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Abstract
Since the massive victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 parliamentary elections, India has seen an entrenchment of the politics of Hindutva, a political-cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and of Hindu hegemony within India. Society and politics in India are experiencing unprecedented transformation under the forces unleashed by Hindu nationalism. The vision that framed the Constitution and the making of the modern Indian nation-state and parliamentary democracy are under challenge. This article discusses three books that assess this trend: Thomas Blom Hansen (Citation2021), The Law of Force: The Violent Heart of Indian Politics, Debasish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane (2021), To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism, and Badri Narayan (Citation2021), Republic of Hindutva: How the Sangh Is Reshaping Indian Democracy. This article seeks to shed some light on these processes of transformation in Indian society and politics and mull the prospects for Indian democracy. These books, through taking different analytical frameworks and with varying emphases, provide invaluable insights into the social and political dynamics of contemporary India.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The Sangh Parivar (the Sangh family) refers to the RSS and its myriad affiliates, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (Indian Student Association), the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (Indian Workers’ Association), the Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram (Ashram for Tribal Welfare), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (World Council of Hindus), and the Bajrang Dal being the most prominent.
2 On February 27, 2002, 59 Hindus were killed in a fire inside the Sabarmati Express near the Godhra railway station in Gujarat. A terrible reprisal against Muslims followed this incident. For a graphic account of violence perpetrated on Muslims in the ensuing riots and ill-treatment meted out to them thereafter in post-Godhra Gujarat, see Mander (Citation2018, 1–49); for a discussion of Modi’s attitude following the episode at Godhra, see Jaffrelot (Citation2021, 39–43).
3 Several scholars and commentators have also reflected on the perilous state of the rule of law. For example, B.B. Pande, a former professor of law at Delhi University, writes: “Contemporary Indian society is passing through a phase of an all round weakening of the rule of law, mainly on two counts: first, a trust deficit in the colonial model of the rule of law, and second, a faith-oriented majoritarian re-imagination of laws that locate their essence in the divine providence” (The Hindu, July 21, 2023).
4 It is interesting that Narayan is talking about a “new RSS” (Narayan Citation2021, 9); however, this “newness” may only be in terms of how it negotiates with technological advancement and the elements of modernity. It is highly contestable whether the RSS has compromised on the basic tenets of its ideology and its project of making India a Hindu nation; this is highlighted by Palshikar in a newspaper article (see Palshikar Citation2018).
5 In this context, it deserves mentioning that the Sangh’s work among the Dalits may not mean that its attitude towards Dalits has changed. In a revealing memoir, an insider’s account of the functioning of the RSS, Bhanwar Meghwanshi (Citation2020), a Dalit and a former volunteer of the RSS, discusses how volunteers from the ranks of Dalits and lower castes serve as foot soldiers while the upper echelons are dominated by upper castes; Meghwanshi graphically narrates the humiliation and ill-treatment meted out to him by the upper-caste cadres of the RSS.
6 B.R. Ambedkar famously talked about cultivating constitutional morality. He feared that the norms of behaviour emanating from the social institutions of society would trump the norms of political institutions created by the Constitution. This is briefly discussed by Dave (Citation2023) and Chowdhury and Keane (Citation2021, 163–164). Generally, scholars agree that the leaders of post-Independent India who had fought for independence had respect for constitutional institutions and followed their norms in word and spirit.
7 The DPSP are governing guidelines and are non-justiciable. They include but are not limited to the right to just and humane conditions of work, adequate means of livelihood, and the right to public assistance in case of unemployment. Lamentably, the DPSP have remained lofty ideals that exist only on paper.