[The Hindustan Times, 21 October 1999]

THE SAFFRON AGENDA
By Harsh Sethi

With the BJP-led NDA now seemingly ensconced at the Centre and the
Congress relegated at least for the proximate future, to the sidelines,
speculation about the future of a broad secular platform is bound to
gain strength.

At the heart of the discourse lies a gut-level fear, shared by many,
that any long term prospect of the BJP as a ruling party may
irretrievably damage the secular fabric of the country. The continuing
obsession about the BJP-RSS links in the post-result discussions on TV,
as also the desire to pin the BJP down to issuing a clear statement of
intent with regard to its core issues ñ Ram mandir, Article 370, and
uniform civil code ñ provides a good indication of this tendency.

The secularist fear is informed by an understanding that the BJP, in our
political landscape, stands as a case apart; that it is more than and
different from a ënormalí political party. A wolf in sheep's clothing,
its current suspension of the Hindutva agenda is merely a tactical ploy.
Given time and somewhat more propitious circumstances, the party cannot
but return to its core issues. That, after all, is what defines it.

The persistence of this ëgenetic codeí understanding of a political
party is not totally without basis. BJP ideologues have never quite
hidden their belief in a restrictive notion of nationalism, of favouring
religion as a primary marker of identity, or of viewing those who
announce India as their pitrabhoomi and punyabhoomi as somehow superior
Indians. There is evidence to suggest that the BJP and its affiliates,
more than most other political formations, are prone to use religious
distinctions as a strategy to expand voter base.

Their ostensible involvement in anti-minority riots, the systematic
intervention in matters ñ educational and cultural ñ from textbooks and
TV programmes to selection of persons to head academic institutions,
their continuing fascination with a nuclearised and militarised India,
are cases in point. On all these fronts the country witnessed
significant developments in their previous stint in power.

There is, of course a counter-view which, while sharing a negative
perception about the BJP, sets store by a political maxim that both
growth and the demands of survival as a ruling party serves to modulate
extremist tendencies. Equally, the fact that the BJP to even come to
power has to be dependent upon allies, not all of whom share its
ideological-cultural predilections. Much, for instance, is made of TDP
decision to stay out of the NDA or the assertions by members of the JD-U
or the Dravidian parties about their secularist credentials. What is
disturbing is the position of the protagonists are more reflective of
ex-ante perceptions than any close scrutiny of the unfolding reality.

The earlier description of the BJP as a party of the urban, upper caste,
middle class Hindu clearly needs reformulation. So does a
characterisation reducing it to the representative of petty trading
interests, or even of those ritualistically inclined. The growth in the
last decade and a half, of the BJP from a fringe 6-8 per cent force to a
party enjoying the confidence of nearly a quarter of the electorate,
claiming for itself the earlier Congress status of the ënatural party of
governanceí, owes significantly to its ability to reinvent itself.

Electorally, at least, it has made advances ñ both spatially and into
different social segments ñ be they the OBCs, SCs or STs. Of course, its
appeal within religious minorities remains limited. And while its spread
to newer regions in the South and Eastñ Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka,
Orissa, West Bengal and Assam, even the north-east ñowes as much to its
ability to broker strategic alliances as its ëintrinsicí appeal, if
needs to be underscored that behind these developments lies a modulation
of its unitarian, centralising and homogenising ideology. Of course, the
fact that its regional partners have long been in contestation with the
Congress helps.

What is intriguing and disturbing is that despite the phenomenal growth
of the BJP in electoral terms, a research-based understanding of the
party, even more its affiliates, remains limited. Take the RSS,
ostensibly the ëshadowyí power behind the electoral face. The most
quoted study about the organisation is still the Anderson and Damle The
Brotherhood in Saffron, a book which came out in 1987. Whatever its
insights, much of the data, interview-based, deals with even earlier
years. Our knowledge about the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a prime mobiliser
of the Ram mandir movement, continues to be based primarily on newspaper
accounts and speeches of its leaders, barring the doctoral thesis of Eva
Hellman. The situation regarding the Bajrang Dal, the Rashtriya Swayamse
vika Samiti or the dozens of sadhu samajs is far worse. Why, it is
difficult to think of even a single detailed account of the Bharatiya
Mazdoor Sangh, arguably the country's largest central trade union.

Most studies on political Hinduism or Hindu nationalism, and the current
decade has seen many, seem to focus either on the electoral performance
of the BJP or a textual/discourse analysis of the affiliates. There is a
relative absence of politics ñ organisational studies ñ even simple
empirical data on membership, composition by caste, age, profession,
gender or behavioural studies about motivations and aspirations. It is
thus not surprising that on either side of the ideological divide we are
presented with an essentialist rendering, almost as if these
organisations are frozen in a frame defined by their foundational
principles viz. Guru Golwalkarís We and our Nationhood Defined.

Not enough is read into the need of our saffron organisations to
incorporate a Babasaheb Ambedkar into its pantheon of greats. Or the
fact that a Sakshi Maharaj, one of the prime accused in the Babri masjid
demolition case, not only campaigned against the BJP ostensibly with
support from UP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, but has now joined Mulayam
Singh Yadav, a bete noir once calumnised as Maulana Mulayam. Even more
that a Shankarsinh Vaghela, once the prime architect of the BJP/Sangh in
Gujarat, is now implacably opposed to them.

The continuing failure of social and political mobilisation against
forces and organisations deemed communal can partly be traced to this
flawed understanding. Despite evidence that members of these
organisations speak in different voices or that they articulate
different interests, in fact political projects, conditioned by their
socio-economic backgrounds, the secularist forces continue to treat them
as a relatively homogeneous bloc. In so doing we underestimate the
restraints the diversity of the country places on any ideological
project.

The reference here is not to the secularist hope in Mandal defeating the
Mandir, but that different regions and socio-cultural groups inevitably
favour different imaginations; that ideological strait-jacketing is
foredoomed to failure. More infantile is the tendency to fall back on
legal-coercive strategies to combat these bodies, be it taking the
Ramjanmabhoomi battle to court as if matters of faith can be reduced to
property disputes or calls to ban the RSS/VHP. All that this does is to
imbue the organisation with the halo of a victim or martyr, often adding
to its strength once it resumes legal form.

Now that the prospects of instability in the BJP-led NDA created by
unfavourable parliamentary arithmetic have somewhat receded, those
concerned about the BJP and its core agenda need to rethink their
strategy. They need to seriously engage with the fears, real or
imaginary, of both faith and existence, that fuel a culture of
intolerance. As a start they could encourage a programme of serious
research into these organisations. A failure to do so may prove fatal.