Indian Secular Nationalism Versus Hindu Nationalism in the 2004 General Elections

Abstract

I analyze the most dramatic event of recent politics, the struggle for power between the secular nationalist Indian National Congress (INC) and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. The chapter deals with the history and nature of the nationalism in India, its relevance to classical models of nationalism, its recent development into secular and religious versions and their most recent political struggle. Indian nationalism is a mixture of intellectual anti-British struggles and a middle class patriotic movement. When it matured, it attained some characteristics of classical nationalism. Nationalism theory became linked with the theory of “imagined communities.” Indian patriots “imagined” an Indian nation, but other groups favored for a special identity and “imagined” the nation of Indian Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs. At some point Hindu and Muslim Indian nationalists started considering each other as “alien,” which led to the rise of Muslim separatism, Sikh Separatism and Hindu Nationalism. The breakup of India in 1947 led to the creation of secular but Hindu-dominated India and Pakistan as the state of Indian Muslims. I conclude that the Indian struggle for independence led to the formation of India’s major political party of India, the INC. It remains the party of Indian secular nationalists and includes regional secular forces which joined to defeat Hindu nationalists. Despite tactical alliances with regional forces the Hindu nationalists have failed to regain the ruling status in 2004. In May 2014, however, Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won the Parliamentary elections and its leader Narendra Modi became new Prime-Minister of India. Thus the pendulum moved againg in favour of Hindu Nationalism.