In an hour-long interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, Christophe Jaffrelot, professor of South Asian Politics at Sciences Po in Paris and also King’s College in London, said that during the last 10 years of Narendra Modi as prime minister, India has developed “a deeper state”. This, author of Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy, said, was different from a deep state. The lines between what happens officially and what happens unofficially and even illegally are blurred.
Jaffrelot notes in the interview that India has, under Modi, become “a landscape of very worrying divisions”.
The full text of the interview is provided below. It has been edited lightly for style.
Karan Thapar: Hello and welcome to a special interview for The Wire. With Narendra Modi having completed 10 years as prime minister, and with the forthcoming elections suggesting that he could win a third consecutive term, we ask how should we assess his legacy, and secondly how should we assess his political personality? Joining me for today’s discussion is one of the great scholars of Indian politics, professor of south-Asian politics both at Sciences Po in Paris, as well as King’s College in London, and author of ‘Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the rise of ethnic democracy’, Christophe Jaffrelot.
Professor Jaffrelot, Narendra Modi has been Prime Minister for 10 years, and he hopes to add another 5 at the forthcoming elections, so let me start by asking; what is your assessment of his performance as Prime Minister over the last decade?
Christophe Jaffrelot: Well I would say that it is very contrasted and that at one end India has become very visible on the international scene, although it abstains most of the time in the UN, but on the other end India is back to the kind of deviations it experienced before and during Indira Gandhi in particular. Communal conflicts have intensified, with the minorities being at the receiving end, the north-south divide being very deep again, and not to say anything about Manipur, Ladakh, Kashmir, and new divisions have been activated, or re-activated based on caste; look at the Marathas mobilisation, and class; look at the farmers movement, so the scene, the national scene is a landscape of divisions. And a statesman, especially in a country that has experienced Partition like India, is in charge of the unity of the nation, and therefore I would say yes; the contrast between the international dimension and the domestic scene is very striking to me.
KT: How worrying are the divisions that you’ve identified; I noticed that you’ve identified multiple divisions; not just Hindu-Muslim, not just North-South, but also rich-poor, how worrying are these divisions?
CJ: They are very worrying because you can’t really move forward without being, without having everybody on board. Without a minimum consensus on what the nation should be and do; for instance the way the southern states are now so resentful of the way the north is, well ‘taking their money’, that’s a cause for concern, and this concern will certainly intensify if the re-delimitation is made according to the coming census, undermining the representation of the south in the parliament. You know, these issues have to be taken care of very carefully, and it’s only one of the many divisions that I’ve mentioned; the north-east of course is another huge challenge.
KT: I’ll just underline for the audience your description of India; ‘a landscape of very worrying divisions, and there are multiple divisions’.
Let’s talk a little about some of the things that Mr Modi has done during the last 10 years; he frequently boasts about his handling of the economy; he says has made India the world’s fifth biggest economy, and has lifted 250 million out of poverty. On the other hand his critics talk about unprecedented levels of unemployment, increased inequality and K-shaped growth. What’s your opinion of how Narendra Modi has handled the economy?
CJ: Well, the government’s claims on the economic front are simply not supported by the few data we still have. And here I must underline that as a scholar working in India for 40 years, I’m really struggling to get data… official data used to be a goldmine for the students of India, and now we are missing, badly missing, the census. For the first time since 1881 the census has not taken place, and we also have the NSS survey, measuring the level of poverty; that was on the rise by the way when the survey was released, in fact leaked, in 2019.
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So we do not have as much official data as we used to, but on the basis of the data we still have, we can somewhat say that on the economic front, this decade is a quasi-loss decade. Of course not for oligarchs and full of people including, of course Gautam Adani, who have prospered, but at the expense of SMEs.
Joblessness remains very high, especially among the youth, especially among the educated urban youth, which is very paradoxical. The inflation rate remains also high, whereas the savings and investments keep falling; the decline of investments in India is very disturbing, because if you do not invest, how can you prepare for the future? And in that regard we have also a very mixed ‘Make in India’ program reserves, it’s not the success, it has not been as successful as anticipated. Look at the urban-rural divide, why are farmers up in arms again?
Because the terms of trade continue to impoverish them. And as a result you have dominant castes, like Marathas, asking for reservation, they want to be recognised as Backward Classes. Is this the way forward? And positive discrimination policies at large are under attack; not only a quota has been created for the upper class under the economically weaker sections tag, but the shrinking of the public sector means that jobs reserved for Dalits, Adivasis, OBC’s, are also less numerous. So the K-shaped growth means more inequalities indeed. And if you go by the data of Thomas Piketty, you see that India is now the most unequal country in the world after South Africa, a country that has inherited the legacy of apartheid.
But I would say, and I would close on this, that was the plan; the plan was to retain social hierarchies, the plan was to diffuse caste mobilisation by Dalits and OBCs. Hindutva is a response to Mandal, Hindutva is the antidote to plebian mobilisations, the idea is while your enemies are not upper caste but the Muslims, Hindus have to close rank against this threat posed by Muslims, and in the process elite groups defend the existing order, social order.
KT: Would I be right in concluding from that answer that other than oligarchs, large suedes of the rest of the country have either not prospered or they have stagnated. You mentioned SMEs, you mentioned joblessness for youths, farmers, Dalits, Adivasis, together that’s probably the majority of the country, and they have not experienced either growth, or they have stagnated under Modi.
CJ: Yes, the urban middle class has of course benefited from this policy. It’s a supply side policy, it’s a pro-rich policy clearly. You look at the fiscal tax system, it has systematically reformed, to the benefit of the rich and mostly upper-middle class people, not the salaried of course. Incidentally that is the Gujarat model, this is exactly what I show in my latest book Gujarat under Modi: Laboratory of Today’s India. That was exactly what we saw for 13 years in Gujarat, and it has been replicated. Incidentally this is the first time in the history of India that an original model can be scaled up at a national and even semi-continental level. It’s a remarkable achievement in a way.
Screenshot from X/@narendramodi.
KT: Now Modi dominates the Indian political horizon and there is a huge personality cult that surrounds him. He oddly refers to himself in the third person, and often his ministers, including our former Vice-President of the country, compare him to God. His policies are called ‘Modi guarantees’. Is all of this understandable and justified because he is popular, or does it smack of megalomania?
CJ: Well such a personality cult is a classic by-product of populist politics. We’ve seen it under Erdoğan in Turkey, Orbán in Hungary, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump in the US, most of the populist leaders are megalomaniacs. When they win elections they claim that the whole country is behind them. And again that is what Modi used to say in Gujarat, ‘60 million Gujaratis are behind me’, today ‘1.4 billion Indians are behind me’. And they claim that they are the country, they are the nation, and they attempt almost naturally after that to prevail, to concentrate all the poor in their hands and to dominate all the institutions. Indira Gandhi followed the same pattern, ‘India is Indira, and Indira is India’, and Modi is no exception, except that in his case the people he claims to embody are only made of the Hindu community, and that’s what we call majoritarianism.
And secondly in contrast to Indira who could only use the radio, he relies on new technologies, he can saturate the public sphere by using the television of course, social media, holograms in the past. And the fact that he could be compared to God by the Vice President of India is not so surprising because only chamchas survive politically in this regime. What is more remarkable is that Narendra Modi himself believes in this idea. According to what he told to Ranjan Mukhopadhyay, and this is not so surprising; Imran Khan also believes today that he has received a mandate from God, not the same one of course, but you have this clear attempt by national populists to, yes, become megalomaniacs.
KT: Very quickly, is his personality cult bigger than, worse than, more worrying than Indira Gandhi’s? Because of the new technologies, and also because he is focusing only on the Hindus and not the rest of the country?
CJ: Yes, it’s difficult to compare two evils, but certainly you have a qualitative difference here in the sense that, yes there is an ideology behind, Mrs Gandhi had no ideology. The Hindu Rashtra is definitely the goal, so that’s a big difference, that makes a big difference. And secondly, yes the means, the resources are much more systematically used for communication, for even the criss-crossing of society. Mrs Gandhi had a very poor organisation behind, you know the Congress party could never be a cadre-based party. Narendra Modi can rely on activists, all kinds of activists; not only the Sangh Parivar activists but those who pay allegiance to him personally.
KT: Now side by side with the personality cult and his larger than life image, is his style of governance. How would you characterise his handling of institutions like parliament, the Election Commission, the judiciary, security agencies like the enforcement directors and the CBI, and the fact that everything is now run by the Prime Minister’s office, not by members of his cabinet or ministers of the government. He believes he has deepened Indian democracy, his critics accuse him of authoritarianism, what’s your opinion?
CJ: Well again, we have to go back to the modus operandi of the populist. He claims he represents the people, he is the people, he relates directly to his people, so the legitimacy he gets from this claim helps him to short circuit all the institutions. You know parliament hardly matters in this context because he represents the people, and all the MPS elected by the people for BJP have been nominated by him himself. The party itself is redundant, you know the BJP used to be a carrier based party with strong state leaders, that’s gone, it’s over. They are parachuted from New Delhi, most of them, and those who were strong enough with the base have been side-lined. and yeah parliament is a bit stumped.
What is more surprising is the way the judiciary as an institution finally succumbed to pressure. and again it’s not so surprising that they tried to reform the Supreme Court of India, remember Orbán did it in Hungary, Kaczyński did it in Poland, Netanyahu is trying hard to do it in Israel. The idea is to compete with the legality; I have the legitimacy, how can, how can you object – how can you defend an alternative rule of law.
(L-R) Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Viktor Orban, Jair Bolsonaro and Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
So the first thing, I think people have forgotten, but the first thing the Modi government tried to do in 2014 immediately after the 2014 elections was to change the way judges were appointed at the Supreme Court. And they failed because the Supreme Court realised that they would, they would shoot in their foot, but finally it made no difference because the judges selected by the collegium when they are not of the liking of the government are just not appointed.
So finally, the Collegium resigned itself to only select people who could be appointed. so not even the judiciary has resisted all the institutions have been somewhat undermined, certainly we can argue that the Supreme Court of India has recently declared that the election bonds were unconstitutional, but before that they had upheld so many decisions regarding Ayodhya, Article 370, other seen as a money Bill, the dilution of RTI, the up-hauling of UAPA, and they are sitting on the CAA for four years now. So we really have um a judiciary that is not what we used to; remember the Supreme Court of India was the most powerful judiciary in the world, and admired across the globe. One last Point about the ED used against the opposition, in order to intimidate its leaders, in order to co-opt them more easily. this is really an era of aaya ram, you know there is no gaya ram’s there are only aaya ram’s, and not only because of corruption but also because of fear. And this sentiment, fear has neutralised Mayawati, has pushed so many congress leaders in the arms of BJP, it’s a very sophisticated way to undermine the opposition, and Congress especially.
KT: A thought occurred to me as I heard your answer; he has subjugated and reduced to subordinates, the Election Commission, parliament, judiciary, security agencies. Is he the most powerful prime minister India has ever had?
CJ: Oh yes, oh yes, remember Nehru who ruled for 17 years, and who seemed to be the king, in a way, of India, he had to write a letter to Chief ministers every 15 days; to consult them, to build consensus on each and every issue, and he could not resist them. he could not resist them when they asked for re-delimitation of the Indian states borders according to the linguistic criterion, he was not for it but he had to do it, because Congress was a pyramid made of pyramids, and you had to follow what the state bosses had to say. Today, where is the BJP state boss in a position to resist anything Narendra Modi would decide? Even demonetisation was decided without consulting any chief minister, including BJP chief ministers.
KT: One deep concern, and you’ve hinted at it in your earlier answers, is the sharp divide that’s emerged between Hindus and Muslims. Modi and the BJP vigorously deny that such a divide exists, but many people believe that in fact Modi and the BJP are responsible for it, what’s your view?
CJ: No certainly, BJP is largely responsible for this divide because it plays the polarisation card, and that’s based on communal riots for years. Again the Gujarat pogrom in 2002, that was followed by the dissolution of the assembly and elections to benefit from polarisation, was the model. But I would say that BJP is not the only actor we need to factor in there, you know. Vigilantes are also very much responsible for this divide, and I think we need to pay more attention to the groundwork they are doing against what they call love jihad, or land jihad, or for reconversion to Hinduism, or for cow protection. These campaigns resulting in dozens of lynching’s, all shown on social media for impacting the Muslim minority even more.
The shop where a poster on ‘love jihad’ had been pasted. Photo: Atul Ashok Howale
You know this is what I call a deeper state, it’s not only the state that is at work, it’s not only the official BJP ruled apparatus, state apparatus, but at the social level, at the grassroots level, a kind of cultural policing of a new kind that makes the state almost redundant. of course, you have many joint ventures with vigilante’s and police, in UP or Haryana doing the job together, but in many cases Vigilantes are on their own, and they are the new police creating a de facto Hindu Rashtra. Well you may say de facto becomes the de jure the moment you have the CAA as a new law, and new laws also making conversions very difficult, inter-religious marriages very difficult, but I really insist on keeping together what is done officially, from what is done unofficially, and even illegally. But again we find the legitimacy question; vigilantes are doing something legitimate, even they defend a secret cause because of Hindutva, and it may be illegal, nobody will go against that.
KT: You know, you said something that I think is particularly new and important- you said India has a deeper state, and this is different to the front facade of the official state. That there is a distinction between what happens officially, and what happens unofficially, and even illegally. A deeper state is terminology we’re used to associating with Pakistan, where the military establishment is the deeper state, and the civilian politicians is the facade. But you’re suggesting something akin, not similar but akin, is happening here; there is the Sangh Parivar, the vigilantes, the cow lynchers, who are part of the deeper state, there are the BJP civilian politicians that are the front facade.
CJ: That’s why your deeper state is different from a deep state; indeed a deep state is largely associated with intelligence services, who are acting behind the curtain, and I don’t mean that it’s not there in India also. But a deeper state is different because it has a societal dimension; the state is there but relates and protect, people who are doing the cultural policy in at the societal level, making sure that Muslim boys do not talk to Hindu girls on the University campuses or elsewhere, making sure that XY any Hindu will not sell any land or any house to a Muslim at the local level. This is the way you do surveillance of a new kind, a surveillance that is not official, that is what I call societal, that’s a deeper state.
KT: Let’s talk…
CJ: It is connected, it is connected of course, but not officially, not visibly, to the Sangh Parivar.
KT: But subterraneously?
CJ: Right.
KT: Let’s at this point talk a little more, specifically about the BJP’s, and Mr Modi in particular, his attitude to Muslims. Under Modi, the BJP doesn’t have a single Muslim MP in either house of parliament, it hasn’t fielded a Muslim candidate in states like UP and Karnataka with substantial Muslim populations. It hasn’t fielded a Muslim candidate, I believe in Gujarat for almost 25 years. BJP Chief ministers and MPS called Muslims Babar ki aulad. They repeatedly publicly tell them to go to Pakistan, we’ve even had calls from a religious organization for a Muslim genocide, and each and every time these issues come up Mr Modi keeps completely quiet. What does this tell us about his attitude to Muslims?
CJ: Well like most RSS members, he looks at the Muslims as descendants of converts who have turned to Mecca, or even foreigners, the dissidents of violent conquerors and the makers of Pakistan. So people who deserve to be second class citizens only, who should be obliterated. Pushed back in ghettos, and ghettoization in Gujarat is particularly pronounced. Well you even have laws in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, making it impossible for Hindus to sell their house to a non-Hindu without the permission of the district magistrate, and that never comes. So this is the Stereotype and the policy which are bound to make Muslims second class citizens de facto, but probably gradually de jure. And this is particularly and fair for the very reason that, for instance this idea that you find in Savarkar’s book ‘Hindutva’, that Muslims are turned to Mecca.
Well, none of the Mughal emperors went to Mecca for haj, not even one. Instead they went to Ajmer Dargah Sharif, India was their sacred land…you know, what Savarkar called a punya bhoomi.
Last point I would like to make on that front; very interestingly for RSS leaders, including Narendra Modi, there are ‘good Muslims’; Bohras, Gujjars, Shias, and here there is a contradiction that has never been solved; on what grounds do you differentiate some followers of Islam? Why do the Sunnis only have to be targeted on what, on what ground? And I think there is probably a kind of black box there and the Muslim question is something that is, that is not dealt with properly.
Group portrait of Mughal rulers, from Babur to Aurangzeb, with the Mughal ancestor Timur seated in the middle. On the left: Shah Jahan, Akbar and Babur, with Abu Sa’id of Samarkand and Timur’s son, Miran Shah. On the right: Aurangzeb, Jahangir and Humayun, and two of Timur’s other offspring Umar Shaykh and Muhammad Sultan. Created c. 1707–12. Photo: CC BY-SA 3.0 igo
KT: On January the 22nd, when the consecration of the Ram Temple happened, Modi seemed to emerge as a sort of high priest of Hindu nationalism. What is the likely impact of this on India’s secularism, which the Supreme Court has repeatedly said is part of the basic structure, the fundamental core in fact, of our constitution?
CJ: Yeah well secularism is dying when majoritarianism prevails; and we saw that in so many countries neighbouring India, we saw that in Sri Lanka, of course that was something we had seen before in Pakistan, we are seeing it in Bangladesh today. India was an exception, till very recently secularism resisted, it was never perfect for sure, but there was a time when Prime Ministers including Atal Bihari Vajpayee, presided over iftar practice. That’s something that belongs to the past now, those days are gone. And Muslims used to be represented in the state apparatus, and not only in parliament and in the judiciary, but you’ve had a Muslim president, vice presidents, the majoritarian attitude means that de facto you push them at the margin at the bottom of the social pyramid. And you know we’ve done a lot of research with a team of scholars, an international team of scholars, and we’ve seen that one of the consequences of this attitude has been the decline of Muslims in the education system in North India, not in the South but in North India, in Uttar Pradesh in particular, the number of Muslims attending university is declining.
To explain this phenomenon is not easy; is it self-censorship? Is it well, why should we get education, we get no job anyway? Is it because you don’t want to move out of the place where you feel safe, because you’re not so safe when you travel by train, or anywhere? I don’t know, what we don’t know what the reasons are, but this is for me a clear indication that yes, secularism is a dead letter when there is no multiculturalism in places like the university system.
KT: Let me ask you a question connected with what we’re talking about, how badly has the line that should separate religion and politics been breached under Modi? I’m referring to the sengol in parliament, the constant references to Hinduism in his speeches, and his much publicised preparation for and role in the temple consecration. Do you get the feeling that Hinduism is becoming the de facto official religion of the country.
CJ: Not Hinduism, Hindutva; that has become the de facto ideology of the country. You know Hindutva is not Hinduism; Hinduism cultivates diversity, forms of tolerance, tolerance which goes with spirituality, a deep sense of spirituality that explains, by the way, that Hindus went to Sufi saints’ places, dargahs, in so large numbers. Hindus were open to cults which were not properly Hindu, because of this sense of spirituality. So Hindutva certainly retains some aspects of Hinduism, including the caste system, the sense of hierarchy. Hindutva is definitely elite-oriented. And it also retains the guru-shishya parampara; and that’s why Sanghis are ‘bhakts’, you know the very word ‘bhakts’ is reference to the guru-shishya parampara; following blindly the Guru is one of the key features of this.
But Hindutva also borrows from Christianity and Islam, and the need for a holy centre like Mecca; Ayodhya becoming an equivalent to that, the need for a book like the Quran or the Bible; and the Bhagavad Gita is promoted as an equivalent for that. The need for big temples like Cathedrals almost, all this is something we saw as early as the making of the Hindutva movement in the 20s as an emulation, an imitation, of Islam and Christianity, to compete more effectively with these two religions.
So Hindutva is not Hinduism in that sense, and more importantly I would add that Hindutva is an ethno-religious, nationalistic ideology, that emphasises the sacred character of land, the way Zionism does, and emphasises the fact that Hindus are not defined as believers, but as a people, as the descendants of the Vedic fathers. You know Savarkar says in ‘our vein runs the blood of our Vedic fathers’, well this is also very much what you find on the Zionist side. If you look for models it’s not on the side of Hinduism that you will find them for Hindutva, it’s on the European history side, on the Jewish history side, because these were the sources of inspiration.
A view of Srinagar. Photo: A. Kumar/Pixabay
KT: Can this Hindutva-isation of the country be reversed? Or has it gone so far and so deep that that is unlikely, if not impossible?
CJ: Well the point of no-return has not been reached yet, I think, but if BJP lost power today, to return to the status quo will be very difficult. First, some laws will be very difficult to roll back; you know, can you restore Article 370? Can you abolish the new CAA? Can you make conversions and inter-religious marriages easier again? No, the legitimacy of such moves will be contested in the street, and I’m back to my deeper state argument. Vigilante’s will be up in arms and of course in parliament, BJP will contest any law of that kind. These are red lines you don’t cross so easily, and if BJP lost power you may have a kind of Plato, but not a return to the previous situation, on that front at least.
KT: One more question about Modi’s legacy before I ask you briefly about his personality, Modi repeatedly claims that he’s made India great again; he says this with reference to Pakistan, relations with America, the G20, even International Yoga Day. Does the world perceive India as Modi sees it? Does the world recognise India as a Vishwaguru? Or are there increasingly deep concerns about India’s diminishing democracy, its increasing communalism, its growing intolerance of dissent?
CJ: Well I can be very brief on that front, the Western governments are well aware of India’s democratic backsliding, but they pursue short-term policies, everybody does. First, they bet on India for balancing China in their Indo Pacific strategies, secondly, they see the country as a big market, especially for armed sales, but not only. This is real politics and between two evils you go for the Lesser evil, China being the real target.
KT: Let’s talk Professor Jaffrelot, a little about Modi the person; he’s an incomparable orator, he has indefatigable energy, and he’s hugely popular. How does his personality compare to other long serving Prime Ministers like Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi?
CJ: Well Nehru was very different, but Modi’s personality has clear affinities with Mrs Gandhi’s; both are authoritarian personalities, you know a psychological type that has been studied scientifically by scholars since the 1950s. Authoritarian personalities do not trust more than a handful of people, because they are fundamentally insecure, and they believe that power is an end in itself. But again as I’ve said before, there is a big difference between Mrs Gandhi and Narendra Modi; for Modi the ultimate goal is the transformation of India into Hindu Rashtra, Mrs Gandhi did not have such a long-term objective. You know the emergency, as we show in our book with Pratinav Anil, was a damage control exercise, and it could last only for 22 months for that very reason. Here it’s a very different game, this personality has an ideology and an ultimate goal for the country.
KT: Let me ask you a little about Nehru, Modi is constantly targeting and belittling Jawaharlal Nehru; do you suspect he has a complex about him?
CJ: I think so, no Nehru was definitely a sophisticated man who interacted freely with all kinds of people, he was a statesman with a vision. He had travelled to Europe when he was very young, he had an encyclopaedic culture as evident from the letters he wrote from jail – where he spent more than nine years, by the way – to Indira Gandhi. Modi lacked this exposure to the world, he lacked Nehru’s culture, his sense of humour; insecure people don’t have any sense of humour, and more importantly of course, Nehru defined the Indian civilization as made of different religions, different languages. Modi believes that Hindus embody the Indian Nation, well he’s not the only one in believing that; this is exactly the Hindutva ideology, and Hindi must prevail.
Also federalism, we’ve not mentioned federalism yet but we must because as I’ve said, Nehru agreed finally to make India more federal by re-delimiting the Indian states according to the linguistic criteria, that was a major reform. Today federalism has been badly affected by centralization of power over the last 10 years, and it’s not only because of the tax processes, or the fact that neither the lockdown, nor demonetization, was discussed with Chief ministers. It’s also because there is an attempt at making Hindi more dominant as a language, and that’s something many states would resist forcefully.
KT: You know on that particular subject of federalism, it’s not just non-BJP states that are at odds with Modi, but even BJP ruled states are slowly and steadily losing their power vis-a-vis the centre. But are you most particularly worried about the north-south divide that in a sense straddles the federalism issue. All the states of South India are non-BJP ruled, the states of Northern India are largely BJP rule, and the differences that are emerging between them in terms of resource sharing, in terms of Hindi, in terms of the interference of the Prime Minister, and then the threat of deliberation. Are you worried that a fracture could open up literally half across India?
A BJP rally. Photo: Facebook/BJP
CJ: Yes, and for very deep reasons, because in addition to all the factors you’ve listed, I’m struck by the divergence; in terms of education, the South being much more educated than the North and the West, in terms of entrepreneurship; with definitely SMEs prospering the, IT sector prospering, you know the most modern, the modern economy is in the South, more and more.
And in terms of welfare, where do you find health services worth that name for the poor, mostly again in southern states. So it’s as if we saw a divide that, of course it’s political, of course it’s ideological, of course Dravidianism is “allergic to Hindutva”. But, beyond that you have social, economic trends, which make the South diverging from the north. And if you impose the northern kind of politics to the South, if you reduce the number of MPS elected in the South, you probably provoke a reaction; how far can that go, of course I have no idea, but divisions are bad in themselves, this kind of division is particularly bad.
KT: When we were earlier talking about Nehru, you referred two-three times in your answer to Modi’s insecurity. Now one of the things I noticed is that Modi doesn’t like critics, whether they’re journalists or whether they’re other politicians. He uses terror and money laundering laws against them, he doesn’t hold press conferences, he only gives interviews to Anchors who will never challenge him. What does this tell us about his political personality? Does it, as I get the feeling, hint at insecurity?
CJ: Yes, authoritarian personalities are insecure personalities. They don’t know how to interact with others, they don’t know how to argue. They can’t be contradicted because they lose their temper usually, when contradicted. Yes, but I would say something else. I would say that in the case of Modi, why he doesn’t accept interactions, press conferences, because his discourse describes an India that does not exist. So when you live in this fantasy, when you have painted such a rosy picture, any way questioning this myth opens a kind of vacuum.
You know the economy is not doing well, the country is terribly vulnerable vis-a-vis China; you look the other way when this question is mentioned, how do you admit that China is encroaching on your territory and you can’t react? So you better not have a question on that either. So that’s what he does with his ‘Mann Ki Baat’ every month, painting a rosy picture, an ideal picture, and if he meets a journalist asking art questions, he can’t do the same. You know it can only be a one-way traffic, it cannot be an interaction.
KT: This is self- protection, he can’t answer so why take questions at all?
CJ: Yeah and you can’t respond to China, so why, you can’t admit that there is anything wrong in the Himalayas.
KT: Before we end Professor Jaffrelot, let me ask you one or two questions, questions about how you think India may have changed as a country, as people, under Narendra Modi? When I was young no one accused Muslims of love jihad or cow lynching, no one called them Babar ki aulad or abbajan, now that’s become common place. Has Modi awoken sleeping demons? Has he made the unacceptable, acceptable?
CJ: Well these demons have been created, the Sangh Parivar works on it for 100 years. Identities are malleable, you do not have constant identities, but it’s a work in progress. Identities change, national identity is changed, especially when people develop fears; the fear that some threat is posed upon them. And in India, to some extent, Islamists have helped the RSS to disseminate its views, because by instigating terrorist attacks they gave a good argument, ‘saying that yes, you are vulnerable, yes you need to develop a new identity’. But the rise of Hindutva predates these attacks, you know.
As early as the 1980s we saw the RSS, after penetrating Society for so many decades, embarking on a key campaign; you know the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that was started after the Janta party left the scene, after RSS realised that there was no way Jang Sangh, now BJP, could be part of a coalition; a Hindu vote bank had to be created, a majoritarian Hindu vote bank had to be created. And the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was precisely dedicated to this task. So the mobilisation played on emotions, transforming the identity of the Hindu majority. The main emotion was anger; you know you have fear and anger, these are the two emotions the national populist play with. Anger because God was behind bars, you know remember God must be liberated, that was the motto. And I think this mobilisation of course again momentum, peaked after 10 years with the destruction of the Babri Masjid, riots after riots, yatras after yatras, you know what we see today is the result of a long process; that started in 1925 and that intensified in the 80s, 90s, that’s why I would say it’s not that demons have been revealed; demons have been created and in a long process, it’s not something that happens overnight.
Photo: Samuel Bourne/Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
KT: If I understand correctly, and correct me if I’m wrong, are you suggesting that rather than appeal to the strengths of the Indian people, Modi’s been appealing to their fears and their anger, rather than appeal to the Democratic instincts of the Indian people, he’s been appealing to their authoritarian instincts, and rather than appeal to their tolerance, he’s appealing to their Prejudice for Islam. Is it the worst side of us as a people, that he’s appealing to?
CJ: Well first of all, I would like to qualify the fact that the people of India is ‘affected’ at large, you know, never forget that BJP has never attracted more than 37% of the voters; 37% that gives a majority, simply because BJP is very strong in the north and in the west. secondly, among the 37% different people support Modi for different reasons. Certainly most of his supporters appreciate the sense of pride he has endowed them with, you know they lacked self-esteem so much they needed some recognition. Remember the slogan of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement? ‘Garv se kaho, hum Hindu hai’ why do you need to be proud of being Hindu? What is the need for this kind of recovery of self-esteem? Well a huge inferiority complex, that had to be subsumed. and it does it; the demolition of the mosque, the building of the new temple, do it they do the job.
So that’s the common ground, but if you disaggregate the 37% further you certainly realise that upper caste middle class people have found in Modi the man who helps them to retain domination, to retain power. I repeat National populism is the antidote to quota politics, and that’s what RSS wanted for sure, as early as 1990 when Mandal occurred, when they feared what they called the Shudra revolution, and that was one of the titles of one of the articles of the Organiser, the mouthpiece of RSS. The Shudra revolution initiated by V.P. Singh, that was what they wanted to stop, and Hindu naturism did the job. Now the main question for me is why do OBCs, and Dalits support Modi as well? The identity self-esteem question I referred to is certainly one factor, but I think there are other reasons; one is there is such a resentment vis-a-vis Yadav’s, among small OBC jatis, there is such a resentment vis-a-vis Jadav’s among small Dalit jatis. And BJP has been so good at corrupting non-dominant OBCs, non-dominant Dalits, that they have attracted these people.
Plus Sanskritization, emulation of the upper caste, it still works. Plus freebies; gas cylinders, latrines, bank accounts, there is no money on these bank accounts but the symbols work, and the contrast by the way is Man Mohan Singh’s NREGA, that saved Millions from poverty, is very clear, but National populism has invented a new form of welfarism. Why do I say all this, simply because we do not sufficiently disaggregate the Modi electorate. Many different people support him for many different reasons, and therefore to only focus on the communal question is not is not sufficient, we need to complexify the whole thing.
KT: I think this is my last question; if Modi wins a third term, what do you anticipate and expect? do you envisage, maybe I could rephrase that and say do you fear a push towards Hindu Rashtra?
CJ: Well if BJP wins again, yeah I suppose new measures will be taken immediately. That was the case after the 2014 and 2019 elections, and remember after 2019 you had Article 370, you had the CAA, so something similar will probably be done. will it be the uniform civil code, will it be something else, but one step further in the same direction probably. More worryingly for me, well elections will not be a levelled playing field, and it is not already a levelled playing field, for two reasons; the media has been captured so clearly, NDTV being the last TV channel, mainstream so-called mainstream TV channel, to be now captured. A technique by the way we saw elsewhere; Orbán has done it in Hungary very systematically, so the media problem, the media coverage is a problem, and makes the information of the voter much more biased. Secondly, there is a resource problem, you know the kind of money BJP can spend on an election makes this competition inequal, and electoral bonds may not make any difference on that front. So yes, something new but more importantly a very uneven playing field, making it very difficult for the opposition to win till Modi is the centre stage. Everything will change the moment Modi will leave the scene, that will be the real turning point.
L.K. Advani and Narendra Modi. Photo: BJP Gujarat website
KT: Absolutely! He’s going to be 74 this September, presumably this would have to be his last 5 year term if he wins when the elections happen. What happens to the BJP after Narendra Modi?
CJ: Well that’s a difficult question. What I tend to think is RSS will try to be Centre Stage again, you know Modi is the first BJP leader to side-line RSS to this extent, and he did it already in Gujarat; he started to tell the pracharak Mr Manmohan Vaidya, that he did not need to report to him. That is completely unprecedented, and it has remained the rule of the game; Mr Bhagwat cannot represent more than, well, the man next to him in Ayodhya when the temple is inaugurated. They will try to initiate a process for appointing the next BJP leader, probably.
Now you have already contenders in the frame; Yogi Adityanath, will he win in UP again? Will they let him win in UP again? And of course Amit Shah. I think that will be an interesting transition, but not an easy one. You know people like Modi have no successor, and it’s very difficult to succeed a man like Modi, you know. especially when you don’t have any dynasty at end, Maduro could never replace Chavez; which is an interesting scenario by the way, because when you can’t be as charismatic, when you can’t be as popular as the man who has created this ecosystem, you may not take the risk of elections and Maduro preferred not to take the risk of Elections. National populist usually take the risk of Elections because they are pretty sure to win, it was not so clear for Erdogan but he did, it was not so clear for Netanyahu and he lost, but he could stage a comeback, same with Trump. They know that they remain popular, when the popularity factor is not there what do you do with power? This is a very key question for the next step.
KT: It doesn’t sound like a reassuring prospect for Indian democracy, it suggests that his successors will find ways of doing away with elections.
CJ: The question will be how robust are the institutions? How robust is the judiciary? And this is something that may change further, but we have to scrutinise this balance of power first for understanding what are the terms of this transition. Because transition is bound to happen, in which terms? and how far will the opposition parties close ranks, realising that there is so much at stake? Now in each and every country I’ve listed so far, finally, all the opposition parties have ended, in Poland, in Israel, in Turkey, everywhere, after 5-10-15 years opposition parties realise that if they want to win, they have to be fully united. will the opposition in India realise that this is an existential threat? I mean this is, what is at stake is their own survival; have they, are they prepared to draw conclusions from such an analysis? Are they aware, are they prepared to make the changes, and not to try to save their skin in their little borrow, in their own state? This is what we will see in the coming month, and then in the coming years.
KT: Professor Jaffrelot, for an eye opening and spell-binding tour d’horizon, thank you very much indeed.
CJ: You’re most welcome, thank you Karan.
Transcribed by Mouli Joshi.
