COMMENTARY

June 14, 2014 vol xlIX no 24 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
10
The Discreet Charm of the BJP
Sumanta Banerjee
Sumanta Banerjee (suman5ban@yahoo.com)
is a long-time contributor to EPW and is best
known for his book In the Wake of Naxalbari:
A History of the Naxalite Movement in India
(1980).
With the Bharatiya Janata Party
and the Sangh parivars poster
boy in power at the centre, India
seems to be heading for a political
order in which the social psyche
will be marked by the following
three traits: (i) thick-skinned
insensitivity to problems that
are outside ones own domain of
immediate, or group interests;
(ii) herd mentality of sticking
together to defend those
interests through a variety of
mental shortcuts; and
(iii) smooth-skinned hypocrisy to
demonstrate ones respectability.
F
inally, the Sangh parivars poster
boy has made it. In the electoral
market of a multilayered public
demand, and a multi-cornered contest,
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could
sell Narendra Modi as the sole winnable
candidate by launching an advertising
campaign which projected him as a con-
sumer item that appealed to the various
layers. He charmed his way from his
traditional Hindu conservative base in
the cow-belt to the new urban genera-
tion of careerist youth, from the aspirant
middle classes to the prot-seeking cor-
porate sector, which were all mesmerised
by the buzzwords Gujarat model,
development, governance. Will Modis
shelf life last beyond the next ve-year
period, during which he will have to
cope with the demands made by these
various competitive layers of the BJPs
vote bank, for their respective pound of
esh? Will his opponents succeed in
mounting an effective resistance both
on the oors of the house and in the
streets to dislodge the BJP government
in the next Lok Sabha elections?
It is also necessary to remind the
Modi-maniacs that their leader has
gained the support of only about 32% of
the total electorate and that also con-
centrated in certain areas of central and
western India. The rest of the 68% who
did not vote for Modi were divided along
different political loyalties, and could
not be brought together under a unied
opposition canopy that could have swept
away the Modi wave. But while blaming
the rst-past-the-post system as an imper-
fect mechanism for failing to represent
and do justice to the actual constellation
of opinions at the ground level, let us
not underestimate the tenacity of the
Sangh parivars political outt, the BJP,
and its foot soldiers in the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in making use
of this same system to reach its goal. It had
unitedly (unlike its political opponents)
followed a game plan of steadily making
its way into Parliament, with the ultimate
objective of capturing power.
Parliamentary Voyage
Let us look at the Sangh parivars historical
tally in parliamentary elections. Right
from the rst general elections in 1952,
when its then political wing, the Jana
Sangh, won three seats, it managed to
increase its number to 22 in 1971-72. In
the years that followed, the Jana Sangh
rode piggyback upon the anti-Congress
coalition politics that was initiated by
Jayaprakash Narayan, and the anti-
Emergency underground campaign dur-
ing 1975-77. In the 1977 general elections,
it joined the anti-Congress alliance of
the Janata Party (which swept the polls
by winning 298 out of 542 seats) and
won 93 seats in the Lok Sabha a dra-
matic leap from its earlier performance
making it the largest component in the
Janata coalition. But the Jana Sanghs
umbilical cord with its parent RSS be-
came a bone of contention in the Janata
Party, with the socialists and ex-Congress
members demanding that the Jana Sangh
should give up its double membership.
The internal bickering within the Janata
government led to its fall. After the failure
of a series of experiments in opportunist
alliances to form a government at the
centre, the seventh general elections in
early January 1980 brought back the
Indira Gandhi-led Congress to power.
The Janata Party won only 31 seats, out of
which the Jana Sanghs share was 16 a
climb down from its tally of 93 in 1977.
Following this defeat, the Sangh parivar
elders decided on a new stratagem.
In April 1980, they gave their political
outt a facelift by renaming it as BJP an
amalgam of its old Jana Sangh members
and a few deserters from the defeated
Janata Party. The new party claimed
that it was the authentic representative
of the ideas of both, the socialist leader
Jayaprakash Narayan and the Jana Sangh
ideologue Deendayal Upadhaya thus
trying to bring within its folds a larger
following. Its electoral ambitions were
however frustrated with the assassination
of Indira Gandhi in 1984, on the sympathy
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Economic & Political Weekly EPW June 14, 2014 vol xlIX no 24
11
wave of which Rajiv Gandhi rode to
power in Delhi that year. The BJP man-
aged to win only two seats in the new Lok
Sabha a throwback to 1952. But thanks
to the Congress governments dismal
record (marked by the Bofors pay-off
scandal), the opposition could again
knock together an alliance, win the 1989
elections and form the National Front
government. As in the post-Emergency
scenario, during the 1989 elections again,
the BJP jumped on the anti-Congress
bandwagon, and won 86 seats. Since
then, there has been no looking back.
Even after the 1991 elections which
brought back the Congress to power
again on another sympathy wave follow-
ing Rajiv Gandhis assassination the
BJP increased its tally to 120 seats.
In 1996, its number went up to 161 in
the Lok Sabha, but its efforts to form
a government were frustrated by two
successive United Fronts which took over
the reins with Congress support. The
BJPs next opportunity to capture power
in Delhi following a mid-term poll in
1998 which gave it 182 seats in the Lok
Sabha ran into foul weather, when
after 13 months, its Prime Minister Atal
Behari Vajpayee had to give up after
losing majority. But it came back with a
vengeance in the elections which took
place a year later. It had in the mean-
while struck up alliances with a number
of regional parties, which enabled it to
gain 296 seats under the umbrella of
the National Democratic Alliance (NDA),
while retaining its own 182 members,
and form a government at the centre. It
survived for ve years, but its record was
tarnished by the BJP-run state government
sponsored massacre of Muslims in Gujarat
in 2002, and by exposures of corruption
at the centre which gave the lie to the
BJP propaganda of a Shining India.
It faced a humiliating defeat in the
2004 elections, when the number of its
seats was reduced to 138, and then
further to 116 in the 2009 Lok Sabha. Its
phenomenal turnaround within ve
years in capturing power at the centre
as a single party without the need for
depending on its partners in a nominal
NDA speaks of a changing conguration
of sociopolitical forces in India during
the recent past, as well as the BJPs ability
to manipulate them in its favour. This
history of the ups and downs in the
journey of the BJP deserves serious ex-
amination by political ideologues and
commentators, economists and socio-
logists, as well as ground-level activists
of political parties and social movements.
BJPs Odyssey a la Luis Bunuel
But apart from that sociopolitical analysis,
there can also be an alternative cultural
perspective that may be useful for
understanding BJPs political odyssey. In
the history of political changes, at times,
creative writers had interpreted the
changes in a more meaningful way than
that provided by contemporary combat-
ants on behalf of one political perspective
or another. Poets, dramatists, novelists
who were described by Shelley as the
unacknowledged legislators of the
world had often come up with allego-
ries that had been more prescient than
all the political columns in newspapers.
I am trying to understand BJPs electoral
quest for power, in terms of a parallel lit-
erary discourse that I nd in two such
allegories one in the form of a lm, and
another as a play.
Let me start with the lm which is
known as The Discreet Charm of the
Bourgeoisie, made by the eminent and
controversial director Luis Bunuel in
1972, satirising the pursuit of power by
the Western upper-middle classes. The
Sangh parivars electoral journey over
the last half a century to reach the
portals of the Indian Parliament as
guests, and today as hosts, resembles
the itinerary of the characters in
Bunuels lm a coterie of ambitious
and unscrupulous couples seeking posi-
tions of guests or hosts, in the ve-star
dining ambience of Paris. Their longing
for a convivial space to be together, is a
metaphor for the nouveau-riche bour-
geoisies search for sharing power at the
top. Bunuel exposes their mendacity (in
hiding their crimes), and snobbery and
prejudices (against their menials) behind
their discreet charm, through sequences
of dinner parties which somehow or other
always get interrupted. One couple hosts
a dinner, where the guests arrive, but
they themselves are not prepared (re-
member the BJPs abortive experiments
in 1996-98?). They then go to an eating
joint, but nd themselves being refused
whatever they order (remember the
BJPs humiliating experiences after the
2002 killings in Gujarat, when for some
time it was looked down upon as an un-
touchable in Indian politics?). This is
followed by a series of similar lunch and
dinner parties, which never fructify
just as the BJPs electoral adventures in
the years that followed till 2014. The
bourgeoisie in Bunuels lm is an assort-
ment of respect able looking dubious
characters a gun-toting diplomat from
a Latin American banana republic, two
French couples who make money by deal-
ing in drug-trafcking with the help
of this diplomat, a minister who orders
his police to release them after they
are caught. They look like anticipatory
parodies of the present-day politician-
smuggler-criminal cabal of our Indian
nouveau-riche classes who, among others
have brought Modi to power.
In Bunuels lm, the main narrative of
the search for a dining space (a metaphor
for political power) by the French bour-
geois couples and their friends, runs par-
allel to another narrative their fears and
sense of insecurity that are depicted in a
number of dream sequences in the lm,
where these paranoid characters feel
scared of being punished for their various
nefarious activities. They suffer from
nightmares of being killed by unidentied
assassins, or arrested by the police. They
remind us today of their counterparts
among the present BJP leaders and Mem-
bers of Parliament (MPs), many among
whom face criminal and corruption
charges, and who should fear punishment.
But unlike Bunuels lm which ends with
the characters walking silently along a
deserted road towards an un certain des-
tination, the present Indian political sce-
nario begins with the triumphant arrival
of these BJP MPs at their destination
along a road crowded with a phalanx of
supporters ranging from big business
houses of the Tatas, Ambanis and Adanis
to intellectuals like Jagdish Bhagwati,
Meghnad Desai and Andre Beteille, from
the urban jet set to the rural farmers.
However, behind the discreet charm
that is exuded today by a triumphant
BJP and its prime minister, who is
COMMENTARY
June 14, 2014 vol xlIX no 24 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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making the right noises to impress his
domestic constituency and the global
community, there looms large the shadow
of the nightmarish record of violent
communal polarisation that the party
and its Sangh parivar parents had intro-
duced in Indian politics beginning from
the pre-Independence period, moving
on to the demolition of the Babri Masjid
in 1992 under the leadership of the sup-
posedly moderate Lal Krishna Advani
which led to one of the worst communal
riots after Independence, and then on to
the genocide in Gujarat in 2002 under
the then Chief Minister Narendra Modis
patronage. But these riots and the
nightmares that continue to haunt their
victims are being discreetly glossed
over by the new government with a
package of populist illusive promises of
jobs for the youth, and rm assurances
of prot for the corporate sector inves-
tors. In an economy marked by the
squeezing out of the traditional manu-
facturing sector by the newfangled
high-tech service industries, Modis
utopia of deve lopment may turn out to
be a dystopia lled with well-skilled
zombies manning those industries, and
the laid-off and retrenched workers
from the manufacturing sector joining
the lumpen-proletariat and lling up the
ranks of the Sangh parivars foot soldiers
to suppress all protest.
Metamorphosing Indian Culture
In a more insidious way, the BJP govern-
ment may concentrate on its long-term
strategy of mutating the pluralistic ethos
of our society into a hegemonic order
of Hindu nationalism (epitomised by the
slogan of Hindu Rashtra). As during
Murli Manohar Joshis stewardship of the
human resource development ministry
in the previous NDA regime, the present
minister may also get institutions like
the National Council of Educational
Research and Training (NCERT) rewrite
history textbooks for students with a dis-
tinct bias in favour of Hindutva, and pick
up academics of the Sangh parivar to
head research institutions like the Indian
Council of Social Science Research
(ICSSR), Indian Council of Historical
R esearch (ICHR), Indian Institute of
A dvanced Study in Shimla and other
such centres for higher studies to pre-
vent independent-minded scholars from
researching in topics that do not suit
Modis agenda. At the ground level, now
that the BJP is in power, its foot
soldiers and moral police will enjoy full
liberty to suppress all expressions of dis-
sent in the cultural arena (whether by
forcing the banning of books, or vanda-
lising exhibitions of paintings, or dis-
rupting musical and theatrical perform-
ances destructive acts which were
allowed even by Congress-ruled govern-
ments in Maharashtra and Delhi during
the last several decades).
In fact, the assault had begun even be-
fore Modis swearing in. In BJP-ruled Goa,
a 31-year-old engineer, Devu Chodankar,
was booked under various sections of
the Indian Penal Code, and the Informa-
tion Technology Act, for his comment on
Facebook (during the run-up to the Lok
Sabha campaign) that a holocaust
would follow if Modi became the prime
minister (IANS report, 24 May 2014). In
Bangalore, on May 25, a 24-year-old MBA
student, Syed Waqas, was arrested on the
charge of circulating derogatory MMSes
against the prime minister-designate
Narendra Modi (The Hindu, 26 May 2014).
The new central governments message
is clear. Any citizen challenging the prime
minister can be hauled up under some
provision or other of the various draconi-
an laws that decorate our statute book.
Curiously, however, despite this noto-
rious record of the Sangh parivars violent
suppression of dissent whether in the
public arena, or in the academic world
(e g, the ransacking of the Bhandarkar
Oriental Research Institute in Pune in
January 2004 after the publication of
James Laines book Shivaji: Hindu King
in Islamic India), and in the cultural venue
(e g, vandalisation of M F Husains paint-
ing exhibitions) quite a number of well-
known intellectuals, both inside India
and abroad, have fallen for the discreet
charm of the personality of Narendra
Modi, who is a dedicated member of
the stridently Hindu nationalist RSS.
Meghnad Desai, the Labour Party peer
from London is all for Modi, hoping that
he will provide a decisive leadership.
The eminent economist Jagdish Bhagwati
is publicly craving for the position of
Modis advisor (The Times of India, 26
April 2014). What is even more disap-
pointing is the statement (made on 25
April 2014) by a liberal-humanist socio-
logist like Andre Beteille, who expressed
the hope that the BJP should come to
power. One can understand their frus-
tration with the Congress-led United
Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments
failures. But how can one explain their
switching over to the BJP and that also
to Narendra Modi of all persons?
Epidemic of Rhinocerosis
a la Eugene Ionesco
Let me try to explain this acquiescence
by our intellectuals in the BJPs game
plan, through another literary allegory.
It is a play called The Rhinoceros, written
by Eugene Ionesco in 1959. It explores
the mentality of those who succumb to
fascist authoritarianism by rationalising
their choice. The play begins with a
scene where the hero sits with his friend
in a caf, when suddenly they spot
a rhinoceros in the street. At rst they
dismiss it as a hallucination. But soon,
news comes pouring from all parts of
the town of the sight of more rhinos. It
turns out to be a new epidemic called
rhinocerosis, where people are willingly
turning themselves into rhinos (like the
name of the disease rhyming with it
cirrhosis, which is brought about by
the willingness of addicts to alcohol). At
the end, in the rhino-populated town,
only two human beings remain the
hero and his lover. In the last scene,
even his lover decides to turn herself
into a rhino. She defends her decision,
by arguing that the rhinoceros has a
beautiful smooth skin and erect horns,
among other virtues! As she deserts him
to join the family of rhinos, the hero is
left alone in his room. He picks up a
mirror, looks at his face in it, and says:
I want to remain human.
Needless to say, Ionesco was describ-
ing a social psyche that is manipulated
by the ruling powers into accepting a sin-
gle homogeneous political order where
all citizens should look the same. He
chose the symbol of rhinoceros to repre-
sent three major traits of such a social
psyche (i) thick-skinned insensitivity to
problems that are outside their own
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Economic & Political Weekly EPW June 14, 2014 vol xlIX no 24
13
domain of immediate, or group interests;
(ii) herd mentality of sticking together to
defend those interests through a variety
of mental shortcuts; and (iii) smooth-
skinned hypocrisy to demonstrate their
respectability. Under this order, individu-
als are persuaded to think what the oth-
ers are thinking (which is shaped by the
media and other means of pressure), say
the same things, and justify why the
change is necessary.
Thanks to the verdict given by
one-third of our voters under a skewed
electoral system, we may be heading for
such a political order. While ensuring ob-
fuscation of past misdeeds (like the 2002
Gujarat riots), the BJP is training the
middle-class youth into a thick-skinned
generation of selsh careerists, gather-
ing the other classes into a herd with the
idea of a unitary Indian identity (marked
by the symbols of Hindutva and based on
a glorious past again harking back to
the Hindu heroes of Indian history), and
employing the smooth-skinned econo-
mists and bureaucrats to implement the
neo-liberal model of development, which
Modi had dangled as a carrot to woo the
voters. But the rest of the voters, who are
in the majority, can still be protected
from the epidemic of rhinocerosis if
only the liberal, secular and left forces
get their act together.