand for a direct democracy circumventing the labyrinths of the liberal institutional frame.13

  In all of this, the Left-liberals got cornered into further justifying the same institutions that are dysfunctional—institutions that they were themselves critical of not being responsive and decaying internally. The more the liberal-progressives claimed to reinstate the legitimacy of the dysfunctional institutions, the more they looked as apologists for them.14 Extra-institutional modes look more credible, direct, tangible, and effective, beyond the drab procedurality of legal imperatives. Street violence and vigilante justice are both the justification and reason for the strongman phenomenon.15

  In the context of India, unlike other societies, creating the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ kind of polarisation is not easy because the majority Hindu society is itself divided across castes. The Right had the unenviable task of creating the Muslim ‘other’ and a unified Hindu ‘us’. The social hierarchies that come with prejudices are the dominant mode in which social arrangement is structured within the Hindu society. The Right could still create a unified Hindutva, not through a simple-minded unity but unity based on fragmentation. In Uttar Pradesh, it supposedly fragmented and mobilized the smaller OBC and Dalit castes, which in turn were stitched to the unified Hindu identity. The more they were accommodated and represented, the more appeared to be their acceptance of a Hindu identity.16 The discourses of fragmentation and fraternity went hand in hand. Fragmentation provided them representation, while fraternity provided them recognition. While the Left-secular mode of representation, through for instance reservations, created misrecognition and the burden of carrying and politicizing differences, the Right mode of providing representation without the stigma of misrecognition ostensibly held some appeal. One is a Dalit to gain representation but a Hindu to gain recognition. The idea that differences need to be positively politicized in order to create mobility and also overcome misrecognition is the core Left-secular mode, while it is a legitimate method in its own right, it should also be recognized that undermining differences in the name of a larger collective, community, and fraternity also holds its own promise, even if it has the flip side of hegemonizing the subaltern under the yoke of the dominant culture. The Right refers to this as the practice of samarasta.17

  Differences and Fraternity

  In a survey I conducted of the Dalit-Bahujan students working with the Right-wing student bodies, the constant theme that the Dalit-Bahujan student leaders returned to was the ‘empowerment’ they felt in not being recognized by their castes and being ‘included’ as part of the larger Hindu community.18 Their complaint with the Left-wing or independent Dalit-Bahujan student politics was the burden of wearing ‘caste on your sleeves’. Instead, one could assimilate to avoid humiliation. One of them intriguingly argued that ‘if eating beef segregates us from the rest of the society, what is the harm in giving up eating it’. He emphasized that there might be a conflict between various castes but that they all also need to live ‘together’ in a village, highlighting the point that conflict and coexistence was the everyday reality. The Left liberal mode of exclusively politicizing differences without striving for fraternal feelings in the given context makes them susceptible to look divisive—even in effective terms, they mean to forge solidarity between caste groups alongside achieving mobility. The fact that Ambedkar emphasized fraternity alongside equality and liberty, also allows the Right to appropriate him in striving for fraternal feelings between caste groups without directly fighting against social prejudices.19 In effect, it had its own mode of protest against the dominant castes. One of them argued that ‘even if they (upper castes) are forced to accept, even if falsely, that there was no Varna system in the past, is it not an acknowledgment of the mobility of the lower castes?’

  The Right has an alternative mode of politicizing caste and other differences within the Hindu community. While such a mode might be hegemonic, it also holds the potential to create a ‘feeling’ of being inclusive. It also provides a readymade discourse or covers against everyday humiliation and stigma.20 This submersion of the identity, as I could see in the course of the survey, also creates a repressed self. This in turn provides a template to justify street violence for the subaltern to vent their frustration, even if it is against the misplaced enemy in a Muslim or a Left liberal, and to further entrench this process, the Right takes recourse to constructing an alternative or a distorted history.21 The ‘deceit also works as a conceit’ for the subaltern castes. Distortion is a mode of unsettling the privileged narrative. It also highlights the voice of the victim or the marginalized. The communitarian modes of articulation strike a similarity with even the dominant castes; there seems to be a possibility of forging an alliance between the poor among the dominant and the those among the subaltern castes as the ‘New Cultural Subalterns’.

  New Cultural Subalterns are those divided across the fault line of those inhabiting the modern institutions and those that are distanced from modernity.22 As it appears, it is not a coincidence that taking recourse to lies, justifying manipulation, and fabricating stories has also been off late justified as a legitimate repertoire even in Dalit mobilizations. In fact, Kanshi Ram had announced that since we do not have opportunities, there is nothing wrong in being opportunists.23 Similarly, in laying claim to a glorious past, the Veeranganas of the Dalits, in Uttar Pradesh, are not very different from the way history seems to be distorted by the Right and its associates.24 The claim to victimhood, by the Right, even if trumped up is similar in its sentiment to the sense of victimhood of the Dalits and it partly explains why the modes of articulation are somewhat similar.

  Further, the Right has legitimately claimed that there is more to Indian Philosophy than Brahmanic Hinduism, even as they refuse to explicitly critique or distance themselves from the Brahmanic traditions. Even as they conflate the two, the Left-progressives too took the same path of conflating the two and did not critically engage with what I refer to in this book as ‘the problem of retrieval’—how to retrieve the past and its heterogeneous traditions, without either submerging or conflating it with the Brahmanic traditions? In one of the essays, I point to the similarity of the Left-liberals with Western philosophers, such as Hegel, who equated the entire Hindu Philosophy to its Brahmanical tradition, and thereby referred to it as a ‘Oriental Spirit’ that got stagnated. The fact that the Left, by and large, can be accused of a Eurocentric bias or a modernist bias can be maintained, even as we can continue to differ with the credibility of the Right in privileging a heterogeneous rendering of history. The Left, in abandoning an exploration of the possibilities of appropriating the alternative renderings, has again allowed the Right to not only appropriate but also apparently distort history, as it was never part of the public debate in popular mobilizations of the progressive politics.

  Secular in Public, Prejudicial in Private

  Finally, the Right has transformed the relationship between the private and the public. The state has become an emotional being. It is no longer soulless and distant; it is a part of the private and the everyday. In this, the Right has created a conversational mode of public communication, mobilized emotions and passions, and adopted a symbolism of a paternal compassion. From a grand redistributive programme, the state has taken to the immediate needs. The symbolism of Amma in Tamil Nadu captures a state that is concerned with the girl child’s education, marriage, and distribution of sanitary napkins. It sought a seamless continuity between the two, bringing not only the state closer to the ‘citizen’ but also carrying the pride and prejudice in the private to the public realm. It has breached the schizophrenic existence that the secular politics demanded of being civil in public and carrying one’s prejudices in the private. The Right begins its mobilization, not in the secular-associational domain but in the realm of religion, family, and schooling. It moves from the private to the public, while the
Left-progressive politics maintains a strict division between the public and the private. It privileges personal freedom that is at a cross-current with the collective of the public domain. The Right politicizes the available social location, while the Left-radical attempts to create new spaces of politicization in creating new subjectivities.25 In this tension between the immanent and the transcendental, the affective and the experiential domain seems to have a more organic link with the Right than the transcendentalism of the Left. Critical theorist Nancy Fraser observes, ‘Socialism is cognitively compelling but experientially distanced’. Left politics has to bridge that gap to undercut the burden of politics as a specialized avocation of a few. It is true that the Right reinforces the given political culture, while the Left attempts to transcend the given, especially that which is discriminatory and exclusionist; however, this cannot come at the cost of undermining the experiential dimension. How Left progressive politics can create an experiential politics that also historicizes and does not naturalize the given social hierarchies remains an insurmountable challenge.