This kind of division of labour makes the BJP different from other bourgeois, and election-oriented left, parties. All these parties have front organizations to garner votes and take the organization's line to particular sectors. But the BJP does not simply seek to capture parliamentary power and is perfectly willing to take extra-parliamentary and even extra-constitutional steps. They are prepared to destroy the bourgeois democratic structure and take (counter-) revolutionary steps against parliamentary politics. And in this the BJP has distinct similarities with the classic fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 30s.
The basis of the BJP's change in strategy and organizational restructuring is the crisis of the Indian economy. From the beginning of the 1980s, state sectordependent capitalist development was facing increasing problems and the capitalist class began to look to a restriction of the public sector, privatization and the removal of controls on the the movement of capital.
The BJP wanted to go beyond the middle caste, medium-sized and particularly trading sectors of capital on which its predecessor the Jan Sangh had based itself. They wanted to prove to the big bourgeoisie that they were a responsible party. Putting forward a liberal face, it selected Atal Behari Vajpayee as its leader (Vajpayee was a former foreign minister under the 1977 Janata party government at a time when the Jan Sangh was applying an "entry tactic" into the broad nonCongress opposition.) and attempted to present a modernizing economic programme and a modern cultural-political profile.
However this space was preempted by Rajiv Gandhi. In 1984-85, many bourgeois leaders and liberal intellectuals confused Rajiv's rather juvenile passion for computers with a determination to introduce a modern ethos.
After this belief was dispelled there was general disillusion with this model of modernization. The petty bourgeois masses in particular were presented with three alternatives, each of which in different ways combined the promise of modernization with some conservative or reactionary themes.
For V. P. Singh, ex-prime minister and leader of the Janata Dal, the way forward lay through the one-point programme of affirmative action for the backward castes through the implementation of the Mandal Commission report. For the Communist Party of India (Marxist) - the CPI(M) -the line was economic development with a more centralized fiscal structure and the downward spread of capital through a relative dispersal of capital, associated with a tighter leash on the working class and all oppositional movements while remaining within the bourgeois democratic system.
The third option was that of Lal Krishna Advani and the RSS.
Hindu chauvinist politics had always existed in the Jana Sangh. But while, in the period just before independence and after partition, the tensions and the mass killings in the Punjab and the two Bengals had created a powerful appeal for the slogan that Hinduism (or Islam) was in danger, the 1960s and 70s were different. Bourgeois democracy and relative economic prosperity appeared destined to lead to the extinction of far right parties like the Jan Sangh. The failure of the Vajpayee strategy - the BJP got only two seats in the lower house in the 1984 elections -gave warning signals of an imminent collapse and the RSS theoreticians decided to rebuild Hindutva - Hinduness.
They banked on the inevitable economic problems besetting a large part of the petty bourgeoisie due to capitalist modernization. Various local superstitions, false beliefs and a growing dependence on religion and, underlying all this, a growing crisis of confidence, were now to be turned into a political weapon.
### "Hindu" identity
A major obstacle to the development of a "Hindu" identity is the fact that Hindus are the majority of the Indian people. Crude propaganda items — "all Muslims have four wives and breed like rabbits" etc. — can only make headway when, for some other reason, anti-Muslim feeling is already getting the upper hand. Minority communalism can raise the cry that the minority is in danger for all the concrete reasons flowing from discrimination by the majority.
But this is not possible for the Hindus. So the slogan had to be broader and vaguer — Hindutva, the very essence of Hinduism, is in danger. In danger from a number of enemies: in the first place the "Muslim community". They live in India but they are foreigners. The precondition for their becoming Indians is that they adopt the mainstream culture. But what is this culture? Answer: the culture based on the ancient Vedic and Smriti or Dharmashastra texts.
This is, in fact, a minority culture and thus there is also the question of how the majority of really existing Hindus are to be made to accept it. The basic approach for how to do this was worked out in the 18th and 19th centuries (see article on p.31) but the problem remains that any Hindutva created on the basis of the Vedic texts would be too intellectual and have only limited appeal.
### Harnessing the epics
Hence, popular dimensions must be tacked on. For this, the ancient epics were pressed into service. Through the influence of Tulsi Dal, the great popular poet of the Middle Ages, the Ramayana epic is a major common bond for the common people of the Hindi speaking areas. Indeed, as long as overt religiosity does not intrude too strongly, this is true for Muslims as much as Hindus. Even outside the Hindi belt, the influence of the Ramayana is not inconsiderable.
Hence the choice of the destroyed Hindu temple of Ram Janma Bhoomi — once on the site of the (now also destroyed) Ayodhya mosque — as an issue. This, the supposed birthplace of Ram, had been defiled by the Muslim invaders and it was an unacceptable shame that independent India had done nothing to redress this ancient wrong. A whole new concept of the nation could be built from this starting point.
There was little in the way of argument that could be mustered against the slogan "Hinduism in danger" given that those who raised it claimed that it was a matter of conviction that went beyond reason. Rama being the incarnation of god himself, there could be no historical dispute over whether he was a myth or a reality and over his birthplace. If the Hindu priesthood - the Sants — declared this particular spot to have been his birthplace, then that was it.
And then could come the plea with reference to democracy — since the majority of people, the majority community, believes it, it must be accepted.
The mass fascist movement around the temple issue began in 1986. As the Congress government floundered amidst scandals, the BJP managed to keep its identity separate. The communal propaganda was churned out incessantly through the VHP. The BJP did not drop communalism from its election plank, but it benefited from the calls for "opposition unity" to oust Congress as the result was the V. P. Singh government propped up on
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the left by Left Front and on the right by the BJP, which thus gained credibility as a national party.
The BJP's aim was to use V. P. Singh's new-found popularity, the Bofors issue and so forth, to weaken Congress. But it had no intention of allowing the new National Front government to last out its full five year term and recreate a viable centrist alternative to Congress. So, the moment the government decided to adopt the Mandal Commission report on affirmative action for lower castes, the BJP went into action.
Because of its strategy of creating a united Hindutva, the BJP stresses a common Hindu identity rather than caste divisions. Given the reality of these divisions it takes a pro-upper caste stance by default. All RSS chiefs have been brahmins (upper caste).
But at the level of rituals, the RSS often insists on cutting out overt casteist rituals. It therefore correctly saw that V.P. Singh's implementation of the Mandal Report was aimed at dividing its own potential base.
Recognizing the danger signals, the BJP secretly joined hands with Congress to fuel upper caste violence throughout India, particularly in the educational institutions, against affirmative action. And, on the other hand, this was when the party chose to intensify its stir to unify Hindus as Hindus through Advani's Ratha Yatra. This programme left a train of 43 riots, arson, murder, looting by rampaging mobs created by the Bajrang Dal, and so on. Ultimately, Advani was arrested in Bihar and promptly, the BJP drew support from the government, which fell.
The BJP's major gain was that all this made Hindutva a major issue in the 1991 elections. Most elections in India have taken the form of plebiscites over one or two central issues. The aim of the BJP was to discredit its opponents one by one and then make Hindutva the central plebiscitary issue.
The BJP made significant headway in northern India. But its progress was hindered by the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi which created a "sympathy wave" from which the CongressI) benefited in the second round of polling, leading to a minority Congress(I) government. Nonetheless, the BJP emerged as the second biggest party in parliament with significant votes even in regions where it had previously been non-existent - for example, West Bengal where it got 12%.
A new and more serious problem for the BJP was the new economic policy of the Narasimha Rao government. Much of it is a carbon copy of what has been advocated by the BJP.
It became evident that while the big bourgeoisie was in agreement with the BJP on economic policy it was by no means reconciled to the prospect of the BJP carrying it out. They prefer to see economic restructuring proceeding under the leadership of Congress, their traditional party.
The next setback for the BJP came when, despite internal factionalism, the Congress(I) managed to stabilize its rule. It had become clear that the big bourgeoisie was not ready to run the risks of bringing a fascist party to power. Indeed, the Indian bourgeoisie is more aware of the complexities and dangers than are most leftists.
The BJP-RSS combine has become increasingly enraged by the attitude of the big bourgeoisie over the past year and a half. They now want to create a situation where the bourgeoisie feels that, for better or worse, they are the only option open to it.
So the "movement" has become steadily more heated. Step by step, with calculated gaps, tension was stepped up. The maintenance of a public, constitutional image fell chiefly to Vajpayee and to some extent to Advani. And to keep up the spirit of the cadres, and the vast masses aroused by the communal campaign there were the VHP leaders, the RSS organizers, and other BJP leaders such as Uma Bharati and Sadhvi Ritambhara.
A parliamentary game
Prime Minister Rao, his party and most leftists, all assumed, being parliamentary personalities, that this was all still a game, if a little extreme, that would be played out within an essentially parliamentary framework. None of them really believed that the mosque would actually be destroyed. Indeed, in private, many left-
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wing politicians were claiming that the BJP was on the retreat.
They all failed to realize that the difference between the BJP and the "fanatics" was a smokescreen. The reality was uncovered by an enterprising reporter from the Calcutta Statesman (December 4 and 5, 1992), Sanjay Kaw, who visited Ayodhya disguised as a kar sevak. His report showed clearly that those gathered in Ayodhya were not a wild mob.
Possibly less than 10% of the over 200,000 kar sevaks were people over whom party control was weak or nonexistent. There were skilled masons there - otherwise it would not have been possible to pull down such a structure and put up a temple on the same spot in less than 20 hours.
The BJP camp is sure that the events of December 6 and their bloody aftermath will strengthen their hands. Advani's admission of "moral responsibility" was essentially a denial of real responsibility, the aim being to avoid a ban on the BJP as such when other branches of the "movement" are outlawed
The next trick is to say that "all right, it is unfortunate and all that, but no more pandering to Muslim communalism. Now there is no longer a mosque, what talk can there be of reconstructing a mosque rather than building a temple?"
The BJP believes that an unnatural conglomeration like the Congress, the Janata Dal/National Front and the Left Front cannot provide stability for three and a half more years, so the present parliament must be dissolved well before its present term is over.
They further believe that their call to Hindutva, together with their cadre force and fascist hordes will not only fetch them a majority of seats in the north but a good bit elsewhere making them the largest single party in parliament.
Thereafter, they can hope to get an act together with the hidden communalists and rightwing politicians in the Congress (I), the National Front and similar parties to set up a stable rightwing regime.
Moreover, they believe that once they emerge as the biggest party in parliament, with a mass extra-parliamentary force to back them up, the big bourgeoisie will have no option but to back them.
This combination of electoral and meta-electoral strategy is not as absurd as most "responsible" parties are treating it. Only an approach which breaks with the prevailing parliamentarism, reliance on the bourgeois army and police, and acceptance of the neo-liberal economic agenda can counter the BJP's advance. *