Religious Division and Social Conflict

The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in Rural India

Peggy Froerer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351378123
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Nationalism & Patriotism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book is an ethnographic account of the emergence of Hindu nationalism in a tribal (adivasi) community in Chhattisgarh, central India. It is argued that the successful spread of Hindu nationalism in this area is due to the involvement of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a militant Hindu nationalist organization, in local affairs. While active engagement in 'civilizing' strategies has enabled the RSS to legitimize its presence and endear itself to the local community, the book argues that participation in more aggressive strategies has made it possible for this organization to fuel and attach local tensions to a broader Hindu nationalist agenda.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

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In September 1998, a particular incident took place in a village that I will call Mohanpur, located in a forested region of Chhattisgarh, central India, which signified the moment when militant Hindu nationalism became a patently visible force in this area. It was early evening, a time when most people had retired to their homes to prepare for the evening meal. The exception was a group of about ten young men belonging to the local Hindu community. Like most evenings, they were engaging in ‘time-pass’, an activity that usually consisted of loitering about, ogling local girls and playing cards.

This particular evening, they had congregated along the forest road at the edge of the village to share a bottle of local liquor. As equal portions were being poured into makeshift leaf-cups, the sounds of a vehicle could be heard some distance away. This was unusual, for vehicular traffic was still rare in this part of Chhattisgarh—particularly after dusk—due to impassable roads and the potential dangers of the jungle. As they consumed the drink, the young men speculated about who could be driving through the forest at this time of the night. Soon, they recognized the jeep belonging to the two Catholic Fathers, who were returning to the mission station in the neighbouring village.

As the vehicle drew nearer, the young men spread across the road, forcing the jeep to come to a halt. One of them ordered two others to ‘bring fire’ and instructed the rest to surround the vehicle so that they could burn it. He then accused the Fathers of wanting to ‘turn all Hindus into Christians, like elsewhere in India’. Because ‘local Hindus do not want to become Christians’, he argued, the Fathers had instead decided ‘to bring the Hindu community down’ by encouraging local Christians to make and sell liquor to the Hindus. These accusations were met with vocal concurrence from the rest of the group and fierce denials from the Fathers, who insisted that they had no such conversion agenda. To the contrary, the Fathers claimed, they were actively counselling local Christians to avoid liquor production and consumption.

Throughout this heated exchange, the Fathers remained seated nervously in their jeep. The two young men who had gone to fetch fuel for a fire had returned and now stood on either side of the vehicle, wielding cans of kerosene and large pieces of burning wood, waiting for the order to torch the jeep. Nearly an hour or so later, the Fathers were finally allowed to proceed, but only after agreeing to employ more stringent tactics against those members of the local Catholic parish who continued to produce and sell liquor, and to conduct their annual village mass not in the Christian locality on the opposite side of the village, but at the local Hindu shrine in the village square.

This incident, which was narrated to me by the Fathers and by several of the young men involved, occurred during the period of anti-Christian violence that spread across India between 1997 and 2000. It was directly connected to the Hindu nationalist movement which, since the late 1980s, has been arguably one of the most pervasive and divisive political forces that have spread across Indian society. While this movement has recently experienced electoral setbacks at the national level, it continues to influence the course of Indian politics at the state and local levels, and its ongoing and often violent penetration into everyday life will continue to have far-reaching implications for years to come.

It is the emergence of Hindu nationalism in this mixed, Hindu/ Christian adivasi (tribal; literally, original inhabitant) village, and the impact that this has had on the lives of local people, which are the principal concerns of this book. Based on nearly two years of fieldwork that took place between October 1997 and August 1999, it provides an explicitly ethnographic approach to the wider understanding of the process by which Hindu nationalist ideology is successfully transmitted in rural adivasi areas. In particular, it examines the role played by ‘conversion specialists’ (Brass 1997: 16; 2003), or those RSS activists who serve as the primary facilitators in this process.

The concerns of this book have been shaped by the growing influence of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh; literally Association of National Volunteers or the National Volunteer Corps), whose increasing attention in this area paralleled the period during which my fieldwork was conducted. Along with other proponents of Hindu nationalism, the RSS is part of what is sometimes referred to as the ‘saffron brigade’—those political and cultural groups most visibly associated with militant Hindu nationalism—due to their appropriation and widespread use of the saffron colour, which is traditionally associated with mainstream Hindu rituals. When I first began my research in October 1997, this organization was relatively unknown in the area. The four RSS activists or organizers (pracharaks) who visited Mohanpur every few months to conduct meetings amongst a few interested young men held the interest of the majority of locals more for their motor bikes and fancy clothes than for their message of Hindu unity. By the time I completed my research nearly two years later, visits by these activists had increased to a weekly frequency. While Mohanpur was by no means the only village in the area in which these cadres were active, it is an examination of the particular strategies that they employed during this period to gain wider access to the adivasis in this particular village that is the focus of this book. Analysis is based on events that occurred between 1997–9, and specific aims are twofold: to identify the local conditions and cleavages that have contributed to the transmission of Hindu nationalism in this community, and to explore how nationalist ideology is tailored by individual activists to correspond with local concerns. The broader objective is to understand the manner by which, through the instrumental involvement of its activists in local level issues, groups like the RSS are able to gain a legitimacy on the ground, and to extrapolate from this analysis in relation to the complex link between the growth of Hindu nationalism at the grass-roots level, and broader discourses on Hindu nationalism.

Approaches to Hindu Nationalism

Mitigating the ‘backwardness’ of India’s adivasi communities is one of the objectives that has recently figured in the agenda of the RSS. Along with other members of the Sangh Parivar (‘the family’), that complex of Hindu nationalist organisations that includes the political branch, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the ‘cultural’ wing, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the long-term aim of this organization is the spread of Hindutva, or ‘Hindu-ness’, and the transformation of Hindu culture into an undifferentiated, unified whole, for the purpose of achieving ‘one nation, one people, one culture’ (Khilnani 1997: 151). This kind of singular Hinduism assumes that India has always been ‘fundamentally Hindu’, a community united by geographical origin, racial connection and religious belief (see Thapar 1991). Indeed, the very notion of Hindutva equates religious and national identity, where an Indian is defined as a Hindu, and the Hindu faith in turn, is defined as the core of Indian nationhood (cf. Gopal 1993; Madan 1997; McKean 1996; van der Veer 1994: 1).

There is an extensive body of academic work within the social and political sciences devoted to analysing the origins and contemporary manifestations of the Hindu nationalist movement, much of which is likely to be familiar to readers of this book. One section of the literature explains the success of Hindu nationalism in terms of systematic organizational work, creative political strategies and mobilizing ideologies (Basu et al. 1993; Jaffrelot 1996; Kanungo 2002; Sharma 2003). Another section interprets Hindu nationalism in more cultural and historical terms (Bhatt 2001; Ludden 2005; Sarkar 2001; Vanaik 1997), or examines the movement in terms of ‘religious nationalism’ (Juergensmeyer 1993; van der Veer 1994). Others use the Ayodhya confrontation as a specific point of departure (Gopal 1993; Nandy et al. 1995), while still others link the movement to the larger disjuncture between democratic mobilization and governance (Hansen 1999; Khilnani 1997).

Alongside this research is a great deal of comparative literature that views Hindu nationalism, together with other ‘nationalisms’, as a product of modernizing and globalizing forces unfolding throughout much of the contemporary world (Kapferer 1988; Marty and Appleby 1993, 1994 and 1995).¹ This scholarship on Hindu nationalism, in turn, belongs to a more general discourse on nationalism that has been produced over the past two decades, largely in response to the growing prominence of nationalist movements across the globe (seminal studies include Anderson 1983; Eriksen 2002; Gellner 1983; Smith 1971, 1992). Finally, the processes outlined in this literature can be viewed within the context of more competitive religious assertions taking place across the globe (see Mahmood 2005; Saberwal and Hasan 2006).²

Most of this literature situates the antecedents of Hindu nationalism within historical traditions such as the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century German ideas of the nation and ethnic nationalism, nineteenth-century Hindu revival and reform movements, Christian missionising practices, scouting and the British police (Andersen and Damle 1987; Bayly 1999; Gold 1991; Jaffrelot 1996; seeThapar 1985 and 1991). Contemporary manifestations of the Hindu nationalist movement, moreover, are framed against the backdrop of a postcolonial context that has been informed by the struggle between parties, factions, personalities and ideologies for the political governance and reconstruction of India (cf. Chatterjee 1993).

As Ludden (2005: 18–19) acknowledges, this struggle, which is underpinned by the gradual disintegration since the mid-1970s of the Congress party’s hold over the Indian state, is principally concerned with the legitimacy of the state and the distribution of state resources and power. Since the early 1990s, this struggle has also been shaped by economic liberalization and an increase in urban, middle-class affluence and consumerism. Furthermore, it has been informed by the upsurge in and increasing demands of lower-caste political parties and social movements, shifting loyalties and vote blocs, and the (re)interpretation of shared cultural symbols and national heritage (see Hansen 1999; Kohli 1990). These phenomena undoubtedly have given added impetus and legitimacy to wider Hindu nationalist campaigns across the country. However, it is also recognized that the continuing momentum of Hindu nationalism has become regionalized (see Hansen 1996), and it is in this context that the BJP and other proponents of the Hindu right have gradually enhanced their power and that, in the 1990s, Hindutva ‘emerged as a solid competitor for popular loyalties’ (Ludden 2005: 19).

While a detailed review of this literature would unnecessarily duplicate by now familiar arguments, that have sought to explain how and why Hindu nationalism and other nationalist movements arise, the purpose of drawing attention to this extensive discourse is to highlight what has generally been ignored: namely, the grass-roots processes that examine precisely how nationalism is manifested and spread at the local level, and how ordinary persons’ engagement in nationalist projects evolves.³

It is true that there is a great deal of attention on the spread of Hindu nationalist sentiment and violence in urban settings. Available accounts include a focus on the Hinduization of public and ritual space in urban sites of conflict (see, for example, Fuller 2001; Hansen 1996); the introduction of new rituals or ‘invented traditions’ created for political purposes in urban areas (cf. Anandhi 1995: 36–43; Fuller 2004); or the personal accounts of the victims of (largely urban) communal violence (e.g. Kakar 1996). Additionally, there are a number of works that cursorily mention the ‘social upliftment’ strategies being employed by Hindu nationalist organizations in rural, adivasi areas (see Hansen 1999: 103–6; van der Veer 1994: 135–6).

Detailed ethnography, however, is sparse, and there is no work to date that documents and analyses the precise manner by which Hindu nationalism is being introduced amongst adivasi communities in specifically rural areas. We know that, due to impediments like inaccessible roads and lack of electricity, access to and participation in ‘mainstream’ urban culture is often limited. This means that the methods by which Hindu nationalism is routinely transmitted in urban areas, which rely heavily on people’s access to mass media and to popular forms of public participation, must of necessity be very different (cf. Farmer 1996; Varadaraj an 1999).

Existing scholarship has hinted at such differences. In his revised edition of The Camphor Flame, for example, Fuller (2004: 262–89) notes a recent study of the Banjara (an ‘ex-criminal’ tribe) in rural Rajasthan, which mentions how RSS activists have spent months endearing themselves and their ideology to the local community. But this study does not analyse the process by which Hindu nationalism is introduced to and accepted by this community. Moreover, while the basic theme of ‘cultural unity’ amongst all Hindus is fundamental to the overall project of Hindu nationalism, available discussions indicate that this theme has unique manifestations. In the tribal-dominated Jharkhand area (now a state), for example, we are told by Hocking (1996: 225) that adivasi Christians have been characterized by Hindu nationalist activists as being outside the bounds of the Hindu nation, creating a threat against Hindu society; and in Gujarat, leaders of the Sangh Parivar reportedly urge adivasis to assert their Hindu-ness and defend their threatened religion against exploitative Muslim traders (Baviskar 2005: 5108; cf. Lobo 2002: 4844–9). Beyond the generalized descriptions of how members of the Sangh Parivar modify their message to suit the situations and histories of different communities however, the specific activities in which these activists engage at the local level remain largely undocumented and unanalysed.

There is perhaps reason for the lack of ethnographic attention to rural, adivasi communities, foremost being the fact that Hindu nationalism has, until recently, been concentrated ‘in the heart of India’s urban middle classes’ (Hansen 1999: 7; Jaffrelot 1996, 1998). Support from this sector unquestionably contributed to the political success of the movement in recent years, most notably in 1997 when the BJP first came to power as the head of India’s national coalition government. Since the early 2000s, however, this support has declined. A consequence of this was the defeat suffered by the BJP in the 2004 national elections.⁴ At the same time, it is notable that the party came to power in states with sizeable adivasi populations, which included Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

In short, it is clear that this movement has successfully spread from its urban centres into more ‘backward’, rural areas, achieving popular and electoral support from India’s dispersed adivasi communities. It is equally clear that, given the anti-Christian violence of the sort ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Transliteration
• Glossary of Selected Terms
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Adivasi Hindus and the RSS
• 3. Adivasi Christians and the Church
• 4. Health, Biomedicine and the Rss
• 5. Local Corruption and the Politics of Inclusion
• 6. Land Relations and Local Tensions
• 7. Liquor Disputes and the Communalization of Local Tensions
• 8. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index