Evaluating Marxist and Post-Modernist Responses To Hindu Nationalism During the Eighties and Nineties

Abstract

Over the past two decades, journalists, legal analysts and scholars of India have devoted much attention to the political advances of the 'pro-Hindu' Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the growth of Hindu nationalist sentiments among the nation's burgeoning urban middle class. This decade alone has reaped a harvest of more than 70 books addressing the issue of the 'secular state' in India, prompted, no doubt, by the clamour of Hindutva. Extensive print media coverage of events leading to and following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 brought the issues of secularism, national identity, and politicised religion to the forefront of public debate. The BJP's success in forming a coalition government after the general elections of 1998 revived questions about the direction of the party's Hindutva agenda and its viability as a 'secular' party.' At some distance now from the tumult of the Babri Masjid demolition, this article offers not another critique of Hindu nationalism, but an evaluation of both Marxist and post-modernist ways of explaining its rise during the 1980s and 90s. The categories 'Marxist' and 'post-modernist' are by no means monolithic, but contain elements that may either converge or conflict with each other. The more 'traditional' Marxist perspective discussed in this article is represented in varying degrees by Bipan Chandra, Sumit Sarkar, Nasir Tyabji, Aijaz Ahmad and K Balagopal. This perspective is limited by its economic determinism which downplays the religious dimension of culture, politics and national identity. Writers who are more influenced by post-modern thought, by contrast, replace the rationalism and class dialectic of traditional Marxism with the dialectics of literature, culture (East vs West) and history-writing (Orientalist vs post-Orientalist). Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Ashis Nandy create a space for the exploration of culture and religion, but do so with post-colonial distaste for the organs of statecraftthe very machinery that was supposed to have protected the Babri Masjid and the thousands of Muslims who were killed in the bloody aftermath of its destruction. 1 1 The categories 'Marxist' and 'post-modernist' do not preclude instances where selfdesignated Marxists address 'post-modernist' kinds of questions. Chatterjee and Chakrabarty, for instance, are self-described Marxists who critique rationalist South Asia Research, 19, 2, 1999 SAGE PUBLICATIONS New DelhiUhousand Oaks/London some Western countries, the Indian constitution has sought to define 'secular state' in terms of the government's 'equidistance' to the country's many religions.3 Eight days after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Girilal Jain wrote, 'The bloated rhetoric of secularism, constitutionalism and rule of law has to give way to commonsense and realism and the Muslim leadership, such as it is, has to recognise the urgent, indeed desperate, need for a change of course on its part.' Times of India, 14 December, 1992, p. 7. For a concise history of how, over the past several ...

The Vivekananda Kendra in India: Its ideological translations and a critique of its social service

“…Its establishment signified the early dynamic phase in the emergence of Hindu nationalism. Hindu nationalism attests Hindu cultural dominance and nationalist mobilization and majoritarianism in the context of liberal development (Mallampalli, 1999). In time, the RSS set up a series of front organizations known as the Sangh Parivar, the predominant one being the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, established in 1964 (Chatterji, 2004;Zavos, 2000).…”