Is There Any Ideology Left in Indian Politics?

The central argument of Pradeep K. Chhibber and Rahul Verma’s Ideology and Identity is simple and straightforward: Indian politics, particularly its party system, far from being influenced by transitory concerns, is heavily ideological. The major axes around which the authors make this argument are those of ‘statism’ and ‘recognition’.

Statism involves questions of the extent to which the state can influence and thereby bring about reforms in society. It is assumed that this state involvement includes both societal and more economic ones. Recognition involves the extent of state protection that can be afforded to vulnerable groups and their identities from the upsurges of majoritarian politics.

In the process of making the case for the prevalence of ideology in Indian party politics, Chhibber and Verma dismiss the idea that cash handouts and other incentives such as television sets and laptops influence voters in terms of their actual electoral decisions (chapter 5, ‘The Myth of Vote Buying’).

This is an argument backed by extensive survey data and will be read carefully by many in the backdrop of a lot of the anecdotal accounts that have suggested that votes are being harvested by engaging a small number of individual political brokers and middlemen.

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A significant component of the book (chapters 8, 9 and 10) consists of an extensive survey of the party system in India, from the one-party dominance of the Congress system, the challenges to that dominance and the rise of the BJP. The BJP is no doubt a heavily ideological party.

This is an ideology that was antecedent to the actual formation of the party. It even once inhabited quarters within the Congress, when the system of dual membership of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Congress existed for some years in the pre-independence era.

In independent India, the ideological Hindutva elements existed within the right-wing factions of the Congress Party and in the form of the Jan Sangha, outside the Congress. Chhibber and Verma are perhaps right to suggest that the Congress’s failure to distinguish itself sufficiently in ideological terms from the BJP would lead to a continuing decline of the party. It is also a telling commentary about Congress’s Hindutva-lite or soft-Hindutva strategies.

The interesting thing to note about the BJP’s current domination is that it has happened not just with the electoral marginalisation of the Congress but the decimation of the Left as well. It is worthwhile to note that in the heyday of the Congress era, the Left continued to exist in its powerful enclaves.

Chhibber and Verma do not seem to have much to say about the ideological preponderance within the left wing of the Indian party system. There is also no mention of the Aam Aadmi Party’s supposedly ideology-free rise with its emphasis on political pragmatism.

The authors further seem to make a category error of mistaking the BJP’s current electoral dominance as a kind of ideological dominance. This electoral dominance seems to be evident in the desire often stated by senior BJP functionaries to see a Congress-mukt Bharat (an India rid of the Congress).

A Congress-mukt Bharat would mean the absence of any possible ideological contestation that could emerge from the party’s left wing. This is itself being achieved by the Congress’s own electoral undermining. A complement to this strategy would be the BJP’s desired electoral dominance from panchayat to parliament.

When it comes to ideology as a contestation of ideas, the authors say little. The Nehruvian idea of India, which the current BJP regime seems to target most consistently, has itself been enunciated extensively. There has been no clear exposition of what the BJP’s ideological moorings are, apart from Modi’s dominant personality and the occasional slogans that convey little more than the few words with which they are strung together.

While Vajpayee’s BJP can be credited with ideologically recasting the BJP away from Gandhian socialism and towards neoliberalism and free markets, can we say the same about the current Modi-led BJP? Have there been any major significant ideological pronouncements?

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Interestingly, for the numerous detractors of the current BJP government, including some who may have previously been members and sympathisers, the party seems to be bereft of ideas, save the desire to win elections. The erstwhile BJP had leaders, such as Govindacharya, who were considered the party’s ideologues. Can one identify such figures now? With ideas and ideology come intellectuals. Who would be the BJP’s current intellectuals in a phase that has been widely castigated for being anti-intellectual?

Finally, the chapter ‘Transmitting Ideology’ makes a desultory mention of the role of social media. How does one understand its role in the amplification and dissemination of blatantly prejudiced and bigoted ideas? There has been a phenomenon of elections being fought on social media, especially a platform like WhatsApp. Far from the respectability of ‘ideas’, we have the spread of fake facts, fake news and fake figures, leading to a classical muddying of the political environment.

The political space has become a confusing hall of smokes and mirrors and loud cacophonies that add to continuing inversion and obfuscation of facts. Ideology would then become the classical ‘camera obscura’ of Marxist political thought. There is not much hint of that in this book.

Amir Ali is an assistant professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.