Avoiding Bhagwat Versus Bhagwati

The right wing needs reconciliation between cultural nationalists and economic right in its fold.

The ‘cold war’ between the cultural and economic right is getting hot with noted economist Jagdish Bhagwati, considered close to Narendra Modi government, telling a leading daily, “Bhagwati will prevail over Bhagwat”.

It is largely being seen as an open challenge to Sangh Parivar’s authority to lay down policy standards for Modi Government. Amazingly, Bhagwati’s opinion is not confined to economics and good governance; he decries the Sangh’s cultural agenda in its entirety and even raises questions over the organisation’s understanding of what Hinduism is all about.

People must figure out whether Hinduism and Hindutva are interchangeable terms representing the same idea.

Sangh Parivar’s constituents have launched their own attacks on the economic right. Its labour wing Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) has been raising questions over National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government’s flagship programmes like “Shramev Jayate” and “Make in India”.

The parivar’s farmers’ wing Bhartiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) is threatening to march to Parliament over the new land acquisition law. The BKS has come out with a very strange demand that land acquisition shall only involve leasing, not absolute transfer of land.

In the meantime, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is going to organise a “Hindu Mahasammelan” during the Budget Session of Parliament to raise issues like religious conversion, which had given the Opposition a pretext to stall the passing of key Bills during the Winter Session.

Both cultural and economic right wing have derived wrong conclusions from the electoral mandate to Narendra Modi. While the economic right wing thinks people gave power to Modi only for “development and good governance”; the cultural rightists think the mandate is primarily for finding quick-fix solutions to issues that have already formed the core of their agenda.

Reality lies somewhere in between the two extremes. While all those voting for Modi were hoping for speedy development and clean, smooth governance, in many states like Uttar Pradesh, which have had a long history of sectarian clashes, people did vote on security issues also.

When a shopkeeper in Saharanpur voted for Modi, he had in his subconscious the fact that no riots happened in Gujarat during Modi’s chief ministership after 2002. A lot of Hindus may have voted for Modi after listening to Owaisis, Azam Khan and Imran Masood’s Islamist threats because they saw in him a strong leader, who could check aggressive posturing by Muslims and pro-Muslim political parties.

Similarly, in Assam people wanted Modi to address, apart from all the development issues, the changing demographics due to Bangladeshi infiltration, while people in Jammu liked Modi as they expected him to aid Hindu refugees from Pakistan while also ensuring that the Kashmiri Pandits would be rehabilitated in the Kashmir Valley.

When Bhagwati says conversions do not matter at all, he demonstrates his ignorance of the fact that such activities tend to ignite sectarian tensions in various parts of the country.

More than that, Bhagwati seems to purge the whole rationale of freedom to propagate one’s faith of its ethical content when he advocates looking away from the tactics employed in conversion campaigns.

However, credit for arming Bhagwati with these sharp arrows goes to the parivar’s hit-and-run narrative. It has always — and continues to — disregard  details. It fails to supplement any of the issues it raises with supportive data and scholarly findings. It relies more on simplistic assertions, questionable scholarship and abstract arguments.

Sangh’s narrative is not at par with the leftist narrative. The left dictated India’s policies for decades without ever being in power. It did so by ‘possessing’ minds. In response to every attack on the left, it would launch a scholarly counterattack.

In contrast, Sangh’s standard response to its detractors is: ‘You do not understand Sangh’ or ‘you will have to be in Sangh to understand it’. The organisation and its offshoots have failed to understand that it needs to explain itself to the people before they cross over to its side.

We are in an era where every piece of information is analysed and cross-examined every minute by hundreds of thousands of people on social media and mobile messaging applications. It is unreasonable of the RSS to expect from the intelligentsia to swing to its side just because some of its leaders shoot some simplistic assertions into the air. Sangh needs to come out with scholarly white papers on issues it wants to be seriously debated.

What needs to be understood is that Modi commands a huge electoral mandate to liberalise the economy and bring about structural reforms. If he fails to bring about these changes due to opposition from left-leaning elements within the parivar’s fold, he will also progressively lose the ability to implement the parivar’s cultural and security agenda.

In the process, Sangh will end up depicting itself as a band of obscurants blocking the material development. By laying down obstacles in path of Modi’s development agenda, Sanghis are just strengthening their own detractors.

The best course for economic and cultural right wing will be to work within their own domains instead of assailing each other. Each needs to understand the concerns of the other side instead of dismissing them outright. This way, both will discover that there is no inherent conflict between economic and cultural nationalism. However, there is certainly a need that cultural nationalism rediscovers economic nationalism and vice versa.

The parivar’s constituents need to stop being allergic to liberal economic policies and must listen to the economic right wing with an open mind. Organisations like the BMS and BKS need to evolve beyond the conventional protectionist discourse and try to understand that a bit of liberal upheaval is necessary to bring about long-term benefits for labour class as well as farmers.

A booming economy will enable the NDA government to roll out more social security benefits for the labour sector and productive benefits to farmers, enabling them to compete well with their Western counterparts. Moreover, a lot of liberal economic ideas, like a liberal tax regime, have always been part of our ancient culture and is well documented in treatises like Kautilya’s Arthashastra.

On their part, economic rightists need to understand that the concept of a welfare state runs deep into the psyche of millions of Indians since time immemorial. From the Ramayana’s Rama to King Vikramditya of Vetala Panchavimshati to documented history’s Emperor Ashoka, the kings who ensured public welfare are still celebrated. No ideological force in Indian history has been so far able to override that psyche.

The electoral mandate for Modi is not for either cultural right wing or economic right wing in isolation. It is for both. It is about synchronising the two.