Will Modi Intensify Hindu Nationalist Agenda In Third Term
(Photo: Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh members. Courtesy:Wikimedia Commons.}
June 15, 2024
After the parliamentary election results were announced on June 4, several Indian and Western commentators forecast that the incoming Narendra Modi government would be forced to moderate its divisive attacks on Muslims and Christians. They said this was because Prime Minister Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), having lost its majority in parliament, was dependent on support from secular regional parties.
But, apparently, Modi views the allied parties as pawns that can be easily manipulated to keep him in power. This week, ignoring his allies, he appointed BJP members to the four key ministerial posts in his cabinet: home, defense, foreign affairs, and finance. Apparently, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), which controls the BJP, also wanted BJP members to hold those posts.
Amit Shah, re-appointed as the Home Minister, will oversee internal policing and security, including the Enforcement Directorate, an investigative agency.
“I am confident under (Modi’s) leadership, Indians are going to become global leaders” and the country’s economy will be number one or two in the world, said Chandrababu Naidu, leader of the Telugu Desam Party, a party backing Modi.
Last year, Naidu was imprisoned over allegations of a $50 million scam when he was the Chief Minister of Andhra state, 2014 to 2019. Naidu reportedly met Shah and other officials in Modi’s government and the BJP. Naidu offered an "olive branch" to work with the BJP for this year’s parliamentary elections, according to Rediff.com.
Also last year, home minister Amit Shah alleged that Nitish Kumar and other opposition leaders in Bihar had run scams totaling Rs 20 lakh crore ($260 million). Kumar, who has the support of some backward castes, is the Chief Minister of Bihar. In January, he switched from being one of the leaders of the opposition alliance to supporting the BJP. Kumar’s party is another regional party backing Modi.
From 2014 - when Narendra Modi first became Prime Minister – till 2022, opposition leaders accounted for roughly 95% of the 121 politicians investigated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is under Shah’s ministry, according to a study by the Indian Express.
This was a four-fold increase compared to ED investigations during the previous Congress Party led government’s rule from 2004 to 2014. Equally important, only half of the 26 investigations during that decade involved opposition leaders.
Since the 2022 Indian Express study, several more opposition leaders have faced investigations or been imprisoned by the ED. Early this year, weeks before the national elections were announced, six of the 25 opposition politicians facing ED investigations moved to the BJP, according to the Indian Express. Six opposition members, who won seats in this year’s parliamentary elections, risk losing their seats if convicted in the criminal cases they face.
Also, the BJP is rumored to offer sizeable sums to entice opposition leaders to switch and support the BJP: reportedly Rs 5 Crores ($650,000) for a state legislator and Rs 50 Crores ($6.5 million) for a member of the national parliament.
In addition to targeting political opponents, Modi’s government “presided over the degradation of the institutions of democracy—including the judiciary, the election commission, and the media” notes Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a professor at Princeton University, writing in Foreign Affairs.
During this year’s election campaign, Modi demonized the Muslims calling them infiltrators, as John Oliver, host of the TV show Last Week Tonight, points out.
Modi’s BJP is the political arm of the RSS. Launching a genocide against Muslims has been a key part of the ideology of Hindu Nationalists for more than a century. The RSS, founded in 1925, was influenced by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), who led a Hindu nationalist group from 1937 to 1943. An admirer of Nazi Germany, he wanted the Hindus to deal with the Muslims in India in a manner similar to how the Nazis treated Jews, according to several researchers.
“A Nation is formed by a majority living therein. What did the Jews do in Germany? They being in minority were driven out of Germany,” Savarkar wrote, according to research published by Marzia Casolari, an Italian historian. The “Indian Muslims are on the whole more inclined to identify themselves and their interests with Muslims outside India than Hindus who live next door, like Jews in Germany,” Savarkar added.
The RSS is a secretive, hierarchical, militant, organization. It holds regular para-military training for its six million plus members at its 70,000 local posts across India. It describes itself as a social welfare organization run by volunteers.
In addition to the BJP, the RSS controls organizations which operate across various parts of Indian society, including among students, women, labor, and retired defence personnel. Some of the major BJP leaders, including Narendra Modi, were or still are members of the RSS, notes Britannica.
In 2014, even before Modi was formally sworn in as Prime Minister, the RSS formed several committees to modify government policies and take control of senior roles in the central government’s bureaucracy. For instance, a committee in the education field focused on rewriting passages in history textbooks which ascribed “too much importance to (Mahatma) Gandhi…to the detriment of Hindu nationalist heroes,” note Christophe Jaffrelot and Pradyumna Jairam, in The Indian Express. These flaws “have all been attributed to the secularist or Westernised nature of history textbook authors.”
Between 2014 and 2018, according to The Indian Express, 1,334 changes were made to 182 textbooks. Since then, the rewrites of textbooks has continued at a rapid pace.
(Photo: voting marker in India. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
During Modi’s current five year term as Prime Minister, even though the BJP lost its majority, the RSS’s control of policies and the bureaucracy is likely to expand further. This is because the leaders of the allied parties are unlikely to block the BJP’s agenda. They risk facing prison and other legal issues.
In this year’s parliamentary elections, Modi’s BJP got 240 out of 573 seats. The BJP lost is majority due to a united opposition and voter anger over lack of jobs and rising food prices. Also, this year, as in the 2014 and 2019 elections, the BJP got less than half of the Hindu votes.
In the 2014 election campaign, Modi promised to create 100 million jobs. Instead, during his rule over the past decade, the number of unemployed has risen sharply. While Modi’s government has stopped issuing unemployment data, the total unemployed, including those who have stopped looking for work, is likely more than 200 million, greater than the population of Brazil.
Also, food prices will continue rising. This is in part due to the lack of cold-storage facilities to protect harvested vegetables and fruits from spoilage, during the severe hot weather across India for most of the year.
Apparently, the RSS fears that rising unemployment and food prices may lead to the BJP losing the 2029 election, especially if the opposition unites again as they did this year. Earlier this month, Mohan Bhagwat, leader of the RSS, indirectly criticized Modi saying that only a leader without an ego has the right to be called a public servant.
Such criticism, some commentators state, shows a widening rift between an autocratic Modi and a more moderate RSS. However, the RSS appears to be merely trying to shift blame onto Modi for the BJP losing its majority.
So far, the RSS has backed Modi because he has led the BJP to several electoral victories. If Modi becames a liability to the BJP in elections, the RSS will quickly displace him. For more than 70 years, since India’s first parliamentary election in 1952. the RSS has effectively controlled the BJP and its predecssor party.
The RSS’s - and BJP’s - Hindu nationalist agenda includes politically and culturally marginalizing India’s 200 million Muslims, roughly 14% of the country’s 1.4 billion population. Working together with other groups controlled by the RSS, the BJP may try to win more Hindu votes by further inflaming Hindu Muslim and caste divisions. For instance, the groups may start agitations to destroy mosques in Mathura, Varanasi, and other sacred Hindu cities, as they did with the Babri mosque in Ayodhya.
The BJP may try to capitalize on local Hindu Muslim clashes and continuing threat of Islamist terrorism, notes Pratap Bhanu Mehta. The BJP may also try to split the alliance of castes supporting the opposition parties, which may trigger a rise in violent clashes between castes.
“The elections have humbled Modi, but Hindu nationalism is not down and out,” adds Mehta. “Its base in civil society remains strong.”
Presumably, the brave opposition leaders, most of whom are Hindus, will continue to attract more Hindu voters away from the BJP. This year, facing threats of assassination and imprisonment, they nearly dethroned Modi.
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