Contemporary India
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An observation often made of India is that it is “timeless” or “unchanging”; this, of course, is sheer drivel. No society or culture is unchanging, and India is no exception. Equally, a mistake is made by commentators who have become excited about the rise of the “new Indian middle class”, assuming this appetite for change and development is a recent phenomenon manifested in India’s embrace of neo-liberalism (confusing an economic doctrine with modernity). In reality, as ever, the situation is more complex.
Economic acceleration
At a governmental level, India has become a paragon of economic virtue as it adopts Western orthodoxy. A huge programme of “disinvestment” (privatization) has been put in place and inward investment has greatly increased; largely to the benefit of the much-lauded Indian middle class. At the same time, attitudes to social welfare have hardened among policy makers, with large tax breaks given to the well-off, while the nation’s poor become increasingly marginalized in both the political and economic debate.
Much effort has been spent since the 1990s undoing the structures put in place by post-Independence Congress governments. These championed state ownership, industrialization and an “India first” policy - indigenous production and consumption coupled with protectionist import policies. Alongside these were promulgated the belief in secularization and, to borrow a government slogan of the time, “unity through diversity”. The irony is that these nation-building ideas were radical solutions to the economic difficulties and fragmented nature of India’s post-colonial society. The British left India in a woeful state, in terms of both economic and human development. There was hardly any indigenous industry and literacy rates were exceptionally low. Recent economic commentators have tended to denigrate the legacy of Nehru (it was largely he who pushed through the post-Independence industrial policies), without acknowledging that the industrial base that they are so keen to see privatized, and the literate workforce that they foresee taking over call centre jobs from the West, are the products of precisely these earlier policies.
Religion and identity
The political discourse around the millennium was dominated by reactionary, right-wing Hinduism as espoused by the BJP, and economic liberalization. Although at first these seem strange bedfellows, given the disruption neo-liberal policies cause to people’s lives, religion and an aggressive promotion of the national myth are useful tools in keeping the populace onside while state and national governments push through unpopular measures.
In an Indian context this saw an individualization of Hindu identity, while at the same time there was an attempt to homogenize a highly disparate and eclectic group of beliefs and practices. Modern Hinduism, at least as promoted by the Sangh Parivar, is increasingly coming to resemble evangelical Christianity. An individual’s relationship with a deity and personal observance of ritual, rather than action for the social good, are seen as the key to salvation. Thus, limiting consumption and displays of wealth in the face of deprivation is of less spiritual importance than, say, taking part in the building of a new temple to Ram at Ayodhya.
This move away from Gandhian ideals has been accompanied by a more canonical approach to the religious text. Writings such as the Vedas, Bhagavad Gita and Ramayana have acquired the status of historical document rather than spiritual tract; they are statements of absolute fact, rather than guides towards universal truths that are open to interpretation. Modern right-wing Hinduism is far more interested in having a rigid rule book of rights and wrongs, than in the traditional subtleties of religious debate, which in the past made the Hindu world relatively inclusive and tolerant.
As with any hegemonic insistence on the observance of a series of rules, minority viewpoints suffered. In India this had the greatest effect on the country’s 100 million-plus Muslims. The national myth promoted by the BJP was fiercely anti-Islamic. For all the recent talks between the two countries, the external bogeyman has been largely identified as Pakistan, while Muslim Indian nationals were portrayed as an Islamic fifth column. The most distressing and vicious manifestation of this occurred in Gujarat in 2002, where at least 1,000 Muslims were killed in communal rioting. The BJP Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, was heavily implicated in the carnage but continues to enjoy the party’s protection.
