Book Review
Name of the Book: Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism—The Violence in Gujarat
Author: Ornit Shani
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, New Delhi Year: 2007 ISBN: 978-0-521-72753-2
Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand
How does one account for the rapid rise of Hindutva forces in Gujarat? Much has been written on this subject by scholars, journalists and social activists. This book makes useful additions to ongoing discussions on the subject, using in-depth interviews and other ethnographic material that provide greater depth and nuance to our search for answers to this burning question.
Shahni’s basic thesis is that culturalist explanations that argue that Hindutva, in Gujarat or elsewhere, is merely a reflection and manifestation of a deep-rooted, widespread and historical animosity between Hindus and Muslims are deeply flawed. If that were the case, she asks, how was it that pre-1970s Gujarat did not have a tradition of sharp communal polarization and communal violence? Her point, which she persuasively argues, is that ethnic and communal identities, generally defined as in opposition to each other, are not unchanging historical givens. Rather, these, as well as the ideologies that articulate them, such as Hindutva, must be seen as products of particular socio-political contexts.
Much of this book is, therefore, devoted to developing the socio-political context in which, Shani argues, the Hindutva ideology began to grow and flourish in Gujarat. Although she recognizes its traces in the colonial period, Shani focuses particularly on the early 1980s onwards, which is when Hindutva forces really witnessed a massive upsurge in the state, and the BJP emerged as the single largest party, thus effectively putting an end to Congress dominance. Crucial developments in Gujarat starting from the 1980s onwards, she argues, are key to a proper understanding of the rise of Hindutva in the state.
It was in the early 1980s that Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s largest city, and one now notorious for anti-Muslim violence, began to register a rapid economic decline. Once a major centre for textile industries, new policies of the government favourable to mill owners but clearly anti-labour, including, but not only, the ‘liberalisation’ of the economy, resulted in the closure of many large textile factories that once employed a large number of workers, mainly Dalits, Muslims and Backward Castes. Working in these factories had not enabled the formation of a strong cross-community working class unity and identity, for the different castes and communities tended to be concentrated in specific branches of the industry and also lived in caste-specific localities. In other words, class-based mobilization among working class Dalits, Muslims and Backward Castes that could have challenged the later rise of Hindutva was weak and little developed.
At the same time as unemployment mounted owing to the rapid decline of the textile mills, a section of Dalits, many of who had been earlier employed in the mills, began to effectively challenge ‘upper’ caste Hindu hegemony, such as through groups such as the Dalit Panthers as well as by educating their children. Since Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and Backward Castes together formed the vast majority of the population of Gujarat, various political parties sought to woo this large vote-bank, and this resulted in some partial gains for the Dalits, thus increasing their political salience at the same time as it began to pose a challenge to the ‘upper’ castes, who saw their hegemonic control as being increasingly questioned.
Then, in 1985, the government of Gujarat announced reservations in government services for Backward Castes in the state, a step which proved to be a major watershed in the history of inter-caste and inter-community relations. The ‘upper’ caste Hindu lobby mounted a fierce and bloody anti-reservation agitation, which held the state to complete ransom for more than half a year. The ‘upper’ caste Hindus saw this move on the part of the government as clearly directed against their interests, for they had an almost complete monopoly of government services despite being a relatively small minority. In the face of mounting contradictions and even violence between the ‘upper’ caste Hindu minority, on the one hand, and the Dalit-Backward Caste majority, on the other, Hindutva forces aggressively stepped in and, as Shani shows, succeeded in transforming the conflict into one between Hindus and Muslims. The growing intra-‘Hindu’ conflict on the basis of caste that the anti-reservation agitation had given birth to was seen as particularly dangerous for the ‘upper’ caste minority elites for it would have threatened their hegemony, which rested on their claim to speak for all Hindus. It would also have exposed the complete hollowness of the Hindutva ideology, based as it is on the notion of a Hindu monolith, transcending caste and class divisions. Hence, in a very conscious and planned manner, Hindutva forces, along with other ‘upper’ caste-led formations, deliberately steered Dalit and Backward Caste protest, which was initially directed against the ‘upper’ castes, onto the Muslims, who, till then, had taken no part at all in the on-going conflicts. This resulted in one of the most horrific anti-Muslim pogroms that Gujarat had ever witnessed, in which powerful elements within the state apparatus also played a central role.
Shani sees the same logic at work in the 2002 anti-Muslim carnage in Gujarat, as being a concerted attempt by Hindutva forces to deliberately frame Muslims as the menacing ‘other’ so that the subaltern castes can be mobilized against them rather that against their real oppressors—the Hindu elites—and so that, in the process a unfied Hindu vote bank, transcending caste/class divisions could be built up. Accordingly, she writes—and this holds true not just for Gujarat but much of the rest of India—Hindutva forces are making well-planned attempts of wooing the Dalits, Adivasis and Backward Castes through various populist schemes and Hinduisation drives, the aim simply being to co-opt them and pit them against Muslims and, in this way, stave off the threat that these sections might ever seek to mobilize against caste Hindu hegemony.
Shani’s basic thesis—that Hindutva is, to a very great extent, not a religious formation or religious ideology, in the strict sense of the term, but, rather, a political programme that reflects the interests of caste Hindu minority elites and their desperate efforts to counter challenges to their hegemony from within the larger Hindu fold (particularly from increasingly assertive Dalits and Adivasis)—is a very persuasive one. It is certainly more credible than those explanations of Hindu-Muslim conflict that see it simply in religious terms. In that sense, it makes a very valuable theoretical contribution to our understanding of the phenomenon of what is loosely described as ‘communalism’, but which, as in the Hindutva case, might more aptly be termed as ‘fascism’.