By Amrita Basu
As 2012 unfolds, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appears adrift. Dissent within the party and within the Sangh Parivar has become increasingly rancorous and conspicuous. As the BJP has ceased to be a disciplined, unified party, it has been plagued by many of the problems that afflict other political parties. And yet the BJP remains more ideologically committed than any other Indian political party. Far from pursuing a linear pattern of growing centrism, it has selectively engaged in militancy and violence. At the national level, the BJP in collaboration with the Visva Hindu Parishad (VHP) grew by engaging in militant religious nationalism until 1999; it has since distanced itself from the VHP and formally adopted a more moderate stance. At the federal level, both before and after 1999, the BJP has demonstrated moderation in some states while in others it has joined the VHP and Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) in precipitating violence against Muslims and Christians amidst campaigns against immigrants and religious conversions, and in favour of banning cow slaughter.
How can we explain the timing and location of Hindu nationalists’ anti-minority violence? What explains the periodic tensions and alliances between the RSS, the VHP and the BJP? What, if any, are their structural sources? How does the BJP’s relationship to the RSS and VHP influence its policies when it is in power and in opposition?
A fruitful way of addressing these questions is by exploring the synergies and tensions between a strong party, the BJP, and a social movement organisation, the VHP. Their goal is to align nationalism with Hindu-majority interests at the expense of minority rights. Since creating the VHP and BJP, the RSS has ensured that they have abided by its core commitments. Yet while the BJP and VHP have strengthened and influenced one another, their different institutional locations and interests have sometimes strained relations between them and influenced their political reception.
The VHP and its affiliates, particularly the Bajrang Dal and Durga Vahini, have employed confrontational direct action tactics. They have sought to instil in Hindus a powerful sense of collective identity by cultivating their opposition to Muslims and to state policies that protect minority rights. Whereas many movements decline if they fail to achieve their central demands, the VHP has profited from periodically raising previously unmet demands for temple construction in Ayodhya and banning religious conversions and cow slaughter.
The VHP’s religious positions are critical to its success in social movement organising. Religious sanction provides moral legitimacy to the use of violence and authorises higher levels of violence than would otherwise be socially acceptable. Religious organisations and functionaries have provided the movement with an organisational infrastructure and resources. In India as in many other places, religious discourses are considered non-elite discourses which are democratically available to the common people.
The BJP and VHP have derived enormous benefits from their partnership. The BJP has enabled VHP members to obtain political office. In supporting the VHP’s campaign around the temple in Ayodhya, it transcended the narrow political world that most parties inhabit to address social and cultural identities and meanings. Its ties to the VHP have enabled the BJP to claim to speak from a domain of moral values rather than from the self-interested world of electoral politics. In certain times and places, as in Uttar Pradesh in the early 1990s, the BJP short circuited the long, slow, hard work of party building by hitching its fortunes to the VHP.
However, there are crucial differences between the RSS, BJP and VHP that stem from their distinctive histories, institutional locations, constituencies and even long-term goals. The VHP’s leadership does not subscribe to democratic rules of governance. It is a non-elected body which disdains procedural democracy. It has repeatedly stated that it will not accept court judgments on matters of religious faith. It has thus eschewed the rules that the BJP must observe. The fact that the BJP is a major national party has a vital bearing on the alliances it forms, the kind of legitimacy it seeks and the pressures to which it is vulnerable. The BJP is not only beholden to the RSS, but also to other political parties. Its close connections to the VHP and thus to militant Hindu nationalist ideals have sometimes proved costly at the polls and in its relations with coalition partners. The BJP’s susceptibility to RSS pressure is greater when the BJP is out of power than in office (especially national office).
However, the effectiveness of party-movement radicalism is not simply internally determined by members of the Sangh Parivar, but also by the external political environment, particularly by popular responsiveness to its appeals and the character and actions of the state. When the state, whether it is controlled by Congress, the Janata Party or the BJP, has conceded to Hindu nationalist movements, they have become more militant. Conversely, when the state has sanctioned anti-minority violence, the party has distanced itself from the movement and pursued more centrist goals.
The most important instance of movement–party collaboration occurred around the Ayodhya campaign from the late 1980s until 1992. Advani’s ‘rath yatra’ to Ayodhya in October 1990 generated powerful solidarities among Hindus, cultivating fear, anger and hatred of Muslims. The movement that the BJP and VHP jointly organised brought down the state and national governments and brought the BJP to power in Uttar Pradesh in 1991. By 1992, the VHP and the BJP were both independently strong and their relationship was mutually beneficial. A BJP Government was in power in Uttar Pradesh and its chief minister supported the movement. The Congress Government headed by Narasimha Rao allowed the movement to grow. On 6 December 1992, the BJP and VHP organised a massive campaign, which resulted in the destruction of the mosque.
However, BJP militancy subsided after the mosque was demolished. One important reason is that the Congress Government at the centre, which had tolerated Hindu nationalists’ provocations until that point, took a firm stand in 1992. Prime Minister Rao ordered the arrest of major movement leaders, dismissed BJP state governments and banned the VHP for two years. Although the VHP continued its work underground, it was forced to assume a lower profile. This reassertion of the national government’s authority broke the movement’s momentum.
The violence associated with the Ayodhya issue was backfiring. Even if Muslims were the worst victims, Hindus also suffered from political instability, material losses and threats to their safety. The November 1993 election results were a public referendum on the BJP’s militant social movement activities. In the Assembly elections in 1994 and 1995, the BJP was only elected in two states (and in these two largely as a result of popular discontent with incumbent Janata Dal Governments).
With the demolition of the mosque, the relationship between party and movement changed. The BJP decided that it could only govern nationally by distancing itself from the movement. By June 1993 it was affirming its secular commitments and putting temple construction in Ayodhya on the back burner. By the 1999 general elections, the BJP was committed to depicting itself as a moderate, centrist party. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government (October 1999–Januray 2004) placed a moratorium on such contentious issues as the Ram Temple, abolishing Article 370 of the Constitution and the uniform civil code.
The movement reasserted itself, this time against the BJP. The VHP, backed by the RSS, organised protests against NDA Government policies on temple construction and globalisation. The BJP had aligned itself with the RSS and VHP on both issues before it was elected. The RSS and VHP felt betrayed by its changed stance after it came to power.
The RSS and affiliated organisations, particularly the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), Front for the Awakening of Mass Nationalism, had been campaigning against globalisation since the early 1990s. Although the BJP participated in some of these campaigns, it whole heartedly embraced economic reform after achieving national power. Under RSS directives, the SJM and other organisations mounted a series of protests from 2000 to 2002 in Bhopal, Patna, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and other cities to pressure the government to scale back economic reforms.
The VHP subsequently organised a series of agitations demanding that the government authorise temple construction in Ayodhya. It issued the central government an ultimatum to hand over the land it had acquired in 1993 by 12 March 2002. Prime Minister Vajpayee legitimated the VHP’s authority by negotiating with its leaders and allowing it to organise prayer ceremonies in Ayodhya. The government’s concessions to the VHP resulted in the horrific events in Gujarat. The two major rounds of killing in February and March 2002 in Gujarat occurred right after the VHP had organised ceremonies in Ayodhya. The NDA Government did not intervene to stop the Gujarat pogrom and allowed Narendra Modi, the architect of the violence, to remain Chief Minister. However, thanks to pressure from coalition members and fears about its own culpability, it halted the movement’s growth. It ordered the VHP to stop its programme and issued orders prohibiting kar sevaks from entering Ayodhya. It supported negotiations for a settlement to the Ayodhya dispute with leaders on the All India Muslim Personal Law Board. It refused to support the VHP’s claims on the mosques adjoining temples in Kashi and Mathura.
The VHP was outraged. In June 2002, the VHP announced that it was withdrawing its earlier commitment to abide by the Supreme Court’s verdict which opposed religious activity in Ayodhya. It directed its state units to mobilise Hindus for the temple construction and organised a much publicised procession to Ayodhya on 17 October 2003.
The BJP did not appreciate the implications of the VHP’s opposition. Confident of victory, it called for early elections. Despite the BJP’s pleas, the RSS did not restrain the VHP from embarrassing BJP leaders and denouncing Prime Minister Vajpayee. The VHP did not campaign for the BJP or express disappointment at its electoral defeat.
Following the BJP’s defeat in the 2004 and 2009 general elections, the RSS reasserted its supremacy and prevented the BJP from pursuing a centrist path. Nitin Gadkari, who became BJP president in 2009, is an RSS swayamsevak and close to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. Gadkari has stated that the BJP is committed to building a temple in Ayodhya and hopes to persuade Muslims to respect Hindu sentiments.
However the Ayodhya movement is likely to wane. The Sangh Parivar did not protest the landmark Allahabad High Court ruling (30 September 2010), as anticipated, largely because its compromise solution favoured Hindu over Muslim groups. The court determined that two-thirds of the disputed land should be allotted to Hindus and a third to Muslims. It did not consider the Sangh Parivar’s deliberate destruction of the mosque in 1992 relevant to its decision. The court judgement only moved the Ayodhya dispute further into the courts, where it is likely to remain for some time. Both Hindu and Muslim groups have appealed it in the Supreme Court.
I have sought to locate the success of Hindu nationalism in pursuing ideologically driven anti-Muslim appeals by highlighting the periodic synergy between parties, movements and states. Until 1999, the BJP and its predecessor, the Jan Sangh, achieved their most significant gains in national elections after they engaged in movement activities (1967, 1977 and 1989). The centrist BJP received just 6.4 per cent of the vote in the 1984 elections. Five years later, at the start of the Ayodhya campaign, its share of the national vote increased to 11.4 per cent and by the 1991 elections, when the campaign was in full flower, 20.1 per cent. It was in the last of these three periods that the BJP most fully allied with a mass-based movement. Movement campaigns have preceded Legislative Assembly elections in many states during the 1990s and thereafter.
Relations between the party and movement have been closer when the BJP has been in the opposition than when it has been in power. After the NDA assumed office, the RSS and VHP became openly critical of the BJP’s whole hearted support for economic liberalisation and its half-hearted supported for temple construction. The BJP-led government weakened some struggles by decisively rejecting their demands while strengthening others by partially conceding to them. Anti-globalisation protests diminished as the NDA demonstrated its unwavering commitment to economic reform. By contrast, the VHP was invigorated by the BJP’s partial concessions to its demands concerning Ayodhya. The BJP’s ties to the RSS have become stronger since its two consecutive defeats in the general elections in 2004 and 2009.
The water-tight distinctions scholars have made between parties, movements and states obscure the blurred boundaries between them. Often elections are sites of movement activities, party members are movement activists and states strengthen movements. However, parties and movements alternately collaborate and conflict because they have different sources of power and different interests and must be responsive to the state and to the prevailing political environment. All of this suggests the centrality of social movements to democratic processes in India. Movements often influence the character of elections, the actions of parties and the nature of state policy. The endurance of movements, and their changing permutations, call into question linear models of party growth and movement decline and suggest complicated, trajectories of political change in India in the past and in years to come.