Wednesday, January 25, 2006

The RSS General Secretary, Mohan Bhagwat, declared a couple of days ago that 'everything is changeable about the Sangh' and that its volunteers are free to join any political party. This is a very interesting statement, and I'm still not quite sure how to decipher it.
It's possible, of course, that these are the flailing words of an organization still short on ideas after the shock of the 2004 elections. It's possible that these are off-the-cuff remarks to a journalist who's asked an unexpected question. But somehow I doubt that.
My immediate reaction is that the long honeymoon's finally over. So many of us in India were sent into whoops of triumph when the 2004 elections happened, when it became clear that the admixture of Hindutva murderousness, as exemplified by Gujarat, and brutal economic neo-liberalism, as exemplified by the India Shining campaign, had not worked. We felt, and rightly, that this was the most important general election since 1977. We felt that, for all the compromises and unacceptable politics one could expect from a Congress-led government, there was a real opportunity here to frame new terms of political discourse, to put issues of poverty and vulnerability on the political agenda again. And to an extent that happened - the EGA's an instance of that. The trajectory of Indian economic and social policy remained depressing, but at least this was contested ground again, and it seemed, for a while, that the subsumption of all other political questions within the framework of right-wing identity politics had been halted. Some were so optimistic as to proclaim the death of the Sangh Parivar, and we constantly told each other congratulatory stories about the vibrancy of Indian democracy, we told each other that Hindutva could never succeed in a country like this.
We were confirmed in this by the incredible dithering of the BJP in opposition. The party that had been so powerful and vocal in parliamentary opposition at the time of the Congress and UF governments of 1991-98 seemed to have lost its nerve, to have degenerated into what the Congress was not so long ago, a pack of opportunistic climbers who made themselves ridiculous through their internal squabbles. The campaign against Sonia after the election bombed when she stepped down at the Congress party meet, a brilliant manoeuvre that took the wind out of the Sangh's sails. From then till now, despite a discernible recovery in electoral politics (Bihar, and now possibly Karnataka) the Parivar has seemed in crisis.
But political movements don't die this easily, do they? And this is the most important, most dynamic political movement of post-independence India. Out of state power, it orchestrated a massive popular mobilization to destroy a 500 year old mosque, and that was successful. Holding state power in Gujarat, it planned, managed, and successfully executed a genocidal campaign against Muslims, and realized its dream, to establish Hindu Rashtra there. A right-wing political movement with this force and energy doesn't die because it suffers an electoral reverse, however traumatic. In the oldest traditions of the Sangh, crisis, we could have expected, would bring out all its strength and resilience, see it regroup, re-strategize, and launch new campaigns.

I reacted euphorically when it seemed, for a while, as though this wasn't happening. Almost two years of UPA power now, fumbling and unsatisfactory but still incomparably better on every level than the six-year nightmare that had preceded it, and the RSS seemed to have been unable to come up with any kind of strategy to combat this. But now I'm worried. Mohan Bhagwat's statement, tucked away in the margins of the news, may - just may - indicate the unfolding of a new political logic, however unstable and tentative at first. Does this statement mean that RSS volunteers are to enter and destabilize other political parties? Does it mean that corrupt, opportunistic hangers-on are to be weeded out of the Sangh, reclaiming thereby that savage purity of purpose that has historically been its landmark? Is this perhaps an attempt to break and reconstitute the Sangh, perhaps to move beyond the BJP towards a new political formation, in the long-term? For this is the one political movement in India that genuinely thinks in the long-term, that has been able to strategize micropolitically on a national scale, to enter the circuits of education, temple networks, voluntary organizations, and local welfare, and work its ideological mission through these channels. We needn't be surprised if the RSS plays a waiting game, it's done this for decades. It's a tragic commentary on Indian politics that the one formation with an intelligent, clear-cut and patient strategy, the only grouping that genuinely has political vision, should be a savage, bloodthirsty, and fascistic movement, whose clarity lies in its total, incorruptible commitment to subordinate all minority communities to majoritarian rule. The RSS has finally spoken, it has finally delivered a statement that may suggest a real strategy, a real vision, once again.

This may all be paranoid, and I hope, I deeply hope that it is. But I'm worried. I'm also worried by the complacency of a secular government that has taken little note yet of what the Sangh is doing in the states in which it's in power - anticonversion laws in Gujarat and M.P., absolutely unjustifiable in any state that claims democratic credentials, have barely been commented upon, let alone politically contested. I'm also worried by the past. There was a time, not so long ago, when people one spoke to would confidently say, 'Ah, now that the BJP's in power, it's nothing more than an ordinary centre-right party, it's eschewed Hindutva.' Sometimes they'd go on to tell you what a wonderful, patriotic gesture the nuclear tests in 1998 were, and how wonderful it was that India was shining, it had to be true, didn't it, if the papers and advertisements told you so surely India was shining? Even if they didn't, and sometimes even when they shared your politics, they'd tell you there was nothing to worry about, we were simply stabilizing, in the natural course of things, into a two-party system.
We never did transmute into a two-party system, thank the Lord or whoever (better the Laloos of the world than the sterility of American politics!). There is, on the whole, no 'natural course of things'. Except, as activists had tirelessly pointed out for over a decade, in the politics of the Sangh. Events did take their natural course there. The BJP controlled India, the Sangh controlled Gujarat. The 2002 massacres happened. It was brutal, it was clinical, it was pre-planned, and efficiently carried out. It was also utterly and completely predictable - Communalism Combat had predicted it for months before it happened. In the life of the Sangh, it was in the natural course of things, it was the growth from adolescence into maturity of their political vision, the first total accomplishment of a goal, with practically no hitches.

If the same complacency reappears, the complacency that mistakes a temporary lull for a change of heart, a temporary wavering for a political decline, then we're all in deep trouble in the not-so-long run. And there's reason to worry.

I'm worried, and I hope I'm wrong. I'm worried because I refuse to believe Gujarat cannot happen again.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting post, though there are quite a few intriguing possibilities that may arise from Bhagawats comments. For one, as you rightly point out, the need of the hour is to aggressively oppose the neo-liberal economic agenda. Otherwise within just a few years, irreparable damage can be inflicted. Thus, perhaps the time is right for a grand right-left alliance. Them motivated by xenophobia, you by your lofty ideals, a most formidable limited arrangement. I think the mistake that a lot of their opponenents make is to paint the right wing with too broad of a brush. There are softer tones, subtle hues, not every Hindutva votary is a reactionary. There is a real opportunity here for a grand "Swadeshi" alliance from Nagpur to Alimuddin Street, the possibilities are endless