India’s communal clashes - Volume 8, Issue 2 - March 2002

 

The Hindu–Muslim violence that has followed late February's massacre by local Muslims of Hindu pilgrims passing through Godhra has so far remained largely confined to Gujarat state. Although at least 500 people had died as of early March, the violence has been smaller in scale than that which followed the destruction of the Ayodhya mosque by Hindu-nationalists in 1992. Then, nation-wide carnage left 3,000 dead. Still, the consequences of Godhra may well be greater. The violence exposes deep problems within both the ruling coalition government in New Delhi, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that leads it. The events have undermined claims that Hindu-nationalist forces have been tamed and no longer represent a challenge to India's secular, pluralist and democratic order.

 

Although the Godhra massacre appears to have been a spontaneous event, it was in many ways waiting to happen. Since India entered the US-led coalition against terrorism and found itself in a deepening confrontation with Pakistan over Kashmir, religious tensions have heightened and the animus of Hindu ideologues to the supposedly 'alien' Muslim presence in India has strengthened. This animus has also been stirred by sections of the BJP. The party had in February been fighting a crucial regional election in Uttar Pradesh (UP), a core constituency. Hoping to rally low-caste Hindus to its cause, the local BJP campaign took on stridently Hindu-nationalist overtones. Local cadres hinted that, following their anticipated victory, the impasse which has arisen over the Ayodhya mosque site would be broken.

 

This site has become symbolic of the dangers facing India's secular democracy. In 1992, Hindu-nationalist activists – mainly from the radical Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), but with tacit BJP support – tore down a sixteenth-century mosque at Ayodhya in UP, claiming that it had been built on the birth-place of the Hindu god, Ram. They then developed plans to construct a Hindu temple on the site, even pre-fabricating parts of it nearby. However, intervention from New Delhi and the courts has prevented them from accomplishing their goal. Were they to do so, the temple would publicly celebrate a perceived triumph of Hinduism over Islam in India.

 

The anti-Muslim backlash following Godhra has been made more ferocious by frustration with the central government. Shortly before the UP election, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee became concerned that local BJP cadres – and some of his fellow ministers – had over-stimulated Hindu sentiment with false promises. He made it known that there were no circumstances under which he could approve the building of the temple. In response, and revealing the chasm which has opened up between different sections of the Hindu-nationalist movement, the VHP declared a deadline of 15 March for it to gain legal sanction for the temple, threatening that its cadres will otherwise take direct action in defiance of 'man-made' laws. Meanwhile, the policing (or non-policing) of anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat, which is governed by a particularly hardline BJP cadre under Narendra Modi, has become a cause célèbre. So lethargic have the Gujarat authorities been in restraining the violence that Vajpayee has had to send in the army instead.

 

For Vajpayee, the crisis poses major challenges to the future of the coalition government and his liberal tendency within the BJP. The coalition, while dominated by the BJP, is critically reliant on the support of smaller, regional parties that do not share its philosophy. The largest of these – the Telugu Desam Party and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam of Tamil Nadu – would not continue supporting Vajpayee if he hesitated to take firm action against Hindu rioters. Yet, if he does act firmly, Vajpayee could split the Hindu-nationalist forces in which he is rooted. These consist of several organisations – the VHP, the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), and several others – of which the BJP is only one. While the BJP is dedicated to constitutional politics, most of the others are involved in direct action. Still, the relationships between them can be close and, while Vajpayee has long sought to distinguish between their agendas, they tend to overlap.

 

This is particularly the case with regard to Vajpayee's deputy prime minister, Lal Krishna Advani, who was initially instrumental in stirring Hindu passions during the UP election. Advani is widely seen as the natural successor to the ageing Vajpayee for leadership of the BJP – although whether coalition partners would accept him as premier is doubtful. Indeed, the Godhra crisis confronts Advani with the dilemma of whether he should rally Hindu extremist forces and push Vajpayee's moderate tendency out of the BJP, or instead show statesmanship in the hope of gaining the helm of the coalition. One of the few hopeful signals from recent events is that he may be choosing the latter course. The BJP's strident campaign in UP failed dismally at the polls. Subsequently, Advani has sought to distance himself from the VHP and backed Vajpayee's stand against the temple.

 

Yet, the issues raised by the Godhra events are more far-reaching. Religious violence is hardly new in India, and even its modern forms of expression – which have more to do with ethnicity than disputes over theology – date back to the colonial era, and were partly responsible for Partition in 1947. After the convulsions of Partition, India set itself along a path of strict secularism, which it took to be the only way in which cultural 'minorities' of Muslims, Christians, Dalits (former-'Untouchables') and tribals – whose numbers ran into hundreds of millions – could be accommodated to a Hindu majority. The revival of Hindu-nationalism since the 1980s has put this secular accommodation in doubt.

 

The causes of this revival are many, but, ironically, very few of them can be related to Islam per se, which has become the principal focus of Hindu ire. In western India, adjacent to the wealthy and culturally assertive Gulf oil economies, a spirit of envy of Muslims has been stirred among political parties like the Shiv Sena. Yet, the majority of India's Muslims – now numbering 130 million – are disproportionately poor, illiterate and under-privileged. Rather, the key causes lie in parallel developments in different areas of Hindu society.

 

The core constituency of radical Hindu-nationalism has always been the petite bourgeoisie of the towns, whose often high-caste status and pietistic culture in fact rests on the modest economic base of small-scale trade and low-level clerical occupations. From the 1980s, their aspirations were fed by the spurt of economic growth and urban expansion engineered by former Congress Party prime ministers Indira and Rajiv Gandhi. However, they were then dashed by the policies of positive discrimination towards the lower castes also promoted by these governments. The resulting tensions exploded in widespread rioting against the Mandal Commission of 1989, which sought to extend positive discrimination.

 

A second cause of Hindu-nationalist revival lies in India's haute bourgeoisie – once the backbone of secularism and socialism. The liberalisation policies of the 1980s promoted a new consumer culture and re-opened contacts with the rest of the world. As a highly-educated Indian middle class deepened communications with other nations and, via extensive migration, even came to live in them, new cultural and political imperatives began to arise. India was seen as needing to strengthen and modernise itself to gain a full and respected place in the world.

In the multicultural West, Indians also needed to find a coherent cultural tradition to establish their ethnic identity. Given the largely high-caste Hindu backgrounds from which most members of the Indian upper-middle classes come, the ethnic/national medium chosen to perform both of these tasks is an authoritarian version of upper-caste Hindu culture.

 

These two strands of Hindu nationalism were woven together in the rise of the BJP from 1979, whose predominantly upper- middle-class leadership made cynical use of the street power of organisations such as the VHP and RSS. Much of this street power was directed against Muslims, culminating in the destruction of the Ayodhya mosque.

 

While these combined forces took the BJP to the status of the largest single party in India, post-election experiences in 1996 indicated that they also made it so objectionable to others that the party could not put together a ruling coalition. At this point, the leadership under Vajpayee changed tack and began to moderate its image. Moreover, since putting together its first ruling coalition in 1998, the BJP has found itself having to assume responsibility for maintaining law and order. This has moved it further away from direct-action agendas. In their reactions to the impasse over the Ayodhya mosque and to the Godhra massacre, activist cadres now see themselves as striking back against this perceived betrayal.

 

The UP election result may already have signalled that the BJP's experiment with democratic government is failing. As Hindu-nationalist themes became more explicit, so the electorate deserted the BJP to rally behind local parties focusing on secularism, or explicitly representing the interests of the low-castes and the poor. Even the BJP's middle-class supporters deserted it, lowering the voter participation rate to 55%. This confirms a trend in which the middle classes appear to be giving up on democratic politics, with their voter-participation rates falling faster than that of the 'lower orders'.

 

If the ruling coalition does unravel and a new general election repeats the trends seen in UP, the likeliest outcome would be a multi-party government built around the theme of secularism. Yet, such a group would likely have other priorities too. Most secular parties represent cultural minorities, who are disproportionately poor and hope for a return to 'socialism'. Sceptical of the benefits of globalisation, this socialism has become progressively less internationalist. It may therefore be that India's brief tryst with liberalisation will be put on hold for some time. A change in government could also lead to rising levels of ethnic violence, as the loss of power and responsibility removes restraints on Hindu-nationalist radicals.

 

The aftermath of Godhra will do little to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan, although Islamabad is unlikely to try to exploit the situation. While Pakistan will see the killing of hundreds of Muslims as adding weight to its case that 'Hindu India' cannot be trusted with Muslim-majority Kashmir, the past association of its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency with Islamic militant groups inside India will make it hesitate to take a stand now. Equally, India's Muslims are unlikely to look to Pakistan for protection. Since Partition, they have cut ties with co-religionists abroad for fear of being branded foreign agents.

 

Attempts to make diplomatic capital out of the tragedy are more likely to come from India. Seeking to distract attention from their complicity in the wave of anti-Muslim violence, Gujarat's police and BJP cadres are claiming ISI involvement in the original attack on Hindus. It is not yet clear that, if the political pressures on them intensify, Hindu-nationalist hardliners in the national government will not adopt a similar strategy and precipitate further confrontation along the Kashmir frontier.