London: Hurst Publishers, 2019. 224 pp. US$27.50, cloth. ISBN 9781787380059.
New Delhi: Penguin Random House India [an imprint of India Viking], 2018. 320 pp. US$8.00, cloth. ISBN 9780670089772.
Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India and Partitions of the Heart: Unmaking the Idea of India together provide a searing commentary on the emergence of Hindu nationalism, the eclipse of civic nationalism, and the nature of the emerging state and society in contemporary India. The creation of a New India, the rallying cry of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the ruling dispensation, cannot take place without unmaking the idea of a pluralist, secular, and inclusive India that emerged during our national movement—an India in which people of every faith would have an equal stake in shaping its present and future. Both books present poignant accounts of deep cleavages and fissures in our society, resulting from jettisoning or assaults on this idea of India. Interestingly, both authors build their arguments on previous studies and on their personal experiences with the incidents/events they are narrating. As the title of Mander’s book insightfully suggests, fraternity—bandhuta or bhaichara, the most cherished ideal of the preamble of our Constitution, and held closest to the heart of B. R. Ambedkar—is being irremediably corroded in a climate created by the project of unmaking the idea of India in the “New India.” While the situations and the cases covered in Partitions of the Heart: Unmaking the Idea of India are entirely from the west and the north of India, south India duly figures in Komireddi’s book. This probably has to do with the authors’ origins, Mander with roots in north India and Komireddi hailing from Hyderabad, a prominent city of south India.
Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Antecedents,” with four chapters, gives the readers a historical background to the political, economic, and social developments in the country under Prime Minister Modi. Here Komireddi analyzes the landmark political events, the response of the political parties, and the conduct of our elected representatives that paved the way for the resurgence of Hindu nationalism and the rise of Modi. The author argues that the multiple betrayals by the Congress Party when in power after the demise of Lal Bahadur Shastri, our elected representatives, and the intelligentsia enfeebled the republic’s commitments to secularism and democracy. The tenures and the leadership styles of Rajiv Gandhi, P. V. Narasimha Rao, and Manmohan Singh are discussed in detail. The origins of dynastic politics are traced to the Congress Party under the stewardship of Nehru, and the seeds of authoritarianism to his daughter, Indira Gandhi. Part 2, titled “India Under Modi,” with six chapters, is devoted to understanding the transition that India has made since 2014, with Modi at the helm. Modi’s meteoric rise in Indian politics, the creation of an extraordinary personality cult around him, policies that brought hardships to the ordinary people, centralization of power, an utter disregard for consultative and deliberative decision making, dissenting voices and parliamentary procedures, manipulation of independent institutions, damage to civil-military relations, use of media for political propaganda, a campaign of terror unleashed on the Muslims, and the prime minister’s studied silence on the killings by rampaging Hindu vigilantes are all documented here.
In chapter 8, Komireddi argues that foreign relations “are now an expression primarily of uncontainable vanities—the vanities of a Hindu supremacist boosted by the vanities of a solipsistic elite clamouring for ‘superpower’ status” (144). In chapter 9, commenting on the erosion of the independence of democratic institutions, he echoes B. R. Ambedkar: “That Modi survived such a bruising indictment … is a reminder that institutions are not self-animating creatures. What they do is contingent upon those who people them” (182). The last chapter discusses the status of Kashmir within the Indian Union, the approach of the successive central governments to the question of Kashmir, and the Modi government’s radical departure from it by abrogating Article 370. Komireddi rightly argues that the project of forced homogenization may boomerang, leading to further division and disunity in Kashmiri society. A coda briefly recapitulates the prevailing state of affairs in Modi’s New India, pointing to the malevolence of the republic. Civility, self-restraint, temperance, and moderation in public life—the prerequisites for a culture of debate and discussion in a democracy—are dying traits in Modi’s New India. Komireddi is well-informed, and he writes with flair. There is no doubt about that. However, at several places, one gets the feeling that verbosity takes precedence over calm reasoning based on facts.
The preface of Mander’s book states: “It is above all to map this systematic erosion of equal citizenship of Muslims, Christians and many Dalit people, first in Modi’s Gujarat and now in Modi’s India, that I feel compelled to write this chronicle. That this erosion and subversion of India’s constitutional assurances was accomplished without adequate resistance by India’s political and state institutions, courts and the media, and by ordinary Indians, causes me profound disquiet and grief” (xxxii). Elsewhere he writes: “I feel an intense unrest and foreboding thinking about how fundamentally the idea of India is changing, and the consequences of a leadership that so profoundly polarizes and divides us. It is imperative for the majority of Indians … to defend peacefully the precious idea of India” (76). Invoking Rabindranath Tagore’s vision of India, he continues: “The idea of a land where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high. Of a country that belongs equally to all. For this reason, I write this book” (76–77). Three aspects of the book stand out clearly: first, it provides graphic accounts of the violence and divisions taking place in our society as a result of the politics of religiosity aggressively pursued by the BJP under the leadership of Modi; second, it argues that the prevailing situation is a result of massive cracks in our fraternal solidarity, which is under unprecedented strain at the moment; and third, it issues a passionate call for the reclamation of a pluralist, humane, and inclusive India by countering the politics of hate “with a new and radical politics of love and solidarity” (233). Besides, while contrasting the support base of resistance to discrimination against the minorities in the US and India, Mander makes some very significant observations about the outcomes of higher education in India: “The systematic hate propaganda against Muslims, people of colour, Latinos and immigrants in the United States was resisted among white Americans mostly by those who had benefited from a college education. By striking contrast, in India, the greatest support of divisive hate ideologies lies with people with the highest levels of education and privilege. … [F]ar from building liberal values or scientific temper, it seems only to nurture a sense of selfish entitlement and prejudice against minorities of various kinds, and the poor” (xl). This provides food for thought to those at the helm of higher education in India, particularly those who are enthusiastic about introducing the American liberal arts model of higher education; they need to ponder as to why the above conditions are the case in India and how to rectify the situation.
The first four chapters of Mander’s book describe the communal polarization taking place in the society of Gujarat in the wake of the Godhra incident and then its replication in the rest of India with the BJP coming to power at the centre in 2014. To suggest relegation of the Gujarati Muslims to subordination and servitude in post-Godhra Gujarat, the author draws an analogy with the status of the Dalits in our society: “Across Gujarat, I observe what I regard to be the ‘Dalitization’ of the Gujarati Muslim” (26). Both Komireddi and Mander explode the myth of the much-touted Gujarat model of development, which has meant humiliation, lack of freedom, and second-class citizenship for Muslims. In chapter 5, Mander tries to counter the claims of the Modi administration that the lynchings are “statistically trivial stray events” by illustrating that they, in fact, “are threatening to become a national contagion” (95). We perhaps may not find a more succinct critique of Hindu nationalism than the one made by Mander. In chapter 7, he opines: “Hindutva nationalism mandates that every Indian must accept and willingly submit to the cultural, social and indeed political dominance of the Hindu faith as interpreted by the Sangh. It matters little if the Sangh’s idea of Hinduism is pugnacious, exclusionary, patriarchal, upper-caste, north-Indian and anti-reason” (136). Reflecting on the question “What does it take to love your country?” in the India of today, the author concludes: “The ‘nationalist’ duty to demonstrate your love for your nation, in the Hindutva doctrine, requires the ultimate litmus test of hating. … I can be a proud Hindu only if I hate Muslims. … I can love India only if I noisily hate Pakistan” (156).
The lines of argument taken by both authors converge on several points. For example, both Komireddi and Mander hold the democratic institutions, political parties, and elected representatives of independent India responsible for compromising the vision of the founding fathers of our Constitution for a pluralist, inclusive, democratic, and secular India that prepared the ground for the eventual resurgence of Hindu nationalism and the rise of Modi. Thus, for Komireddi, “Modi, an affront to that idea, is also the result of the disfigurement of that idea” (209); for Mander, the blame mainly lies with political parties: “it has long been in the making, with the so-called ‘secular’ parties carrying a great part of the responsibility for where the Indian people find themselves today” (xxxiii). Both authors hold the conduct of the Congress Party responsible for immensely undermining the secular and democratic credentials of the republic. For both, the major crisis that politics in India faces today is the absence of an alternative to the BJP. Thus, Komireddi laments: “India’s tragedy is that just when it is faced with an existential crisis, there exists no pan-Indian alternative to the BJP. What remains of the opposition is bleached of conviction” (206). Reflecting on the electoral victory of the BJP in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections of 2017, Mander writes: “The lesson, then, … is that the runway victory of the BJP in the elections to the Uttar Pradesh assembly in the spring of 2017 was as much due to the BJP’s polarizing campaign and Mr. Modi’s charismatic but divisive leadership, as it is due to the failure of any authentic and credible secular alternative” (176).
Both Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India and Partitions of the Heart: Unmaking the Idea of India fall into the category of various attempts that are being made to understand the rise of majoritarian nationalism and the path India is taking with the BJP in power in New Delhi. They have been written with passion. While Komireddi employs his journalistic skills to chronicle the political history of independent India, Mander draws on his background in administration, and later his rich experience of working with the downtrodden people as a human rights and peace worker, to narrate incidents of increasing state apathy and indifference, often complicity, to the sufferings and marginalization of the minorities. Both Komireddi and Mander make a plea for the reclamation of the idea of a plural and inclusive India. Komireddi’s style of writing may be termed verbose; that of Mander is lucid. Both books are gripping and free from jargon. They could be of interest to anyone interested in understanding the denting of the secular and democratic credentials of the Indian republic under different dispensations and the transition it is making now under the shadow of Hindu nationalism. The books are well organized, and the proofreading is good except for a few typos.
Ganeshdatta Poddar
Education University, Pune