Why BJP needs enemies

“People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity,” said Samuel P. Huntington whose book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order drew worldwide attention at the turn of the millennium. Identity is a major issue which the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] has played with producing remarkable effects at the hustings during the last five years.  

The identity bequeathed to India by Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi when the country liberated itself from the British was essentially a Western product founded on secularism and liberalism. The quintessential Indian outlook was – and still is, to a large extent – antithetical to secularism and liberalism. India’s countless gods and the rigidly hierarchical caste system were incompatible with Nehru’s rational agnosticism and Gandhi’s mystical inclusiveness.

The later leaders who led the Congress Party lacked the profundity of both Nehru and Gandhi. Most of them succumbed to the temptations to use religious communities as vote banks precisely because they didn’t know what else to do with the baffling cultural diversity in the country. This vote bank politics instigated the majority community which naturally perceived it as appeasement of the minority communities.

Narendra Modi knew how to convert the discontent among the Hindus – particularly the upper classes who saw themselves as victims of the appeasement politics – into an identity quest. Consequently Hindutva became the new religion and identity as well as the political goal for the majority community. Secularism and liberalism became anathema. Nehru and Gandhi became enemies of the new nationalism.

Hindutva came to be projected as the new custodian of the ancient Hindu civilisation. It readily caught the fancy of the majority community in the country. Their religion suddenly emerged as superior to the alien religions with their monotheism and essentially Western worldviews. They longed to assert that superiority, their new identity. Modi gave them the means and tools. Hatred: the easiest tool, the most expedient tool for identity questers.

“For people seeking identity and reinventing ethnicity, enemies are essential,” said Huntington. If there are no enemies, it is necessary to create them. Luckily for the BJP, it had a lot of readymade enemies: the large population of non-Hindus in the country as well as in the neighbourhood.

It is very easy to define an identity by asserting what we are not rather than what we are. We are not what Nehru and Gandhi tried to make us. “We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against.” That’s Huntington again. We are not the beef-eating Muslims, Christians and Dalits. We are not the followers of Western ideals and alien gods. We are not practitioners of customs like triple talaq or Valentine’s Day. And so on.

Modi succeeded easily in telling India what it is not. He possessed all the eloquence required for that. He had the natural talent for rhetoric. He emerged at the right time: when India was discontented and frustrated. He converted all that discontent and frustration into the potent passion of hatred. Hatred is far easier to foment than love and cooperation. In fact, love and cooperation don’t need any particular ideology. And they are almost impossible to work with/on for political purposes.

Hatred is the strongest passion among mankind. The BJP, under Modi’s leadership, sowed hatred and reaped more hatred. Suddenly a whole lot of Indians became the country’s enemies. And these enemies sustain the BJP. Without these enemies the BJP will crumble like an edifice of cards. People like Sakshi Maharaj and Pragya Thakur win elections with thumping majority because they spew hatred effectively and efficiently. The BJP is sustained by such leaders. And such followers too.