In the second term of the BJP-led government, Hindutva went into overdrive. Many who opposed it were labelled as threats to national security.
India is celebrated as a beautiful country for its diversity. But the governance of this diverse country has always been a challenge for its rulers. The British were able to impose their rule by dividing and ruling the people. When India became independent, it chose to become a “secular” country with equality, within its boundaries, for people of all religions, ethnicities, and castes.
Secularism is a contentious concept in India and France and other democratic countries. Does secularism mean “no religion” or equality of all religions? Independent India’s founding leaders clearly meant the latter. Many Hindus, aggrieved by the greater freedom given to people of minority religions to maintain their own customs in “civil” matters such as marriage and dress in school have promoted “Hindutva” (their stylised version of Hindu ways) to reduce India’s diversity, even amongst Hindus. They expect this will make India a better country for the Hindu majority, even if not for all Indians.
Promoters of hard Hindutva should pay heed to the insecurity of Zionist Israel (which they admire). An Israel created for Jews, and ruled by Jews for Jews, surrounded by countries with non-Jewish populations, is the most insecure country in the world. None of India’s neighbours, except Nepal, has a large Hindu population. India has political problems with all of them, even Nepal. A Hindutva nation will feel perpetually threatened by its neighbours. India’s borders with Pakistan and China have remained insecure ever since India’s independence. The people of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Myanmar are not willing to live under India’s hegemonic shadow.
Hindus have been divided into professional classes for centuries. Their professions codified into castes. On top are the repositories of knowledge. Besides them are those who are armed to rule. Beneath them historically, and now above them, were those who traded and made money. Below these power holders of knowledge, arms, and money are people who do the work without which society will not survive — labouring on farms and workshops to produce daily necessities, serving, and cleaning the mess created by others. They are classified as Scheduled Castes, backward classes, and other backward classes. They include at least half of India’s population. Profession-based casteism prevails even amongst Muslims and Christians in India. They have appealed for caste-based reservation of economic opportunities to help them overcome centuries of social and economic discrimination.
The third demographic division, which is posing an enormous challenge for India’s economic policymakers, is the huge bulge of youth seeking dignified employment with adequate income, combined with swelling numbers of aged persons who will need care. In India and elsewhere, advances in medicine and improvements in nutrition and sanitation have enabled people to live longer. If the youth cannot earn enough to look after themselves, how will they look after their aged parents? And where will the state get resources to care for older persons if it cannot raise taxes from the youth, nor tax rich people because they say this will curb their enthusiasm to make more money?
Inequality between working classes and money-making classes has increased. Now, economically-deprived segments within the upper classes are also demanding reservation in education and employment. With these sections, the proportion of the population that is not feeling sufficiently included in India’s growth story has crossed 50 per cent. Economists may use clever statistics as much as they like to show that India’s growth, following the “liberation” of the economy in the 1990s, has improved the prospects for all. But, common citizens don’t trust economists’ numbers (even many economists no longer do). People experience reality in their daily lives.
In the second term of the BJP-led government, Hindutva went into overdrive. Many who opposed it were labelled as threats to national security. Leaders of opposition parties began to show their support for Hindus by appearing in temples, performing Hindu rites, and reciting Hindu chants. But they also took up the cause of the backward classes more vigorously to beat the government’s Hindutva agenda. The government responded with public shows of support for the backward classes. Nevertheless, the BJP was shocked by the result of the election in June this year. It thought the masses would be impressed by GDP growth and computerised delivery of welfare services. However, bread-and-butter economics prevailed. The youth want not just jobs: They want employment with better wages and social security. Farmers want fair prices and higher returns from their work.
A cause that will unite Indians across religions and caste is justice for the working classes. Most Indians, across religions, ethnicities, and castes, are now on the same side of a growing class divide between those who do not have enough and those who have a much larger share of the growth pie. This divide is inevitable in insufficiently regulated markets in which the principle of “cumulative causation” operates freely. Those who have power and wealth use them to seize new opportunities to accumulate more power and wealth. Those who have little to begin with are left further behind. Since the 1980s, the concept of economic reforms has been distorted to mean less regulation of the private sector and handing over public services to the private sector. The ideology of “get government out of the way and leave it to the market” has increased inequalities of incomes and wealth around the world, even in the US and Europe.
A “million mutinies” (V S Naipaul’s description of the dissatisfaction in India in 1990) are again erupting across the country, with violence amongst Indians and protests against the state. India will not be secure, nor viksit, in the future if its leaders don’t stop the Hindutva parade, and stop beating the drum of GDP to divert the masses from the failure of the economy to create dignified employment, with more income and social security, for a billion Bharatis.
The writer is Chairman, HelpAge International and former member, Planning Commission
