#
In fact, between 2014 and 2019, there was nothing in Narendra Modi's economic management that was different from what Manmohan Singh would have done if in power,
#
except perhaps for demonetisation, which was reminiscent of Indira Gandhi.
#
Arun Shourie famously called the Modi government as UPA plus cow, but even cow is not really a differentiator,
#
as the Congress resorted to soft Hindutva during his recent campaign and includes welfare schemes for cows in some of the states where it is in charge.
#
In other words, all our political parties are left-wing on economics and right-wing on social issues,
#
and therefore against individual freedom in every domain, much to the dismay of those like me who believe in individual rights.
#
It is clear that much of our politics is based around identity.
#
It is also clear that much of our politics is based around patronage and the bribery of voters, direct or indirect.
#
Does this mean that ideology does not play a part in Indian politics?
#
That is a conventional wisdom, and it is one that we shall examine critically in this episode of The Scene and the Unseen.
#
Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioural science.
#
Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
#
Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
#
My guest today is Rahul Verma, the co-author with Pradeep Chhibber of Ideology and Identity, a fantastic new book that makes the argument that contrary to the assumptions of many,
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including myself before I read this book, Indian politics is actually deeply ideological in nature.
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Rahul is not related to me. Indeed, he is a Verma who spells his name V-E-R-M-A, while I am a V-A-R-M-A.
#
His is the most common spelling, and it's a pet peeve of mine that so many journalists spell my name wrong with an E instead of an A.
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One could argue that my objection is rooted in identity, but I would say that it's rooted in ideology,
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for it's a core philosophical belief of mine that we must respect all other individuals, especially when it comes to how they spell their names.
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Before I begin my conversation with Rahul on more serious matters of ideology and identity, let's take a quick commercial break.
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The book I want to recommend today is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
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If you enjoyed the TV series, consider that this audio version of the novel is read by Elizabeth Moss.
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Check it out on Storytel. And remember, you get a 30-day free trial only at Storytel.com slash IVM.
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Rahul, welcome to the scene in The Unseen. Thank you.
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Rahul, tell me a little bit about your background. Like, what were you trained as? Were you an economist or social scientist? What got you into this field?
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So I'm a trained political scientist. I'm completing my PhD from University of California at Berkeley.
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Currently, I'm a fellow at the Center for Policy Research. What got me interested into politics? Frankly, I don't know.
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I was interested in elections and politics as a child, perhaps. So as a child, I was sort of like most kids. I was a very naughty character.
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So I was born very close to Ayodhya, a small town in my village, which is very close to Ayodhya.
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So growing up, I basically witnessed two political phenomena that changed India forever.
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I didn't understand those two phenomena then, the Mandal politics as well as the Ram Mandir politics.
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So literally, my first memory of Ram Mandir agitation and mobilization was that you can see buses with policemen.
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And all these policemen, what they do is basically eat banana and throw on the road.
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Later on, I figured out banana is a high energy fruit and you know, that's why these policemen eat it.
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But that's my memory of a curfew. When you see a curfew, you will see lots of policemen in buses and they will be basically eating bananas and throw them out.
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So as a kid, I used to do all the tamasha during the day. So during summer vacations, my father basically asked me to read newspapers.
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And in the evening, when he'll come back from his office, I have to tell him what is on the front page, what is on the sports page.
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And so as a child was just four, five or six, I started reading newspapers out of fear that I'll get sort of scolded in the evening if I don't do my homework.
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So I used to do homework on newspapers and I used to read. So because I was growing up in UP, at home, I was getting Hindi newspapers.
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So both on the sports page as well as on politics, I used to hear funny proper nouns, right?
#
Like in UP, there is a constituency near Mirzapur, which was Robert's Ganj.
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And you know, as a four or five year old kid, I was like, Robert's I had heard in Hindi movies. So why is there a Robert's Ganj?
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Or if you read a Hindi newspaper, all these terms are spelled very like, like before wicket is Pagbada.
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And, you know, these just used to sound funny in my head.
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And so I think that's how I got interested in politics, reading about them, sort of making a notebook, both of cricket scores.
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So cricket and politics both also have a component of numbers.
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If you win elections, you have to be right on the numbers.
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So I used to sort of maintain a notebook for a very long period of time on both cricket scores and on both political scores.
#
And somehow I think that got interested me in politics.
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And do you think just thinking aloud, do you think that unlike other English speaking elites like myself for that matter,
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who I mean, I grew up just reading English newspapers, unfortunately,
#
did the fact that you were reading Hindi newspapers day in and day out since you were a kid,
#
did that give you a slightly different understanding of politics from the people who are your peers today?
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So I don't know that. But even today, I order a Hindi newspaper.
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And if you look at Hindi newspapers, their coverage is very different from what you get in English newspapers.
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So I don't know about a different perspective, but I certainly get to see more things than what get covered in a Hindi newspaper.
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The editorials in Hindi newspapers are very, very different on very different subjects.
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I remember a couple of years ago, there was a debate in a couple of English newspapers by Ram Guha, Sagarika and other people basically writing on this topic.
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Why don't we have conservative public intellectuals?
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And my answer was perhaps you don't read vernacular newspapers because your point is we do.
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We do. They just don't write in English. If you read Marathi newspapers, if you read Kannada newspapers.
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So, in fact, because I have been reading Hindi newspapers, so I know Hindi public intellectuals who have conservative viewpoint.
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And then I asked my other friends who read Marathi or Kannada newspapers and they said we do have these things.
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So I think certainly you get a very different point of view by reading vernacular language newspapers.
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So, you know, as you kind of grow up and then you got into the academics of it as well,
#
who are the sort of thinkers who influence the way you think about politics in the world?
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Are there any books that you can recommend to my listeners or books that you feel change the way you think about the world?
#
There is a long list of both thinkers and books that have influenced me.
#
So I'm a political science or politics nerd. So, you know, I read things.
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I don't know. There's no time of either reading or sort of like working on things.
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But so if you think of good Indian political scientists who people should read, perhaps in the older generation,
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Rajnikothari, Randhir Singh, who was a big Marxist theorist.
#
If you have to read contemporary people, I think Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes in Indian Express is one of our foremost political philosophers.
#
I think Yogendra Yadav still when he sort of like despite being in politics, I think some of his writings are very illuminating.
#
There were some social scientists who were American, but they worked on India.
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Myron Wiener's work on Congress Party, Child in the State, Migration and Nativism.
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I think Suzanne and Lloyd Rudolph's work on the political economy of India.
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So there are lots of political scientists who have influenced.
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I think I also read a lot of Hindi fiction.
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So if people want to sort of like Ragh Darbar is one classic Shrilal Shukla, but Mela Achal, we were talking about Kashi Kashi, Kashi Narsingh.
#
So one advice which I got from my PhD advisor that if you're not getting idea, read fiction.
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So don't read too much political science, but also read fiction.
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And I think fiction poetry makes you think about things in a very different context.
#
So I love reading poetry.
#
I grew up in a small village, but my schooling was from Lucknow.
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So there is some influence of Lucknow.
#
I think even like I have always been fascinated by two line share or six line couplets, which basically tries to bring a very, very complex thought into, say, 10 or 12 words.
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So I do think people perhaps, I don't know.
#
There have been so many poets who have influenced me.
#
Generally, I think so I don't read much political philosophy.
#
Perhaps later in my life, I'll do that.
#
But as part of course, curriculums I have read, I think Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke and all of these have made influential points.
#
What books people should read?
#
I think read as much as you can.
#
And just look at like top 50 novels in your language, which you are comfortable with or top 50 novels in English.
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I don't know what names to give to you, but fair enough.
#
And what you said definitely strikes a chord with me because I haven't read remotely as much in Hindi as you obviously have.
#
But if someone were to ask me, how do we understand India of the 1960s and 70s?
#
And I would say there is no better book than Raag Darbari.
#
How do we understand the nature of the Indian state?
#
I would say there is no better book than Raag Darbari.
#
You can pick up books by historians and political theorists and all that.
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But the sort of magic in a good work of fiction that captures society.
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And Raag Darbari incidentally is available on Storytel, who are the sponsors right now of The Scene in the Unseen.
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So you can actually listen to it in Hindi over there, even if you're not comfortable reading the language.
#
So sort of moving on from there, let's come to the book that we're talking about, which you've co-written with Pradeep Chhibber, Ideological Identity.
#
How did you come to this subject?
#
So Pradeep Chhibber, he's my PhD advisor.
#
He's a professor of political science at University of California, Berkeley.
#
Pradeep is considered one of the foremost experts on party politics and party systems.
#
And he has written some very interesting books on party systems.
#
But before this book, he wrote another book, which I think didn't get attention.
#
The title of the book is Religious Practice and Democracy in India.
#
And what he shows in that book, that religious practice in India, especially the public.
#
So this is all based on data, survey data.
#
So people who go to, say, religious sites such as temples, gurudwaras, mosques, churches,
#
and people who participate in religious services such as bhajan, kirtans and jalsas and church services,
#
their outlook towards democracy is much more positive than those who don't practice religion.
#
And the idea is basically that all other sources which links individuals to the state are sort of captured.
#
So if you think of or captured or not working properly, basically you have a capricious state in India.
#
Bureaucracy is discretionary and sort of like discriminates.
#
Political parties have been captured by vested interests.
#
It is religion or religious places which even for moments provides equality to people from all walks of life.
#
And that's why those who participate in it, they think that the democracy in the country is functioning much better.
#
So Pradeep generally, and I think this is largely, I wouldn't say a norm,
#
but slowly getting more traction that in natural sciences or in engineering people, they don't write solo author pieces.
#
You will always see five, six, eight, ten people writing this.
#
Social sciences was generally where people were doing solo work,
#
but nowadays given there's a lot more emphasis on sort of like data-related work,
#
and this basically brings much more collaboration than earlier.
#
And there I think I see much more collaborative work happening between not just professors,
#
but professors and their mentees and students.
#
So Pradeep generally works with all of his students.
#
So I am not an exception to the large community of scholars he has been sort of producing in the last 20 odd years.
#
So we were writing a couple of op-eds and Pradeep generally likes to take a walk when he wants to discuss something, right?
#
And so I think this was around Independence Day, we were in Berkeley,
#
and somehow the conversation started happening that there is a long shadow of partition, right?
#
Basically same themes emerging every five, six years,
#
the debate on majoritarianism or how to accommodate religious minorities into body politic,
#
the debate on reservation resonates every time.
#
So we thought that these were some of the founding debates we were having at the time of independence.
#
And so I think the idea started germinating from there.
#
So during the 2014 elections, what we did is wrote series of op-eds on six, seven chapters, which you see in the book.
#
Basically, we tested our idea in 1,200 words each.
#
And once we got enough reactions,
#
so we did start with the classic economic and social ideology framework.
#
That's where we started.
#
And in the data, there wasn't any difference in the economic.
#
So there was a difference on the social ideology or social conservatism.
#
But between parties, there was no difference on the economic ideology front.
#
And then we started wondering why we don't see the other dimension,
#
which is so much prevalent in Western Europe and North America.
#
And that got us into thinking perhaps either our polity is one dimensional or there is a second dimension,
#
but there is something unique about our own historical and cultural context.
#
And we started reading about things.
#
And that's how the collaborative process began.
#
I was struck by a quote which actually comes towards the end of your book,
#
but kind of sums up the conventional wisdom which your book is questioning.
#
And it's a quote from the Italian Giovanni Sartori.
#
Quote, ideology does not strike roots in all types of soil.
#
And while there is very little evidence to the effect that ideological factors do have empirical relevance in African context,
#
it is abundantly clear that most of what is spoken as ideology is mere political rhetoric
#
and at the same time image selling to Western public.
#
And this applies to India as well.
#
And early on in your introduction, you guys write,
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quote, contemporary Indian party politics is commonly viewed as chaotic,
#
centered around leaders, corrupt, volatile, and non-ideological in nature.
#
What accounts for this perception and for the corollary view that elections in India are rarely,
#
if ever, genuine contests of ideas, policies, and visions?
#
So why does this perception then kind of exist?
#
So apart from this quote, there was another interesting, I think, letter to the editor in New York Times or somewhere
#
where someone basically went on a rant that, you know, Indian political parties are just alphabets,
#
one lot siding with the other lot.
#
It's not a solemn selection of leader of 1.3 billion, but like a children's game show.
#
But if you remember 2014 election or 2019 election, both the Congress party leaders,
#
the top leaders in the Congress party, as well as BJP leaders,
#
were in fact unequivocally saying that this is a fight or battle for the soul of India
#
or this is a fight between two ideas of India.
#
So politicians perhaps realize these are ideological battles,
#
but in our scholarly context, journalistic context, we thought voters do not,
#
so there is no structure or framework to our politics.
#
People just vote on their whims or they get something and in exchange of those favors,
#
they vote a particular political party or politician.
#
So we don't want to go that route and we tried to avoid as much as we could.
#
We didn't want to go on a rant against this whole perception of that Indian politics is non-ideological.
#
But we do wanted to make a point that any departure from how politics is conducted in West
#
is seen as primordial or the politics in West is structured around ideas,
#
whereas politics in developing world is just taking some samosa, some liquor, some sari
#
or tribal instincts and so on.
#
So we were sort of like bugged with this sort of characterization about Indian politics
#
Jiomani Sarturi is one of the foremost political scientists.
#
He's a classic on party systems and I like his writing.
#
When I read this stuff, I thought this should go in our book
#
because this is what we are sort of like challenging that we may not...
#
developing countries like India or post-colonial countries like India
#
may not have the same structure of politics as the West,
#
but the departure should not be understood as these countries,
#
there is no framework to our politics.
#
So I think that was sort of like beginning of why we wanted to sort of take on this argument.
#
The perception has remained, I think,
#
what we would like to describe as a fake fact of politics.
#
There is no basis to make that claim,
#
but once that claim started gaining ground,
#
it became sort of a truism or a normal assumption about our politics.
#
No, and what it strikes me, and this is even a mere kalpa of sorts,
#
in the sense that this perception, this looking at Indian politics
#
through a left-right prism, through a fundamentally Western prism,
#
and saying that, oh, okay, it doesn't function along this prism,
#
therefore it is sort of non-ideological and it's on all these other factors,
#
which is one that I have held for so long and your book is making me reconsider,
#
really comes mostly from political thinkers or theorists or columnists or pundits
#
who are a part of the English-speaking elite whose education is kind of Western,
#
whether it is in the West or here.
#
And as you pointed out earlier in the episode,
#
you've grown up reading Hindi newspapers,
#
and therefore you weren't exactly captured by the elite in that sense.
#
You also had access to expressions of different contestations
#
and a different set of intellectuals from where you came.
#
Before we kind of proceed by talking about the book,
#
I think it's kind of useful to define some of the terms because they get confusing.
#
So, for example, define ideology.
#
Okay. But I just wanted to sort of get back to one point,
#
which is basically this departure from the West.
#
Democracy is sort of understood and defined very differently in the context of West,
#
whereas democracy in the context of post-colonial and underdeveloped countries
#
is always defined with an adjective, right?
#
That this is not a perfect democracy, it has become an ethnic democracy,
#
it has become something like that.
#
But if you come to think of it,
#
India is one of the busiest laboratories of democratic politics.
#
And I think now, so in US when we used to make presentations,
#
not just me, but many times,
#
if people who work on South Asia or Africa or some other country,
#
there would be a general question, and this is a legitimate question.
#
How far does your theory travel to other parts of the world?
#
And sometimes in my irritation, I used to basically, if not in public,
#
I do used to say that I don't care if it doesn't travel.
#
In every theory, we own one sixth, right?
#
So given the size of our population,
#
we now need to sort of like the theory of democracy now needs to move out from the West
#
and see how it is being practiced in a country like India or a Bangladesh or say Philippines.
#
And those theories now sort of like needs revision.
#
And no, I get what you're saying.
#
And there's a certain condescension there from people on the West who are sort of saying that
#
here's our theory and our theory is paramount and does it fit you or does it not?
#
But asking different questions of your theory,
#
where you actually have to kind of prove that it travels, as you said,
#
I can understand why you were irritated by it.
#
Getting back to ideology, let's talk about, you know,
#
since your book is centered around ideology, define it for me.
#
So we take a very sort of like watertight definition of what we consider as ideological conflict, right?
#
Which is basically an issue bundle.
#
And many of these issues go together.
#
And voters take basically position on these issues.
#
So it might happen that you care about one issue more than the other.
#
But because it is part of your issue bundle, you will have some position closer to your preference.
#
But for anything to become ideological and structure party politics,
#
we claim that it must meet four conditions.
#
One, every election can have a very different issue which drives that election.
#
But for something to become the basis of ideological conflict,
#
it needs to be stable for a long period of time.
#
Because it is an idea, it must have an intellectual origin.
#
There must be people or intellectuals, elites writing about it, debating about it and talking about it.
#
So the second criteria is it must have an intellectual basis.
#
Third, to reach that idea to masses, it needs channels of transmission from political or social elites to masses.
#
Fourth, it must have enough number of people on each side of the divide.
#
Because unless that happens, you won't see political parties taking a clear stand on that issue.
#
And that wouldn't become a basis of ideological conflict.
#
And I think to think about why we make this argument that the Indian version of ideological conflict is very different,
#
because those ideas are born out of historical experiences and trajectories.
#
And the historical experience of the West and a post-colonial country like India was very, very different.
#
And that's why our ideological conflicts are going to be very, very different.
#
And that's a very fascinating part of your book,
#
where you kind of elaborate on the four different ways in which ideology as the West understands it is formed in the West,
#
and why none of those apply to India because of a completely different set of circumstances and histories.
#
Can you elaborate on what those four ways are?
#
So this is a very famous thesis by Lipset and Drokhan, and those are two great political scientists.
#
So the claim they make that the West European party system is frozen in four cleavages.
#
The four cleavages were basically labor versus capital, rural versus urban, center versus periphery, and church versus state.
#
Those were the four sort of like main cleavages on which party politics in West Europe happened.
#
And it happened because West Europe underwent a historical trajectory of first renaissance, reformation, then industrial revolution.
#
Industrial revolution produced capital labor divide.
#
It also, because of industrial revolution, it also created an urban-rural divide.
#
There was always a center-periphery issue going on in many parts of those countries.
#
And the church and state thing comes from renaissance and reformation.
#
A country like India never underwent this historical experience.
#
Overnight, we became an independent nation-state from a colony.
#
So for us, while nation-building debates were happening in the background,
#
but we suddenly become an independent or sovereign country within a matter of night.
#
And at the time of independence, most of these countries like India were so poor, so rural,
#
that you cannot have a politics on these cleavages.
#
In fact, when Nehru stands in the constituent assembly to begin the objective resolution,
#
he basically begins with that the first task of this assembly is to clothe the naked, feed the hungry.
#
So the state, in a sense, there was a consensus that the state is going to take the burden of poor, right?
#
And that's why we don't see divide on economic ideology.
#
There may be minor differences on the route to welfare model,
#
but I don't think any political party, as you said, in India is pro-market in that sense, right?
#
We don't have market versus state debate among our political parties, barring, I think, the communist parties,
#
which has a clear, at least written prescription,
#
but I don't know whether they follow the same thing on the ground.
#
So the two axes could not have, so they didn't take off.
#
The center periphery debate could have taken off.
#
And there were riot-like situation, in fact, on the question of integration of various parts of India.
#
And I think that problem got in some ways resolved by the reorganization of state into linguistic provinces.
#
So language politics now was just centered within the state, not vis-a-vis the center.
#
So I think there were some steps taken in 1950s and 60s,
#
which restricted the center-state fight emerging as a central issue, basically as a national issue in that sense.
#
So you would see in Tamil Nadu a fight with Delhi or in Jammu-Kashmir a fight with Delhi.
#
But that does not become a mobilizing plank across India, especially in the large parts of Hindi heartland.
#
The fourth, in India, we never had that kind of centralized church.
#
Hinduism never had that kind of...
#
It's very diffused, almost outsourced.
#
So we never had a church versus, at the time of independence, there was no church versus state conflict that was happening.
#
But we could in some way sort of like argue that religion or accommodation of religious minorities
#
did become a meta-narrative of Indian politics, and it does resonate still today.
#
So you kind of pointed out, and I found your arguments quite convincing and obviously agree with them,
#
that these four sort of ideological cleavages of the West don't apply to India.
#
However, you said this does not mean that India does not have ideological contestations,
#
and you talk about two specific ideological battlegrounds, which have been ideological battlegrounds for decades,
#
and therefore they are stable, and they meet all your other conditions of the ideology, that they are stable,
#
they have intellectual elites on both sides, they are propagated through all the various kinds of means.
#
Tell me what those two are.
#
So we basically argue that Indian politics is structured by two ideological scales.
#
One, we describe it as politics of recognition, which is basically the idea of bringing different groups into the body politic,
#
and what would be the method of accommodation.
#
So debates on reservations and quota, whether the Indian state should hew to majoritarian characteristic,
#
that basically forms the bulk of basis of politics of recognition.
#
And if you read the Constituent Assembly debates, these were the questions on which our founding fathers,
#
there were very few women in the Constituent Assembly, so founding fathers were debating about.
#
The debate on cow slaughter, like I think began in 1909 or something,
#
where members in the Constituent Assembly are quoting statistics,
#
that there were so many thousand cows in the north-western for 20-year provinces,
#
and now their population has decreased to this, and that's why there is a cow slaughter happening,
#
they will invoke Gandhiji, and you know, so Constituent Assembly, you were having these things.
#
Similarly, the debate on reservations started way back in 18, I think 1882.
#
So there were some ramblings earlier also in Mysore, in Kolhapur, and in Trivandrum.
#
Yeah, yeah. But in 1882, I think Hunter Commission, so there was a representation by Phule to Hunter Commission
#
for affirmative action for Dalits and backwards in the education sector.
#
And I think that debate on reservations began there,
#
then it took another shape during the Monte Milo reforms, Mont-Gueux-Chemsford reforms,
#
Gandhi-Ambedkar debate, a large part of Constituent Assembly debates were on the reservations, 1950s Kahlilkar.
#
So I think throughout last hundred years, we had spurts of moments
#
where the debate on reservations were happening for different communities.
#
And I think now with the BJP's final, so in fact, the reservation bill for economically weaker section,
#
this is the first time it has been passed, but at different times, various governments have tried to bring this bill,
#
which is what it is doing is changing the nature of the debate on reservation
#
from sort of historical reparation and social justice to economic backwardness.
#
So there's a very different twist that is being given by BJP on the reservation.
#
In fact, this particular twist is almost one which takes it from your first ideological cleavage,
#
which is to do with recognition to your second one, which is to do with statism.
#
So not necessarily, but...
#
Because it's again about the state sort of remaking the economy of society by this kind of...
#
So we have a very particular understanding of what do we mean by statism.
#
And I do acknowledge that it may not fully encapsulate what is happening.
#
So in our view, the role of the state in society has a very different conception in Western political thought and Indian political thought.
#
In the West, society basically makes the state to sort of like reorganize it.
#
So that's the Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau tradition.
#
Whereas if you read Indian political thinkers and the classic textbooks such as sort of like Mahabharata, Shastra,
#
so I think the state society conception in Indian political thought is very, very different.
#
And perhaps there is a reason why we don't have a good theory of state and we don't have a good theory of kingship.
#
In fact, in all our texts, there is things written about what a good king should do and what a bad king would do.
#
But why do we need a king?
#
The theory of kingship is not well established in Indian political thought.
#
So the way most of these thinkers, not just limited to the Hindu tradition,
#
but it seems like a subcontinental idea and you find resonance of this in some ways in Buddhist thought, Islamic thoughts, as well as in Hinduism,
#
where the role of the state or the king is to act as the guardian of the society.
#
So the state and king cannot sort of like, they should protect the social norms, but they should not be trying to remake the society.
#
And they should not even sort of like have redistributive impulse, basically taking away property and then redistributive.
#
In fact, if you think about Gandhian idea of trusteeship, it was based on the same notion.
#
This is not the job of the state to take away property from people who have it and so basically changing social economic norms.
#
And I think, and this is what emerges from constituent assembly debates and debates that were happening on a Hindu court bill at that moment of time,
#
was that people like Ambedkar and Nehru wanted to use the levers of the state to remove the inequalities in our social and economic life.
#
And then there were other members in the constituent assembly who were opposed to these ideas.
#
They thought that this is not the job of the state to remake the society.
#
And like you explained in your book, it comes, I mean, this whole conflict in a sense comes from differing perceptions of what is the relationship between the state and the society.
#
As you say in your book, quote, in Western political theory, Rousseau, Locke and Hegel are good examples.
#
Political order means a subjugation of society to the state.
#
So, you know, you might have a state of nature there, but for society to function, you need the state to protect individual rights and so on.
#
That's Western political theory. But to give the contrast to that with, you know, what is contained in Indian conservative thought,
#
you quote Karpatri Maharaj and I'll quote this, Karpatri Maharaj's words, quote, in Indian tradition, the society is always supreme and the ruler is accountable to dharma and society.
#
The administrator and administration keep changing, but not the society and dharma.
#
The laws of the state always have to be favorable to religious text.
#
So in that conception, society already exists.
#
It is prior to the state and then the state comes in and the state is like sort of an administrative convenience.
#
That's absolutely correct. So in this conception, the role of the state is just a facilitator.
#
There is permanent feature, which is society.
#
And the interesting feature about this whole conception is that there may be some sort of like deformation or bad things that may appear in the society.
#
Now, the state should not be sort of intervening to remove those bad things.
#
The society would itself heal up or will come up with solution.
#
Right. So think about the problem of untouchability.
#
Right. Gandhi never said the state to sort of like take the law in hand and remove untouchability.
#
Gandhi basically goes in the society and says this is a bad thing. We need to reform it. Right.
#
So in this framework or the model, the reform has to come within the society.
#
The state should not be using a violent mean or a danda to sort of like correct things.
#
In fact, one of my favorite quotes about politics is by Andrew Breitbart, where he says politics is downstream of culture.
#
And it would seem that that represents sort of the traditional Indian view.
#
And it's also very interesting that then the people fighting for statism, as it were, the state intervening in the economy and in society, were essentially Western educated liberals like Nehru and Ambedkar.
#
That is correct. That is correct.
#
So Karpatri Maharaj, he's a very interesting character, and I hope some political theorist works on him.
#
So Karpatri Maharaj was the founder of Ram Rajya Parishad.
#
This was an orthodox Hindu party in 1950s, which slowly sort of got merged into Bharatiya Jan Sangh.
#
So the quotes are coming from Karpatri Maharaj.
#
He wrote, I think, more than a thousand page book, and the name of the book is Marxvad or Ram Raj.
#
And he basically is sort of like challenging not just the Marxist interpretation of the state and society, but he takes on all possible Western philosophers in that.
#
And a lot of it is, in some ways, you can call it basically polemic and rhetoric, but then somebody sitting in the jail and writing these thousand pages as Indian political thought.
#
Is a translation of it available in English?
#
So I have not seen the English translation.
#
I've seen the Hindi one, and it is sold by Geeta Press.
#
Yeah, which is interesting, which connects me to both a past episode and a future episode.
#
I did an episode a few weeks back with Suyash Rai of Kanagi, and he mentioned your book in his discussion with me.
#
And he mentioned this book by Karpatri Maharaj.
#
And I'm doing a future episode with Akshay Mukul, which should be out in a few weeks on the Geeta Press.
#
He's written an incredible book on the Geeta Press.
#
So that should be fairly interesting.
#
And you kind of then you thought that you've got another quote from Gandhi quoted by Masani, but quote from Gandhi in your book, which is,
#
quote, I look upon an increase in the power of the state with the greatest fear because although apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation,
#
it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of all progress, stop quote.
#
And, you know, here he's almost coming down on the side of the traditionalists.
#
And so tell me a little bit.
#
So these are the two sort of ideological contestations you've identified.
#
There is a politics of recognition and there is a politics of statism.
#
Let's talk about both in turn.
#
Let's talk about statism first.
#
What are the sort of debates taking place around statism at the time of the Constituent Assembly?
#
Because it's not as if Gandhi and Ambedkar are getting their view.
#
And in fact, the cover of your book is really fascinating.
#
As you pointed out, it's a picture of Nehru's first cabinet.
#
And the fascinating point you made is that if you just look at them, you know, left to right,
#
they almost represent where they stand ideologically with Nehru in the center,
#
Shyama Prasad Mukherjee on the extreme right.
#
And then you have Vallabhbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad.
#
And on the extreme left, you have Dr. Bheem Rao.
#
And on the extreme left, you have Dr. Ambedkar and almost representing sort of the very two cleavages that you talk about,
#
you know, where you could say that the guys on the right, like Shyama Prasad,
#
are against the sort of statism and the intervention that these guys do.
#
And the guys like you get to the left, you get to Ambedkar.
#
And that's probably the extreme when it comes to recognition, though not remotely as extreme as so many people today,
#
which is quite interesting.
#
Tell me about the battles around statism.
#
So if you think of 1940s and 50s, statism basically implies using the power of the state to change social and economic norms.
#
By social norms, you can take, for example, marriage norms, inheritance norm, and economic redistribution of private property.
#
Now, the best example of this debate could be found in the debates that were taking place on the Hindu Court Bill.
#
In fact, there was so much viscerous opposition to the Hindu Court Bill that the debate started in, I think, 1940s and it ends in 1956,
#
when Nehru in fact had to break down the Hindu Court Bill into four parts and then get it passed through the parliament.
#
But before that, I would sort of like the hell broke loose.
#
Ambedkar thought that Nehru is not serious enough on the Hindu Court Bill because he thought this is very,
#
very important to give women equal place in the society.
#
And given Nehru's non-seriousness on the matter, he in fact resigned from Nehru's cabinet.
#
Nehru had different plans and didn't sort of talk, took Ambedkar in confidence on that.
#
But before this Gandhi- Nehru-Ambedkar battle, Purushottam Das Tandon in 1953 became the president of the Congress Party.
#
And he was one of the traditionalists who was opposed to the Hindu Court Bill.
#
And Nehru knew with him being the president of the Congress Party, this would not work.
#
And in a way, Nehru had to revolt, use his charismatic personality and powers of the prime minister to sort of ask Purushottam Das Tandon to step down.
#
So there was battle within the Congress Party, within the government on this question of Hindu Court Bill.
#
And what was Hindu Court Bill? Basically, trying to sort of like codify marriage and inheritance norms.
#
And similarly, on the question of redistribution of private property, both, I think, Nehru had not just the instincts, but he pushed for land reforms, right?
#
And look at the kind of opposition it met. There was sort of a compromise on this.
#
India was, I think, one of the first countries to have right to property as fundamental rights.
#
And this was a sort of like pushback traditionalists gave back in the Constituent Assembly that they got right to private property as a fundamental right.
#
And Nehru, on the other hand, wanted to push the land reforms. And in some ways, it failed.
#
So those were like two big debates that happened in 1950s.
#
And now, of course, right to property is no longer a fundamental right.
#
And this is something I had an episode on with Shruti Raj Gopalan. I think it's episode 26. Commend me for my memory.
#
Episode 26 of The Scene and the Unseen. I'll link it from the show notes.
#
And it's interesting how both Karpatri Maharaj and Maulana Madhudi, one of the founding thinkers of Islamism, both opposed this kind of redistribution and this kind of statism.
#
And you kind of wonder when you talk about, and this is a question I ask many of my guests, that when we debate sort of the idea of India,
#
fine, Nehru's idea of India, some of which I agree with, some of which I don't agree with,
#
but Nehru's idea of India won out in those founding years partly because he happened to be a giant of the freedom movement.
#
And therefore, he was in that position and partly because of happenstance that other figures from within his party,
#
like the traditionalist Hindu wing of his party sort of got sidelined after Vallabhbhai Patel died in 1950.
#
Then, you know, he made Prashottam Das Tandon step down because he wanted Kripalani to be Congress president.
#
And that wing kind of just faded away. But my question is this that before we arrive at what the idea of India should be,
#
and it's basically a bunch of elites debating that and deciding that, it is also perhaps interesting to question what is India?
#
And should the idea of India reflect what India is? And did that idea of India reflect what India was?
#
I mean, you know, later on in time, Dindayal Upadhyaya made the point that the Constitution does not reflect India,
#
that it's been foisted by sort of liberal Western elites and so on.
#
And this is then a question that I've asked various people on this podcast, including Suryash, including Shashi Tharoor a while back,
#
and various people. So I'll ask you now that, you know, how do we resolve this?
#
That let's say that, you know, we might welcome the idea of a liberal constitution.
#
But if the liberal constitution is something imposed by elites, by liberal elites on a country which is fundamentally illiberal,
#
and I don't necessarily use that in a bad way, but which is fundamentally not liberal, then is that imposition itself not illiberal?
#
That's a good question, complicated question, and I don't think I have a good answer to it, but let me try.
#
I think so first, we must remember, so this idea of India term got popularized by Khilani's book.
#
And I think one doesn't need to do a very careful reading, just a cursory reading will tell you that Khilani talks about ideas of India.
#
He basically says that there were multiple ideas of India, the idea of India makes the case.
#
And that's why he's writing about it, because he thinks the idea of India represents the diversity of not just the diversity of the population,
#
but only the idea of India allows all other ideas to exist simultaneously.
#
So in that sense, not just diversity, but pluralism, where you sort of like, multiplicity of thoughts can sort of coexist.
#
And perhaps, so in the book, in the conclusion, and this is a sort of like a thought experiment we borrowed from Ashutosh Vashney,
#
which is basically think of like 1940s India, you had three strong contenders for power.
#
Vallabhbhai Patel on one hand, and Nehru on the in between, and then you have Bose on the other hand.
#
Bose and Patel both were very, very popular and charismatic leaders and they had big organizational influence, Bose Gandhi debate of 1930s when Bose became the president of the Congress Party.
#
So Vashney in his book basically writes that one shudders to think what would have happened to India if instead of Nehru,
#
Bose or Patel would have become the prime minister, first prime minister of the country.
#
So I think depending upon your ideological position today, you would have a point of view on that particular question.
#
But I think in a diverse country like India, the passing of Biden from Britishers and basically to the liberal elite, it allowed India to remain democratic.
#
Perhaps with some deficiencies and everything. But if we would have gone other way, and by that I don't mean Bose or Patel,
#
but if a conservative politician would have sort of like got the bait in, I think the very much idea of democracy in India would have been in danger.
#
So this counterfactual thought experiment sort of like tells me that, okay, the discourse in the beginning was dominated by liberal elite,
#
who sort of presented them as patrons of masses. But in doing so, at least they germinated the idea of democracy in our country.
#
No, and there's a fascinating insight in that thought experiment, in the sense that as you correctly pointed out,
#
that of all the ideas of India which could have won out, there is only one idea of India which would have allowed the others to contest it and emerge.
#
So today, if you have say, some would argue that the idea of India which is on the ascendant today is not just the idea of Narendra Modi,
#
but also the idea of Vandabhai Patel and this is maybe the direction he would have liked to take India in.
#
I don't think that's exactly correct, but some would make that point.
#
Then the point to be made there is that other idea has emerged and triumphed in our democracy because we first ensured that it was a liberal democracy to begin with.
#
That's actually the most satisfying answer of all the ones that my guests have given me so far.
#
You've kind of described the sort of the contestations around stratism.
#
Before we go in for a break, tell me a little bit about the contestations around recognition.
#
So I think we discussed some of it, especially on the reservation debate, but also on the question of majoritarianism,
#
which is basically whether the Indian state should queue to majoritarian tendencies or it should become more accommodative of religious minorities.
#
So I think we didn't do enough justice on that question in terms of like there was ambivalent in the position of leaders at the time of independence.
#
And I think that's what ideological conflict do.
#
It allows you to sort of like mitigate on certain questions, but on other questions you have to be accommodated of the opposition.
#
So we create a secular state, but we allow in our directive principles that we will think about UCC.
#
We will think about religious conversion.
#
We will think about what to do with animal husbandry and cow slaughter.
#
Right. So in some ways, and many, many have pointed out, it has become a practice that anything, any government functions in India happens through a Hindu ritual.
#
Now, you could say that this is a cultural practice, but then by following one sort of cultural practice, you're basically towing to the majoritarian ritual practice.
#
So I think that's a reflection of the ideological conflict as well as some scholars have gone to the extent of saying that what emerged in 1950s was a Hindu state.
#
That basically we were more accommodative of Hindu majoritarian demands than basically liberal secular.
#
But the point that the BJP has throughout made the Jansangh made before it and the BJP has kind of made is that the Congress's version of secularism, what they call pseudo secularism, was pandering to minorities.
#
So I think perhaps in practice, Congress ended up doing that.
#
So secularism, which was a matter of conviction of our founding fathers, because the idea of India would not have survived without a secular India, slowly became a politics of convenience, a politics of compulsion.
#
But it's no longer a matter of sort of like ideological conviction. But basically, and I think BJP's opposition is that they do sort of appeasement of Muslims and they haven't done anything to uplift those populations.
#
And I think to some extent that charge is not wrong.
#
What the secular or so-called secular parties did, they basically sort of like used Muslim elites to mobilize Muslim population, but did not do enough for the Muslim masses in that sense.
#
And come to think of it, right?
#
In 60 years, Congress ruled most of the states. How many Muslim chief ministers can you think outside the state of Assam and Jammu Kashmir?
#
Well, given the population, you will have a natural choice as a Muslim chief minister.
#
I can remember only perhaps one example from Maharashtra and six month period for, I don't remember the name, but in Bihar.
#
Other state Congress never made Muslim chief ministers.
#
How many sort of like Muslim ministers or MPs came out from the Congress party or other secular parties?
#
So the BJP is being now able to mobilize not just on the question of secularism, but also on the question of social justice.
#
Because what they have managed to convince a large section of Indian population that again, this was basically so politics of reservation for OBC was not an OBC politics.
#
It was just for Yadavs in North India, right?
#
Politics reservation for Dalits was not meant for all SCs.
#
It was just meant for Jatavs in the heartland.
#
And I think what BJP has managed to do is exploit the fault lines on both the social justice, secularism, as well as some sort of like nationalism, patriotism angle.
#
I love the way your eyes light up when we talk about politics.
#
We're going to take a brief break now and we're going to come back and get a little deeper into the nitty gritties of how Indian politics has evolved through these ideological cleavages, as you put it.
#
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another week on the IBM podcast network.
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If you're not following us on social media, please make sure you do your IBM podcast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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As I have asked you guys before, if you're finding what you listen to interesting, then please take a screenshot of what you're listening to.
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Send us a note with it. Tag us on social media.
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We just really appreciate getting feedback like that, as do all of our hosts.
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Also want to mention the fact that we're still hiding at the best place on earth to work in, which is the IBM podcast network.
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So if you're interested, please do send us an email to careers at IndusVox.com.
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One other thing I wanted to mention that this is the week of the crossover.
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We have not one, not two, not three, but four crossovers this week on the network.
#
Hosts from one show are showing up on another.
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And so if you'd like to listen to your favorite host in a different context, stay tuned and find out where they appear.
#
On the Rani Skruvala podcast, Rani talks to me about the importance of focus, empathy and choices and how those three aspects have formed the crux of his journey.
#
On Cyrus Says, we have a crossover episode as film and TV journalists and host of the podcast on the very IBM network that you're listening to right now,
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Mr. and Mrs. Binge Watch, Aniruddh and Janice Sequeira talk to Cyrus about how spouses with different tastes in TV get along, how to interview celebrities and the onslaught of remakes.
#
On Ganatantra, Alok and Suryu talk about the institutional tug of war between the judiciary and the political executive over appointment of high court and Supreme Court judges.
#
You can also catch Ganatantra host Alok Prasanna Kumar as a guest on the Pragati podcast talking to Pawan Srinath about how India's anti-defection law has undermined democracy.
#
On A Simplified Shori, Chuck Nadine and Sriket talk about all of the other unusual variants of crickets which are played around the world.
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Things like whoop cricket and stuff like that. I think you'll enjoy that.
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On Keeping It Queer, Navinan Farhad are joined by Mr. Gay World India, Suresh Ramdas.
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He throws light on gay pageants and why this representation matters.
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On States of Anarchy, Anahita Majumdar of Himalas South Asia joins Humsani to discuss the crackdown on press freedoms across South Asia.
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On Paperback, the founder of Arugula and company, Niharika Goenka joins Satyajit and Rachita to discuss her secrets to the healthy lifestyle and books that motivate her thoughts.
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And with that, let's get you on with your show.
#
Welcome back to The Scene in the Unseen. I'm chatting with Rahul Verma, co-author with Prateep Shibbur of the excellent thought-provoking book Ideology and Identity.
#
It'll give you new insights into Indian politics, so do pick it up.
#
Continuing from where we left, you kind of described how you guys disagree with the notion that Indian politics isn't ideological.
#
You pointed out that what we think of as the typical ideological cleavages of the West don't apply to India,
#
but we have our own ideological cleavages which have come from our history.
#
One, around statism, the role of the state in the redesigning society or the economy.
#
And two, around the politics of recognition.
#
Now, what you also do in your book is that you tackle people's descriptions of what Indian politics actually is about.
#
For example, people say Indian politics is all identity politics based around vote banks.
#
People say it's patronage politics and voters are basically bribed during elections and so on and so forth.
#
So, tackle them one by one for me.
#
As far as identity politics is concerned, you're obviously not taking an absolutist position that identity doesn't matter
#
because the title of your book is Ideology and Identity.
#
But tell me a little bit about your thinking on this and how do you test for the importance of identity in the views that people hold?
#
Okay. So, as you rightly said, we're not sort of taking that position that identities don't matter.
#
In fact, one part of me deeply believes that your ideological position are also related to your social identities
#
because given that the ideological conflict is on the question of identity, right?
#
If it's about accommodating lower caste or religious minorities into body politic, then it is related to your identity.
#
Similarly, your identities determine in what kind of social and economic norms you are embedded in.
#
And if state is going to change that, then again you are sort of like interacting with the identity portion.
#
What we sort of like disagree with that there is some sort of like determinism attached to your identities
#
as if identities alone determine what you are going to sort of like your policy preferences are going to be.
#
And which political party you're going to vote for.
#
And these kind of like debates or talks become much more common during elections in India where all conversations start and begins with caste.
#
As if you are born into a certain caste and you are going to vote for a particular political party.
#
And the way politics in India is changing, I think it is leaving many more people surprised
#
because we started with that assumption.
#
So what we are basically doing in one of the chapters, trying to sort of distangle identity and ideological platform.
#
And so in the world I come from, where I was doing my PhD, there's a particular way of sort of like writing things.
#
So you make a theoretical point, you also take on the counter arguments and then you provide evidence for your theoretical point.
#
And then there are new methods being developed to test for some of these questions.
#
So how do you separate identity and ideology? That was the question for us.
#
So what we basically do in that chapter, use evidence from a survey experiment to show that despite your identity,
#
whatever caste or religion you are born into or practice, it doesn't, though it may be correlated with your ideological platform, but it is not deterministic in that sense.
#
So that's what we do is basically showing that prejudice does play a role, but there is an independent effect of your ideological beliefs on what you sort of do.
#
So I have two kind of questions here. One is that while it's obviously correct to say that identity is not deterministic,
#
and you might even be arguing with a straw man there because who says it is, but while it's correct to say that identity is not deterministic,
#
like you can't look at an individual and say that his identity or her identity determines the way she will vote.
#
But you can look at a group and say that it is likely that this group will feel this way because of his identity.
#
An example being that I think it's fair to say, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the average upper-caste person would be against reservations
#
or the average middle-class person would be against redistribution or high taxation.
#
And I'm not going into the merits of any of these policies. They are more complicated.
#
But these are sort of the positions that they would hold on average, and therefore there is something to be said about identity determining even one's ideological position,
#
which brings me to the second point where you've got these very interesting surveys in your books and you've got a lot of data
#
which shows that people's positions on certain issues like reservations could be partly determined by identity,
#
but are partly also determined by ideological position or other first principles which they come from.
#
But my sort of how I tease that out is by asking you that could it not be the case that many of those counter views,
#
many of those ideological positions that appear to come from first principles are rationalizations of a tribal instinct that they feel arising from their identity?
#
Like how can you account for that?
#
So you're right. I think that deterministic point was a bit far-fetched or a stretch.
#
But think of what you said. All political parties are rooted in social cleavages, not just in India, across the world.
#
If you look at Democrats in the United States, a large portion of their votes would come from African Americans and white poor and Hispanics and immigrants.
#
And therefore the argument can be made, in fact, I'm just thinking a lot, sorry for interrupting you,
#
but the idea can also be made that a lot of that politics is actually more based on identity than people previously would realize and less based on ideology.
#
And again, I'm just thinking aloud that could possibly account for the rightward drift of the Republican Party in recent times,
#
where a lot of the previously about ideological principles, like earlier ideologically they were for free trade,
#
but now they no longer seem to be so as they're all behind Trump.
#
So you could argue that a lot of those ideological positions were positions of convenience and it all boils down to identity at the end of the day.
#
So the two, in fact, three questions. So let me tackle first two.
#
So, yes, there is a relationship between identity and voting for a particular party. But why are they doing so?
#
Because that particular political party espouses some policy platforms that are closer to their identity.
#
And those policy platforms are actually those ideological beliefs, right?
#
Why does a Dalit vote for a Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh?
#
Because they think that Bahujan Samaj Party takes care of Dalit interest, right?
#
And that's the idea. This is, so when I was talking about the determinism,
#
it is not because I was born into this category and I have a leader belongs to that category and we like each other.
#
Basically, because I think that this party takes care of my interest and interests are basically reflected in your ideological leanings, right?
#
So that's the limited point I was trying to make there.
#
The second, I think what you are trying to suggest is that parties leave their position and they sort of take up new positions.
#
It's not a matter of convenience. You can say that, but then this ideological space,
#
which structures or undergrids the conflict and party politics, is not a static space.
#
Political parties in some ways, organizationally dynamic.
#
They will keep bringing new voters, leaving out some old voters.
#
And that's why the ideological space, not just because of the time and space,
#
but because of the groups that you sort of like take into that ideological space will also keep moving.
#
And sometimes it is moved by, that's the third point, it is moved by leaders, right?
#
And that's one of the chapters where we talk about people are not attached to leaders because they just like the leader
#
because leaders basically represent a kind of sort of become a heuristic or a hint for the ideological platforms they want to sort of like believe in.
#
And I think one of the points which you are sort of bringing up, and it's a hard question to answer,
#
is basically whether they like the leader and then decide the platform, which you were mentioning in the case of political party and identities,
#
or they have a policy platform and then they find the leader closest to that policy platform.
#
Or it's not so much leader and policy platform.
#
Like another contestation I had, you know, in your book where at some point you seem to imply that,
#
like in terms of statism, obviously, I totally agree with you about the statism cleavage that exists around the state remaking society.
#
But as far as the state remaking the economy is concerned, I think there are very, very, very few people like me
#
who would want the state to not interfere with the economy and would allow markets to play a hand.
#
And I think that a lot of the people in 2014 who supported Modi, some of them were taken in by the rhetoric,
#
but a lot of them were perhaps couching their innate preference for some of the other positions of the BJP,
#
like their positions on Muslims or cow slaughter or whatever,
#
and instead making it sound respectable by talking about economic freedoms where they didn't really give a damn about economic freedoms.
#
So it's not that they decide to support a particular leader, but it's like,
#
okay, I do not like Muslims, but I cannot say that and therefore I will say that I want free markets.
#
Yeah, yeah, but that's the way. So what you say is identity couched as ideology.
#
So on the question of majoritarianism, you know, but you are expressing.
#
So you're not saying but by voting for that particular political party, it may not be your top priority.
#
Right. So you may be actually. So that's a very different thing.
#
What you're saying that you're voting for that particular political party, which espouses anti-Muslim view,
#
and you have voted for the anti-Muslim view, but you don't want to say that out loud.
#
And so you're saying it's, but is being anti-Muslim, why are you being, is it just prejudice against Muslims?
#
Or do you think you have problems with Muslims because there are some interests involved.
#
They are taking away your resources. They are given more preference by the government.
#
Why do you not like Muslims?
#
I am saying that there are perhaps a substantial number of people who are simply bigoted
#
and who couch their bigotry in more respectable terms.
#
So they will find a way to couch, like they will rail against the pseudo secularism of the Congress,
#
which is actually a point with a lot of merit.
#
But they might be bringing that point up for other reasons.
#
Or they might be saying that, no, you know, we need minimum government, maximum governance,
#
which of course in reality hasn't happened at all under Modi.
#
We've had maximum government, minimum governance.
#
But, you know, they will couch it in respectable ideological terms,
#
but those instincts will be based around identity.
#
I mean, I don't mean to disagree with the thesis.
#
I think what you are asking is a very, very important question.
#
We don't do justice to that question in the book.
#
And perhaps this is something to sort of like think about,
#
because if your hypothesis about prevalence of bigotry is correct,
#
that we have high prevalence of bigotry,
#
the implications of that is that we should be seeing riots or communal violence almost on a daily basis.
#
We don't see that happening.
#
Or then you would argue that bigotry to violence is sort of like another chain.
#
It's another chain, but also I'm not saying there's a high prevalence of bigotry.
#
I kind of have more faith in my country than that.
#
I think that there are a lot of reasons why one can vote for, say, the BJP
#
and bigotry is just one small part of the mix.
#
There are a lot of very good reasons to vote for them.
#
I don't deny that. I think what you're asking is...
#
And also I completely like we'll talk about leadership a little later in the episode,
#
but I also agree that, you know, Modi as a transformational leader,
#
a lot of his support, especially in these recent elections,
#
when you consider the broad base of the support and the number of Dalits who voted for Modi,
#
a lot of it is not because of identities, definitely because of ideology,
#
and that almost, in fact, proves very emphatically the point that you're making.
#
So I didn't really mean to sound as if...
#
No, no, no. I like those questions.
#
In fact, a pushback is very, very important
#
because this is not the end of the research on ideology and party system.
#
This is the beginning of it.
#
And of course, the beginning of the research, there are going to be lots of mistakes.
#
There are a lot of going to be deficiencies,
#
and these questions will make us think hard and perhaps come up with better answers.
#
No, and you've made me...
#
Through your book, you guys have made me question my prior assumptions.
#
So in a sense, maybe this is just reflexive. I'm fighting back.
#
Another point that you kind of bring up,
#
and again, you're not taking an absolute disposition, it's important to say,
#
is, for example, voter bribery, right?
#
Where you say that it is simplistic to say that voters are bribed during elections.
#
That's not quite how it is. Can you elaborate on that a little?
#
So now there is a large literature on developing countries,
#
which basically describes these countries as patronage democracies,
#
clientelistic politics, where basically the one-line summary of this argument is
#
that voters in these countries vote for a politician in exchange of some goodies
#
that could range from job, expectation of job, to a sari, a samosa, or some cash.
#
Now, we're not saying that these things are not there in our elections.
#
Basically, that would mean we are closing eyes and not looking at what is happening.
#
And so all of this cash supply or distribution of these goodies are there.
#
But what we are sort of challenging is that the vote is not contingent upon
#
whether I receive an item or not.
#
It has become like a – so it's not quid pro quo, but it's anti-upquid pro quo,
#
where basically like a poker game, the political culture – and this is not a good thing –
#
in the last 70 years have evolved in a way that all politicians have to put in money
#
and that will sort of like make them seem winnable or competitive to be in the race.
#
But that would not sort of determine whether they are going to win the election for sure or not.
#
But if you don't put in money, you're surely going to lose.
#
So it's like a hygiene factor.
#
I think our mutual friend, Milan Vaishnav, who in fact introduced us,
#
made this point in his podcast with me where he kind of said that,
#
you know, whether bribery works or not, all parties have to at least offer a bribe.
#
And a counterpoint, doesn't that then make bribery derriber, for example?
#
And it also depends on like bribery is not just giving a sack of rice
#
or a pressure cooker or whatever.
#
There are sort of policy bribes, for example, farm loan waivers.
#
We've kind of reached the equilibrium in this country
#
where it is understood that to win an election,
#
that is one of the things you will have to do, offer a farm loan waiver,
#
which often in the short immediate term, I think,
#
provides even a necessary anesthetic for farmers sometimes,
#
but is nowhere near the long-term solution that we need to do.
#
And we don't carry out those long-term structural reforms.
#
Absolutely. I completely agree with you.
#
And that's why we think that despite this ideological conflict,
#
the political culture is such that competitive populism in our politics is going to continue.
#
And the limited point we wanted to sort of make through this chapter
#
is that these goodies or even bribery by the incumbent in form of policy
#
happens during all party regimes.
#
And if this was driving our electoral politics,
#
incumbents would always have a leg up and they should be returning back,
#
not just as MPs, MLAs and government.
#
We have a big example on 2017 UP election,
#
where Akhilesh Yadav ran a government which was patronage by rule book.
#
In fact, targeted almost every kind of voter that was possible.
#
And Akhilesh by no means was running.
#
So his government may have been a little bit unpopular,
#
but he was certainly seen as a popular leader.
#
And despite that, they not just lost the elections, but lost it badly.
#
So the limited idea we are making, there is influence of the...
#
So these goodies are very much part of our election game.
#
A lot of cash is sort of like needed to build a campaign in a short period of time,
#
but the vote is not contingent upon this.
#
Vote is very much an independent choice.
#
It is partly driven by identity, partly driven by ideology.
#
Maybe at margins, some votes will be getting influenced by these goodies and welfare policies,
#
but to describe this as a patronage democracy or a clientelistic politics is a little bit of a stretch.
#
That's a fair point. And you're making a nuanced point.
#
You're not being absolutist and saying that bribery doesn't matter at all.
#
You're saying it's multifactorial. This might be one of the factors.
#
Let's not overstate it. Just to needle you.
#
I used to write weekly limericks for the Times of India.
#
So just to needle you, I'll quote a limerick about exactly the subject.
#
I think it's called politics.
#
The limerick is, a Neta who loves currency notes told me what his line of work denotes.
#
It is kind of funny. We steal people's money and use some of it to buy their votes.
#
Stop. Good. No, but your book is perhaps a response to that.
#
Let's move on to another subject, which you brought up a moment ago,
#
and I found your chapter on it quite fascinating, which is the subject of leadership,
#
where you point out that there are really two kinds of leaders in politics,
#
especially Indian politics, and one kind is driven by ideology.
#
Tell me a little bit more about this.
#
And it's related to this logic of bribery and patronage.
#
So a lot of research in political science is basically focused on these small-time fixers
#
or very local-level politicians whom we describe as transactional leaders,
#
that I will do something for you and you vote for me.
#
And so the focus has been on these fixers and brokers and local-level politicians.
#
What political science, and this is like a serious problem within political science,
#
that we don't study leaders.
#
Leaders of sort of like not just prime ministers or chief ministers,
#
but basically people who have influence in a large part of society.
#
And the reason they have a large influence, because they project themselves as transformational.
#
They may not turn out to be transformational,
#
but the vision they project is that they are going to transform society.
#
And because of that kind of vision, they can not only enthuse their own party cadres,
#
but they inspire a large swathe of masses.
#
And there is some measurable impacts, which we show in the book.
#
But think of the politics in this country is not shaped by these local-level brokers and local-level politicians.
#
Political parties are moved in the system by these big influential leaders.
#
As soon as you think of Lalu Yadav,
#
you may sort of like imagine something about him of being a backward caste politician, right?
#
Mayawati, a Dalit politician, or Narendra Modi, a Hindu with a Samrat.
#
You attach some ideas with all these leaders, right?
#
And that's why what we are trying to make the case in this chapter,
#
is these leaders who project themselves as transformational, portray an ideological vision,
#
and they structure or shape party politics in the country.
#
And so transactional leaders tend to be more local,
#
whereas transformational leaders are many of the great names that have walked on the Indian political landscape,
#
like Indira Gandhi, Anna Durai, M.G. Ramchandran, Narendra Modi to the present day,
#
Mayawati and Kanchi Ram are all transformational leaders because there is a broader ideological view that they have
#
and a specific place they have on the issues of both statism and recognition that appeals to people.
#
Yeah, and think of like in 2014 and 2019, journalists and political scientists and common people alike
#
would talk about a Modi effect in the election.
#
What does Modi effect means? Is it just about Modi's personality?
#
He was not promising them that you vote for me, I will get a rodent next to your house,
#
or I'll offer you a samosa or a saree or 500 rupee note.
#
He might be offering 15 lakhs, that's different.
#
But the idea is, even when we talk about Narendra Modi, Narendra Modi represents some vision
#
and he can very well articulate that vision and perhaps that is the reason of his popularity
#
because there is clarity of articulation on one side of the ideological spectrum
#
and there is disarray on the other side.
#
And that increases the gap which sort of like creates some Modi effect.
#
You know, and as I'll ask you to elaborate on as we're ending the episode a little later,
#
will be essentially how Modi's transformational appeal as it were is so vast that he actually,
#
I think in this election, more Dalits voted for the BJP than for Congress.
#
Yeah, that had happened in 2014.
#
In 2014 also, and in fact the Dalit leader Jignesh Mehwani had a lament on Twitter
#
rather about how he doesn't understand why so many Dalits are voting for the BJP
#
and given where the BJP once stood on the politics of recognition is surprising
#
but it's also very interesting how Modi has managed to on the basis of his leadership
#
sort of widen the base of his party as it were.
#
What I'm going to ask you to do and what I found very sort of insightful
#
and if I had one feedback for the book, I would ask you why did this come so late in the book
#
where you talk about the four different political periods in the political evolution of India
#
which is really fascinating to me, so just kind of take me through those four periods.
#
Okay, so it comes late into the book because we are boring political scientists
#
and we have sort of like a way of presenting the material, right?
#
Theory, counter-argument, evidence and then what are the implications, right?
#
What is the big picture implication of this?
#
So that's the Dandamar way of writing things.
#
So what we have basically, it's a re-reading of Indian political history.
#
So there is a consensus among political scientists that 1952 to 67 was the first phase of party system
#
where Congress was a dominant party.
#
Political scientists likely care about party system because it structures the rules of the competition.
#
So in some ways as a voter you are going to choose from the menu that you are going to get
#
and so party system in some ways is presenting you the effective choices that you have.
#
And what I found particularly interesting about your analysis was that you were talking about
#
these four different periods in the context of the ideological cleavages in your book
#
which is statism and recognition.
#
So kind of take me through that, that you know, where was the Congress in that first period
#
with regard to those two, how did that change, how did it evolve?
#
So I would sort of like now ask you to imagine a three-dimensional space
#
where if you have one axis of recognition and other axis of statism,
#
Congress in the beginning is sort of sitting at the center.
#
The large umbrella political party sitting at the center.
#
Then on the right you have lots of smaller political parties.
#
So Bharatiya Jainsangh, Ramraj Parishad of Karpatri Maharaj, Hindu Mahasabha.
#
Later on in 60s you get Swatantra party.
#
So there were lots of these parties.
#
On the other side you had lots of socialist parties.
#
So Praja Socialist party, Kishan Mazdoor party, communist parties.
#
So these were there in the beginning.
#
Dominance of Congress in the beginning, Congress is sitting at the center.
#
Just to clarify that the Congress is doing both a certain amount of statism
#
and the politics of recognition, but those on the left,
#
the communists and the socialists and all feel not enough.
#
And those on the right say that no, the state should not interfere with society
#
so much and no, don't give reservations.
#
So actually the first split in the Congress, first big split,
#
so there was a split around 1906 when the Surat Congress got split.
#
But I think in 1930s and 40s when we got closer to the independence,
#
there were politicians who you would describe as socialist or communist
#
within the Congress party.
#
So Congress was the large national umbrella movement.
#
The socialist wing of the Congress party felt,
#
and at one point Nehru was part of that group,
#
felt that the Congress leadership is not doing enough on their policy platform.
#
So they leave the Congress party and form the Congress Socialist party in 1934,
#
which later on becomes the Praja Socialist party and KMPP
#
and then Socialist party.
#
So what you would in traditional sense think of the socialist within the Congress,
#
left the Congress pre-independence and slowly the process was complete by 1950s, 60s.
#
And then you had lots of these right wing players.
#
So Congress was basically sitting in the center in a sense,
#
they were doing few things, but not doing enough.
#
For example, they did appoint Kaka Kalelkar Commission on the OBC reservation,
#
but they didn't do anything on that.
#
And similarly on the Hindu court bill happens,
#
but nothing happens on the uniform civil courts.
#
So they were not taking it to the logical conclusion.
#
And whereas the right wing parties had a very different idea.
#
So in 1967, when Mrs. Gandhi is now the Prime Minister of the country,
#
she faces challenge from the right.
#
What she does is basically moves the Congress party closer to the Congress.
#
So in fact, the 67 government had Communist Party of India
#
basically supporting Mrs. Gandhi's Congress.
#
So she moves closer to those ideological position on both,
#
especially the statism part between 67 and 89.
#
In fact, she takes lots of steps related to the marriage, age, related to dowry,
#
which basically further in some ways the traditionalist,
#
the Hindu traditionalist within the Congress felt further marginalized
#
and they slowly started leaving out the Congress party.
#
If you think of the syndicates within the Congress party,
#
they were in some ways the conservative politicians.
#
In fact, Gulzarilal Nanda, who was two time interim Prime Minister,
#
is also one of the founding members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
#
So because she moves the Congress party in one direction,
#
now the space was created there, so right leaning elements basically started coming together.
#
So now what you see in 1980 as Bharatiya Janata Party is not just the Bharatiya Janata Party.
#
It had elements of BJS, but also elements of Hindu Mahasabha,
#
elements of Ram Rajya Parishad, elements of Swatantrata Party,
#
elements of Congress organization, which was the splinter group of the Congress party.
#
So all the conservative elements basically coalesced together
#
and formed the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980s.
#
And if you think of the vote share with BJP is basically getting in 18991,
#
this is basically the addition of all these groups in what they used to get in 1960s.
#
So it's fascinating that for her personal political survival,
#
Indira Gandhi needs to reposition herself politically
#
and because her opponents in the party happen to be towards the right,
#
she goes towards the left, again we are using this in terms,
#
but she goes towards the left, there's more statism therefore she goes towards
#
and therefore she leaves that space which eventually coalesces all those years later
#
into the BJP which is now a more powerful force.
#
And in fact you point out, I think at one point that in the 89 or 91 elections,
#
the BJP got the same vote share as the Jansan plus the Swatantrata Party in the 60s.
#
So it actually coalesced into that one entity and then grew from there.
#
So in terms of the ideological issues of statism and recognition,
#
Indira Gandhi moved a lot towards statism and on the recognition front what was happening?
#
So recognition front what happens is basically she's standing right there,
#
which basically now opens up a space for all these socialist parties,
#
basically they were trying to do some sort of like class mobilization in the first party system,
#
post 67 they all become backward caste parties of North India.
#
So they start because nothing was happening on the reservation front,
#
so now basically the centrist congress party is caught in the middle.
#
You have basically socialist parties mobilizing on the caste angle,
#
the right wing party is mobilizing on the religion angle and the statism angle
#
and the communist party is saying you are not done enough on the statism.
#
So basically congress starts getting squeezed.
#
So in the second party system which is 67 to 89,
#
congress though remains dominant nationally,
#
but in the states now it is facing challenges in some places from the BJP,
#
in some places from the communist, in some places from these backward caste parties or regional parties.
#
And everywhere these regional parties have come up like in Tamil Nadu for example,
#
EMK and NADEMK basically running the roost.
#
Then let's go to the third party system.
#
So third party system basically begins in 1989 when congress loses its national dominance also
#
and we get a fragmented party system.
#
So what happens in this period that in places where congress gets regional parties
#
which are ideologically very similar to it, congress parties almost finished in that state.
#
You quoted the example of Tamil Nadu.
#
What congress was basically doing was one time aligning with DMK, one time aligning with AIDMK.
#
Basically congress party gets caught between AIDMK and DMK and is now virtually not a player in Tamil Nadu.
#
Something very similar happens in Uttar Pradesh.
#
Congress party basically is squeezed by both the presence of the Samajwadi party and Bahujan Samaj party.
#
And come to think of it, the reason is that congress, it is hard to distinguish ideologically
#
on the question of recognition and on the question of statism.
#
So these parties are indistinguishable from the congress party.
#
In fact, congress party survives in the state and does well in the state where it is in direct competition with the BJP.
#
Think of Madhya Pradesh, think of Rajasthan, think of Chhattisgarh, think of Himachal Pradesh.
#
In all these states, the direct competition of the congress is BJP.
#
And these two parties are ideologically very different.
#
So therefore it can survive when it has that positioning advantage.
#
Yeah, and we use this example to make the point that a lot of people think that the decline of the congress is due to leadership
#
or due to organizational atrophy.
#
And if these two were the reasons, you have the same leader, you have the similar organization,
#
but the decline of congress varies across Indian state depending upon who is congress party's main competitor.
#
So you see one kind of congress which is alive and kicking when it competes with the BJP,
#
but another congress party which is now defunct in states like UP, Bihar, Bengal and Tamil Nadu,
#
where you are competing with regional parties.
#
So now in this third party phase, the two big M words that come up here are mandal and mandir.
#
So tell me how the resurgence of mandir and the arrival of mandir,
#
how do they play in this ideological landscape of recognition and statism?
#
And how does that lead into the fourth era which we are in right now?
#
So in the book basically we mention about that perhaps 2014 is the arrival of the fourth party system
#
where BJP is going to become the focal point of competition.
#
And now the 2019 results basically confirm that we are indeed in a BJP dominant party system.
#
What happens, you mentioned these mandir and mandal which simultaneously occurs between 1989 and 1991.
#
Now congress party on both questions remains ambivalent.
#
In fact, so think of the politics that is emerging, right?
#
Somebody tells Rajiv Gandhi, the prime minister, that you lost the by-polls in 1986
#
because there was some controversy related to the Shah Bano case and you didn't do enough.
#
Rajiv Gandhi in fact sort of like twists the parliament's hand and passes a law.
#
So he's basically sometimes playing with the Muslim conservative politicians
#
and at other times he's trying to be a liberal reformist.
#
Then someone basically tells him perhaps that now the Muslims are gone,
#
you should think about Hindu conservative politicians.
#
So Rajiv Gandhi basically begins the 1989 election campaigns from Ayodhya.
#
So basically playing with fire, trying to do both the things.
#
Whereas the BJP takes a very clear position on both the issues.
#
They don't say much at least publicly on the question of mandal reservation
#
because they know it would be an electoral society to oppose reservation for such a large group.
#
But they do prop up proxy opposition to mandal reservation
#
and to counter the effects of mandal reservation, in fact join the bandwagon of mandal mobilization.
#
So now mandal mobilization was happening at the backdrop through Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other RSS affiliates
#
since early 1980s after the Meenakshi Puram conversion in 1982.
#
It gained momentum during late 80s and this seemed like a good opportunity for them
#
to counter the effects of mandal and create a pan-Hindu identity.
#
So because BJP took some sort of clear position,
#
the first effect of that was that the upper caste basically thought
#
that this party takes care of their ideological platforms.
#
They left Congress en masse in the Hindi heartland and joined the BJP.
#
Congress is not doing so is ambivalent on these positions.
#
Whereas regional parties were clear like the SP was clear on the question of reservation
#
and also in some ways sided on the position which Muslims would have wanted them to take on Ram Mandir mobilization.
#
And they got the benefit of that.
#
So there were two parties which took clear position, the Congress didn't do anything
#
and that's why basically Congress slowly faded in the Hindi heartland of UP and Bihar.
#
So bring me now to the fourth party era.
#
So in 2014 what you see is emergence of BJP as the principal pole of Indian politics
#
and 2019 basically now cements the BJP's pole position.
#
Now what is likely to happen and this is a working paper on 2019 elections
#
from where I'm sort of like going to make the case that it seems
#
and so far the conversation seems on short term factors which led to Modi's victory
#
which is basically the leadership popularity, the organizational advantages BJP has
#
or their successful presentation of 2019 as a national election and using national security platform
#
or basically removing inconveniences through massive welfare schemes such as Ujwala and other things.
#
While these factors are definitely important, the reason I think BJP is becoming the dominant pole
#
of Indian politics is large structural shifts that are taking place in Indian society.
#
The first one is very simply that the size of the middle class is increasing,
#
the size of the urban population is increasing, the size of educated voters is increasing,
#
the size of people who are more media sort of like exposed to more media is increasing.
#
And these guys are likely to be against both stratism and recognition.
#
These guys are essentially in some ways BJP voters and so what is happening is that the size of the BJP,
#
the pie from which BJP can draw is increasing but just increase in demographic share
#
does not mean that they are more likely to vote for the BJP.
#
The second thing I think what is happening is basically on, so we don't have good evidence on statism
#
but there is clear clarity on politics of recognition scale playing a role
#
in basically bringing these new groups to the BJP fold.
#
One, I think what is happening, political majoritarianism is increasing
#
and second, the BJP's use of this EWS quota to change the whole debate on recognition
#
and affirmative action is bringing these new group of voters.
#
And what is interesting and I don't have a good answer right now,
#
it seems that political majoritarianism is not linked to Hindu nationalism.
#
And why this point is important, because if it was old style Hindu nationalistic politics,
#
I don't think you would have got an increase in vote share of Dalits and lower OBCs for the BJP.
#
So I think the old Hindu nationalistic card was rooted in upper caste sensibilities
#
whereas this new Modi's political majoritarianism is devoid of those upper caste biases
#
and it's a new kind of sort of majoritarianism.
#
Even OBC himself and as you point out in your book, some of the reasons for the rise of an OBC
#
like Modi to power and the BJP have to do with Govind Acharya's rescission in the 90s
#
to sort of widen the social base of the BJP which brings me to two questions
#
I'll kind of end the episode with because we're running out of time
#
but there are tons of fascinating material in your book.
#
Another question I wanted to ask was you've got a very good analysis about the decline of the Congress
#
and why many of the traditional reasons started out by people don't necessarily work
#
but as we don't have time for that in this episode but I hope my listeners will go buy your book instantly
#
and read it, support good scholarship.
#
But both my questions are essentially about the BJP.
#
One of the things that Amit Shah has been doing as a political strategist is sort of widening the base
#
but widening the base can also in some ways mean diluting the ideology or what the party stands for.
#
For example, they are getting sort of defections from other parties almost indiscriminately now.
#
Anyone who wishes to join and can bring a base with him, just join.
#
So it's a question of will to power versus ideology.
#
The will to power is fantastic but doesn't this dilute the ideology and what the party actually stands for?
#
Question number one. And question number two, as you point out the increasing urbanization of
#
and this was one of the very interesting points towards the end of your book
#
that the increasing urbanization of India makes another kind of fissure apparent
#
where a lot of the people who sort of support Modi for multiple reasons now
#
will not have those multiple reasons to support him in future.
#
So just elaborate on that. That's correct.
#
I think so BJP is now a dominant party but will it remain a dominant party for a long time?
#
So there are emerging contradictions within the coalition that has brought BJP to power
#
and they have to work on it.
#
You are absolutely right about basically BJP taking in politicians from outside
#
and whether it would dilute ideology.
#
Now that remains an open question because political parties are not just there to sort of like follow an ideological doctrine
#
but primary reason they exist because they want to be in power.
#
So given that there is some sort of like vulnerability factor associated in bringing these politicians,
#
all political parties would do that.
#
But is BJP going to sort of like allow these new kind of politicians to run the show and not toe its ideological line?
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I think if they do that, they would be in trouble with their ideological sort of like fountainhead
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and there would be sticks from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
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In fact, there have been warning signs after this election.
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They are continuously trying to push back that don't make it a personality centric government
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or personality centric election or on personalities.
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This is a victory of our ideas.
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The second point I think we must sort of like keep this in mind
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that that happens with all political parties.
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When you expand, you bring in not just different sort of like politicians who don't share your ideology
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but you also bring voters who are not part of your core support group.
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Now, they will come to you and vote for you, but they would want something in return.
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They would want representation.
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This is what happened with the Congress parties in 1970s.
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It was getting vote from all segments of the society, but large part of Congress leadership remained upper caste.
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So, basically, many leaders moved out and formed different political parties
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and the decline of the Congress thus began.
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It would happen with the BJP also if the party remains upper caste in its leadership structure.
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For some time, when you have a charismatic personality like Modi,
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these contradictions would be sort of like subdued,
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but once someone like Modi goes and you don't have a replacement, these would unravel like anything.
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The final point which is important that we have to understand the changing context in India.
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So, BJP in some ways practices conservative politics on social norms,
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but large segment of voters which are voting for BJP are receiving global messages
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and as much we will get integrated into global economy,
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they would receive very different kind of messages and aspire very different kind of life.
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So, they might be voting Modi for fulfillment of certain aspirations,
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but if on other parameters they feel threatened by the politics of BJP,
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that would create its own sort of like contradictions and fissures.
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And I think that is where the BJP's challenge lies to be able to manage these contradictions
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and hold on to the ideological coalition they have created.
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In fact, you could argue that the fact that they won in 2014 and 2019
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is almost like a perfect storm of events coming together,
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managing to draw all these disparate social groups who are not yet this enamored of the BJP.
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And there's a telling line from your book when you talk about the growing urban voter
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where you say, quote, the young may hold their noses and vote for the BJP,
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especially because of a lack of credible ideological alternatives,
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but this support will not last because this group is not enamored of majoritarian politics.
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Stop quote, which is interesting.
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And is it also the case that there might be people who might feel that the BJP led by Modi
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in this sort of broad-based avatar is not doing enough for the Hindu cause?
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Rahul has been fantastic talking to you. I learned a lot today.
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Thank you so much for coming on the show.
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Thank you for those questions. I enjoyed it.
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