Violence and Democracy: The Collapse of One-Party Dominant Rule in India

By Kazuya Nakamizo

The Bhagalpur riots occurred in the Indian state of Bihar during the 1989 Lok Sabha election campaign. In the lead-up, political actors and parties exploited religious identities for their own electoral purposes. In this book, Nakamizo systematically and comprehensively analyses the course of the significant political change that forms the background to these and other outbreaks of violence, from the collapse of Congress's rule to the rise of identity-based political parties. The political change is explained via a multi-layered analysis of the connection between centre, state, and rural village levels in the context of the interaction between caste and religious identities.The riots, especially the counter-riot response, are used as a key explanatory variable throughout. Nakamizo's book offers an insightful and highly relevant perspective on the political background to the communal violence that has been a feature of democratic India and continues to this day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trans Pacific Press
• Release date: Nov 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781920901813

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Preface

This book is the English edition of Indo: Bōryoku to minshushugi – Ittō yūi shihai no hōkai to aidentiti no seiji (Violence and Democracy in India: The Collapse of One-Party Dominant Rule and Identity Politics), published by the University of Tokyo Press, Japan, in 2012. The original Japanese edition was based on my Ph.D. dissertation, ‘Bōryoku no haitō – Indo Bihāru shū ni okeru seiji hendō to aidentiti no seiji’ (The Dividends of Violence: Political Change and Identity Politics in Bihar, India), submitted to the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, the University of Tokyo, in March 2008 (degree awarded in November 2008), but for publication I trimmed it to half its length and added a new discussion on economic factors (Chapter Four). While it is unfortunate that many of my arguments had to be omitted from this book, I believe that the inclusion of the new chapter on economics added more depth to my analyses. The Japanese book won the 2012 Asia-Pacific Award of the Asian Affairs Research Council (Special Prize) and the 2013 Japan Consortium for Area Studies Award.

Many of the arguments presented within are founded on the fieldwork I conducted in the Indian state of Bihar from 2002 to 2005. Over the 12 years since my Ph.D. dissertation was completed and eight years since the publication of the Japanese edition, there has been an accumulation of important findings in the area of Indian political studies. For the publication of this English edition, however, I decided to limit changes to factual corrections and updating political situations and refrained from making major revisions to my argument. I am well aware that some of the points I make are now redundant. I am also aware that the political change that occurred from the 1980s to the early 1990s is becoming a historical subject in the context of the vigorous push toward political and social Hinduisation under the current Modi government. Nevertheless, I believe that the political shift examined in this book is an important political change that is crucial for an understanding of the Hindutva (Hinduness) politics of today and that my arguments have not lost their significance in this regard.

It took me a long time to settle on the political consequences of particular riots as my theme. Because I entered my research career through the study of war and poverty in the field of international politics, the question of violence was as important as the question of poverty in my mind. Nevertheless, it was the sheer weight of India’s reality that made me realise clearly that it should be the focus of my Ph.D. dissertation. I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to stay in India as a fellow of the Asian Leadership Fellowship Program sponsored by the Japan Foundation from March to October 1996 and as a researcher/advisor at the Embassy of Japan in India from December 1996 to March 1999. I was also fortunate to be a recipient of the Japanese government’s MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) Scholarship for International Research Students from March 2001 to February 2003, and was then given the opportunity to undertake field research as a fellow of the Research Fellowship for Young Scientists (PD) of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science from April 2003 to March 2006. During each of my stays, I witnessed the serious problems confronting India.

My first experience of an election, which happened during my first stay, was the 1996 Lok Sabha election (parliamentary election) in which the BJP became the leading party for the first time. The BJP finally took over the government after the 1998 Lok Sabha election. Shortly after, India conducted a nuclear test, which was followed by the 2002 Gujarat riots. As I observed the process in which a political party that had instigated major religious riots legally won power under a democratic system and triggered devastating riots once again, I was compelled to contemplate the question of the relationship between democracy and violence.

In addition, the Ranvir Sena, a militia group formed by upper-caste landlords, was most active in Bihar state, which was the study field for both my master’s thesis and Ph.D. dissertation. The impact of the newspaper photo of the then Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav standing in front of the bodies of the poor farmers murdered by the Ranvir Sena remains fresh in my mind. I wondered what to make of this situation in which massacres were repeatedly carried out under a stable democracy.

At the same time, my stays in India happened to coincide with the most politically unstable period of the competitive multi-party system phase. Lok Sabha elections were held four times in a period of eight years from 1996 to 2004. I was fortunate to be conducting my field studies during those four elections and witnessed the birth of the BJP government from the Lok Sabha public gallery in 1998. As I watched the unfolding of the political process on a daily or even hourly basis, I became curious about the dynamics involved in the rapid collapse of Congress’s one-party domination.

Consequently, making connections between the two themes – violence and political change – became the goal of my Ph.D. dissertation. The first subject I tackled was the Ranvir Sena and I discovered the importance of the political change in my search for the cause of massacres. I came to realise during my field study that the emergence of the competitive multi-party system in Bihar was fostering the transformation of not only party politics but also society as a whole. The establishment of Laloo’s government was changing the rural society that accounted for almost 90 percent of Bihar state, accelerating the collapse of the traditional hegemonic structure, which had been crumbling gradually, and giving rise to a phenomenon that could be called a reversal of the social order in many parts of the state. Murho village, and Belaur village where the Ranvir Sena was formed, have been discussed as such examples in this book. What made this change possible? What stuck in my mind in considering this question was the impact of the 1989 Bhagalpur riots that Mr. Farzan Ahmed, a Muslim journalist for India Today, told me about when I was researching the 1998 Lok Sabha election. I saw the possibility of connecting violence and political change in examining that event.

Fujiwara (1998) was helpful in developing my idea into the framework of the political consequences of riots. His hypothesis that the process of ending a war influences the formation of post-war order seemed to be useful in my attempt to elucidate the relationship between riots and political change. It appeared that the way in which the ruling party responded to riots certainly influenced the level of voter confidence in the government and had a major impact on political change. This is how I finally arrived at the framework used in this book to examine the political consequences of riots.

This book was completed with the generous support of a large number of people. Although I cannot mention all of them by name due to space limitations here, I would like to express my gratitude from the bottom of my heart.

Firstly, I would like to thank my supporters in India. I had the fortune to learn from some of India’s leading academics. At the Jawaharlal Nehru University where I studied on two separate occasions (in 1996 and 2001– 2005), I had the privilege of having Emeritus Profs. Aswini Kant Ray (in 1996), Imtiaz Ahmad (from 2001 to 2002) and Kamal Mitra Chenoy (from 2002 to 2005) as my supervisors. They provided me with very kind and detailed guidance as well as all sorts of assistance for myself as an international student. I continue to be encouraged by the professors, who are engaged in active discussion for the protection of India’s democracy to this day.

Former Prof. Achin Vanaik of the University of Delhi and his wife and former senior associate editor of the Indian Express, Pamela Philipose, gave me tremendous help on every visit to India. Their genuine and open personalities have never failed to warm my heart. The writings and activities of Prof. Vanaik and Philipose, who have long fought for the realisation of freedom and equality, gave me the fortitude to believe in the potential for Indian democracy.

Guidance from the late Emeritus Prof. Rajni Kothari, who has energetically led Indian political science for many years toward the realisation of democratic ideals, has left a deep impression on me. I continue to cherish his comment that Bihar was an excellent choice of topic on my part along with his wise advice to go beyond the bounds of political science and learn about Indian culture.

I also received much assistance from many people in Bihar where I carried out my field surveys. First of all, I would like to thank Dr. Shaibal Gupta, Dr. Prabhat P. Ghosh and Dr. Sunita Lall of the Asian Development Research Institute. They, especially Dr. Gupta, gave me detailed advice in preparation for my field surveys in Bihar ranging from basic knowledge about the state to location selection as well as full support for my stay in Patna. My field surveys would not have been possible without assistance from them and others at the Institute. Every time I visited Bihar, they asked me when the book was going to be translated into English, and I feel relieved that I have delivered on my promise at last.

In conducting the surveys, I was greatly helped by my Indian friends – Mr. Shambhu Kumar Suman, Mr. Harendra Kumar and Mr. Rohit Kumar helped me in the survey of Murho village in Madhepura district while Mr. Vivek Sharan, Mr. Pavan Kumar Sharma and Mr. Dharmendra Kumar Singh worked as my assistants in the survey of Belaur village in Bhojpur district. With regard to the Bhagalpur riots, I received the support of eminent journalist Mr. Soroor Ahmed as well as my assistant, Mr. Yakub Ashrafi. I also owe a great deal to Prof. Farul Ali of Bhagalpur University.

In addition, renowned journalist Mr. Srikant furnished me with valuable information at each juncture during my surveys in Bihar. I turned my attention to the Bhagalpur riots at the suggestion of the aforementioned journalist, Mr. Farzan Ahmad. My field surveys would not have succeeded without their cooperation.

Most of all, I would like to extend my gratitude to the people of India, especially of Bihar, who kindly agreed to participate in my research. Bihari peoples gave me a total of over 200 interviews including the panel survey for this book and, graciously and with a smile, answered my questions ranging from private matters such as family structure, assets and social attributes to the rather sensitive issue of riots that had the potential to threaten their personal safety. They obliged just because I had come all the way from Japan to learn about Bihar and patiently spent many hours with me. In particular, I cannot thank the people of Murho village, Belaur village and Bhagalpur enough, who agreed to be interviewed multiple times. I was not able to make use of all of the interviews nor list all of the interviewees’ names here, but this book would not exist if not for their cooperation, for which I am truly grateful.

I would also like to extend my thanks to my advisors in Japan. From my postgraduate years, my supervisor, Prof. Kiichi Fujiwara of the University of Tokyo, taught me the fundamentals I needed in order to stand on my own feet as a political scientist. My Ph.D. dissertation took me an enormous amount of time to complete but he provided me with well-considered and excellent instructions. Prof. Chiharu Takenaka of Rikkyo University empathically taught me how to approach and relate to not only Indian politics but also India itself. In addition to the basics of Indian politics and research, she advised me to take the attitude of facing India as a human being which was, in a sense, more important than looking at it as a research subject. Prof. Kazuo Ōgushi of the University of Tokyo was my supervisor when I was a post-doctoral fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and gave me detailed feedback of unparalleled accuracy as the examiner of my Ph.D. dissertation. Emeritus Prof. Nobuko Nagasaki of the University of Tokyo opened the door to Indology for me. Emeritus Prof. Nariaki Nakazato of the University of Tokyo taught me the rigors of the discipline of Indology. The sharp yet warm pointers he gave me from time to time have served as valuable guiding principles in my development as a researcher.

After the completion of my Ph.D. dissertation, I was again fortunate enough to receive support from many people in honing my arguments. Prof. Akio Tanabe of the University of Tokyo, Emeritus Prof. Fumiko Oshikawa of Kyoto University, Dr. Noriko Kondō of the Institute of Developing Economy, Emeritus Prof. Takenori Horimoto of Shobi Gakuen University, the late Emeritus Prof. Haruka Yanagisawa of the University of Tokyo and Prof. Kōichi Fujita of Kyoto University were kind enough to read my manuscripts and give me valuable comments. Prof. Ken Ishida of Chiba University, Prof. Akio Takahara of the University of Tokyo and the late Prof. Akira Adachi of Kyoto University organised research meetings and gave me important feedback.

I would also like to thank the reviewers of the Japanese version of the book. Their advice and painstaking efforts have allowed me to improve on the arguments in this English edition.

I have received generous support from my colleagues in both the academic and administrative departments at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University, where I currently work. Prof. Tatsuro Fujikura, Associate Prof. Rohan D’Souza and Associate Prof. Sae Nakamura are always inspiring me with new ideas. In particular, Rohan has always offered me warm words of encouragement for my research and stressed the importance of presenting Japanese studies to the world. His assistance has been very valuable in bringing this book to readers in India and the world.

Needless to say, all factual errors and interpretations contained in this book are my own.

I owe the publication of this English edition to the efforts of Mr. Tetsuya Suzuki, Editor-in-Chief at Kyoto University Press, and Emeritus Prof. Yoshio Sugimoto, Director of Trans Pacific Press. I was initially planning to translate the book myself, but I was too busy with academic duties. I consulted Mr. Hideki Yamada of the University of Tokyo Press, the editor of the Japanese edition of my book. He referred me to Mr. Suzuki, who welcomed me into his office even though I was almost a walk-in and introduced me to Prof. Sugimoto. They have been very instrumental in the publication of this English edition, a project I had nearly given up on. This work would not have seen the light of day without the effort of translator Ms. Minako Sato and editor Ms. Miriam Riley. I would like to extend my sincere appreciation for all of their support.

The publication of this edition has been made possible by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Grant-in-Aid for Publication of Scientific Research Results: Scientific Literature) for 2018. I thank the committee members for their support. The field studies that underpin my arguments in this book were facilitated by the Asia Leadership Fellow Program of the Japan Foundation (March–October 1996), a Japanese government MEXT scholarship to study in Asia (March 2001–February 2003) and the postdoctoral fellowship program of the JSPS (April 2003–March 2006). I am truly grateful for the support.

Lastly, I would like to dedicate this book to my family who patiently support my work and especially my daughter, Haru, who was born after the publication of the Japanese edition.

Introduction

Democracy in India is facing a crisis. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition (the National Democratic Alliance) that came to power in the 2014 general election has been vigorously pushing a Hindutva (Hinduness) agenda in politics and society under Prime Minister Narendra Modi (Vanaik 2017: 357–423). Although there have so far been no major religious riots comparable to the 2002 Gujarat massacre, for which Modi himself owes political accountability, persecution of religious minorities such as Muslims and Christians has intensified through the activity of vigilante groups such as the Gau Rakshaks (Nakamizo 2017, 2020). Beyond such oppression by violence, Hindutva is also being advanced in educational and judicial institutions. Democracy that upholds the ideals of freedom and equality is in great turmoil under present conditions.

India has maintained a democratic system since its independence in 1947, aside from a period of almost two years from 1975 to 1977. This makes it an extremely rare case among developing countries. Why has India fallen into this critical situation after practicing democracy for 70 years? India has inscribed secularism as one of the basic principles in its constitution and upheld interfaith coexistence as a national policy based on the tragic experience of independence-partition riots. Why are these principles now being so easily eroded? In order to answer these questions, we need to analyse the political upheaval that took place from the late 1980s to the 1990s. This is the focal point of this book.

There is a large body of research analysing the political change that occurred in the 1990s. I discuss these studies in detail in Chapter One, including Kohli’s (1992) explanation of the breakdown of Congress’s party organisation leading up to the decline of its rule, Chhibber’s (1999) argument that the reflection of Indian society’s inherent social cleavage in its political party system precipitated the change in this system and Jaffrelot’s (1996, 2003) detailed analyses of the process of the emergence of political parties built on caste and religious identities. There is no doubt that these studies have made important contributions. At the same time, some issues remain unexplained. The primary problem is that past discussions did not always pay sufficient attention to the connection between two important political shifts, namely, the collapse of Congress’s rule and the rise of identity-based political parties.

When Congress’s rule was rock solid, political scientists devoted their attention to this party. As the party declined rapidly, however, they turned their attention to fast-rising identity-based parties such as the BJP and Janata Dal. Congress’s downfall was examined only in the context of research on identity-based parties as in Jaffrelot (2003) and Chandra (2004), and a thorough analysis of the collapse of Congress’s rule seems to have been abandoned after Kohli (1992). This tendency has been growing in the current climate in which Congress suffered a historic defeat in the 2014 general election, winning only 44 seats in the 543-member parliament, and was again defeated in the 2019 general election, winning only 52 seats, while the BJP coalition emerged victorious in both elections.

While the downfall of Congress and the rise of identity-based parties certainly occurred in succession, the course of Congress’s decline was not subsumed under the process of the emergence of identity-based parties; it had its own dynamic. By the same token, the emergence of identity-based parties had its own dynamic independent of Congress’s decline. In order to conduct a more accurate analysis of India’s political change, it is important to understand the dynamics of both processes and examine the close interaction between them. Accordingly, this book focuses on two factors connecting the two processes – one is the transformation of rural society and the other is the riots which occurred after Independence.

Regarding the first factor, the traditional power structure in rural society drew my attention. In India, where approximately 68 percent of the population live in rural areas (as of 2011), rural votes are of vital importance to the acquisition of power. While Congress’s rule tended to rely on the influence of traditional elites in rural society, the transformation of rural society in response to the introduction of the Green Revolution led to the destabilisation of Congress’s rule. The rise of the middle and lower strata and the weakening of traditional authority in rural villages chipped away at Congress’s power base and forced the party to resort to religious-identity politics in an effort to restore stability to its support base. This decision sparked large-scale religious riots.

Here the riots enter the picture as the second factor; the ‘counter-riot response’ of each ruling party became the key question. Needless to say, riots can change people’s lives drastically, especially those of the victims. In the case of identity-based riots, it is undeniable that the severity of the damage tends to sharpen or radicalise people’s sense of identity. Moreover, the counter-riot response of the ruling party either strengthens or weakens people’s trust in the government, as the protection of the lives and safety of its citizens is the government’s fundamental responsibility. If Congress failed to contain anti-Muslim riots, it would lose the support of Muslims, who formed an important part of the party’s support base, and the sharpening of people’s identity consciousness would lead to the emergence of identity-based political parties.

Despite the importance of the transformation of rural society and the riots in linking the political phenomena of the collapse of Congress’s rule and the rise of identity-based parties as outlined above, these factors have not been sufficiently analysed in preceding studies. In terms of attempts to connect the political change with the transformation of rural society, some have examined relevant factors down to the district level, such as Kohli, but very few have tried to link rural politics with central and state politics. A majority of the studies that include rural villages within their scope merely provide a general overview of changes in rural society and rarely look into this question on the basis of field surveys, as this book does.

Similarly, it is fair to say that past studies have neglected the role of riots in the process of political change. The preceding studies have treated the violence and riots that occurred in the course of political change as the ultimate result and the tragic end brought on by caste- and religious-identity-based mobilisation. For this reason, they have examined the political process leading up to the riots in detail but have neglected to analyse the political consequences of the riots thoroughly. Today, there is active research on religious violence, but much effort is devoted to investigations into the cause of the riots while insufficient attention is paid to the impacts of them. The attempt to approach the political change from the angle of the riots in this book is novel in both the study of political change and the study of riots.

While the use of the two analytical axes, namely the transformation of rural society and the counter-riot response, enables us to understand the political change in a more systematic fashion, this book makes another important contribution from the viewpoint of systematicity: the focus on the impacts of the interaction between caste identity and religious identity on the political change. Preceding studies tended to analyse the rise of identity-based political parties by separating religion- and caste-based parties. However, an analysis of the current political process demonstrates that the interaction between the two identities plays a crucial role in the rise of these parties. For instance, the Janata Dal succeeded in seizing power in Bihar in 1990 precisely because the Congress government failed to respond properly to large-scale riots in Bhagalpur in 1989, which prompted Muslims to desert the party. The rise of upper backward castes led by the Yadavs was certainly an important factor, but it alone cannot explain the Janata Dal’s takeover of power. In this way, past studies have underestimated the involvement of the interaction between the two identities in the political change.

This is not to say that past studies have entirely ignored the interaction between the two identities. As I discuss later, Brass and many other scholars have noted that the announcement of the implementation of the Mandal Commission Report was the trigger for the BJP to launch Rath Yatra (chariot procession). Nevertheless, there has been a strong tendency to analyse the effect of the interaction between the two identities for the purpose of explaining individual strategies such as Rath Yatra. In contrast, the analysis in this book goes beyond individual strategies and deals directly with their connection with the political change. In other words, this book attempts to understand identity politics systematically through analysis that centres on the interaction between the two identities.

Thus, the key feature of this book is the systematic and comprehensive analysis of the course of the significant political change from the collapse of Congress’s rule to the rise of identity-based political parties. What proves meaningful in this contribution to the understanding of contemporary Indian politics is the attempt to explain the political change through a multilayered analysis of the connection between centre, state and rural village levels while paying attention to the interaction between caste and religious identities and using the riots, especially the counter-riot response, as an explanatory variable.

Other characteristics of this book in addition to its methodological uniqueness include the time periods and the religious riots it looks into. One of the time periods subjected to detailed examination here is the term of V.P. Singh’s National Front government that came to power in December 1989 and collapsed in November 1990. While V.P. Singh’s government, albeit short-lived, left its mark on India’s political history by declaring the implementation of the Mandal Commission Report, it was a tempestuous period marred by many religious riots associated with the Rath Yatra in addition to the Mandal riots. While the term of the Singh administration tends to be characterised solely by the announcement of the implementation of the Mandal Commission Report, it was in fact a highly crucial period during which caste identity and religious identity became politicised in an intricately intertwined fashion. This book examines and explains the political process of this period in detail.

The other characteristic is the focus on particular religious riots. The most symbolic incidents at the height of the Ayodhya movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s were the demolition of the Babri Masjid (Mosque of Babur) in December 1992 and the subsequent anti-Muslim riots (the Ayodhya riots). Accordingly, many studies tend to focus on the 1992–1993 Ayodhya riots while paying little attention to the religious riots immediately before them. With this point in mind, this book sheds light on the 1989 Bhagalpur riots, which have kept a low profile in the shadow of the Ayodhya riots, and analyses the political impacts of this large-scale incident in detail. As of 2020, post-Independence India has held 17 general elections, but the 1989 Lok Sabha election was the only occasion in which an election campaign and riots as large as the Bhagalpur riots occurred simultaneously. In this sense, the Bhagalpur riots have a special significance in relation to the political change. Moreover, data on the Mandal riots and Rath Yatra-related religious riots during the period of the National Front government have been collected and analysed in detail. Thus, this book illuminates the seldom-reviewed riots through field surveys.

I now briefly introduce the contents of this book. Chapter One presents the analytical framework and proposes that the ‘counter-riot response’ is an important explanatory variable in the study of political change. Based on that premise, Chapter Two examines the process in which Congress gathered votes by utilising the socioeconomic structure of rural villages in order to elucidate the structure of Congress’s rule. The dominance of upper castes (upper strata of the caste system) produced by that process fostered discontent among backward castes (middle and lower strata of the caste system). Chapter Three discusses the process in which socialist political parties took note of disaffection among backward castes and attempted to mobilise them.

For this mobilisation to succeed, backward castes had to become independent from the socioeconomic influences of upper-caste landlords. This was made possible by the introduction of the Green Revolution, which is the topic covered by Chapter Four. As backward castes gradually built their strength, they played a key role in the anti-Congress movement of 1974–1975 and contributed to the long-awaited victory of the opposition alliance over Congress in the 1977 Lok Sabha election.

Even though Congress was returned to power in the 1980 Lok Sabha election, it was obvious that its support base was slowly crumbling. Congress instituted various policies in order to restore its power base to its former stability, but in the end, it resorted to the exploitation of religious identity, which did not require budgetary allocation. This decision led to the outbreak of large-scale religious riots. Chapter Five examines the process leading up to major religious riots and the way the Congress government responded to them based on the findings of field surveys conducted in the area where the Bhagalpur riots broke out in 1989, while Chapter Six looks into the impacts of the riots on the 1989 general election.

The vacuum created by the collapse of Congress’s rule was filled by identity-based political parties. Again, it was the riots that had a definitive effect on the seizing of power by identity-based parties and determined which of these parties would take control. Chapter Seven looks at the counter-riot responses of ruling parties using the state of Bihar as an example. Finally, the Conclusion summarises the book’s arguments and considers democracy’s potential as a political system to overcome violence.

1Violence and Democracy

Political change and violence in India

India has now arrived at a crossroads. The Indian National Congress (hereafter referred to as ‘Congress’) lost its majority and became an opposition party in the 1989 general election after leading the independence movement and holding power at the central and state government levels continuously for decades. Congress’s place was taken by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose aspiration was to turn India into a Hindu Rashtra (nation). The BJP had long been regarded as untouchable because ‘the founding father of India’, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was assassinated by a former member of its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps; hereafter RSS). However, in 1996 the BJP became the leading party for the first time and took the reins of government for two consecutive terms from the 1998 general election. The BJP was defeated by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in the 2004 general election and again in the 2009 general election. In the 2014 general election, however, the BJP nominated Narendra Modi as its prime-ministerial candidate and won an outright majority for the first time since Independence. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won once again in the 2019 general election and increased their number of seats from 282 in 2014 to 303 in 2019. It now forms a new party system, that is, the ‘BJP system’ (Nakamizo 2020).

Contrary to the overwhelming majority of the BJP-led NDA, Congress is struggling hard to survive. It suffered a crushing defeat in the 2014 general election, where it managed to secure only 44 seats, the worst performance since Independence, and only 59 seats as the UPA collectively. In the 2019 general election, they increased their seats from 44 to 52 (UPA total: 90), however, it has proved very difficult to catch up to the BJP and NDA. India is undoubtedly signifying a dramatic change in its political party system.

Change was not confined to the political system. Political issues also shifted dramatically. The eradication of poverty captured attention as a political issue in the midst of the power struggle that erupted after the passing of Nehru, who had embodied the prestige of Independence. When Indira Gandhi’s government won a landslide victory on an anti-poverty platform in the 1971 Lok Sabha election after losing its majority through the 1969 Congress party split, the eradication of poverty consolidated its position as an indisputable political concern. However, poverty was usurped by religious identity during the 1980s.

As the Sikh separatist movement turned violent from the early 1980s in Punjab, a state on the border with Pakistan which was divided at the time of India’s independence-partition, national integration became a key issue. In order to eliminate the extremists agitating for an independent state of Khalistan, Indian army troops trampled the Golden Temple, the Sikh religion’s sacred site, and killed the militants who had barricaded themselves in the complex. After Sikh bodyguards assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in retaliation, Hindus mounted riots and massacred Sikhs mainly in North India. In the 1984 Lok Sabha election held immediately following the massacre of about 3,000 Sikhs, Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress received an unprecedented level of support and won over three quarters of the seats, securing unshakable dominance in the Lok Sabha.

However, Congress’s policy stance was shaky. While successive election defeats at the state level had led to questions within the party regarding Rajiv’s leadership, the BJP began to regain lost ground after its humiliating defeat in the 1984 Lok Sabha election left it with only two seats. When the Sangh Parivar demanded the reopening of the gate of the Babri Masjid (Mosque of Babur) in the North Indian city of Ayodhya, which it claimed was the ‘birthplace of Lord Ram’,¹ Rajiv’s government took an appeasement approach by following their demands after a long period of closure since 1949. This action literally opened Pandora’s box. The Sangh Parivar built on the momentum and organised processions heading towards Ayodhya. The mobilisation created violent confrontations between Hindus and Muslims across India, culminating in the eruption of large-scale riots in Bhagalpur district, Bihar. The incident that resulted in the slaughter of over 1,000 Muslims deeply shocked the nation.

Congress was toppled amid a series of massacres. The party was defeated in the 1989 Lok Sabha election that coincided with the spreading Bhagalpur riots. The incoming National Front government headed by the Janata Dal’s party leader, Vishwanath Pratap Singh (V.P. Singh), took up the issue of public sector job reservations for backward castes, which had been shelved by the previous Congress governments. As soon as Prime Minister V.P. Singh announced the implementation of the reservation system recommended by the Mandal Commission, the upper-caste protest movements spread mainly in North India. In this process, upper-caste protesters and backward-caste supporters began to clash and riots broke out largely in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states. Religious identity was thus pushed aside by caste identity as the main issue.

For the BJP with high aspirations for ‘Hindu Rashtra’, the caste issue capable of dividing Hindu society was a threat. Amid reports of clashes between anti-reservationist protesters and the police as well as self-immolations by upper-caste students, the BJP staged a procession heading for Ayodhya. Its party leader, L.K. Advani, led the march riding on a chariot. His arrest by Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav of the Janata Dal triggered the collapse of V.P. Singh’s government. The impacts of the chariot procession did not stop at political turmoil; it provoked serious religious riots in which over 600 people were killed mainly in North India, with most casualties in Uttar Pradesh, the state in northern India in which Ayodhya is situated. The waves of violence surrounding caste and religion altered the structure of party politics.

Why did Congress’s domination crumble? Why did the post-Congress political parties put caste and religious identities at the forefront in order to gather support? Why did the new party system develop as a competitive multi-party system rather than a new single-party dominance regime in the 1990s? Why did the political change and the riots based on caste and religious identities coincide? How did the outbreaks of violence influence India’s political shift? The aim of this book is to find answers to these questions which is crucial to enable us to understand current political developments.

Change in the party system

Three-phase party systems up to 2014

I begin this section with a discussion on the change in the party system before embarking on an exploration of the above questions. The phases of the shift in the party system have been defined variously by different scholars depending on the criteria used in the analyses.² For the purpose of our discussion on the collapse of Congress’s dominance and the rise of new political forces with emphasis on both national and state levels, it is appropriate to adopt the three-phase system proposed by Y. Yadav (1996, 1999, 2004).

Yadav presented three phases of party systems based on the number of seats and share of votes won by each party as well as other criteria such as voter turnout, the number of candidates in each constituency and the effective number of parties. The first phase lasted for 20 years from Independence to 1967, during which the Congress system of one-party dominance was at work. In this period, there was no opportunity for the opposition to take over the government. The second phase also lasted for almost two decades, from 1967 to 1989, when Congress functioned as a key party in the Congress-Opposition party system, although it was no longer dominant. Opposition parties were able to take power from Congress at the central government level by forming an anti-Congress alliance during this period. The third phase began in 1989 when Congress lost its special position at the centre of the political party system and began to compete against other parties for votes in a new competitive multi-party system. Unlike in the past, Congress no longer had the ability to seize power on its own. I advance my discussion principally on these three phases in this book,³ although India has now entered a fourth new party system, the BJP system, from 2014 onward (Nakamizo 2020). In order to understand the current new BJP system, it is essential to analyse the development of the previous three party-system phases.⁴ The characteristics of each phase is examined next.

Phase I: Establishment of the Congress system (1947–67)

Rajini Kothari first proposed the Congress system as a theoretical model.⁵ Based on the fact that Congress held around two thirds of the Lok Sabha seats (Table 1.1) and governed in nearly all provinces, Kothari defined the Congress system as a system of one-party dominance with Congress as the party of consensus and opposition parties as the parties of pressure. The concept of ‘the party of consensus’ originated from the way the party operated according to consensus reached through the open competition between factions within the party that was permitted under the stable leadership of Nehru. The intra-party competition directly formed the core of the competition within India’s party system, where opposition parties recognised Congress as the dominant party.

On the other hand, opposition parties were not there to form government, unlike in the two-party and multi-party systems in the West. Their main role was to influence Congress’s policy decision-making as pressure groups and to force the government to alter their policies under threat of regime change if they diverged from public opinion. Their presence performed a very important function for the Congress system in guaranteeing its ability to respond to the wishes of the people.

Was there any hope for the opposition? As the chance of an opposition party forming government was low, emerging forces considered it to be expedient to operate within the Congress party and Congress was prepared to accept them when necessary. For this reason, there was a tendency for Congress to grow more powerful while opposition parties dwindled, but this is not to say that the opposition stood no chance. Kothari (1990: 25, 29) argued that the potential for the opposition to extend its influence depended on Congress and that it could be found, for example, when Congress failed to absorb a new force.

According to Kothari (1990: 27–35), the conditions for the establishment of the Congress system included the historical consensus that Congress took the initiative in organising the independence movement and actually gained independence and the fact that Congress adhered to democratic ideals from its inception and maintained democratic values and institutions with the emphasis on consensus-building after Independence, especially under the leadership of Nehru. In short, the Congress system had the following three features. Firstly, it was equipped with an inclusive capacity to deal with change internally within the party, unlike a regime change in the West or a coup d’état under a one-party system. Secondly, it brought out various interests and resolved conflicts through pressure within the party and from the opposition. Finally, it connected society and politics through its factional network. The Congress system proposed by Kothari established itself as a commonly accepted model that accurately represented the party system of the first two decades after Independence.⁶

The Congress system featuring these characteristics came to an end as Congress suffered a setback in the 1967 election and gave way to the Congress-Opposition system of the second phase.

Phase II: Establishment of the Congress-Opposition system (1967–1989)

The 1967 election was a watershed in Indian politics, as Congress managed to maintain a slim majority in the central government but found itself in a minority in eight of the 15 populous states (Bihar, Kerala, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Madras (present Tamil Nadu), Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal) at the state government level.⁷ Opposition parties, which had previously been mere ‘pressure parties’, succeeded in taking political power from Congress and forming non-Congress governments in these states.

Table 1.1 Number of seats and vote share of major political parties (Lok Sabha: 1952–2019)

Source: Prepared by author based on Election Commission reports.

Notes: (1) The numbers for JD (Janata Dal) include the Socialist Party and Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP) for 1952, Praja Socialist Party (PSP) for 1957, PSP and Socialist Party (SOC) for 1962, PSP and Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) for 1967, PSP and SSP for 1971, Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD) for 1977, Janata Party (Secular) (JNP (Secular)) for 1980, JNP and Lok Dal (LKD) for 1984, Janata Dal (JD) and Samata Party (SAP) for 1996, Janata Dal (JD), Samata Party (SAP) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) for 1998, Janata Dal (Secular) (JD (S)), Janata Dal (United) (JD (United)) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) for 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019. (2) The numbers for the BJP include Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) up to 1971, Janata Party (JNP) for 1980 and BJP from 1984. (3) The CPM was formed in 1964 and contested its first election in 1967. The bold numbers denote the numbers of seats won by ruling parties. (4) Bold numbers indicate the ruling parties.

Abbreviations: INC = Indian National Congress, JD = Janata Dal, CPI = Communist Party of India, CPM = Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The 1967 election was the first in which voter turnout exceeded 60 percent for both the Lok Sabha election (61.3 percent) and the state elections (61 percent) (see Table 1.2). It is clear that there was an interaction between increased participation in political processes and change in the party system in this election. According to Yadav, this change was driven by intermediate castes and Other Backward Classes (OBCs), whose mass participation in electoral politics escalated competition and challenged the dominance of Congress and upper castes in North India for the first time since Independence. Yadav defines this as the first wave of democratisation. The party system changed as a result.

The newly emerged Congress-Opposition system had three characteristics. Firstly, opposition parties were transformed from pressure parties to potential ruling parties. At the state assembly level, the opposition parties had a close contest with Congress which gave rise to a bipolarised situation in which Congress and the opposition faced off against one another. However, this created multiple bipolarised contests around the country (on a state level) rather than bipolarisation on a national level (Y. Yadav 1996: 99).

Congress continued to rule at the national level until the Janata Party came to power in the 1977 election as the first non-Congress coalition government. Kothari (1990: 35) states that the party system can be considered to have changed only when the opposition takes control of the central government. The Janata Party government thus symbolised a change of the political system.

Nonetheless, Congress continued to act as the central player in the system. The Janata Party government threatened the existence of Congress at the national level, but it failed to remove Congress from the core of the system because the Janata Party was just a coalition of anti-Congress parties, lacking ideological cohesiveness. Congress managed to sustain its influence in the Lok Sabha by maintaining a majority as it had done during the Congress system phase except when it was ousted by the Janata Party and when Indira Gandhi’s government became a minority from the Congress split in 1969 to the 1971 election. Especially in the 1984 election soon after the assassination of Indira, Congress recorded its largest majority with 415 seats. Although Congress often lost government at the state level, it continued to play the central role in the party system by ruling one end of the bipolarised structure and holding on to power at the central government level.

Table 1.2: Change in voter turnout (1952–1998)

Source: Y. Yadav (1999: 2397, Table 7).

Note: A ‘major’ state assembly election refers to one involving contests in at least 2,000 constituencies within one or two years. The 1998 state assembly election does not conform to this definition.

Secondly, there was major change in Congress’s power structure. As it was called the ‘party of consensus’ during the Congress system phase, it emphasised consensus-building among influential members from