Banyan: The Hindutva rate of growth

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ON SHOW this week was the Narendra Modi much of the world cheered for when he became India’s prime minister last year: dynamic, reformist, business-minded, pragmatic. Presiding over the “Vibrant Gujarat” summit in that state’s capital, Gandhinagar, he boosted his “Make in India” campaign to turn the country into a manufacturing hub. The two-yearly summit was an occasion to show off his success in developing Gujarat in his 13 years as its chief minister. The foreign VIPs on hand gushed. John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, hoped the Gujarat experience could be “extrapolated” to the rest of India. Mr Modi, he said, was a “visionary prime minister”.

It seems churlish and irrelevant to recall that a decade ago America refused Mr Modi a visa because of his failure to prevent appalling communal violence, mostly directed at the Muslim minority, in Gujarat in 2002. Those who raised the pogrom during last year’s election campaign were seen as missing the point. The bloodshed was in the past; Mr Modi campaigned not as a sectarian firebrand, but as an energetic, honest and strong leader who could whisk India out of the decade-long doldrums of rule by a jaded and corrupt Congress party. That, most believe, is why his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), won the election.

Mr Modi’s problem is that not all in the BJP seem to see it that way. It is the party of India’s centre-right—socially conservative and economically liberal—but it is also the political wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a mass organisation inspired by “Hindutva”, or Hindu nationalism. Some BJP members are driven by this ideology as much as by Mr Modi’s modernising zeal. Indeed, they are already proving an obstacle to it.

Even as he was talking to the great and the good, the BJP was grappling with what to do about one of its MPs, Sakshi Maharaj, who this month said that every Hindu woman should have at least four children “to protect the Hindu religion”. Not only does this flout government policy; it panders to an atavistic fear that Hindus are producing fewer children than Muslims. And he is not alone. A party colleague this week went one better and advocated five children per Hindu woman.

When the BJP was last in power nationally, from 1998-2004, it was at the head of a broad coalition. It faced core Hindutva demands, to end the special constitutional status of the Muslim-majority state of Jammu & Kashmir; to introduce a federal ban on cow slaughter; to do away with the separate personal law that applies to Muslims; and to build a temple in the northern city of Ayodhya over a mosque demolished by Hindus who believed it to trespass on a Hindu holy site. At that time the BJP had to forsake such ideas as politically impracticable. Today, however, the BJP government can govern without the votes of “secular” parties in the lower house of Parliament. The RSS is enjoying a resurgence, and its ideologues have the wind at their backs.

Last month Parliament was stalled by a stand-off over religious conversion. The BJP argues that the issue merely provided a handy pretext for Congress obstructionism, but its activists have made it a topic of debate. At issue is a law that would ban “forced” religious conversion. Their passion stems from the notion that India—Hindustan—is in essence a Hindu country. It has become religiously diverse not through immigration (as have the United States and Europe), but through conversion. Hindu-nationalist historians argue that Hindus were lost through coercion or bribery. Conversion under the Mughals was at swordpoint, while Christians bought believers. And, the ideologues argue with little evidence to back the claim, it is still going on. Bizarre claims are made about “love jihad”—a Muslim campaign to woo Hindu women into abandoning their birthright through marriage. And Christian missionaries still proselytise. So Hindu activists are arranging “reconversion” ceremonies for Indian Muslims and Christians—though since traditionally you are born a Hindu rather than become one, and any proposed law would not be meant to block Indians from returning to their supposed Hindu roots, it is called ghar wapsi or “homecoming”.

The whole idea is offensive and rather threatening to Indian Muslims and Christians, and so is highly contentious. Mr Modi has reportedly tried to rein in the hardliners and to persuade them to get with the economic programme. But he has not spoken out in public on the issue, even though it has become a political distraction and, in Parliament, an actual hindrance—and that seems odd. Few doubt the election victory last year was a personal one: he is more popular than his party. Surely that should give him the right to crack the whip?

His reticence may be tactical. When Mr Modi was shunned internationally after 2002 and hemmed in by a Congress-led government in Delhi, it was the BJP’s right wing and RSS activists that stayed with him and provided the platform for his campaign. He is in their debt, and also needs them to keep getting the vote out in state and national elections. But another explanation for Mr Modi’s silence is that he agrees with them, if not with their methods. He, after all, is an RSS veteran, steeped in its teachings.

Notes on nationalism

To his Western fans, that would make Mr Modi rather like two of his contemporary Asian leaders. One is China’s Xi Jinping. From a Western perspective Mr Xi is pursuing many admirable aims—rooting out corruption and tackling difficult economic reforms. What a pity that this is accompanied by intensified political repression! The other is Mr Modi’s friend Shinzo Abe of Japan. Again, foreigners like the promised economic reforms but wish he would not pander to the Japanese right as it tries to airbrush history. But maybe, for all three men, the contradictions the West sees do not exist. They all want to make their countries great again. Economic reform is the means to a nationalist end; and, for Mr Modi, nationalism is of the Hindu variety.

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