:: Saturday, June 15, 2002 ::

Re Growth Rates:

As an economic historian, fooling around with growth rates takes up an inordinate amount of time, but reveals some worthwhile insights, if used properly. Recently, Indian economic historians have looked hard at the experience of Meiji Japan in increasing it's growth rates from the 1870's until the interwar period starting from a position not vastly dissimilar to that of India except for the fact that India was a colony of Britain; this has furthered the debate over how exactly colonialism retarded growth in India. Classic explanations such as Dadabhai Naoroji's Drain theory and the deindustrialisation thesis have now been questioned and shown to have had much smaller effects than was once thought. Meliorist views of colonialism have thus dominated- a good case in point t being the recent Cambridge Economic History of India published in the early 1980's and bringing together many of the most prominent economic historians of the day; yet colonialism was hardly discussed and treated as a factor in India's economic development. Given that much discrimination was of an informal nature and that until the early 20th century Britain could afford to be a free trade nation as unit cost and competitiveness of its manufacturing industries was unmatched has tended to obscure the role colonialism did play in slowing the process of economic growth in India even though the mechanisms might not be so easily apparent. I would make the following observations with regards to your table:

1) At a bare level; the data do show that the imperial meliorist' case is untenable as there is a marked improvement in growth rates after independence and the commitment to concerted and planned growth. While one should add that the nature of statistics in the colonial period can be of a questionable quality and given the massive agricultural economy combined with a taxation system based on land taxes gave an incentive to underreport harvests and agricultural incomes; the disparity is clear to see and shows starkly the impediment to growth presented by colonialism.

2) Given the high mortality rates, population growth at an all India level was negligible before the 1920's when serious improvements in public health and disease control began to be introduced on a wide level. The demographic transition meant that population growth took off with the expansion in social welfare spending in the 1950's and continued at a much higher historical rate since - bearing this in mind it is all the more impressive that GDP per capita still registered such large increases in the post-colonial period. Another testament to the impetus given by planned growth.

Turning to the Japanese experience I think it is interesting to note the comparison with India, given the faster growth Japan experienced over the same time period (Vikash, in the interests of comparability could you post the GDP p/c growth rates for Japan from the same source - hopefully they will verify my argument!!) I won't recount the Japanese economic history in detail but point out some discontinuities, which are important for understanding why and how Japan was able to over come it barriers to growth. Firstly, while the colonial government in India was at best indifferent and at worst obstructive to building up an indigenous heavy industrial sector, the Meiji govt actively pursued such a course and by 1900 public investment in manufacturing and mining exceeded private investment and over half of domestic capital formation took place in the public sector. Of course building a state subsidised heavy industrial sector is no guarantee of sustained growth. There was also the reduced role for foreign firms who were shut out of most Japanese markets due to the close-knit institutional relationships between local producers and consumers and between suppliers of intermediate good sand the large corporate buyers. For example in capital goods there was a close relationship between Japanese importers of textile machinery and local mill owners, allowing local importers to trade on a more competitive basis than foreign firms.

Another crucial element was the monetary history of the period. From 1868-81 the Meiji state had a small balance of payments deficits of 77 million yen per annum. This was paid for however, by large remittances of bullion and coin rather than through exports, leading to a drop of specie which formed 75% of the currency in circulation in 1868 falling to only 20% by 1881 and precipitating a near collapse of the monetary system. This crisis led to a reform, which saw the replacement of specie by a paper currency and a savage deflation under the finance minister - Matsukata. The deflation restored a small surplus but by the early 1900's a rapidly growing industrial sector increased demand for imports and created another balance of payments deficit. The was met partly by indemnities from China and increased export earnings but also vitally by borrowing by the Meiji govt. Which overcame it's reluctance to tap foreign capital markets to finance the current account deficit. Between 1899-1914 foreign investors lent Japan £200 million, which was four times what was lent to the colonial govt in India. To put this figure into perspective Japan received six times the level of foreign investment per capita over 1900-1914 than India did 1950-1964. Of course this level of borrowing was spiralling out of control and it was only the boost to demand and the supernormal profits of WWI that allowed the Meiji economy a windfall that enabled them to pay off this debt.
The Matsukata deflation in particular is credited with: establishing a convertible paper currency, reducing govt payments to the old samurai landlord class by food price inflation, dispossessing small farmer who had prospered due to rising prices for agricultural commodities but were now forced off the land as mortgages and debts were called in and as a result destroying the desire for financial capital to seek investment in land as opposed to industry. The deflation of the 1880's shook financial surpluses out of the rural economy and transferred it to the hands of those who had moved beyond the rural petty commodity trading stage and after 1905 the agricultural downturn eliminated any other substantial source of accumulation of surplus.

Lessons form Japan?!:

Both Meliorist and revisionist historians in India agree that there was some sort of poverty trap operating in India, especially in agriculture that prevented structural change. For the Meliorists this was due to the low level of per capita income and technology and a shortage of investible capital funds, while the Revisionists argued that there was sufficient capital and other factors of production but there was an inadequate level of aggregate demand in the economy coupled with excessive competition for foreign firms. The real debate centres on how the economic surplus was consumed and distributed: Meliorists argue that the government expropriated this surplus for itself by wasteful expenditure and by foreign trade where prices were manipulated by monopoly agencies which exported profits abroad, with the rest of the surplus going into the hands of landlords and moneylenders who were parasitic in their relationship to the rest of the economy - not reinvesting the surplus in a productive fashion. The Revisionists contend that the surplus generated remained with the agrarian classes and was reinvested in agriculture partly in consumption loans but also in expanding cultivation, providing infrastructure and sowing new crops. But the developmental impact of this change was limited, as economic resources were needed to buttress social power and the class inequalities in the countryside on which relations of production rested. Market led growth in agriculture was restrained by custom based social stability- preventing the emergence of agricultural capitalism on a full scale.
Of course generalisations are difficult in a country of India's size and diversity and there is evidence that can support a wide variety of views. There is evidence for a rural entrepreneurial class in 19th century India; Madison’s estimates of surplus distribution speculates that the "middle-classes of small traders, entrepreneurs, tenant-at-will, small zamindars and village moneylenders took 50% of national income while compromising 26% of the labour force". These groups did not play the dynamic role they did in Japan in moving from the rural economy into the industrial sector; to see why we must look at the institutional factors and structure of the Indian colonial economy. The market was split according to risk and uncertainty with British firms dominating the lucrative export markets leaving the domestic market largely to Indian entrepreneurs. This reflected a division of labour and knowledge, as the British were very sensitive to changes in overseas markets but little about mofussil markets with the reverse being true for Indian firms. Neither British nor Indian firms had the requisite level of knowledge or capacity to undertake operations in both sectors and to undertake the risk implicit in integrated marketing systems. Moreover, from 1873-98 due to the depreciating silver Rupee the British were wary of investing in India and after 1898 when losses from exchange risks were minimised the forces of foreign and indigenous capitalism were too weak to break the hold of the petty traders and producers in the mofussil markets.

In the industrial sector the mills and factories of the managing agencies were never able to create vertical and horizontal integration, which allowed them to overcome the risks and uncertainties of dealing with the unorganised sector where much of their inputs came. Foreign owned firms were strong enough, especially in the pre-WWI period to prevent indigenous firms from creating an integrated market structure but were too weak to impose one of their own. Ironically the only sector to have an integrated market network was the market for foodgrains, which was dominated by large numbers of petty traders. In other sectors competition between Managing Agencies and indigenous firms resulted in an uneasy compromise characterised by complex patterns of agency agreements between suppliers and producers at all levels of the supra-local economy. The major problem with this decentralised economy was that no one group could control it either horizontally or vertically: the surplus was therefore seen to be evenly distributed with imperfect information preventing investment flowing into the most profitable sectors.

The interwar period and the shock of the First World War changed many of these conditions. In the interwar period most of the modern financial institutions and commercial enterprises in India were established. New business empires were created at a time when the absolute wealth of the economy was static; the long price deflation of 1928-33 accomplished a similar process to that of the Matsukata deflation in Japan, shaking out resources from agriculture and local trading and also led to the retreat of the Managing Agency firms. Indian business groups moved into industries having better contacts in mofussil markets and then moved into foreign trade and manufacturing sectors. By the mid-1930's even the hold of the once impenetrable Jute industry was giving way to new Indian businessmen who had better contacts in the rural producing and trading communities. Since 1939 these firms have come to dominate the private industrial sector facing competition only from the foreign subsidies of the TNC's. The debate has again taken a pessimistic turn with the industrial deceleration of the late 1960's - while there was rapid industrial growth from 1929-1966 businessmen have argued that problems since then have been caused by populist government policies and attempts to trim the activates of the monopoly houses, with taxation and pricing policies being biased in favour of the agricultural and rural sector.

This comparison with Meiji Japan may hold some insights for asking why India had such a poor performance pre-1947. The traditional explanations of the drain of wealth, role of foreign firms, instability of foreign trade and idiosyncratic value systems of traditional trading and baking can only take us so far. Implicit in this Meliorist view is the assumption that merchant groups went along with non-maximising economic behaviour because they were too weak as a group to break the old society and thus institutional underdevelopment limited the indigenous demand for marketable goods. However, as the experience of Meiji Japan shows, such barriers were not insurmountable and part of the reasons of poor Indian performance can be sought elsewhere: A key difference was that Japanese firms had the pre-condition of a rich and developed rural economy, while Indian firms were constrained by a poor and underdeveloped rural sector. Japan was somewhat different from India in that it was no longer really a peasant society by 1800 - a population pattern similar to medieval England was emerging with non-collective agricultural units of production. However, one cannot from this extrapolate that any industrial take-off needs a small-holder agrarian society - what was unique to Japan was the combination of small units of production with a strong sense of vertical integration.
The degree of market integration allowed the Japanese economy to move from being a rich, decentralised rural one to an even richer, centralised industrialised one. In India the failure of these institutions in the 19th century and their slow emergence in the 20th century were not directly connected to growth patterns or agricultural productivity. Distribution and management of the surplus is important in explaining the stunted development of the Indian economy. The lack of integrating economic structures and institutions is an important factor and avoids simplistic views of the Indian economy; it is an important step in understanding the limiting factors and conditions for growth without lapsing into the platitudes that often accompany historical analysis of underdevelopment in South Asia - the the regions was poor because it had always been poor or because she had been robbed of her riches in the past.

:: Conrad Barwa 10:33 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Growth Rates of Real GDP per Person:

INDIA
1820-1870___0.1
1870-1913___0.4
1913-1950___-0.3
1950-1973___2.1
1973-1996___2.9

Source: IMF (2000) World Economic Outlook

:: Vikash Yadav 5:46 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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The True Character of Vajpayee:

May 2002: As the political posturing over Gujarat has raged in the press and in parliament, the question of the NDA being able to muster sufficient support to continue in government has become foremost in the people's minds. The excesses that have brought us to this turbulent moment have temporarily ceded the spotlight to the political fortunes of the Prime Minster. The legacy of his rule itself appears to be at stake, and understandably, his greatest energies seem focused in preserving some virtue therein. He attends peace rallies, he defends the Parivar. He speaks of tolerance and inclusion, but apportions blame for the rioting to the victims as well. Stalked by the spectre of failure, he clings to the ambivalence that brought him to power, hoping to find in it the strength to continue.

And yet, the most definitive quality of this moment is how it shows Vajpayee to be very unlike the person he has always been deemed to be! The alleged moderate of his party, his spin on the events in Gujarat isn't distinguishable from that of the fanatics anymore. The alacrity with which this new face of the PM has appeared suggests that his public persona, crafted carefully all these years, is nevertheless only the merest veneer to his true self. The Prime Minister should pause to ask himself a very simple question - if the most extreme and vicious of the religious elements were asked to explain the atrocities in Gujarat, how would that explanation be different from his?

In a life criss-crossed by praise and criticism, exasperation and forthrightness, and many other conflicting and wavering states, Atal Behari Vajpayee has finally arrived at a character that has no opposite in his political career. Now, he can be described unequivocally - not as a moderate man in a radical party, and not as the right man in the wrong gathering of politicians, but instead in far more consistent terms. Devoid at last of the facade that seemed to separate him from others around him, Atal Behari Vajpayee's actions stand revealed to contain the one unambiguous quality attributable to all of his political career - complicity.

The complicity of silence, of acquiescence in bigoted faith, of failed leadership, of opportunities lost and others never reached for. Quite simply, he has never professed his personal loyalties with enough clarity to separate himself from those who would destroy India. And now, we finally need no longer ask why a man, who by his claim is besotted with visions of a virtuous and resplendent India, nonetheless aligns himself with precisely those elements that give lie to those dreams. The answer should have been plain enough long ago, and yet Govindacharya was correct only in part - for the mask concealed not just the true nature of the party, but of Vajpayee himself. The Prime Minister is, and has always been, less than a man of his appearances.

India Together editorial
May 2002


:: Conrad Barwa 4:23 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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The People of India: Unity through Diversity?

A Landmark survey carried out by the leading Universities of India and the Anthropological Survey of India has recently published the data collected. The survey involved over 500 scholars and took almost a decade to complete: from 1985-1995 with the first volume being published in 1992 and the last in 2001. 4635 different communities were covered, with data from 421 districts involving all the states of the Indian union with sampling from over 6,000 villages and 2,500 urban centres. The study represents the most intensive and rigorous examination of ethnographic and anthropological data in India to date and carries potentially explosive implications for the current debates about caste, race and religion in India. It has also outlined clearly the real nature of the diversity that is much talked about in Indian political discourse but rarely analysed in any depth. I think is useful to give a little taster of some of the main findings as it has already challenged many preconceptions about the make-up and history of Indian society:

1) There is no single homogenous element that holds true across the country for different communities and the enumeration of 4635 communities was based on how these communities perceived themselves and how they were perceived by others as well as changes in their profile over time. Aspects studied included: biological traits, dress, language, forms of worship, food habits, kinship patterns and occupations pursued.

2) Racially it has proven impossible to identify a “pure Aryan”. All communities were found to have mixed ancestry roots that includes: Proto-Australoid, Paleo-Mediterrnean, Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid. The different racial components that could be clearly identified included: Aryan, Greek, Hun, Arab, Turk, Afghan, Mongol and European. These strains have become so intertwined that none of them can be found in their pure form today. It is difficult to distinguish different groups on the basis on when they historically entered and settled the Sub-continent.

3) Genetic and morphological traits vary more within communities than they do between communities. Homogeneity is along the lines of region, not caste or religion. There is no proof that the upper and lower castes have a different racial identity or ancestry. For example Tamil Brahmins have little similarity in racial traits with north Indian Brahmins. There is more homogeneity between the Brahmins and those at the bottom of the caste hierarchy in most regions than amongst the same castes in different regions. Most Muslim communities do not show any component that can be called migratory. They have descended mainly from the local population.

4) There are few communities in India that do not consider themselves as migrants or outsiders. Every community recalls its migration in its in its folklore and collective memory. All accepted the regional ethos of the area that they settled in and contributed to its local traditions.

5) Many settlers professing Islam actually settled here earlier that those today professing Hinduism.

6) There are 325 recognised languages and 25 scripts in use deriving from various linguistic families: Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, Andamanese, Semitic, Indo-Iranian, Sino-Tibetan, Indo-European as well as thousands of dialects with their local variations. At least 65% of the communities are bi-lingual and most tribal communities are tri-lingual.

7) 85% of the communities are rooted in their resources. The lives and livelihood, the occupations, dress patterns and songs of the different communities cannot really be separated from their landscape, climate and occupations deriving from their resources. Rootedness in the eco-cultural zone is an outstanding characteristic of our communities, no matter what religious label attaches to them. Most migrants seek to identify themselves with their local environemnt except in the matter of languages they speak at home and in marriages.

8) 55% of the communities derive their names from the occupations they pursue e.g. Alvan (salt-maker), Lohar (blacksmith), Churihar (Banglemaker), Bunkar (weaver), Chitrakar (scroll-painter). 14% have names associated with their environment e.g. plains, rivers, mountains and 14% from their places of origin such as Gond, Alhuwalia, Kanpuria, Chamoli, Arandan and Shimong.·

9) Caste categories also cut across community and regional boundaries with common surnames such as: Singh, Acharya, Patel, Naik, Prasad, Gupta, Sharma and Khan.

10) 775 selected traits have been used to capture the cultural life of the population including: ecology, settlement, social customs, marriage patterns, food habits, economy and linkages, which reveal a sharing of traits across religious boundaries. Hindus share 96% of these traits with Muslims, 92% with Buddhists, and 89% with Sikhs.

11) Markings of identification by different communities are mainly non-religious. In dispensing their dead, 3059 communities cremate them, as many as 2386 bury them. Many communities follow both practises.So is the case with marriage symbols, food habits, dress, dance and musical forms. Clans bearing the names of animals, plants or inanimate objects cut across religions, regions and language barriers.

12) Communities in India have not remained isolated. They have interacted with their physical and social environments and with each other, both in conflict and in peace. This has given a particular form and content to the diversity found within India and the unity within that diversity.

These facts are taken from the People of India: An Introduction, edited K.S. Singh. It is the first volume in the multi-volume survey being produced and published by the Anthropological Survey of India. The introductory volume is an excellent place to start to understand something of the ethnographic diversity found in India and to explore some of the different communities studied. It is published on behalf of the Anthropological Institute of India by Seagull Books, Calcutta; while the full series will be published by Oxford University Press.

:: Conrad Barwa 2:59 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Communal Solidarity Bihari Style:

Anand Mohan Sahay in Patna

While Gujarat was burning, a small town in Bihar set an example of communal amity, when a group of Hindus got together and protected a mosque from being vandalised. During Friday's bandh in Muzzaffarpur, called by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to protest the Godhra carnage, a group of hooligans tried to enter the Company Bagh mosque and vandalise it. A senior police official, who was present on the spot when the incident occurred, said that when the word spread about the bid by the hooligans to enter the mosque, almost 100 Hindus converged on the spot from the nearby Goriamath and Sariyaganj area and challenged them. A tussle broke out in which quite few Hindus were injured while guarding the mosque, but the hooligans had to beat a hasty retreat in face of stiff resistance, he said.
By the time police reinforcement came in, the hooligans had done the vanishing act. Muzzafarpur has the distinction of never having witnessed a communal riot.
"Thanks to timely intervention of local Hindus a major incident was averted," a senior police officer said, heaving a sigh of relief.

From the Telegraph, March 2, 2002

:: Conrad Barwa 12:41 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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The Roots of Middle-Class Support for Hindutva:

Vikash, I was just want to go partway in responding to your invitation to categorise some of the basis of support for Hindutva in Indian society. A key part of this I feel is the role played by the middle classes in India. Members of this class were generally supporters of Rajiv Gandhi in the mid-1980’s but by the early 1990’s were already switching their allegiance to the BJP. Part of this is as Christopher Jaffrelot contends the BJP supported a political project the building of a strong India, which had been popularised by Indira Gandhi. By the 1990’s the Congress was seen as incapable of pursuing this project due to its perceived corruption and ineptitude and without a ‘charismatic’ member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to keep factionalism in check it lost much of it’s hold on the public imagination. This allowed the BJP to win support from not only its traditional base in the trading castes but also from prominent business executives, ex-servicemen and the elite civil service. The National Front/Janata Dal lost support amongst the middle-classes and upper castes due mainly because of their mildly leftist agenda and their support for reservations for the Backwards Classes.

A survey conducted soon after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, showed that in Delhi and Western Uttar Pradesh, 60% of white-collar professionals and 62% of traders supported the assaults, while amongst workers their support fell to 28%. The authors of the survey felt that there was substantial evidence that amongst the significant number of middle-class people who “have acquired economic status but not social status” there is an anxiety to “bring the two into consonance” partly through religious observance and congregational activities. Other crucial elements of support are the middle and upper castes. Young men who participated in the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation in 1990 often belonged to the upper castes and their apparent “overrepresentation” among the "martyrs" who were killed or wounded in the confrontation with security forces at Ayodhya on the 30th October has to be understood in the context of protests over the Mandal Commission report and the issue of reservations. This reflects a deeper unease that the middle-class and upper caste supporters of the BJP felt with the changes in politics in India during the 1990’s.

This ambivalence was characterised by a world-view where the political field was seen as an arena marked by the erosion of moral principles and proper behaviour in favour of commercialised and criminalized behaviour. In this upper caste environment the “decay” of the world of politics was unequivocally ascribed to the rising assertiveness of lower caste politicians – described often as “goonda types” or as “uncultured”. Similarly the ostensible decline in the quality of public administration was attributed to the influx of ever more officers of the lower castes. I have already remarked in an earlier note how the discourse of caste was banished from the sphere of the public realm by the mainly upper caste elite after independence so I won’t repeat my self here. Though there has been change and mobility- not least in the signification of caste whereby the hierarchy of differences is couched more in terms of civic conduct, Harvard degrees or NRI status rather than ritual purity or pedigree; the important dimensions of the modern grammar of caste – separation and hierarchy have persisted and reproduced.

I was told by the older Brahmin inhabitants of several north Indian Cities, especially in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra that a certain ethos is needed to achieve the superior ability to capture and utilise the instrument rationality of modern knowledge and to internalise the utility of civic order without losing the ancient cultural heritage and cultural groundedness one requires in the turmoil of urban modernity. The implicit and increasingly explicit accusation was that communities “read castes” placed lower in the hierarchy do not possess this shied of cultural sophistication, many Brahmins argued. When exposed to the perils and temptations of urban life they become rootless, vulgar, dirty and greedy for money and power.

Most of the upper castes people who dismissed politics in this way were at the same time the ones who were intensely interested and engaged in politics captured by the fascination derived from the constant display of the “scandalous secret of corruption” in politics and the striving for naked power. This was accompanied by abroad realisation that without political correctness and political leverage it was very difficult to conduct a business, see one’s children into a good school or to pursue a career and get proper housing.
Most traits that these middle class families saw as repulsive in politics – corruption, dishonesty and populism, were at the same time ethically neutralised as necessities ion politics for “our party” to win or “for our work to be done”. Behind much of this ambivalence lay a suppressed nostalgia for the innocence of the Nehru era and the retro-projection of a “golden age” where public standards were higher and the level of integrity much stronger – this loss of innocence was elided and mixed with the loss of community security, predictability and direction of society being experienced by the established middle class. These narratives are of course endemic in the modern political imaginaries in any society undergoing what Ambedkar called a “democratic revolution”.. Lack of order, lack of development and the bemoaning of immoral present threatened by an “uncultured people” are all seen as results of a faulty and corrupt polity producing an excessively liberal, fragmented and immoral society.

The result is something that all observers of Indian society have come across: speak to an Marwari or Sindhi businessman or an upper caste professional and one will the common refrain about the “need for discipline in society” or a “clean and tidy house” phrases like how the “background” of a candidate mattered were really code words which denoted a certain class and caste perspective that couldn’t be openly voiced but through certain metaphors refereed to in polite conversation. Some of the views I came across were quite disturbing – one trader even argued that there had been a drastic decline in the quality of governance since the departure of the British and blamed the Indian elite that replaced them for occupying positions of power without the “self-Control” and “discipline” that British administrators and politicians showed. Another remarked that ever since the days of Indira Gandhi employees didn’t fear their employers in the same way and even had the courage to demand rights and answer back to their employers.

Two things stem from this: firstly there is on the surface a reluctant acceptance of the reality of “plebeian” mode of politics but beneath this is a worrying desire for a “clean sweep” and an imposition of a moral authoritarian order that would privilege those in possession of status and culture. Secondly, there was the existence of a sense of threat to the comfortable lifestyles, in socio-economic terms, of the urban middle-classes – a threat from the uncontrollable social world, which seemed to teem with the alarming “uncultured people” who were being given ideas above their station by distant political elites manoeuvring for votes.

It is by exploiting fears such as these that the RSS/BJP project of Hindutva reassured the middle-classes and upper castes that they could trust in the Saffron juggernaut to give them security and respectability in their search for a “controlled modernity” which wouldn’t damage their “haven of order and cleanliness”.

In class terms one can discern two separate dynamics: there is what some scholars such as Achin Vanaik have argued is a conservative reaction: where the usual narrative is a joint alliance between an emerging middle-class which allies with the subaltern groups to overthrow the feudal and elite classes and replace it with a bourgeois dominance, what has happened is the return of the older feudal and conservative classes in a new alliance with the subalterns against the weak middle-classes who haven’t completed their revolution. Secondly, there is the combination of a desire for regaining eroding social status by the established classes and castes in the face of a new assertiveness by lower classes and castes – an assertiveness which was implicit in the Indian constitutions and the ideal behind the different wings of the Freedom Movement which had been denied by the clientist nature of democratic politics since independence which is now breaking down irretrievably. In both cases it means that the social bases of Hindutva come from the conservative and reactionary forces in Indian society who are reacting to the actual rather than just the formal implementation of democracy in India: this is a promise that underlay the mass-based politics of the anti-colonial movement but which was not fulfilled after the gaining of independence. This is our true tryst with destiny.

:: Conrad Barwa 4:33 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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More Protests for Peace:

Pakistani schoolchildren attend a rally for peace in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, June 10, 2002. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

:: Vikash Yadav 9:23 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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The Hidden Narratives within Hindutva:

I just wanted to outline some of the more disturbing facets of Hindutva that are now being propagated. One can launch this attack from many angles from a Dalit, Gandhian or rationalist critique but I want to explore the idea of Hinduism that the Sangh Parivar are foisting on us from within a Hindu perspective itself as I am always reminded very forcefully by Hindu friends and family, that what the Sangh projects is not really Hinduism at all but a perversion of it. This may also tie in, Vikash, with why I think there has been a perceptible shift in the minds and hearts of our consuming classes towards the US and the kind of globalisation project that is being pursued by the devotees of neo-liberalism.

I can see some of this change in the different temples styles within Hinduism itself: the rich and bejewelled temples that are cropping up now with the flow of funds from wealthy NRI's abroad and the Indian mercantilist groups. While I would not go far as some, like Amit Chaudhuri who in a recent article in the TLS, called Hinduism a " rich man's, a trader's, religion" there is a link between wealth and the kind of Hinduism that we find being aggressively marketed today. Regional tensions abound, one can see the worship of Saraswati being replaced by the worship of Lakshmi and many of the upwardly mobile consuming classes are eagerly embracing this change. Hindutva promotes not so much spirituality as the material success of its followers. Success has been the keyword of the 1990's and success only for the majority: it is not to be shared with other groups who only live on sufferance. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the recent violence in Gujarat has occurred on a state that has usually been seen along with Maharashtra as one of the economic powerhouses of the country - the reputation of both these states as communal laboratories is also well known. Therefore, prosperity and rapid economic development does not prevent conflict as states which are rich in per capita income such as Punjab, Maharashtra and Gujarat have also seen some of the worst ethnic and communal violence while poorer states such as Kerala, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh have been relatively unscathed by such acts of organised political violence.

Secularists argue that Hinduism was never at the heart of a revolutionary political movement unlike Christianity because it had no Word or truth to spread. The killings done in its name are not part of a jihad or a residue of misguided evangelism but a brutal and calculated exercise of power - Hinduism as the punitive instrument of the powerful. While it may be possible to argue that Christianity has a quarrel with modernity and the materialism that accompanies it; while Islam may have a related quarrel with the West, modernity's synecdoche; secularist's such as Chaudhuri argue that Hinduism has no problem with modernity or with the West and it rushes to embrace the latter's benefits. This makes Hindutva less like religious fundamentalism than like fascism in the eyes of many secularists. We can return to this debatable point sometime later.

The problem I have with this view is the easy way Hinduism and the mainstream are thrown together by most writers on India. Mainstream a word that should connotate rule of law and a democratic polity is thereby elided with the beliefs of the religious majority by a cunning sleight of hand and those therefore who are not part of the majority become by sub-conscious association and suggestion: anti-democratic and breakers of the law. It is a short step from this to the concept of the homo sacer, in ancient Roman Law which denoted those who could be killed with impunity and therefore those whose death had no sacrificial value: this all has chilling resonance to the language and rhetoric used by the VHP and others in places such as Gujarat in dehumanising Muslims who instead of being seen as Indian citizens turn into non-members of the national community who can be killed with no regrets or mercy.

It is by these subtle measures, which deserve to be deconstructed that the BJP and their ideologues poison the imaginary realm of political action. The use of Saffron, or gerua in the Indian languages, is a good case in point. It has powerful echoes in the Hindu consciousness: wholly to do with that strong undercurrent of counter-hegemonic thought in Hinduism - vairagya: the melancholic and romantic possibility of renunciation. Gerua stands for not what is brahminnical and conservative but what is most radical about Hinduism- it is the colour not of the householder, king or merchant but of the marginal man, the exile and the outcast; the colour of those sharp-tongued ascetics in the Upanishads who used to emerge from their forest retreats to attack ancient Hindu society for what they saw as social inequalities, political abuses of power and moral degenerations, the colour of those who have gone into the forest and renounced life had passed out of normal society and therefore were outside of it but who criticised it freely nonetheless. It stands for that current in Hindu philosophical thought that despised crass materialism, laughed at ritual, sneered at pomp and display and spurned wealth. By rewriting and recasting the practise of Hinduism the Hindutva brigade has robbed it and silenced it of these meanings -and those who mourn the passing of secularism should also mourn this twisting of the Hindu religion as it has been practised for centuries. [continued...]

A Hindu fundamentalist chants "Hail Lord Ram" in Ayodhya, India Friday March 15, 2002, as two pillars for a Hindu temple are carried through the streets. (AP Photo/John McConnico)

Ironic that the politicisation of the colour gerua was popularised first by Swami Vivekenanada - a man who the RSS have tried to claim as one of their own, especially abroad where he made a deep impression. However, even his story is inflected with the contradictions of the emergence of modernity into Hinduism. Vivekenananda's real name was Narendranath Datta, a graduate of Calcutta University; he had studied law and was set for a promising career in the profession. Like many other middle-class men of his generation, in India at the time he was a seeker after metaphysical and religious truth. After rejecting the major religions and philosophies that surrounded him, he finally found his master in the rustic mystic Ramakrishna Paramhansa, a priest in a small village in northern Bengal; who spoke in parables and sermons and claimed to have seen the goddess "Kali". What interests me here is not the veracity of Ramakrishna's claim or his actual status as a religious mystic but the nature of his religious explorations. He believed in experimentation and could practise for periods of time such faiths as Christianity and Islam and his immersions during these trance-like periods, in these alternative modes of worship was so complete that he would begin to internalise the habits and customs of other religions, to spend, for instance, long spells inside a mosque and eat beef; he would even experience a sort of revulsion towards his beloved deity Kali. His experiments led to conclude that all paths lead to God - jata path tata math (there as many ways as there are paths) we can se here the immediate similarity to the Buddhist notion of the Thousand different paths to Enlightenment. This formed a valuable part of the inheritance of Hindu syncretism that was strong in Bengal (other regions have similar traditions) and combined with the liberal humanism of the Bengal Renaissance that decreed toleration towards all faiths regardless of whether or not you adhered to one yourself - this formed the basis of the secularism of the Indian state. But the experience of Ramakrishna led in a different realm: his was an explicitly religious and non-secular experience which located these various religions not within society or the nation he lived in but within himself; it was here that they co-existed and competed with each other, often annihilating each other temporarily; history animated him from within. The tension between this inclusive pervasive religiosity and the humanist secularism formed the two faces of modernity that every Indian artist and writer had had to negotiate. However, the BJP and the BJP-governed middle-class have with Hinduism a proscriptive not a creative relationship; the harassment of writers and artists by the Hindu right for alleged offences against the Hindu religion all form part of their campaign. This is not just the death of secularism but also of the great syncretic and dynamic traditions left to us by mystics such as Ramakrishna, Kabir and Tukarama. This is a loss that we all share as these great figure belong to a tradition that is more Indic than Hindu and were proponents of universalism rather than Hinduism in their thought and poetry.

To return to Vivekenanada, he was introduced to Ramakrishna, ironically but typically of the time by an Englishman - Professor WW Hastie. Ramakrishna on meeting Datta renamed him Vivekenanada meaning " one who exults in a clear conscience and discernment" and made him his spiritual heir. On his address to the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, Vivekenanada wore the saffron of the sannyasi (wandering Holy mendicant) not the white of the brahmachari (celibate devotee); his address which announced a new and resurgent Hinduism to the West made him famous and by association as well as by chance Saffron became identified with the colour of resurgence rather marginality. But where is this legacy now - while Vivekenanada famous for his saying that "football brings one closer to God than Prayer" wanted a more manly and assertive Hinduism he would not have approved of much of the West today represents - principally in the benefits of the free market, which is the very thing that the votaries of Hindutva rush towards. Moreover, Vivekenanada only reconnected with Hinduism through Ramakrishna - the rustic village seer and the vernacular roots of Hinduism were important to him: the globalised urban faith that Hinduism is today in Delhi, Bombay, London and New York is divorced from the vernacular tradition that Ramakrishna represented.

The South Asian religious scene has always been rich with such examples of syncretism: another common feature was the role of Bauls (wandering Minstrels) in Bengal. Bauls in one form or another had been instrumental in re-establishing the influence of Hinduism in those areas which had come under Buddhist impact and by their reliance on small groups of poor and homeless wandering minstrels and singers could spread a devotionalist form of Hinduism easier in the rural villages where low literacy and ignorance/distaste of religious texts prevented the easy penetration of brahminnical Hinduism. Bauls in Bengal have always sung of their devotion to a universal God: their appeal lies in addressing the heart and is not circumscribed by the tenets of Islam or Hinduism; it is instead a synthesis of the unorthodox Sufi strain in Islam and Bhakti devotionalism in Hinduism. That is why purists of both religions have always been suspicious of these self-proclaimed fakirs and there are many instances of both Hindu and Muslim Bauls being ostracised and persecuted in Bengal; where historically they have contributed hugely to the musical scene. Much of Bengali poetry is set in tune to Baul music (including some of Tagore’s) and recordings of Baul music are a frequent sound both in the homes of the urban middle-classes as well as the rural hamlets that dot the Bengal landscape.

This trend has resumed of late both in India. Sadar Fakir of Nadia (in West Bengal) spent his life singing songs that debunked religion with words such as “the search for Allah and Bhagwan is futile, Salvation lies in a universal Love for Mankind”. The local Maulvis were not impressed and destroyed his house, ransacked his fields and banned him from singing within the village boundaries again as well as declaring him a kafir. Omar Shah in neighbouring Alinagar, for the same offence was charged with sacrilege, forcibly shaved and fined Rs. 1000 and exiled from the village. Worse has happened in 1992 five Muslim Bauls were killed in Murshidabad district for refusing to capitulate to the dikat of religious zealots and in the district other Bauls have been ostracised by the Muslim Communities – “Our only fault is that we believe in human beings. Being Hindus and Muslims is only incidental” says Kazem Sheikh one of those ostracised. Hindu Bauls are also facing persecution – Gouranga Hazra in Beldanga village in Murshidabad was beaten up and his hut burned down for daring to accept Muslim followers. The recent rise of Hindu nationalism coupled with the cross-border immigration has heightened tensions in the countryside in both India and which straddle the partitioned region of Bengal; with fundamentalists in both countries stoking up passions; it is always syncretic communities and individuals such as the Bauls that will bear the initial lash of the fundamentalist anger as by their very existence they defy and make a nonsense of the Hindutva and Muslim Fundamentalist ideologies and claims.

We need to ask why this changes have taken place: how has the gerua the colour of the marginal man, the outsider, the exile come to stand for the mainstream in society and the blind hatred of Hindutva?! How have the regional traditions like the Bauls in Bengal, which were essential in the spread of folk Hinduism, and vibrant religious sentiment come to be seen as threats that need to be silenced?! The projection of Hindutva as the real religion of the Hindus does much epistemological violence to the reality and history of Hinduism: it ignores the questioning, probing and dynamic aspects of it’s own history, it closes it’s eyes to the rich tradition of interchange and borrowing that has taken place between it and other religions such as Islam, it denies the narrative of autochthonous peoples whose contribution to religious-historical discourse has been sublated or only incorporated in insulting ways in the sacred texts and it forgets the basis of much of modern Hinduism very little of which can be characterised as Vedic, Brahminnical or “Aryan” something that doesn’t sit well with the materialist middle-class enthusiasts of today’s shrill Saffron brigade. We need to recover and rehabilitate these lost and suppressed narratives in an imaginative fashion, to undermine and destroy the grandiose but hollow claims being advanced in the name of religion; in this struggle the mind is the primary battlefield for the life of nations like that of men is lived mostly in the imagination.

:: Conrad Barwa 2:43 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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