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From Ideological Pragmatism to Hindutva : A Hypothesis of 2019 Elections

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Pragmatism as a governing ‘logic’ post 1970s

Elections till 2014 including the ones that Congress lost, were fought on atleast the rhetoric of Nehruvian ideas of liberal democracy, progressive social reform and economic development. Simultaneously, since the Emergency, India has seen ‘pragmatism’, both in economic and social policy, as a governing ‘logic’ used by successive governments to push a patchwork of reforms – a multitude of temporary props to assuage public protests, mitigate crises and stabilize a crumbling system – with rather myopic policy frameworks while leaving myriad discordant conflicts for the future.

Neither Congress nor non-Congress regimes explicitly claimed to any ideological political framework in this period – an ambiguity which suited them in electoral strategy and post-election alliances. While pragmatism gave more room for maneuver, both to Congress and non-Congress governments, it lacked a coherent ideology to combat a new opponent which it has found in the form of Hindutva. In political terms, pragmatism is not an ideology and it can never counter any ideology while it may be a condition for maintaining it.

Hindutva as the governing ethic post 2014

That ideological ambiguity has summarily changed with the 2019 elections, but it didn’t happen abruptly. The governing political ideology of India started undergoing a change starting in the 1970s with the conflicts surrounding the Emergency, Mandal Commission and Babri Masjid demolition. 2019 elections mark a completion of that change. The last five years were, in a way, a launch pad to a new ideological formation – Hindutva – as the governing ethic by the BJP. In many ways, the ideological assertion of Hindutva in India’s political system is testimony to the catastrophically flawed nature of post-Nehruvian pragmatism that was ideologically hollow by design.

While it does not have much to differentiate itself from the Congress in terms of the economy, BJP has shown that there is much more outside the economy that it can make people care about. In a way, its 2014 campaign was very much in the vein of ‘pragmatism’ of preceding elections – promise of jobs, low inflation, and no corruption – while Hindutva remained in the background. The ideological divide between the Congress and BJP wasn’t as big a factor then as it was in 2019. The recently concluded elections were not fought on the old – who is more pragmatic – terms. There was a clear ideological divide and BJP did not shy away from underlining it.

What the last five years show is, if the framing of pragmatism is devoid of ideological underpinnings, intentionally or otherwise, it becomes vulnerable to criticism, even subjugation, from another doctrine ready to take the space. The 2019 elections were the first to have been fought on a wholly and radically different ideological plank of Hindutva, with explicit condemnation of Nehruvian liberal democracy.

All the Congress had to offer in response was its own version of Hindutva, justified in the language of ideological pragmatism – it didn’t even try to been seen defending the Nehruvian ideology, content in claiming ownership to Nehru’s legacy. That does not mean that the ideology of Nehruvian liberalism had all answers to India’s problems, just that its policy prescriptions was grounded in solid ideological framework.

Political necessity of opposition’s ideological framework

Being the propagator of the governing ideology, BJP could only commit “errors” – it could never be fundamentally wrong in the way its ideologically shaky opponents could. Moreover, in politics, the point is not to avoid all the errors but to be able to justify it – this needs an ideology. BJP could justify anything within its ideological doctrine – from demonetization to mob lynchings. Congress and the opposition needs to realize that the new common sense about social and political norms have changed, heavily influenced by the ideological preferences of the BJP. The Indian National Congress has to atleast attempt to provide a new common sense.

Frankly speaking, the opposition never tried to decisively dislodge the emerging hegemonic force of Hindutva – they only tried to get around it. What the opposition offered was not a counter-ideology but a pragmatic bend of the prevailing Hindutva doctrine in a less fundamental direction. Calls for pragmatism cannot stand without an accompanying doctrine. Without an ideological framework, a pragmatism can always be framed as ideologically bankrupt. BJP did just that, on every occasion it could. Opposition’s pleas to the pragmatism of Indian voters had no robust ideological underpinning. Successful as it might have been in previous elections, it was seen as an incoherent and defensive response.

If Congress wants to stop Hindutva from achieving hegemony, it has to now fulfill the political necessity of an alternative ideological doctrine in response to BJP’s own ideological assertions. Without an ideological force behind the opposition, Hindutva will become the default governing doctrine of Indian politics. Any subsequent pragmatism thereafter will be forced to abstract from that new common sense, just like pre-2014 pragmatism abstracted from the default of Nehruvian liberalism.

Conclusion

For the opposition to offer anything substantial as a challenge, it has to develop a robust new common sense, based not on pragmatic interpretation of the prevailing views of Hindutva but on ideological coherence of its counter-narrative and exemplar governance where it presently holds power. The unchallenged political sway that the Hindutva doctrine has acquired over Indian politics will gradually seep into constitutional institutions, civil society, academic and research institutions etc. The challenge therefore is to answer the political necessity of a cogent ideology which can provide foundations for pragmatic governance.

Institutions: Independent Decay or Decaying Independence?

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In the present decade, we have seen an unprecedented amount of writing on the decay of institutions worldwide – whether it is the media or the courts or the legislatures. – from New Delhi to the Washington, from Brussels to Westminster. Commentators and critics lament the hollowing out of institutions that had been presumed to be bedrocks of constitutional democracy especially after World War II. The inability of these structures to stem the tide of illiberal, personalized, cult-based governments has evinced some surprise, even introspection, in the promoters of liberal democracy.

Newspaper columns, essays, editorials and even some books are filled with historical analysis of institutions – their origins, their structures, their functions and their present decay. Most of this is quite convincing and seemingly accurate. But they only present a part of the story. A lot of commentary presumes institutions as stand-alone setups that function above the dynamic of everyday politics. For example, the Election Commission of India was assumed to be an ‘apolitical’ for long time. Now, the liberal intelligentsia in India find that adjective to be false.

Similarly, prominent commentators have time and time again cast the personal shortcomings of some institutional leaders as exceptions. For example, the former Chief Justice of India Deepak Mishra was seen as an aberration who would be repaired over by his successor, Justice Ranjan Gogoi. Many editorials who praised him while he was CJI in waiting now have much to complain about him. Moreover, suddenly the Supreme Court of India looks like a palace of intrigue.

On the other hand, the former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan was a darling of the liberals as much for his policy decisions as his comments on socio-political issues. RBI, it seemed during his tenure, could do no wrong. His successor Urjit Patel, who was initially seen as a timid bureaucrat, suddenly found himself being praised for standing upto the incumbent government. His successor Shaktikanta Das has had no such turn in fortune.

It would seem from these example and those from around the world that the persons leading the institutions are just as important as the artifice of the institutions themselves. That is certainly true. However, the political dynamics and ideological contests that surround institutions are just as important, and often ignored by commentators. Do institutions matter? Yes, they do. But people that lead them and their ideas matter just as much.

Take the example of the ECI. The lament of its ‘decay’ from a strong force of impartiality to its shortcomings in the present sometimes conveniently forgets the political struggle that created its strength – under the leadership of T. N. Sheshan, the support of Supreme Court and popular belief in ECI’s newly acquired powers to ensure free and fair elections. It did not stop there, there was a change in the lexicon of Indian electoral democracy – Model Code of Conduct, which had to be adhered to no matter what. What we have failed to appreciate while this became the norm is that it was not an event, but a dynamic process that brought us to a place where out expectations from ECI had changed – it was and continues to be a struggle to keep the elections free and fair. ECI does not exist outside the realm of everyday politics. Its officers are not objective robots but subjective bureaucrats. It is not an independent, autonomous body but an inter-dependent, constrained institution that depends as much on the courts and popular support as it does on the some of the very people it is supposed to keep in check – the powerful leaders in government.

Similarly, the Supreme Court of India is a case in point. It would appear from commentary that the SC has suddenly taken a turn towards decay. Presumably, it was a fine institution earlier. What this ignores is that the roots of today’s decay lie precisely in the fineness of the court in the preceding period. This was underlined by an unprecedented power-grab by the court – to appoint its own members, justified by the inability of Indian politicians to be sensible and popular resentment against them. While the ‘collegium’ temporarily solved some problems, it created a facade of independent judiciary without oversight by the people’s representatives. Today, the same independence that was applauded and institutionalized has created a situation where a sitting judge can be a judge in his own case without the slightest bit of irony. Not just that, it has created a situation where the political executive can exploit these gaps and shortcomings to its advantage while preaching the rhetoric of judicial independence when suitable.

The example of RBI is even more baffling. While a major headliner in the limited reaches of the financial press, the RBI Governor wasn’t a figure of media commentary until Raghuram Rajan became the Governor. And suddenly the person holding the post has become a thing of daily news. However, the previous ignorance and the recent stardom of the RBI fails to capture the institution of India’s central bank in its entirety. While 1991 liberalization is seen as a major step in opening India to global trade, its role in changing RBI’s functions is only mentioned in passing. Moreover, the changed financial market landscape in which RBI functions today means that its institutional dynamic with the government with the central governments is vastly different from what it was two or three decades ago. At the same time, the ideological bent of Indian economists and financial commentators has changed – the institutional expectation from RBI is therefore not the same. At the same time, the role of political executive has been made more prominent via the monetary policy committee (MPC) – away from the singular role of the Governor in monetary policy. But that is not all that RBI does. In a globalized and digitized financial landscape, there is a struggle between government and the RBI for jurisdiction over emerging arenas. This makes the RBI board and the RBI Act important structures – both of which remained outside common public discourse until recently.

These examples should suggest that institutions are neither autonomous nor independent. Neither should we want them to be. They are dependent – on their leaders, on other institutions, on people, on ideas, on precedents, on political dynamics and on many other things. To narrow them down to just their leaders or just their independence is both disingenuous and naive. They reflect a tenuous social contract that emerges after every small struggle for power and for ideas – one that happens at all times and that is shaped by a variety of potent forces that make the adjectives ‘autonomous’ and ‘independent’ seem childish and hollow.