The ravages of routine
Both the Congress and the BJP suffer from a vision deficit
Both the Congress and the BJP suffer from a vision deficit
As we think about the 2014 national elections,one thing is becoming manifestly clear. The two leading political parties of India,and their alliances,are in varying states of disarray. As of now,either could still win the next Lok Sabha elections,but that will not be because of organisational health,only due to the absence of other alternatives. The BJP,as the opposition party,should have been sitting pretty after the incumbent scandals of the last 18 months. But it seems incapable of stealing an easy thunder. How do we understand the malaise of both parties?
Before we proceed further,we should note that the malaise,however characterised,does not pose immediate,or fatal,dangers to India’s democracy,as is sometimes claimed. We need to draw a distinction between routine and visionary forms of democratic politics. If anything,India has too much of routine democratic politics: bargains and negotiations between political parties,and of course,regular elections,victories and defeats. But India also has too little visionary democratic politics,in which parties vie with each other on transformative visions,mobilise support and run campaigns on that basis. It is the emaciation of visionary politics that has caused depression in the popular mood. Not in jeopardy,routine electoral democracy will go on.
The problems of the Congress party can be easily summarised. All over the world,political power has a corrosive,self-destructive quality. Exceptions notwithstanding,few incumbents last more than two terms; in some polities,in fact,there is an explicit two-term limit. The self-destructive quality of political power stems from the fact that the more a political organisation acquires power or the longer it lasts in power,the more it attracts those for whom political power is a means to patronage and to personal or sectional enhancement,not an instrument of social or national transformation. And the more politicians in power serve their own interests or those of a specific group,the more they lose larger political legitimacy. As power goes up,legitimacy tends to decline,very often if not always.
Even in the most idealistic phase of governance in India (1947-64),leaders worried about the mercenary uses of power. In the late 1950s,a Nehru-appointed committee found that the Congress organisation in Gujarat — in the famous land of Gandhi — had lost its idealism,wedded as it was to those who used power for patronage.
The problem is,of course,much more serious now. Given the level of economic activity,graft was not pervasive then. It is today. With an economically rising India,personal enhancement of politicians has reached monumental proportions. Typically,businessmen become billionaires; in India,some of the politicians have also come to scale such heights,not because they came to politics from business,but they use politics for business. The fact that this happened during so many rapid economic transformations in the world — in the late 19th century US,in South Korea during the 1970s and 1980s,in China since the 1990s — is not something that can bring solace to Indian voters. They don’t vote in non-Indian,or historically bygone,polities.
The BJP suffers from this problem too. After all,it is in power in several states,if not in Delhi. It has also attracted seekers of patronage and wealth,not simply ideology. In Indian political science,Karnataka was known to be one of the cleanest states till the 1970s; under the current BJP rule,political ethics in the state have touched new depths of decline.
At any rate,from the perspective of the 2014 elections,the BJP’s problems are quite deep. The BJP has a leadership crisis,and a crisis of ideology. If Narendra Modi wins assembly elections in Gujarat in December,his right to lead the BJP in the 2014 parliamentary elections just cannot be legitimately denied. No one who wins three elections in a row can be brushed aside,if others can’t even win two. But if Modi leads the BJP,the NDA will almost certainly break up. Nitish Kumar will leave,as will,most probably,Chandrababu Naidu. They heavily depend on Muslim votes.
Nitish Kumar’s departure will,in particular,hurt,for he is a new star of Indian politics. If Modi has kept Gujarat going at Chinese rates of economic growth,Nitish Kumar has pulled Bihar from the abyss of pessimism. Who could have realistically believed,in the 1980s and 1990s,that it was possible to turn Bihar around? Bihar’s turnaround also illustrates an old truism of democratic politics — that democracies are capable of self-correction. In their routine form,democratic politics can be boring,even depressing,but in their visionary form,democratic politics can lift spirits. As scholars,we simply don’t know how much routine malaise is necessary before visionary forms of politics emerge.
The most logical solution for the BJP’s leadership crisis has been obvious for some time: Narendra Modi should apologise for 2002 and make up with India’s Muslims. The apology will be political,for the massacres took place when he was chief minister. The apology does not have to be personal,if he believes he did his best. Moreover,only the courts can establish his personal culpability,if any.
What is the appropriate language for a political apology? Only Modi can decide. He has twice come close: last year when he invited Gujarat’s Muslim leaders to the manch of his well-publicised rally; and last week when he gave his first uninterrupted interview on 2002 riots to an Urdu weekly. He clearly knows what is necessary,but each time he pulled back from a politically pivotal moment. Muslims were welcome to the stage in Gujarat,but their offering of a cap was not accepted. The weekly was given a long interview and Muslim dreams were said to be important to Modi’s politics,but the remorse was not evident. Only ambivalence was.
If the Congress has apologised for 1984,why can’t Modi for 2002? The problem appears to be ideological. The Congress does not have an anti-Sikh ideology; the RSS has an anti-Muslim one. With roots in the RSS,an anti-Muslim ideology seems to be ingrained in Modi too. In the 1920s and 1930s,V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar,fathers of Hindu nationalism,had no doubts that Muslims were fundamentally traitors to the Indian cause; in the 1960s,Deen Dayal Upadhyay,another leading ideological figure,was less acerbic,but he was also doubtful of Muslim commitment to India. Even in the interview last week,Modi’s advice to India’s Muslims is that they should see themselves as human beings and Indians,not as Muslims and Indians. If Hindus can be simultaneously Hindus and Indians,why can’t Muslims be Muslims and Indians at the same time? Elementary norms of modern citizenship require such equalisation.
Essentially,the BJP is struggling with a post-Ayodhya ideological framework. Blaming Muslims for India’s ills,and castigating the Congress for Muslim appeasement,just can’t be a viable electoral strategy any more,as it was in the 1980s and 1990s. For electoral success,the BJP needs an ideological reformulation. The leadership crisis and the ideological crisis are linked.
The writer is Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and Social Sciences at Brown University,where he also directs the India Initiative
express@expressindia.com
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