New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements in Developing Societies

The Bharatiya Janata Party

Sebastian Schwecke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136846564
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi sull'etnia

Applying an intercultural and comparative theoretical approach across Asia and Africa, this book analyses the rise and moderation of political movements in developing societies which mobilise popular support with references to conceptions of cultural identity. The author includes not only the Hindu nationalist movement but also many Islamist political movements in a single category – New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements (NCIPM). Demonstrating significant similarities in the pattern of evolution between these and European Christian Democracy, the book provides an instrument for the analysis of these movements outside the parameters of the fundamentalism debate.

The book looks at a number of key variables for understanding the evolution of NCIPM, and it goes on to analyse the transition of developing societies from rent-based political economies to capitalism and the (partial) failure of this transition process. It argues that there is a need to incorporate economic and class analysis in the study of political processes in developing societies against the continuing emphasis on cultural factors associated with the "cultural turn" of social sciences. The book is an interesting contribution to studies in South Asian Politics, as well as Comparative Politics.

1    Introduction

The last decade has seen the emergence of movements which propagate culturally or religiously defined conceptions of identity as significant political actors in a variety of developing countries. In India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led two successive coalition governments between 1998 and 2004 and remained the single largest opposition party afterwards. The Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) has remained in power in Turkey since 2002. Across northern Africa, West Asia, and South and South East Asia many other movements have increased their popular support and political influence, among them the Mouvement de la Société pour la Paix (MSP) and El Islah in Algeria, the Parti de la Justice et du Développement (PJD) in Morocco, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Wasat in Egypt, the Islamic Action Front (IAF) in Jordan, the Parti Islam se Malaysia (PAS) in Malaysia and the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS) in Indonesia. The Palestinian Hamas has won the parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories in 2006, while the Lebanese Hizbullah has reinforced its political influence in recent years.

All these movements have in common that they and the respective ideologies they represent have, at times, been classified as forming part of the fundamentalist spectrum of politics. While this classification is rejected here, unless being used in a highly vague sense which does not appear to contribute to our understanding of the nature of the various movements subsumed under this category, the type of movements outlined above have other crucial commonalities. The most significant of these in order to understand the evolution of these movements is the role played by them vis-à-vis the potential transition of the societies they are operating in from at least to a significant degree rent-based to increasingly capitalist socio-economic and political orders. Where this transition is relatively successful, for example in India, it coincides with the emergence of increasingly influential, predominantly capitalist new middle classes in the respective developing countries.

The emergence and rise of the BJP and its predecessor has been linked by various observers to its support among the middle classes, the petty bourgeoisie in the initial stages of its evolution and the new middle classes since the late 1980s. Mostly, however, the party’s evolution has been discussed in terms of its cultural identitarian agenda (and radical interpretations of the latter.) Critical studies have tended to highlight the threat Hindu nationalism is perceived to pose to the fabric of Indian society and India’s polity, not only by the Hindu nationalist movement’s propensity, at times, to employ violent means but also with respect to the unifying aims of the movement and its alleged proximity to authoritarianism which are seen to endanger the principle of ‘unity in diversity’ underlying the process of nation-building in India.

While it has rarely been doubted that the Hindu nationalist movement should be considered to be anchored in modernity itself, Hindu nationalism as a political and social force, at least in its initial phase, is often linked to a failure of some supportive social segments to adapt to modernity. In this, the debate on Hindu nationalism shows striking similarities with the discourse on movements outside India which also propagate alternative conceptions of identity, defined by religion or, rather, culture: especially Islamist movements. In contrast to the debate on Islamism, the discussion of Hindu nationalism lacks the pervasive sense of urgency, especially in western countries – the effects of the rise of Hindu nationalism in India are not generally perceived to threaten the stability of the western dominated international order to the same extent. This perception has contributed to a relatively low level of concern and, consequently, interest in the topic among the western academe outside the circle of scholars focussing on Indian or South Asian affairs. With some notable exceptions, the study of Hindu nationalism and Islamism (or other structurally similar movements) has remained separated. For the case of Hindu nationalism, this simultaneously results in a lack of broadly comparative perspectives in the analytical approaches employed.

Broadly speaking – and evidently as a rough generalisation – most approaches of studies on movements of recent origin (or prominence) which mobilise support via the propagation of culturally defined alternative conceptions of identity can be divided into three categories: Studies focussing on the origins and development of the ideological discourses of these movements; analyses of political processes, especially violence or processes perceived to threaten secularism, civil liberties, and in case of Islamism national and international stability; and analyses derived from area study approaches which focus on the emergence and evolution of these movements, their respective support bases, or specific policy contents. With reference to Islamist movements, area study approaches have increasingly tended to include comparative perspectives.

Analyses of the support bases of these movements have shown substantial differences, especially in class terms, among various Hindu nationalist and Islamist movements, and the importance of middle class support for some of these movements. However, since these are most often from area studies oriented disciplines, studies which include a theoretical framework based on the significance of political economy for the evolution of Islamist and Hindu nationalist parties remain rare. This is especially deplorable since political economy provides a link between the various movements which serves at least partially to transcend cultural and political contexts and thus facilitates comparison.

The present study of the BJP starts from an assumption of cross-cultural comparability, notwithstanding the fact that some aspects in the evolution of specific Hindu nationalist and Islamist movements can only be understood within the distinct cultural and political contexts these movements are operating in. The rationale for the cross-cultural comparison of these movements rests with their operation in similar contexts of political economy, of which several sub-types are discernible in the areas in which many of these movements have emerged. The BJP is seen here as one of the most important representatives of a specific sub-group of movements encompassing some, though not all Hindu nationalist and Islamist movements which are classified here as New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements (NCIPM). Their evolution can primarily be understood by the interaction of a specific set of factors pertaining mostly, though not exclusively, to political economy.

The broad theoretical framework for this study was originally developed by Hartmut Elsenhans in the mid-1990s, and elaborated in a research project on the partially isomorphous evolution of the BJP in India and two of the successors of the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) in Algeria, in co-operation with Elsenhans and Rachid Ouaissa who directed and conducted the research on the Algerian case.¹ The theoretical concept of NCIPM is outlined in Chapter 2.

This theoretical framework is based on an interpretation of politics in many developing countries which is influenced by the Elsenhansian understanding of (at least partially) rent-based economies and the possible transition of these societies to a capitalist mode of production (Elsenhans 2009). As these theoretical concepts are not well established in the Indian context, a concise outline of the concepts in the context of the evolution of modern Indian politics is provided in Chapter 3.

The case study of the BJP in India commences in Chapter 4 with an outline of the origins and development of the ideological discourse of the Hindu nationalist movement and its specific adaptation to the context of Indian politics. Chapter 5 traces the development of the BJP after its foundation to the present and the reasons for its emergence as a viable contender for political power in India. Chapter 6 discusses the evolution of the BJP at the regional and local level of Indian politics in two case studies: the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and the city of Aligarh. Chapter 7 analyses the process of transformation of the BJP under the impact of the changing context, defined mostly by factors of political economy, and the discursive framework in which this transformation is being established, at the national and the local level. For the latter, the analysis is based on a detailed local case study of the BJP local party unit in Aligarh city. Finally, the general hypotheses of this study are taken up again for the case study of the BJP and the general concept of NCIPM, respectively, in Chapter 8.

The general hypotheses of this study can be shortly summarised as follows: In a number of developing countries, among them India, the political system after de-colonisation depended to a significant degree on rent allocation processes to ensure the continued legitimacy of the established political elites. In the Indian case, socio-economic development and the relatively open political system resulted in increasing rent scarcity from the mid-1960s onwards, since demands for participation in the rent allocation process from rising social strata began to exceed the availability of rents for distribution. The political process, accordingly, resembled a contest between established and rising social strata, notwithstanding intermittent alliances between various strands belonging to the two respective groups. The moderate success of Indian development policy, apart from leading to rent scarcity, increasingly provided new avenues for the relatively prosperous sections of society for the maintenance and improvement of their socio-economic position.

This resulted in a paradigm shift in Indian politics: the advent of economic liberalisation policies and the corresponding emergence of new social coalitions. Economic liberalisation in India essentially constitutes a gradual and selective dismantling of the state’s interventionist structure in the economy. It is selective because it tends to concentrate on economic sectors providing comparatively highly-paid employment especially for the new middle classes, a recently emergent conglomerate of the established middle classes and certain rising social strata. While the discursive framework of Indian politics had been characterised by the contest between a discourse based on ‘social justice’ – the preferred idiom of rising social strata – and a discourse based on ‘merit’ propagated by the established middle classes, the two discourses increasingly began to co-exist as two separate idioms targeting distinct social strata.

In this context, political parties tend to propagate a combination of the two separate discourses as outlined above, depending on the parties’ respective composition of social support. The BJP – as the principal NCIPM in India – strongly benefited from the paradigm shift since some of its core ideological conceptions were highly conducive to its emergence as one of the main representatives of the interests of the new middle classes while, at the same time, augmenting the party’s capacity to reach out to select lower class groups. The unifying agenda of Hindu nationalism (if interpreted pragmatically) and its pre-occupation with a culturally defined concept of nationalism as opposed to its only vaguely defined body of economic thought served as a potent (and flexible) tool for political mobilisation.

To establish its presence as a major political force in India encompassing various strata and diverse interests but dominated by its core support from the new middle classes, the BJP turned towards political moderation in the mid-1990s. Notwithstanding the impact of institutional and ideological features pertaining to this course correction, the most important reason for it derived from political economy:

•   an increasing realisation on the part of the party’s leadership of the need to maintain its presence among the new middle classes by propagating these sections’ interests which had to be balanced to some extent by addressing the interests of select lower class sections;

•   and an implicit (though often denied) awareness that identity politics serves to facilitate political mobilisation but cannot serve as a substitute for the articulation of sectional (and primarily economic) interests, at least not in the long-term.

In contrast to the institutional and ideological factors pertaining to the party’s turn towards political moderation, the factors arising from political economy to a significant degree facilitate path-dependency in the gradual evolution of the BJP to an increasingly moderate centre-right political party. While the turn towards moderation has been challenged within the party and within the larger Hindu nationalist movement, its opponents lack political issues and strategies which could form viable alternatives to the direction of the party’s evolution. Essentially, opposition to the turn towards moderation is taking place in a discursive framework which, notwithstanding occasional setbacks, favours the proponents of political moderation as long as the context, especially regarding political economy, remains as defined above.

In its rise and subsequent evolution, the BJP represents a specific sub-category of NCIPM, distinct from other sub-categories by the contextual framework of political economy the various NCIPM are operating in. Hence, in this sub-category, it can be assumed that various NCIPM distinguished by their respective ideological origins and the political and cultural contexts they are operating in, will tend to follow a similar path of development, unless secondary factors gain overarching importance – exemplified by the presence of violent conflict in which an NCIPM is operating as a resistance movement.

2 The theoretical framework

The concept of new cultural identitarian political movements (NCIPM)

Religion, a central component of culture, becomes an important factor in the struggle for political democracy when it contributes to either concentration or dispersion of social, economic, and political resources.

Abootalebi (2000: 1)

Hindu nationalism and fundamentalism

Discussions on the topic of Hindu nationalism have often conceived this ideology and the Hindu nationalist movement in India within the bounds of the theoretical discourse on right-wing political movements in developing, non-western societies. According to the respective observers’ positioning within this discourse – specifically the emphasis placed on either religion as a source of political ideology or authoritarian tendencies within the movement – Hindu nationalism has variously been classified in proximity to either the concepts of fundamentalism¹ or fascism.² Since both these classifications appear problematic, other scholars working on Hindu nationalism have tended to situate the ideology in a category of its own, a specifically Indian political phenomenon. These attempts have resulted in a discourse devoid of the trappings associated with the fundamentalism debate and the leftist or liberal rejection of fascism. At the same time, they have tended to isolate the debate on Hindu nationalism from the discourse on related phenomena in other parts of the world: the almost coterminous emergence and rise of political movements in large parts of the developing world which derive ideological sustenance largely from indigenous cultural tradition and, therefore, have tended to reject secular conceptions of politics at least partially.

It is argued here that many of these movements can be subsumed under a single category, irrespective of the cultural content of their respective ideologies and the various political contexts they are operating in, as New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements (NCIPM) – following Elsenhans’ attempt to classify certain Islamist and the major strands of the Hindu nationalist movement in the mid-1990s (Elsenhans 1994). Before proceeding to discuss the concept of NCIPM (and its applicability in the case of the BJP) it is necessary to trace the ambiguities that arise from the approximation of these movements with fundamentalism.

The concept of fundamentalism originates from the literature on Christian religious political movements in North America, especially the United States, in the early twentieth century which indicated a revival of political values and sentiments which were perceived to be opposed to modernity and the rational foundation of modern politics (Riesebrodt 1990; 2000). The term fundamentalism later became associated with certain religious revival movements belonging to the spectrum of Semitic religions, most notably Islam, and was then extended to non-Semitic religions and even political ideologies unrelated to religion.³ The discourse on fundamentalism comprises a significant disconnect between the original narrow definition of the concept and the manifold uses of the term that followed the various extensions of the concept to an increasingly wide range of political phenomena.

Fundamentalism has an ambiguous relationship to religious orthodoxy: While the recourse to religious scriptures supports the orientation towards orthodoxy, the lay character of most fundamentalist movements⁴ and its strong emphasis on political action contribute to their emergence as religious reform movements with a tendency to emphasise a simplified version of the respective religion’s moral ideas. This, in turn, has in some cases led to the estrangement of traditionally organised religious functionaries, especially those representing historically grown ‘folk’ traditions.⁵

Fundamentalism’s opposition to established political systems is primarily based on their opposition to secularism, not on a socio-economic agenda. Secularism is perceived as the root cause for social ills in that it allegedly distances society and political leaders from the tenets of ethical conduct. Fundamentalism, hence, is about moral and ethical restoration. Often, fundamentalist movements will point to a mythological or superficially interpreted historical past as a role model or reference for a utopian ideal state and society. This affec...