http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0319-3747
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ABSTRACT
Despite the vast amount of comparative research on right-wing populist parties over the past decade, there has been little work on non-European parties (as opposed to leaders). In this article, we argue that the international literature on populist parties has largely overlooked a significant non-European case: India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP – Indian People’s Party). Following the ideational approach to understanding populism, we examine whether the three distinguishing features of right-wing populism – its conceptions of “the people”, “elites” and “others” – are reflected in the views from interviews we conducted with BJP officials and representatives. We find that they are and so then consider whether they have been manifest in actions and statements while in power or whether, as some scholars claim, governing parties like the BJP moderate their populism. We conclude that the BJP can be very fruitfully included in comparative research on right-wing populist parties and propose a series of concrete ways in which this could be pursued.
Acknowledgements
Many colleagues provided useful feedback on previous drafts of this article. Among these, we would especially like to thank Eviane Cheng Leidig, Sohini Guha, Ian Hall, Zoya Hasan, Iyanatul Islam, Glenn Kefford, Paul Kenny, Diego Maiorano, Marco Valbruzzi, and Annika Werner. Ashok Acharya deserves thanks for sharing his insights and providing information during the earlier stages of the project. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments. A particular debt of gratitude is owed to the journal editor, Aurel Croissant, who was extremely generous with advice throughout the process. The fieldwork for this article was funded by the Griffith Asia Institute (GAI), as was the research assistance. We are very grateful to the two GAI directors at the time, the late Russell Trood and then Ian Hall, for their support. Finally, we wish to say an immense “thank you” to Chandrachur Singh for his help with the project and, especially, his assistance with organising interviews in Delhi in March 2016.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Duncan McDonnell http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0319-3747
Luis Cabrera http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7871-6944
Notes
1 Mudde, “Populism: An ideational approach.”
2 The most significant exception is McGuire and Reeves, “The Bharatiya Janata Party.”
3 Chakravartty and Roy, “Mr. Modi Goes to Delhi”; Jaffrelot and Tillin, “Populism in India”; Kenny, Populism and patronage; Chacko, “The Right Turn in India.”
4 Stanley, “The Thin Ideology”; Mudde, “Populism: An ideational approach.”
5 Kefford and McDonnell, “Inside the personal party”; Levitsky and Cameron, “Democracy without Parties?”; Mizuno and Phongpaichit, Populism in Asia.
6 See the 2015 report in Quartz: https://qz.com/372466/heres-how-the-bjp-surpassed-chinas-communists-to-become-the-largest-political-party-in-the-world/.
7 Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties; Albertazzi and McDonnell, Populists in Power.
8 Heinisch, “Success in Opposition”; Albertazzi and McDonnell, Populists in Power.
9 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism, 6–10; Sharma, Hindutva.
10 Savarkar, Hindutva, 113; Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement, 26–33; Sharma, Hindutva, 147–157.
11 Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement, 52.
13 Andersen and Damle, RSS.
14 Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement, 314ff.
15 McGuire and Reeves, “The Bharatiya Janata Party.”
16 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism, 20–21.
17 Gowda, Rajeev and Sridharan, “Parties and the Party System,” 13.
18 Palshikar, “The BJP and Hindu Nationalism,” 722–24.
19 Saffronisation refers to the deep orange (saffron) colour of the robes worn by Hindu ascetic devotees. The term is often used by critics of efforts perceived as promoting Hindu nationalist principles in civic life and government policy.
20 Desai, “Forward March of Hindutva Halted?” 49.
21 Chakravartty and Roy, “Mr. Modi Goes to Delhi.”
22 Kaul, “Rise of the Political Right”; Chacko, “The Right Turn in India.”
23 Hasan, “India.”
24 Modi’s rise to national leadership occurred despite allegations that he had been purposely slow to intervene in the 2002 Gujarat riots. These saw mass rapes, burnings of Muslims and left nearly 800 Muslims and more than 250 Hindus dead, according to government figures.
26 Sridharan, “Class Voting.”
27 Chhibber and Verma, “The BJP’s 2014 Resurgence,” 25.
28 Ibid., 29.
29 Kaul, “Rise of the Political Right,” 536.
30 Varshney, “Hindu Nationalism in Power?”, 36.
31 Stanley, “The Thin Ideology”; Albertazzi and McDonnell, Populists in Power; Akkerman, de Lange, and Rooduijn, Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties; Mudde, “Populism: An ideational approach.”
32 Gidron and Bonikowski. “Varieties of Populism,” 6.
33 Canovan, Populism, 294.
34 Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties, 23.
35 See also Stanley, “The Thin Ideology”; Freeden, “Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology?”
36 Müller, What is Populism?, 20.
37 Müller, What is Populism?, 22–23.
38 Kriesi, “The Populist Challenge,” 363.
39 Mény and Surel, “The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism”, 9.
40 Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties.
41 We conducted all interviews in English, with the exception of two (Arya and Rahatkar), for which we used a Hindi interpreter. Our group of interviewees was selected in order to include people who had been elected to all institutional levels (from the national cabinet to state and municipal government) and held offices at different levels within the party structure (from the National Vice President down to local branches). While mostly male and Hindu, our interviewees included two of the few Muslim BJP officials (both male) and three female (Hindu) representatives and spokespeople. For background knowledge we also draw upon six previous interviews conducted in March 2013 by one of the authors with similarly positioned BJP officials.
42 Specifically, 15 interviewees expressed unequivocally right-wing populist views of “the people”, 17 did so in relation to “elites” and 11 did so with regard to “others”.
43 Müller, “The Wrong Way to Think About Populism.”
44 Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties, 23.
45 Müller, “The Wrong Way to Think About Populism.”
46 Sonia Gandhi was born in Italy. In 1968, she married Rajiv Gandhi, who served as prime minister from 1984 to 1989.
47 Sarkar, “Who Rules India?”, 237.
48 Heinisch, “Success in Opposition,” 101; See also Mény and Surel, “The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism,” 18.
49 Akkerman, de Lange, and Rooduijn, “Inclusion and mainstreaming?” 3.
50 Albertazzi and McDonnell, Populists in Power.
51 Jaffrelot, “Refining the Moderation Thesis.”
52 Modi, “Full Text: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech.”
54 Kaul, “Rise of the Political Right,” 540.
55 See http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/how-bjp-sets-the-terms-in-pm-narendra-modis-second-year/articleshow/52301042.cms. While Modi did not comment publicly on the party’s “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” resolution, he has made a point of closing speeches with this and other patriotic slogans. His 2014 Independence Day speech concluded with him chanting each of the following three times: Bharat Mata Ki Jai! Vandematram! [Long Live the Motherland] Jai Hind! [Hail India]. See Modi, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech.”
57 See Chacko, “The Right Turn in India.”
58 Müller, What is Populism?, 48.
59 See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/12/india-supreme-court-judges-integrity-dipak-misra.
60 Jaffrelot, “An Ill-judged Conflict.”
61 Pappas, “Populist Democracies,” 3–4.
62 Both Muslims and Dalits traditionally consume beef and have been employed in slaughtering, rendering and leather work.
64 The gathering southeast of Mumbai had marked the bicentennial of a battle in which Dalit troops serving British agents had defeated troops serving higher-caste Hindus. See https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/world/asia/india-protests-mumbai-dalits.html.
66 Hasan, “India,” 4.
67 Palshikar, “The BJP and Hindu Nationalism,” 728.
69 Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties; Pappas, “Populist Democracies.”
70 Gidron and Bonikowski, “Varieties of Populism,” 21.
71 See the 2017 Freedom House report “Freedom in the World, 2017: Populists and Autocrats: The Dual Threat to Global Democracy”, available at: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2017.
72 See the “Rule of Law Index, 2017–18” at https://worldjusticeproject.org/our-work/wjp-rule-law-index/wjp-rule-law-index-2017%E2%80%932018.
74 Lijphart, “The Puzzle of Indian Democracy.”
75 Sridharan, “Class Voting.”; Chhibber and Verma, “The BJP’s 2014 Resurgence.”
76 Kriesi et al., West European Politics.
77 Kaul, “Rise of the Political Right”; Chacko, “The Right Turn in India.”
78 Albertazzi and McDonnell, Populists in Power.
79 Marzouki, McDonnell, and Roy, Saving the People: How Populists Hijack Religion.
80 Heinisch and Mazzoleni, Understanding Populist Party Organisation.
81 Kefford and McDonnell, “Inside the personal party.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Duncan McDonnell
Duncan McDonnell is Professor of Politics in the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University. His main research interests are political parties and populism. He is the co-author (with Daniele Albertazzi) of Populists in Power (Routledge, 2015) and the co-editor (with Nadia Marzouki and Olivier Roy) of Saving the People: How Populists Hijack Religion (OUP, 2016). His next book, with Annika Werner, International Populism: The Radical Right in the European Parliament, will be published in 2019.
Luis Cabrera
Luis Cabrera is Associate Professor of Political Science at Griffith Asia Institute and the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. He has published numerous articles and books addressing issues of democratic citizenship and practice. His forthcoming book, The Humble Cosmopolitan: Rights, Diversity and Trans-state Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2019), focuses in part on democratic development and caste relations in India, and on the Bharatiya Janata Party's relation to both.