Saturday, August 15, 2009

Politics beyond Hindutva (August 2009)

Eternal India (Delhi), August 2009

By Swapan Dasgupta

A simple sentence of political analysis by Perry Anderson, one of the foremost Marxist thinkers of our time, had a profound impact on me when I read it in early-2000. In his editorial in the New Left Review for the new millennium, Anderson argued that “The only starting point for a realistic Left today is a lucid registration of political defeat.”[1]

Celebrating victory is exhilarating but effortless; handling defeat is far more daunting, particularly when it assaults a deep faith. For Communists nurtured on the belief that history was on their side and that the Communist Party was somehow infallible, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and China’s endorsement of a market economy were traumatic. To those who remained true to the faith, the experience of both despondency and doggedness, and anger at those who discredited a noble ideal prompted a Churchillian determination to fight to the last and never surrender. The sense of realism and the frank admission of political defeat that Anderson demanded remained a minority current among activists—though, in private moments, they acknowledged its veracity.

A refusal to read the writing on the wall is not uncommon in political formations where group solidarity is paramount.[2] In 1978, the suggestion by historian Eric Hobsbawm[3] that the triumphant march of the labour movement was threatened by social changes and a political disconnect was disregarded by the British Labour Party. The activist-dominated organisation responded to its election defeat at the hands of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 by lurching sharply to the left and stepping up trade union militancy. The outcome was disastrous and Labour faced three more humiliating general election defeats before Tony Blair’s New Labour experiment yielded handsome dividends.

Blair’s attempt to make his party relevant to the times involved a bitter inner-party struggle that was fought out all levels. It involved the Labour Party jettisoning Clause Four of its programme—an article of faith committing it to the public ownership of the means of production, a euphemism for nationalisation. In a speech to the party conference, three years before he became Prime Minister, Blair explained the impulses of his reformism in very simple language: “If the world changes and we don’t, then we become of no use to the world. Our principles cease being principles and ossify into dogma. We haven’t changed to forget our principles but to fulfil them. Not to lose our identity but to keep our relevance.”[4]

Blair won three elections for his party but he was never spared repeated accusations of betraying the cause.

It is paradoxical that something resembling this touching Left irredentism is being witnessed in the Bharatiya Janata Party in the aftermath of two consecutive general election defeats. What was explained as a fluke defeat in 2004 and attributed to the unpopularity of its alliance partners in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh has, in 2009, been described as a verdict against the ramshackle Third Front, with the BJP suffering collateral damage. The outcome, it has been suggested, was not really a defeat but a disappointment in terms of the party’s own expectations. The more outlandish have even gone to the extent of pinning the relative success of the Congress on doctored Electronic Voting Machines, a theory reminiscent of the “secret ink” theory that surfaced in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s famous victory in 1971.

At a purely functional level, the underestimation of defeat can be explained by the need to shore up the sagging morale of the foot soldiers and prevent their retreat into inactivity. The problem arises when the need for a “lucid registration of political defeat” is rejected altogether and discipline becomes the fig leaf for an abrupt end to all meaningful attempts at a larger post-mortem. More than two months after the results, the discussion in the BJP about the 2009 experience has been at best perfunctory and at worst disingenuous. What began as a tactical talking-up exercise has, quite predictably, ended up as denial. The belief is that time, a bout of activity coinciding with the next round of Assembly polls and the follies of the government will re-galvanise the party and paper over uncomfortable questions thrown up by the 2009 poll.

The optimism may perhaps be warranted. However, the scale of the BJP’s defeat suggests that the erosion of support is quite significant.

· The party’s tally of 116 seats is below the 138 it won in 2004 and is even lower than what it secured in 1991 when it had no allies apart from the Shiv Sena.

· Its popular vote of 18.8 per cent was a sharp 3.4 per cent below what it secured in 2004.

· Apart from Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka where it increased its vote (and seats), there was a swing against the BJP throughout India. This included a 12.4 per cent decline in Rajasthan and a 5.5 per cent fall in Delhi and Jharkhand. The decline in support throughout India brings into question the theory that, like 2004, the 2009 verdict was an aggregation of local polls.

The loss of momentum was also felt socially. According to the post-poll analysis of the BJP performance by Lokniti and CSDS: “This election represents a stagnation or reversal… Except Karnataka, the BJP does not appear to be cultivating a new social base anywhere. In this election, the BJP’s hitherto upward trend among adivasis and Muslim voters has been reversed and its expansion among the lower OBCs halted. The BJP faces a threat in its core constituency too. Though it continues to be the first preference of upper caste Indians, the only social group where the BJP is ahead of the Congress, the party has faced a sharper than average erosion in this group. The BJP trailed the Congress among ‘middle class’ urban voters. All this confirms the picture of a party in retreat.”[5]

It is curious that the social decline of the BJP (even among its core supporters) has been viewed as a simple case of campaign mismanagement. The presumption is that a better advertising agency, more catchy slogans and better candidates will be able to reverse this fall from grace. In other words there is no need for the party to be gripped by convulsions.

What is especially intriguing is the ease with which “ideology” has been disentangled from popular acceptance. In a recent interview, the BJP President argued that “On the ideological front, the party has never deviated in the past, nor would it do so in the future. There is unambiguous clarity in our ideology. There is absolutely no confusion… In our Hindutva ideology, everyone has a respected place—it is all-inclusive, liberal and tolerant. Had our ideology not been liberal and tolerant, it would never have been eternal (sanatan)... Not only the human beings, but also all the living creatures in the world are equally respected and taken care of in our ideology.”[6]

Apart from its caricatured articulation, the underlying theme of this ideological drum-beating is loyalty and steadfastness. Like many in the Communist movement who are unwilling to deviate from the textual guidelines set by Lenin “himself”, the BJP appears to have been trapped by a dogma of its own making. The fault for the BJP’s defeat, it would seem, has been pinned on the incomprehension of the electorate.

Prior to 1990, Hindutva, far from being the unchanging ideological lodestar, didn’t even feature in the BJP’s packaging of cultural nationalism. The term was generally associated with Veer Savarkar who invoked it as an encapsulation of the Hindu political mission. “Hindutva is not a word”, he wrote in 1923, “but a history. Not only the spiritual or religious history of our people as at times it is mistaken to be by being confounded with the other cognate term Hinduism but a history in full.” At the same time, Savarkar conceded that “The ideas and ideals, the systems and societies, the thoughts and sentiments which have centred round this name are so varied and rich, so powerful and so subtle, so elusive and yet so vivid that the term Hindutva defies all attempts at analysis. Forty centuries, if not more, had been at work to mould it as it is.”[7]

Savarkar’s stress on the virtual impossibility of positing Hindutva other than as a nebulous ideal, prone to sharply conflicting interpretations, has often been overlooked. Over the years, the invocation of Hindutva has taken many forms. Some individuals have tried to reduce it to a set of principles. In an interesting interview this year, K.N. Govindacharya has argued that there are five constituents of Hindutva: respect for all modes of worship, egalitarianism, harmony with nature, special respect for women and stress on non-material values.[8] Govindacharya’s vision of Hindutva has large areas of commonality with Swami Vivekananda’s belief that the alleviation of poverty should be at the core of Hindu activism.

As opposed to these ideas, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad is said to have identified some 14 parameters for what constitutes Hindutva in today’s India: belief in Ekam Sat Viprah Bahudda Vadanti; the reconstruction of temples at Ram Janmabhoomi, Krishna Janmabhoomi and Kashi Vishwanath; promulgation of a Uniform Civil Code; the abolition of Article 370; amendments of Articles 25, 26 and 30 to remove special privileges to state-funded minority run educational institutions; honouring Shri Ram, Shri Krishna, Rana Pratap, Chattrapati Shivaji and others as national heroes; no state control of temples; abolition of Haj subsidy; revision of history curricula; restoration of ancient Hindu sites; economic policies to foster indigenous entrepreneurship; ban on cow slaughter; zero tolerance of terrorism; ban on religious conversions and bar on foreign missionaries.[9]

It is pretty apparent that there is little common ground between Savarkar’s attempted distillation of 40 centuries of Hindu experience, the BJP president’s more elementary understanding, Govindacharya’s socialist Hindutva and the VHP’s political manifesto. That they all swear by Hindutva, as do the notorious head of the Sri Ram Sene in Mangalore and the alleged perpetrators of the Malegaon bombs targeting Muslim, is revealing. Like the 57 varieties of Heinz, Hindutva has become the catch-all label for a multitude of Hindu preferences, some innocuous, some innovative and others, frankly, quite crazy. In political terms, Hindutva has suffered from an imagery of confusion and incoherence. Regardless of what was in Savarkar’s mind, the contemporary usage of Hindutva doesn’t serve as a magnetic attraction to either the political Hindu or even the religious Hindu. To a new breed of cosmopolitan Indians, Hindutva often appears as a mirror image of literalist Islam.

That a term L.K. Advani once described as the BJP’s “ideological mascot” would experience such a fall was entirely unanticipated. When Govindacharya began injecting the usage of the term into the political discourse of the 1990s, he had in mind something more than the Sonmath to Ayodhya rath yatra and the movement for the reconstruction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. At that time Hindutva became the convenient shorthand for the wider intellectual ferment centred on the meaning of Indian nationhood and the future direction of our polity. The BJP emerged as the alternative to the Congress, gaining new ground quite spectacularly, not because it resurrected historical memory but because its frontal assault on pseudo-secularism challenged the assumptions of a stagnant Nehruvian consensus. In one his more forthright interventions, Girilal Jain captured the essence of the times: “The (Babri) structure as it stood, represented an impasse between what Babur represented and what Ram represents. This ambiguity has been characteristic of the Indian state since Independence. In fact, in my opinion, no structure symbolised the Indian political order in its ambivalence, ambiguity, indecisiveness and lack of purpose as this structure.”[10]

Yet, despite the sublimated energies it released, Hindutva was essentially a political plank born out of a thousand years of defeat and subjugation. Hindutva kept alive the historical memory of Hindus and the country’s unwillingness to accept subordination as a permanent feature of life. It symbolised the anguish and the anger of the politically dispossessed. It fought against the countervailing currents of Hindu passivity and contrived universalism—both alternative responses to defeat. Political Hindutva never fully captured the imagination of the entire Hindu “nation”; it was always contested and remained a minority current.

A reason for this lack of wider acceptability was the confusion over inclusiveness. When he prescribed the acceptance of India as both the fatherland and the holy land as a precondition for incorporation into the Indian nation, Savarkar was consciously advocating the exclusion of Muslims and Christians from political citizenship, a proposal horribly at odds with the Indian Constitution. It was this exclusionary politics that was a factor behind Shyama Prasad Mookerjee’s decision to quit the Hindu Mahasabha and facilitate the formation of the Jana Sangh.

Within the Jana Sangh/BJP tradition there has been a long tussle between exclusionary and inclusive tendencies. There were elements in Guru Golwalkar’s writings that more or less mirrored the primacy Savarkar attached to Indic religions. At the same time, the important distinction between the RSS as a voluntary association and the BJP as a political party was sought to be maintained. In short, while the RSS could remain a family made up exclusively of Hindu volunteers, the BJP as a political party had to keep its doors open to all faiths and communities. This uneasy coexistence of two contradictory impulses persisted despite the BJP formally embracing Deendayal Upadhyaya’s principles of Integral Humanism. Unlike Savarkar’s Hindutva, Integral Humanism attached importance to the harmonisation of potential areas of conflict, notably those involving man and nature and man and man.[11]

The tussle between these contradictory impulses came to a head during the Ayodhya movement, when Hindutva entered the BJP lexicon. The aggressive thrust towards redefining national identity yielded electoral dividends but also resulted in the BJP’s “majestic isolation”. The fallout of Ayodhya resulted in the BJP emerging as the alternative pole of Indian politics. Yet, it was also clear that there were limits to the party’s forward march as long as it wasn’t in a position to co-opt other nationalists, anti-Congress forces and some regional parties. These parties were willing to cooperate with the BJP as long as the rough edges of Hindutva were blunted. For many in the BJP too, there was a real danger that the energies unleashed by the Ayodhya movement would turn roguish. Atal Behari Vajpayee in particular saw “coalition dharma” as an instrument to check Hindu radicalism and the uncompromising advocacy of Hindutva.

Fortuitously for the BJP, the Supreme Court came to its rescue. In a landmark judgment on December 11, 1995, a three-judge bench pronounced “that no precise meaning can be ascribed to the terms Hindu, Hindutva and Hinduism; and no meaning in the abstract can confine it to the narrow limits of religion alone, excluding the content of Indian culture and heritage. It is also indicated that the term Hindutva is related more to the way of life of the people in the subcontinent.”

The judgment, in effect, gave the BJP an opening to defang Hindutva as am instrument of political aggression. Where the earlier emphasis had been on Hindutva as historical memory and political change, the Supreme Court reduced it to a benign “way of life”—the very description used by S. Radhakrishnan to categorise Hinduism.

In its rush to embrace the apex court judgment, the BJP, however, left an important question unanswered. If Hindutva is merely a descriptive term for a “way of life”, how does it qualify to be the defining ideology of a political party? More to the point, how does a “way of life” constitute a philosophy of governance? The sheer nebulousness of the judiciary-determined Hindutva made it possible for hundreds of interpretations of the term to coexist, without anyone being the wiser.

These issues could have been left wonderfully unaddressed had it not been for the media projection of Hindutva as the signature tune of crazy and sometime murderous fanatics. The projection may be unfair but it has cost the BJP its middle class constituency and the youth vote.

However, to blame the media for the demonization of Hindutva is unduly simplistic. Between the Ayodhya movement which encapsulated a mood for change and the 2009 polls, India has changed dramatically. First, the past decade has seen economic growth and urbanisation on a scale not witnessed since Independence. Secondly, the joint family system is no longer the defining feature of social life in urban India. Thirdly, the demographic balance has shifted quite decisively in favour of a Young India. Fourthly, India has been subjected to more global influences than ever before. A new cosmopolitanism has taken root in the country. Finally, India’s emergence as a formidable global player has led to the erosion of the mindset of defeat that was the hallmark of the Hindus in earlier times. Hindutva provided both solace and courage to a defeated people. It is perceived to be out of place for a country whose attitude to the world is couched in cockiness and self-confidence. The advocates of a neo-imperial foreign policy in particular perceive Hindutva as a huge obstacle to the spread of Indian influence in Asia.

Political parties don’t exist in a vacuum; they relate to real situations and real societies. The emergence of Hindutva as the defining feature of an earlier age was bound in a context. That context has changed, the society has changed. Unfortunately, the BJP is caught in a time-warp. Its political miscalculations and a failure to appreciate a changing India have cost it two elections. Unless there is a reality check, the future could well be even more dismal.


[1] Editorial in New Left Review, January-February 2000, p.18.

[2] Cass Sunstein, “To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with”, The Spectator (London), July 4, 2009, pp. 12-13.

[3] Eric Hobsbawm, et.al, The Forward March of Labour Halted? (Verso 1981)

[4] The Guardian, October 5, 1994.

[5] The Hindu, May 26, 2009.

[6] Organiser, July 19, 2009, p.9.

[7] V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva (7th edition, Mumbai 1999) p. 2.

[8] Tehelka, June 27, 2009, p. 18.

[9] Private communication from Ashok Chowgule, June 19, 2009.

[10] Organiser, January 31, 1993, p.7.

[11] For an analysis of the conflict between Hindutva and Integral Humanism, see Chaturvedi Badrinath, Dharma, India and the World Order (Pahl-Rugenstein, Bonn, 1993), pp. 272-316.

8 comments:

ZoomIndianMedia said...

Swapanda

1. Your using the analogy on UK labor's clause 4 and applying it to BJP's commitment to followers of native Indian beliefs (Hindutva) is disingenuous. It is neither apt, nor accurate.

2. You have made even bigger fundamental error presuming that BJP stood for Hindutva in 2004/09. This entirely destroys your "Give Up Hindutva" premise a false one.

So despite your wonderful writing style, substance of your argument is weak, revealing a Stephanian streak;)

ZIM

Sundararaman said...

Your scholarly analysis gives a historical background for your changing views post election defeat of BJP. However I feel this changing India etc are too simplistic an analysis. In my view the biggest contributor for electoral defeat is the credibility gap. What BJP needs is a stable leadership and time to build credibility around that leadership and this I feel will require one more electoral defeat. As regards Labour dropping the clause of nationalisation, whether they would have done that if 1990s resembled the current economic situation. The late 80s and 90s Hindutva movement was a reaction to the geopolitical situation in Afghanisthan and Pakisthan which culminated in 9/11. Post 9/11 there is a perceptible drop in the islamic fundamentalism and terrorism though not in incidents but in virulence, naturally there should be a honing of the ideology to changed circumstances.

Spade a spade said...

Factually wrong article. This guy doesn't know an ioto of understanding of Indian politics. If he had it then he would have sensed defeat during the election itself.If a guy of mini metro like me had predicted this defeat with so surety then why u can't ? U know my arguments during the election were exact opposite to ur latest arguments! Giving up Hindutva and licking of feets of Muslims for their votes will only make ur core voters furious and dejected.

U don't angree with me ? Ok. Then wait till the municipal election of M.P which will take place in this December. These days here Shivraj, Sushma, Shahnawaz and company is trying their best to surpass the Hajpayee record of "inclusiveness". The vernaculars r full with front page headlines: "BJP ke doot baney Musalman", "BJP Musalmano ki sacchi hamdardad" etc. These guys were here for some BJP National minority karyakaram.

At times core voters feel they r living under SP rule. Even Congress isn't that appeasing. In his second inning Shivraj is trying to emulate Hajpayee. Iska harsh bhi Hajpayee jaise hoga jo 2004 mai hua tha.

Wait and watch for the by poll and municipal election result.

Modi too -- who was immune to secular virus-- seems to be bitten by "inclusive" bug. And he tasted the result of it also in Junagadh.

Following ur suggestion BJP will go to sub 50 seats I strong believe.

Rest is upto u and do watch for this minor but imp municipal polls.

charuvak said...

Brilliant. Very nice Swapanda. This sort of writing is what sets you apart from all. I am so glad you are on the web and thus allowing us to comment on your writings.

ZoomIndianMedia said...

Spade a Spade

Your larger thrust is accurage. Going after placating muslims/xians is a bottomless pit.

Efforts Placating muslims took Gandhi and India to disaster and is reason why BJP is in the woods today. ABV/LKA repeated Gandhi mistakes.

On Junagadh Municipal elections not many know BJP got 10% more votes. Musims dominated 9 wards made the difference for congress.

Real election analysis on Junagadh Municipal elections (factual unlike what long liars like yogendra yadav, hajdeep slurdesai, prannoy james roy peddle is provided in the link below)
http://deshgujarat.com/2009/07/21/junagadh-civic-election-result-some-observations/

Modi is unlikely to beg for muslim/xian votes. His track record proves it. His message to muslims has been consistent and this. If you care for harmony and for India, vote BJP. (I will not provide you any special benefits because of your vote bank politics)

His plain speaking is the reason why he is targeted by corrupt media, anti Hindu islamic/xian forces.

In fact right clause 4 type moment for BJP will be to assert that Vajpayee/Advani made a serious mistake by opting for minority placatory politics in 2004/2009; and hereafter BJP will resolutely stand for native Indian faiths, wellbeing of followers of native Indians. If there is divisiveness in discourse, onus is on muslims/xians/congis/communists.

To summarize BJP if it has to get out of its morass of the past decade, will need following:

a. Coherent definition of Ideology elements such as Hindutva, Big Ideas that will have resonance in minds of voters.
b. Social Engineering to expand its voter base on social and economic criteria.
c. Inspiring leadership of a proven performer like Modi who can bring in the incremental votes (something that Advani 2009 could not achieve)

Above three conditions in conjunction are necessary

A charter for what BJP should do to get out of the woods is provided below.

http://zoomindianmedia.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/election-2009-analysis/

Indian Nationalist said...

I have been reading and following this author's post for a very long time. He seems to be a confused soul oscillating between many positions and trying to figure out if his political discretion or his command over English language is of more importance.


Mr. Swapan Das Gupta, one good advice for you. It is not important for you to write in
English language to prove your point. You can even write in Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi
or Gujarati since I can understand all these languages. Better yet you can write in Sanskrit
since it is scientifically proven by the English masters that it is a much more advanced language than the one you are trying to master.

Anyway coming back to the point of discussion, Mr. Swapan analyzes the fall of communism and compares that with the Hindu or Hindutva ideology and tries to convince us that both of them have followed the same path and both have reached their sell by date. While I agree with Communism that it has reached its sell by date, I do not agree with him in regard to HINDUTVA. What Mr. Swapan does not understand is that the Hindutva or
Hindu faith is not the sole proprietorship of BJP or RSS. In fact, the BJP fully and the
RSS partly have failed miserably in its attempt to rejuvenate the faith. But that does not mean that the Hindutva concept is a failed concept in itself. I can 100% certify that if any political party can soundly implement the objectives of Hindutva in contemporary India, It will be set to rule India for the next 500 years without defeat. It will
surely finish the dynastic congress party within the next few years.

Then Mr. Swapan Das Gupta analyses the 2004 general elections and argues that the Hindutva
image of the party was responsible for the bad performance. He continues to say that the
Hindutva ideology followed by the party since 2004 has resulted in the complete rout in the recent elections.

He goes on to ridicule the BJP over the EVM rigging allegations. Nothing has been proven
as yet whether the 2004 or the 2009 elections were 100% genuine. There can be a great
possibility of wide spread rigging and having Naveen Chawla as the EC definitely does not give credibility to your argument that the elections were 100% genuine.

Anyway, even considering that the elections were free and fair,
He points out that Hindutva was the sole cause of the defeat.

Indian Nationalist said...

Coming back to the main agenda of Hindutva which Swapan Das Gupta so ferociously antagonizes.

The objectives and goals of Hindutva have over the past 100 years been completely compromised ,
completely negotiated and completely made worthless that today Hindutva is worth nothing more than a piece of paper carrying no weight.

He mentions Savarkar and Golwalkar. Savarkar and Golwalkar(Guruji) had clear and complete understanding of Hindutva and its objectives.

They listed out the following objectives for 20th century Bharat and its future:

a. Bharat should be country where the Hindus and Indic religions should only be encouraged,
sustained, preserved, promoted and encouraged.

b. If Pakistan is created, then all the Muslims should be sent there and the Christians would
be allowed to stay in Bharat if they respectfully follow the Indic traditions and customs.

c. Cow protection and Temple Reconstruction should be the goal of the nation.

d. Bharat would promote its historical culture and achievements prior to Islamic invasions and would actively work in this direction to improve it inorder to show to the world its
glorious achievements before the unfortunate Islamic and Western invasions.

NOW, out of these 4 original goals of Hindutva laid out by Savarkar and Golwalkar, BJP and its
parent organization watered down the original objectives and diluted it so badly that it
made it absolutely worthless.

They (BJP and RSS) narrowed down to the following objectives of Hindutva

a. India (changed from Bharat) will have a Uniform civil code for all religions promoting secularism.

b. Article 370 should be abolished and Kashmir should be allowed to be repopulated.

c. Cow protection and ban on cow slaughter to be implemented.

d. Ram Mandir and Kashi Vishwanath temples to be reconstructed.

The BJP (and its parent organization) fought the 1983, 1987, 1990 and 1996 elections based on the
above 4 DILUTED objectives and the BJP came up from 2 seats to emerge as the single largest party
in the 1996 elections.

After that the BJP continued to show influence and gained power in the 1998 elections.

In its 6 years of rule since 1998 elections, the BJP which originally increased its seats from
2 seats to 190 seats in parliment FAILED TO IMPLEMENT EVEN THE diluted objectives of Hindutva.

- It did not implement Uniform civil code.
- It did not abolish article 370
- It did not construct Ram temple
- Cow slaughter was never banned in many BJP states.

SO AFTER FAILING TO IMPLEMENT EVEN THE DILUTED HINDUTVA AGENDAS, we have many in the BJP trying
to tell us that FOLLOWING THE HINDUTVA was the cause of the party being defeated in the 2004
and 2009 elections.

Indian Nationalist said...

Ironically everyone knows that is far from the truth. The truth is that the BJP

A. ROSE TO POWER ON THE PLEDGE OF HINDUTVA.

B. AFTER GAINING POWER IT CONVENIENTLY DUMPED HINDUTVA AND BETRAYED THE HINDUS AND KAR SEVAKS DURING THE VAJPAYEE REGIME AND DID NOT FOLLOW ANY OBJECTIVES OF HINDUTVA.

So it is NOT FOLLOWING THE HINDUTVA pattern but DUMPING THE HINDUTVA PATTERN which has caused the defeat of the BJP.

Later Mr. Swapan Das Gupta mentions that the India of 1990 and the India of 2009 are different. He is correct.

- The demographic of the country has changed and Muslim population and especially the Muslim young
population has dramatically increased over the past 20 years.

But then he also mentions the following:

- Economic growth and urbanization has increased.

- Nuclear families has evaporated.

I want to say that how is the these 2 points about Economic growth and Nuclear family affect the support for Hindutva?

Will a Non - Nuclear family mean that a former Hindu who was a supporter of Hindutva give up Hindutva?.

Will becoming economically rich mean that the former Hindu who was a supporter of Hindutva give up Hindutva?

How is becoming Rich or losing a Nuclear family in any way connected to the fall of popularity of Hindutva as Mr. Swapan Das Gupta points out?

Overall his analysis and his observation is so poor that in his attempt to master over the English language he has lost the direction of truth.

My suggestion to him earlier too was the same, He can definitely join the Congress party and write for them since he so much loathes Hindutva and the Hindu religion.

Thank you.