“Bharat” and “India”

Two Ideas of an Independent Indian State

Hindu revivalism has been a part of Indian nationalism almost since the independence movement itself began. However, it has gone through many forms and been embodied in many different organizations, often being ignored in the forum of Indian politics. However, the victory of the Hindu revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the elections since 1998 has forced many scholars to reconsider the history of such movements, to analyze the forms they have taken throughout the 20th century. This constant reshaping has allowed organizations like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to survive for decades, though with greater or lesser influence in different periods.

Since Independence, it may be better to speak of a “Bharatiya” movement, rather than a Hindu revivalist or fundamentalist movement. Discussing the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (the first incarnation of the later Jana Sangh and Bharatiya Janata Party), founded in 1951, Hansen says:

one of the most significant changes in relation to Golwalkar’s [a leader of the RSS] writings was the use of the term ‘Bharatiya’, which Richard Fox has aptly translated ‘Hindian’, a mixture of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Indian’ (Fox 1990: 64). The use of the term ‘Bharatiya’ thus signified an adaptation to the political realities of official secularism, which had made explicit references to ‘Hindu’ impossible and illegitimate outside the religious field. (Hansen, 85) Thus, almost since the founding of the RSS, it has stood for a complex mixture of religious and secularist ideas. This mixture has carried on to its affiliates, such as the BJP. “BJP leaders, among them Advani, publicly announced that they were irreligious and never went to temples. They posed for the educated urban middle classes as ‘political Hindus’ in a modern, secularized (but not secular) and nationalist sense of the term.” (Hansen, 174) Thus, although the grassroots movements that provide most of the electoral support for the BJP in rural areas are explicitly religious, and appeal to the devotion and faith of these supporters, the party leaders and the mainstream political structure of the party manage to work within official secularism, and instead represent a pride in nationhood and patriotism that the urbanized middle class can also support. This mixture of respect for national unity and Indian culture (including at least many outward appearances of Hinduism) is expressed by the name “Bharat” for India, and the adjective “Bharatiya”. Because Hinduism has never historically been a unified religion (not even to the extent of Judeo-Christian religions, with their explicit subdivisions into more or less hierarchical branches, such as Catholicism, Reform Judaism, or Shi’a Islam), the only unifying appeal that can be made to all Hindus is to the concept of India as a nation, and Bharat as its incarnation free from outsiders of non-Indian faiths and loyalties.

Since the idea of being “truly Indian” is constructed as requiring a lack of ties to external authorities (such as the Pope or Caliph), and a respect for India as a Holy Land, India’s current nationalist movement is necessarily tied up with religion. This can only be changed by an acceptance of India as the multiethnic democracy that it is, and seeing Hinduism not as a single monolithic religion, but rather a collection of related practices. When the Muslim from Kerala, the Buddhist from Kashmir, the Catholic from Goa, the Hindu from Bihar, the Jain from Gujarat, and the tribal animist from Nagaland are all seen as being equally Indian, nationalism will require secularism, rather than precluding it as the Bharatiya concept does. “One should be extremely wary of BJP slogans like ‘one nation, one people and one culture’. Respect for diversity not only embodies the democratic spirit, it is the real guarantee of unity.” (Engineer, 272) A similar reorientation with respect to languages may be underway, allowing many languages to serve equally in official roles, and this may gradually allow such a perception of India as truly one of the most multicultural nations of the world.

At the beginning of the 20th century, this perception of India prevailed among Independence activists. “India was a multi-cultural and multi-religious society and there was no option for the Congress but to assure all religious groups that their religious autonomy would not be tampered with and that they could join the Congress with an easy conscience. It was this assurance which enabled Muslims and Christians and Parsees to join the Congress without fear of Hindu hegemony.” (Engineer, 269) For the Congress at this point, the English were to be driven out because of their exploitation of the people of India. Their non-Hindu-ness was not a problem, as otherwise, Muslims, Christians and Parsees would have been just as bad. Their problem was instead the fact that they took the wealth of the land and sent it back to Europe, with nothing in return for the people. However, the unicultural idea of “Bharat” is nearly as old and stems from another strand of the Independence movement. “[Dr. Keshav Hedgewar, in the early 1920s] argued that independence could be achieved only after the splintered Hindu community – divided by caste, religion, language and sect – coalesced. He believed that the Congress, in which he had been an active participant, had appeased Muslims and was therefore unable to unite the Hindus.” (Andersen, 26) At this time, the Hindu Mahasabha was functioning as a Hindu revivalist political party. But Hedgewar founded the RSS to provide the cultural indoctrination supporting the idea of “Bharat”, unifying religion and nationalism, rather than focusing just on religion. “Savarkar [of the Hindu Mahasabha] focused on politics, agitation, and political mass mobilization, whereas Golwalkar [Hedgewar’s successor at the RSS] focused on more introverted cultural activism and ‘character building.’” (Hansen, 93) The driving force behind this development was a fear that Gandhi (then the new leader of Congress) emphasized non-violence to such an extent that Indians would not be able to struggle to throw off the yoke of British imperialism. (Andersen, 20) However, this creation of a mythic unicultural “Hindu India” has had political repercussions far beyond the independence movement.

Soon after Independence, the RSS went through a major transformation. With the assassination of Gandhi, Congress realized how dangerous the idea of a Hindu state was, and banned the RSS. “After the ban was lifted in 1949, the RSS was forced to develop a new ‘respectable’ image in order to overcome its public stigma. The most important instrument became diversification. Semi-autonomous affiliates of the RSS, run by deputed organizers and RSS volunteers as the core activists in many fields, were gradually started.” (Hansen, 96) Most important among these organizations for future developments was the political party, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, later known as the Jana Sangh, and finally the Bharatiya Janata Party. This party was founded primarily to replace the Hindu Mahasabha, which suffered greatly in the aftermath of Gandhi’s assassination, but the new party also had the benefit of being affiliated with the RSS, rather than totally independent from it. (Hansen, 127) “The mass organizations [Jana Sangh, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and many others] emerging in the following decades were in both organizational and ideological terms subsidiaries of the RSS. Financially and in terms of public representation they were, however, formally independent of the RSS, which had no de jure responsibility for their actions.” (Hansen, 97) This collection of organizations became known as the “Sangh parivar” and has been responsible for the growth of the Bharat idea in the decades since, despite the changing political strengths and goals of the member organizations.

In the early years after Independence, the Jana Sangh sought mainly to introduce RSS ideology into the political context. Unlike Congress, which gave power to local candidates on the basis of gaining more support from their constituencies, the Jana Sangh actively worked to sway both voters and candidates to their ideology. “The Jana Sangh came to have a party structure which was distinctive in the Indian context, being dependent more on a network of activists than on clientelism. But the significance of these developments only became apparent in the perspective of the 1990s.” (Corbridge, 55) I believe that much of the reason for this delay was that it took a long time for their message to sink in, and they needed to navigate through several changes in economic positions to keep up with the changing views of the Indian populace. Only with the large-scale Sangh parivar activity of the late 1980s did the Bharat idea become a key issue for a large proportion of the voting population.

An important shift occurred in the mid 1960s. In its early days, the Jana Sangh had appealed mainly to upper-caste voters. “A decisive reorientation of the Jana Sangh in a more populist direction took place from 1965 onward. … It ceased to isolate itself in the right corner of the political field and started to explore possible alliances with other opposition forces. This reorientation was prompted by the opening of the political field for alternatives to Congress in the wake of Nehru’s death and the subsequent weakening of the ideological hegemony of the Congress party.” (Hansen, 128) With these hints of the vulnerability of Congress, working with other parties in an attempt to gain power became feasible. As a result, some compromise towards the lower castes was suddenly politically expedient, and meanwhile allowed them to start spreading their message to a new segment of society.

This conciliatory approach finally paid off in the late 1970s. “From the late 1970s on, the peasantry of north India began to emerge as a significant constituency in national politics.” (Hansen, 140) One result of the more peasant-oriented politics the Jana Sangh adopted at this time was an alliance with Jaya Prakash Narayan, a reformer from Bihar who advocated the removal of Indira Gandhi, and a shift to a more participatory democratic system. (Andersen, 210) With the rise of the Emergency, and growing discontent with Indira Gandhi throughout the nation, the Jana Sangh played a more major role in politics, based mainly on its oppositional and populist nature than its religious or nationalist stance. This soon resulted in the election of the Janata Dal coalition, replacing Congress rule for the first time in independent India. This was a major victory for the Sangh parivar, which eventually contributed to their meteoric rise in the late 1980s and into the 1990s.

While the Janata Dal was in power, having ended the excesses of the Emergency, there was severe conflict between the Jana Sangh and the leftist parties in the coalition. The other parties had much more secular viewpoints, and thus there was disagreement over issues of secularism in history books and the possibility of membership in both the RSS and the Janata Dal. These issues fragmented the coalition, and many RSS supporters voted against the Janata Dal in the next elections, leading to a return of Congress rule and a re-separation of the Janata Dal into many smaller groups. “The defeat of the Janata party and the disenchantment within the RSS with the Janata experiment resulted in the formation of a new political affiliate of the RSS, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in April 1980. This party, led by Vajpayee and his populist wing, claimed to be the true inheritor of the ‘spirit’ of the Janata Party.” (Hansen, 133) Thus, even after losing power, the Sangh parivar had gained in authority for having been part of this experiment in non-Congress rule.

This public renown came mainly through populist political positions, so the BJP began to drift from the RSS and its “Bharat” ideology. “Between 1980-1984, aspiring to be the national alternative to Mrs. Gandhi’s Congress party, the BJP emphasized its secular credentials to achieve this objective. Advocating a democratic front until late 1984, the BJP wanted to end the political isolation brought about by the RSS controversy.” (Andersen, 143) This was an attempt to move back to the more respectable middle ground of secular politics that characterized most other parties. Since their populist issues had carried them through the late 1970s, culminating in a defeat of Congress and several cabinet positions, they hoped that they could continue in this vein, even without the direct support of a coalition as broad as the Janata Dal. “The program and strategies of the BJP in the period between 1980 and 1986-1987 was in many ways based on the imagined restoration of the broken Janata party: a moderate Hindu nationalist ideology combined with a cautious moral critique of Congress management of the state, and guided by an overriding ‘logic of opposition’ – that is, a sustained effort to create a measure of unity among the disparate forces opposing Congress.” (Hansen, 158)

However, this strategy backfired severely. “In 1984, leading RSS figures openly called upon the RSS cadres to support Congress, rather than the BJP. Not only had the sheer force of Congress at this juncture rendered opposition parties weak and fragmented but the party was also playing the majoritarian and communal cards with far greater force and efficiency than the BJP was capable of, or willing to, under Vajpayee’s leadership (Graham 1987a, 15).” (Hansen, 158) After the disaster of the 1984 elections, Vajpayee acknowledged responsibility for winning only four seats, and a working group created new policy for the party.

Decisive concessions were given to a more ‘purist’ line emphasizing the BJP’s profile as the defender of ‘Hindu society,’ in order to win back the support of the local RSS cadres. Coalitional politics were scrapped and a solitary strategy more in line with the self-images of RSS cadres was adopted. However, broader populist themes were also strengthened: expansion among the poor sections was given priority, agitational politics was emphasized … all indicating a somewhat belated adaptation to the strategic imperatives of majoritarian democracy. (Hansen, 159) Thus, although there was a return to the Bharat ideology of earlier years (prompted partly by the adoption of parts of this ideology by Congress), the economic populist package that carried them through the Indira Gandhi years was maintained, confirming this decisive change in policy from the original Jana Sangh.

The early 1980s were a very unsuccessful time for the BJP, partly because of the squabbling of the Janata Dal and the sympathy vote for Congress after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, but the BJP’s abandonment of RSS policy also played a large role. As a result, their realignment with the Sangh parivar was the source of their later success. “It would have been difficult to predict in 1980 that the BJP would position itself as the leading opposition party, and ‘the party of the future’ in India, by the end of the decade. … And amongst the organizations within … ‘the Sangh parivar’ … it was above all the VHP [Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the World Hindu Council] that was instrumental in bringing about the transformations of the 1980s.” (Corbridge 111-2) This realignment was partly a result of the replacement of Vajpayee by Advani as head of the BJP, encouraging a return to the more extremist style, and a greater willingness to take advantage of communalist fervor. This fervor was primarily sponsored by the VHP, though the BJP took part as well.

The period from 1987 to 1992 was characterized by incitement of the pro-Bharat masses. “The Bharatiya Janata Party was able to use the passage of the Muslim Women Bill [in 1987] to support its claim that a ‘pseudo-secularism’ in India had worked to the disadvantage of the majority Hindu community; that it was, in fact, a form of minoritarianism which required the reform of Hinduism even as it reinforced the most anti-modern practices of India’s leading minority religion, Islam.” (Corbridge, 116) By making this Congress support for conservative Islamic tradition the starting point for its return to religious campaigning, the BJP was able to support its claim of representing the true secularism, while Congress represented only pseudo-secularism. The Bharat idea also began to receive wider support from other sources.

[The] middle class of ‘India’ stood opposed to the village people of ‘Bharat’, according to the distinction made by the Maharashtrian farmers’ leader, Sharad Joshi. Indian federalism, already strained in the 1970s by Indira Gandhi’s attempts to centralize power, entered into crisis [in the 1980s]. … Before the end of the decade some of India’s leading intellectuals had begun to argue that the idea of secularism for which Nehru, in particular, had stood, and which was reflected in the Constitution, was inappropriate for India. (Corbridge, 94-5) Thus, religious authorities like the RSS and VHP began to be more active on both the political and social scenes, and their message became more widespread. In 1989, the VHP started its “Ramjanmabhoomi” movement, encouraging the “reconstruction” of a temple at the putative birthplace of Ram, which was then occupied by a famous mosque, the Babri Masjid. “The BJP was [in 1989] shedding earlier cautiousness, and the party’s status as the political wing of the RSS now became a central part of the BJP’s self-description.” (Hansen, 259) This association with the VHP and the whole Sangh parivar paid off handsomely in the new elections. “The 1989 election results also seemed to indicate a close correlation between the routes of the Ram shila puja [consecration of bricks for the Ramjanmabhoomi], the subsequent communal violence in September-October 1989, and at least 47 out of the seats won by the BJP. (Chiriyankandath 1992b, 68)” (Hansen, 163) The timing of these movements before major elections led Congress to make many compromises, allowing communal tensions to rise higher and higher, creating the kind of polarized situation in which the RSS thrives. “The significance of Partition in the RSS mythology also confirms that nationalist movements have their ‘optimal habitat’ in situations where contradictions are clear and so are antagonisms, and the struggle is one of life and death. Fuzziness, shifting stands, and overlapping complex loyalties – typical of democratic politics – may be lethal to the cohesion of such movements bent on ideological cohesion.” (Hansen, 96) Its better organization than the rest of the opposition and its ties with the RSS and VHP propelled the BJP from the mid 1980s into its position as centerpiece of any opposition in the mid 1990s. Communal tensions contribute to the Sangh parivar most strongly by building associations between non-Hindu-ness and national danger. When Hindus and Muslims are fighting in the streets, it becomes difficult to believe that they can really be supporting the same nation. As a result, the Bharat ideology becomes stronger, as people tend to associate the nation more strongly with the majority than the minority. When Muslims seem to pose a threat to the nation (no matter how illusory), Hinduism becomes more of a part of national identity.

Hindu culture, always inclusive, tolerant, and syncretic but also always lacking a clear center, a clear-cut identity, unity, and sense of cohesion, has finally come into itself, as a nation, through the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, the VHP rhetoric went. Through the collective worship of Ram, posed as a latent nationalist practice, the Hindus have come together on a common platform and have made the Hindu nation manifest. (Hansen, 176) By the time the Babri Masjid was destroyed, the BJP had enough of a hold on national ideology that they could allow the movement to halt and campaign with a more rounded platform. Their experiences in the early 1980s at dealing with economic as opposed to nationalistic issues rewarded them in the cities, particularly as they grew in national prominence. “Not all BJP supporters voted for the party’s Hindutva ideology. A goodly proportion were more concerned with law and order or reservations issues, or wanted to register their disenchantment with the Congress.” (Corbridge, 117) This disenchantment with Congress after the (perhaps temporary) downfall of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty allowed the BJP to take more mainstream issues of national pride (such as nuclear armament) and join coalitions with other parties once again to take control of the government. This time, however, the BJP is at the center of the coalition, and has a strong enough hold on Parliament that internal squabbling among the parties involved is not a serious threat.

In the end, it appears that the several branches of the Sangh parivar all contributed greatly to the recent electoral success of the BJP. While it could not effectively spread the Bharat ideology alone, this ideology was necessary for its recent victories. Had it been totally independent of the RSS, it would not have effectively been able to take advantage of the rise in Bharat sentiment at the expense of India sentiment in the last few years. But if it had been totally integrated into the RSS, it could not have served in the Janata Dal, and would not have had the middle-class respectability that carried it through the 1980s. This experience with official secularism taught the party leaders how to speak of a distinction between “secularism” and “pseudo-secularism”, allowing them to take the constitutional line while maintaining their political strength. Instead of phrasing their position as a religious one, it has been displayed as a national and social one, allowing them to keep their traditional base of support, while gaining educated and middle-class voters with right-wing leanings.

Bibliography:

Andersen, Walter K. and Damle, Shridhar D. “The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism”. Westview Press, Boulder, 1987.

Corbridge, Stuart and Harriss, John. “Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy”. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000.

Engineer, Asghar Ali. “Lifting the Veil: Communal Violence and Communal Harmony in Contemporary India”. Sangam Books, Bombay, 1995.

Hansen, Thomas Blom. “The Saffron Wafe: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India”. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1999.

home