The Promise and Peril of Modi’s Triumph Hindu nationalism made India governable. Can it stay that way? By Walter Russell Mead
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-promise-and-peril-of-modis-triumph-11558989753
Narendra Modi’s triumphant re-election as India’s prime minister may not have been a shock—ever since Indian forces retaliated in February against Pakistan-based attacks in Kashmir, the contest had been moving in his direction—but it does represent an important tipping point in Indian history, and therefore in world history.
As Tunku Varadarajan wrote in these pages last week, India is turning decisively away from the Western ideological foundations of its founding fathers. The secularist and liberal beliefs that grounded Indian politics during the long era of Congress Party domination have lost majority support. Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalism can do what the Congress vision no longer can: assemble a consensus that makes India governable.
A dedication to secular liberal values imported from abroad is weak tea for holding large political agglomerations together, and the Congress vision of India was dying long before Mr. Modi administered the coup de grâce. Before the new era of majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party governments, India was turning into a country without a majority. Regional- and caste-based parties had eaten away at the Congress consensus. The complicated coalition building necessary to form a majority was frustrating effective governance. Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalism for now offers a collective identity that can mobilize Indians across the subcontinent, defeating both the dying secularism of the Congress Party and the more parochial visions of the regional and caste parties.
But if Hindu nationalism can unify a majority, it does so at a significant cost. Putting Hindu identity at the core of Indian politics risks alienating India’s 200 million Muslims. In an effort to offset this risk, Mr. Modi has spent more time in the Islamic Middle East than any previous Indian prime minister, and his relations with countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are strong. Polls show BJP’s support among Muslim voters, though small, increasing in the last decade. Still, many Muslim as well as Christian Indians fear marginalization and even persecution under emboldened Hindu nationalist rule.
Mr. Modi’s victory was welcome news in Islamabad, Pakistan, where the triumph of Hindu nationalism over Mahatma Gandhi’s secular vision is seen as vindicating Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s belief that the Muslims of British India needed their own state. Some elements of the Pakistani military believe that alienated Indian Muslims can become a secret weapon in Pakistan’s unequal struggle against its larger neighbor. Pakistan may also hope that another term for the Modi government will mean continued tension in Kashmir, where the local Muslim majority is likely to resist Hindu nationalist policies.
The shift toward identity politics in India follows a script familiar in world politics today. From Turkey to Brazil, from Hungary to Israel to American college campuses, we see a shift away from a cosmopolitan vision of politics based on universal values toward a focus on strongly felt group identities as the driving force of political engagement. At least for now, the secular, universalist ideals of the Enlightenment are retreating before the forces of particularism and nationalism.
The question in India isn’t whether the Congress Party can somehow resuscitate a national majority behind the secular vision of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. That ship has sailed. The question is whether the BJP’s form of Hindu nationalism can avoid a further splintering of Indian identity along regional and caste lines. The regional differences in India are profound, and history tells us that economic development increases the salience of identity politics. When they were predominantly agrarian and poor, large multinational and multicultural polities like the Ottoman, Russian and Austrian empires were politically stable. Economic growth and modernization disrupted this political order, as ethnic, religious and linguistic groups across the empires began to demand self-determination. India could face similar pressures as modernization forges ahead.
Meanwhile, the BJP must find a way to capitalize on an unprecedented economic opportunity created by the developed world’s growing tensions with China. As companies in Japan, the U.S. and elsewhere seek to reduce their dependence on Chinese supply chains, India can become a major global manufacturing power in short order. Success would create millions of jobs and give India the economic strength and diplomatic clout it needs to fulfill its ambitions by joining the front rank of world powers. Unfortunately, the inward-looking value system of Hindu nationalism will struggle to accommodate the difficult reforms (especially on labor and land law) needed for India to grasp this opportunity with both hands.
Americans must wish Mr. Modi success. Given China’s current course, it’s hard to envision a peaceful future in Asia or anywhere else without a prosperous and united India.
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