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ABSTRACT
This article aims to explain the concept of majoritarianism that is currently commonly used in the context of Indian politics. It also attempts to make sense of available empirical data that suggests a considerable presence of majoritarianism in India and, on that basis, discusses the implications of the diffuse nature of the majoritarian tendency. The paper argues that the diffuse nature of majoritarianism portends the possibility of democratic distortion.
Disclosure statement
The author is associated with the work of the Lokniti programme and is its co-director.
Notes
1. The author wishes to gratefully acknowledge the encouraging yet probing review by an anonymous reviewer. The remaining limitations owe much to the obstinacy of the author.
2. Besides his trenchant criticism of ‘Hindu arrogance’ and unwillingness to sacrifice for the nation, Ambedkar draws attention to the fact that Hindus will anyway remain a majority in social and cultural sphere and hence they should not worry about conceding the rights of minorities in the political sphere. He was obviously alluding to the demographic composition and the propensity of different communities to convert themselves into political communities – and the need to safeguard against that possibility. In States and Minorities (Citation2019[1947]), he goes a step forward to claim that Scheduled Castes (being ‘avarnas’ i.e., outside the varnic hierarchy), should be entitled to be treated on par with ‘minorities', thus distinguishing between the ‘political’ category of Hindus and the non-Hindus. It is another matter that majoritarianism that goes in the name of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism has somewhat successfully incorporated the two avarna sections – Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes – into its fold by insisting that they are Hindus and more significantly, by convincing them to adopt the Hindutva approach to public power (For more details about this, see Teltumbde, Citation2020; Kanungo & Joshi, Citation2009). Similarly, the Jains have traditionally aligned with the ‘Hindu’ interests. A similar claim about Sikhs has had very limited traction.
3. This is where the critiques of Hindutva nationalism have traditionally made a mistake. They always believed that Hindutva nationalism was attractive only to the Brahmanic interests. This exaggerated sense of Brahman conspiracy resulted into a neglect of invisible popularity of that viewpoint in ordinary lives of large sections of non-Brahmans, at least in central and north India.
4. This proportion could be higher. This figure is based on accounting for those who do not give any answer (‘Don’t Know’ or ‘No Response’). If such non-response respondents are set aside, the proportion goes as high as almost seven in every ten for 2014. More alarmingly, once the non-response answers are set aside, in 2004 and 2009, we find the approval and disapproval of majoritarian principle almost evenly balanced while in 2014, the majoritarians outnumber the non-majoritarians by over forty percentage points and in 2019 by 26 percentage points. I am thankful to Jyoti Mishra for pointing this out.
5. Although it should be noted that for citizens, what constitutes a ‘minority’ is often somewhat different from numeric/objective meaning of minority. Thus, migrants, poor, marginalised persons often tend to perceive themselves as minority because the idea of minority implies a sense of being ignored.
6. Any casual observer of Indian politics would have noted the sudden rise in sharpness of polarisation on critical issues in recent past. If that is any indication, we can hypothesise that a) the ambivalent will develop opinions of such critical issues and b) the middling categories of ‘weak’ majoritarian and weak non-majoritarian citizens will become less numerous as more and more citizens become more and more divided on the issue of majoritarianism.
7. Clearly, the prevalence of majoritarianism among Muslims requires more research. The natural tendency of democracy to homogenise is always a possible reason; a tactical acceptance of the majoritarian norm may also be the reason out of survival strategy; a third possibility is that every community (religious or otherwise) may increasingly begin to imagine its dominance based on numeric preponderance in specific locales (see Palshikar, Citation2004, pp. 5427–28) – thus there can be competitive majoritarianisms as well. In either case, the spread of majoritarianism across religions (and as we shall below, across other social groups) indicates a major challenge to democracy.
8. Source: Data made available by CSDS Data Unit from the study, ‘Politics and Society Between Elections-PSBE’.
9. This explains the swift determination of the BJP governments in states and also at the centre since 2014 to initiate policies aggressively criminalising sale and consumption of beef and subsequently many state governments using the ‘love jihad’ rhetoric to criminalise inter-faith marriages.
10. This is also the period of political churning in terms of decline of congress, rise in the self-consciousness of the backward castes and challenges to nation-state posed by Khalistan movement, militancy in Kashmir and the focus on ‘outsiders’ in Assam. These political developments indeed helped in legitimising a majoritarian approach to nationalism and also helped the BJP to situate itself as the key inheritor of the political dominance that the Congress party earlier exercised. However, it is not possible to imagine the success of the BJP since 1989 without considering the role of Hindu mobilisation that the party undertook through the Ramjanmbhoomi agitation.
11. This was during an election rally in Uttar Pradesh, where the Prime Minister also said that non-discrimination is the key and it means if there is uninterrupted power supply during Eid (a Muslim festival), the same should happen during Diwali (a Hindu festival). See, Modi at Fatehpur, India Today, 20 February 2017; accessed 30 May 2021: https://www.indiatoday.in/assembly-elections-2017/uttar-pradesh-assembly-election-2017/story/narendra-modi-fatehpur-uttar-pradesh-elections-961475-2017-02-19.
12. For the text of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), see https://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2019/214646.pdf.