The end of ordinary politics Premium

The transition to a Hindutva order has been followed by a reframing of what is legitimate politics

When the Indian Constitution was being born, its creators resolved that all further politics would be conducted within its bounds. B.R. Ambedkar said: “... We must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods.”

Political theorists make the distinction between ordinary politics and extraordinary politics. Ordinary politics reproduces instituted order. In extraordinary politics, the sovereign, the people, change the fundamentals and reconstitute the order. The establishment of a new order is deemed to be the ‘end of politics’ until it is challenged through insurrection. David Held uses the concept of the ‘end of politics’ to analyse Marxism. “The end of politics (or the end of the era of the state) means the transformation of political life as it had been known ...,” with the establishment of communes. Extrapolating, all politics aim for an end of politics.

The founders not merely eschewed civil disobedience but also retained instruments of the imperial legal structure to enforce obedience by the citizenry — from sedition to defamation, which the principal leader against the current regime now stands convicted of. Not everyone agreed to the new Constitutional order; the right and the left of the Indian political spectrum questioned its legitimacy from the very beginning. The manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in 2009, lamented that “the leaders of independent India …continued to work with the institutional structures created by the British”, which was disconnected from India’s “civilisational consciousness”. Political mobilisations outside legally defined contours continued in what could be termed “between the boundaries of insurrection and institutional political activity”. ‘Worse than the British’ became a slur that was routinely thrown at the Congress regime by its opponents. Underground armed rebels, separatists, and political insurgents pushed the boundaries of the constitutional order. Conversely, political settlements with various discontented elements also tinkered with the original order. Then Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee would famously state that a resolution to the Kashmir problem would be sought not necessarily within the bounds of the Constitution, but of humanity.

Three points of extraordinary politics are milestones in India’s journey to its current Hindutva order — the J.P. Movement, the Ayodhya Movement and the Anna Hazare Movement, all primarily confined to the region above the Vindhyas. What is common between the three is that they mobilised people to overthrow the constitutionally established order through insurrection, and even violence. J.P. called it a Total Revolution.

The 1971 election made Indira Gandhi and the Congress appear unbeatable through institutional mechanism. The response was the Gujarat Navnirman Movement that attacked legislators, followed in Bihar with similar tactics, and, finally, JP’s call to the army to disobey the elected government. It culminated in the declaration of Emergency and the suspension of democracy itself. In the second, the Ayodhya movement, the BJP and the Sangh Parivar argued that the popular sovereign cannot be constrained by law that is its creation. The Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992. In the Anna Movement, a new system was sought for the summary punishment of anyone suspected of corruption; the entire parliamentary model of democracy was targeted as illegitimate, and devoid of popular sanction.

In all these three phases of extraordinary politics in India, the Sangh Parivar was a common factor. In fact, it was sequential, one leading to the next, and culminating in the electoral majority of Hindutva, in 2014. Elected Prime Minister, Narendra Modi said India had finally freed itself from “1,200 years of slavery”. A new order was being born.

When order is reconstituted, the instruments of the previous regime are taken over rather than replaced. As it happened at the founding of the Republic, its transition to a Hindutva order was quickly followed by a reframing of what is legitimate politics. The long journey of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act over many decades through various regimes is instructive. Since 2019, individuals, and not only organisations, can be notified as ‘terrorist’. Mere association with an illegal outfit makes an individual liable regardless of the commission of any illegal act. The Supreme Court of India told protestors at Shaheen Bagh (2019-20) that they must act within the bounds of law. Any criticism of the government is portrayed as anti-national; restrictions on freedom of expression are enforced for undisclosed national security reasons, and foreign links make any opinion questionable. Simultaneously, the Ayodhya insurrection has been legitimised as a sovereign act through a judicial process, retrospectively.