The further shores of Partition: ethnic cleansing in Rajasthan 1947

Past & Present, August, 1998 by Ian Copland

I

Probably the most significant development in Indian politics since Independence, the dramatic rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has excited intense debate (and not a little anxiety) among scholarly observers of the South Asian scene. At the heart of this debate is the question of 'why'. Why are Indian voters turning away from the Congress (which, at least during Jawaharalal Nehru's premiership was known for its commitment to tolerance and secularism) and embracing a party which purports to stand for the 'core values' of 'India's age-old culture',(1) and which talks menacingly of taking steps to defend the country's Hindutva (Hindu-ness) against external aggression and internal subversion?

Of course, opinion is divided. Some explanations for the BJP's success focus on the party's structure and performance. For example, it is argued that the party has benefited from having a highly centralized, almost despotic, high command; that it has been well served at the regional level by astute, adaptive leaders such as Rajasthan's Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, and at the local level by its close association with grass-roots organizations such as the nativist Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS)(2) and the revivalist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP); and that it has shown great flair in finding innovative ways to sell its policies to the electorate.(3) Other explanations emphasize, rather, the role of unsettling developments in Indian society during the 1980s, such as the Mandal Commission's recommendation for a substantial reservation of places in colleges and the bureaucracy for the so-called Backward Castes, the mass conversion to Islam of over 1,000 'untouchables' in Tamilnadu, the Muslim revolt in Kashmir, and the Congressite programme of economic liberalization. The BJP's chauvinist, anti-transnational stance, it is suggested, has a lot of attraction to voters facing an uncertain future. Others again stress contingent factors such as the steady decline since the 1970s of the once-dominant Congress, which has opened up a strategic space at the centre for emergent parties like the BJP to fill.(4)

Nevertheless, there is one notion that cuts across the spectrum of opinion: put simply, it is that the rise of the BJP has a lot to do with the mounting frequency and ferocity of clashes between members of India's major religious communities. As many commentators have remarked, the BJP did not perform dazzlingly in its first four years of operational life, from 1980 to 1984; in particular, its showing at the 1984 polls was disappointing. This led to a change of leadership and a new, overtly Hindu-centred strategy, which by 1989 had narrowed into a campaign to reclaim the alleged site of the god-king Rama's birthplace at Ayodhya. On 6 December 1992, this campaign reached fruition when BJP and VHP workers tore down, brick by brick, the mosque which the Mughals had erected over the site in the sixteenth century, and laid the foundations for a new Ram temple. Coincidentally, and arguably as a direct consequence of the Ayodhya campaign, the BJP's national vote-share in the 1989 elections went up by 4 per cent (7.4-11.5 per cent), enough to secure it eighty-five seats in the Lok Sabha (Table 1). But there is more. While Hindu-Muslim 'communal' riots had been on the increase for some time, 1989 saw a spectacular jump. Towns which had never had a major riot before exploded into violence. The death toll rose by 500 over the previous year. Early in 1993, immediately following the VHP's 'triumph' at Ayodhya, upwards of 3,000 Indians perished in the worst communal riots since Independence. Did the BJP, avowedly a Hindu communal party,(5) benefit electorally from the atavistic passions stirred up by these outbreaks of social violence?

TABLE 1
BJS/BJP LOK SABHA SEATS 1952-1991(*)

            Madhya       Rajasthan     Uttar      Bihar      India
             Pradesh                  Pradesh

1952           -             1           -          -          3
1957           -             -           2          -          4
1963           3             1           7          -          14
1967           10            3           12         1          35
1971           11            4           4          2          22
1984           -             -           -          -          2
1989           27           13           8          8          85
1991           12           12           50         5         119

(*) Sources: David Butler, Ashok Lahiri and Prannoy Roy, India Decides: Elections, 1952-1991, 2nd edn (New Delhi, 1991), 98-9; Yogendra Malik and V. B. Singh, Hindu Nationalism in India: The Rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (New Delhi, 1995), 186-7; India Today, 15 July 1991, 42.

Most BJP-watchers have no doubt. Shekhar Gupta writes that 1989 marked, 'the beginning of a dangerous [new] phase in which religion had come to be accepted as part of electoral politics'.(6) Jogendra Yadav notes that the BJP in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan has consistently done well in constituencies containing a relatively high proportion of Muslims, where the communal factor is arguably of major concern to Hindu voters.(7) Shail Mayaram shows how the polarization of the 1989 election campaign laid the ground for riots in Jaipur.(8) Observing that Karnataka 'has become highly communally sensitive since the BJP made a serious bid to expand its political base in the state', Ali Asghar Engineer concludes that 'often communal violence is used to increase one's electoral appeal'.(9)