12.03.1998

Indian elections - Reaction fills the gap

Backwardness and regionalism have emerged as clear winners in India’s recent elections. As horse-trading continues apace, the smaller, religious and regional parties are placing their imprint on whichever party is asked to form a minority government by president Narayanan. That task looks almost certain to fall to the hindu-nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party and its leader AB Vajpayee.

And a minority government it will be. The BJP and its allies have won 251 seats on the Lok Sabha, India’s 543 seat lower house. Deals with smaller independent forces seem unlikely to take the BJP over the 272 seats required for a majority. Congress and its allies have 168 seats, while the former United Front government has been reduced to 97 seats.

For most of the 90s India has endured unstable governments built on dubious coalitions. Less than two years ago, the BJP formed a government which lasted a mere 13 days, pulled down by the collective efforts of Indian National Congress and the United Front, a coalition of convenience which includes regional secular parties as well as the Communist Party of India and Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The 1996 elections saw the formation of a United Front government which relied upon Congress support. Withdrawal of this support led to these most recent elections.

In order to form a government, the BJP will need to curb the more extreme elements of their programme, such as its economic isolationism, anti-islamicism and plans for an open nuclear weapons programme. Many of their potential coalition partners rely on maintaining harmonious relations with muslim forces at state level.

Within this context J Jayalalitha, leader of the AIADMK party in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, is emerging as a key player. Jayalalitha and her smaller regional allies have taken a crucial and unexpected 30 seats in the Lok Sabha. Her demands to the BJP include sacking of her opponents from government in Tamil Nadu and protection from the many corruption cases pending against her. She is emerging as the king maker, but insists she will not form part of the government.

In contrast, Congress has been courting the UF and its constituent parties to form a government around a secular platform against the BJP’s rampant hindu-nationalism. Prospects for this are slim, as many of the regional players in the UF see Congress as the main enemy. The irony that it was Congress which forced this election, and the instability of another Congress-UF alliance, will not be lost on president Narayanan, who must appoint a government by next week.

Amidst all this back-room dealing, Congress’s octogenarian president Sitaram Kesri has resigned, with pressure being placed on Sonia Gandhi - wife of assassinated Prime Minister Rajiv - to replace him. A continuing Gandhi-Nehru dynasty, though by no means universally popular, is one of the few remaining symbols of stability and continuity left for Congress.

So what is going on? For 45 of the 50 years since independence, India has been ruled by the Indian National Congress. Its stable centre government was the mainstay of India’s post-colonial development. While regional disputes raged in the Kashmir and Punjab, war ever occured with Pakistan and China, and the military intervened in Bangla Desh and the Tamil war in Sri Lanka, Congress, under successive leaders of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty, maintained and developed a fragile Indian national identity.

But to what extent can we speak of India as a nation? Its hundreds of languages and religious and ethnic centripetal forces all suggest a myriad of nationalities which predate the imperial-colonial construct that was the Raj. Moreover as the Economist notes: “In recent years, Indian politics has been breaking up, as Congress’s decline has enabled smaller parties based on caste, region and religion to spring up” (March 7-13). In the main, most of these parties have not been separatist. Again, the Economist identifies the main vote-winning gambit of these forces is ‘Vote for me, I’ll give you more subsidies’.

During the cold war, Congress tried to portray India as a neutral nation, but aligned more to the USSR than USA. With the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent shifts in the Middle East and South Asia, the basis for India’s supposedly ‘third-way socialist’, secular, post-colonial identity evaporated. With it, Congress has withered. Previously, Congress was able to manage the centripetal forces through subsidy, patronage and its direct control of foreign investment. With the neo-liberal wave washing through the sub-continent in the early 90s, such possibilities were no longer within Congress’s reach.

In place of the ‘third-way’ facade which Congress tried to maintain, the BJP has a decidedly reactionary hindu-nationalist outlook. Coming to international prominence in 1992, BJP supporters razed the mosque at Ayodhya, claiming it as a sacred site of the hindu god Lord Ram. Building a temple on the ruins remains a plank of the BJP’s manifesto. Other aspects include replacing the personal law of muslims and other minorities with a common civil code, a rampant economic nationalism which calls for stringent curbs on foreign investment and a bellicose military policy which aims to take India’s long-standing nuclear weapons programme into the open. While the BJP may have to temporarily curb the more extreme elements of this programme to form a government, it will attempt to build on its recent successes to push through its agenda which is based on prejudice, ultra-nationalism and the reactionary caste system.

Whatever the immediate outcome, India looks set for a continued period of instability at the centre. Such instability provides both difficulties and opportunities for socialist forces. It must be remembered that India is one of the few countries where mass communist parties are a reality, albeit with programmes laden with the nationalist-socialist legacy of ‘official communism’. Nevertheless, the working class and its peasant allies have by no means been wiped off the political map as is the case in so many other countries.

Yet the failure of independent working class politics to come to the fore in India has partly paved the way for the BJP’s hindu-nationalism to fill the gap opened up by the fading fortunes of Congress. But the millions upon millions of workers and poor peasants remain a powerful force.

Martin Blum