Populism, Religion, and Nation in Contemporary India: The Evolution of the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra

This text, first drafted in 1995 and based on the results of several years of fieldwork, is in no way intended to provide a complete description of the Shiv Sena as a political phenomenon or as a social reality. In response to what I consider to be impasses or weaknesses in the discourse of the contemporary social sciences regarding this movement and the ensemble of politico-religious tendencies in general, I attempt only to cast light on particular elements and on little-known processes. I wish to highlight aspects of the scene heretofore considered with perhaps insufficient distance (the position of a foreigner is sometimes valuable) and to take up problematics too delimited by narrow disciplinary perceptions. Entire areas have, therefore, been deliberately left aside, awaiting further consideration. I have relativized questions of the cultural dimension, for example, of the particularities of local implantation, of the political sphere properly speaking, and of caste, to allow for a comprehensible presentation in a relatively limited space. Moreover, the undertaking aims at introducing certain sociological and socio-anthropological concerns and modes of analysis in a domain that remains the preserve of specialists in political science. The particularities of systems of representation and their very specific relation to the ideology of action are first examined in an attempt to consistently distinguish the part assumed by discourse and other aspects of reality. Fieldwork, so very necessary and fundamental at this level, only has utility when interpreted through a theoretical process. The importance of the actual and local issues concerning this movement and the entire Hindu nationalist scene must not cause one to forget that one is confronting a long-standing problematic which affects to varying degrees the entire world. It is this aspect that I would like to accentuate.

The Sudden Rise of a Political Force

Since April 1995, a provincial government controlled by the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has presided over the destiny of the state of Maharashtra (75 million inhabitants). The most urbanized, industrialized, and modernized state in the Indian Union had thus, for the first time, passed into the hands of the Hindu nationalists. The victory of the two parties, allied since 1989, put an end on the local level to nearly 50 years of rule under the Congress Party and its dissidents. The regional powers are, of course, greatly limited, but this event nevertheless assumes an exceptional significance. The head of the Mumbai (formerly Bombay) government at the time of writing (M. Joshi of the Shiv Sena) promised radical measures to encourage development, to eliminate shantytowns, and to combat poverty, criminality, and violence. Before concretizing these intentions, Joshi ostentatiously designated those responsible for the prevailing problems as coming from the ranks of illegal immigrants and members of the Muslim minority. In India, where this type of rhetoric is becoming increasingly accepted and the successes of the Hindu nationalists follow one another from year to year, the event does not appear to have caused surprise or scandal. B. Thakre,¹ the 68-year-old head of the Shiv Sena, chose to be the éminence grise of the provincial government, rather than "dirtying the hands" with politics. The fact that he was being investigated by several judicial inquiries in connection with the large-scale pogroms of January 1993 in Mumbai did not at all represent a disadvantage for his cause. Nor were the success of the Shiv Sena and its ally called into question by memories of the days of December 1992 and January 1993, during which members of this organization had killed considerable numbers of Muslims in atrocious circumstances.² The country appears to be accustoming itself to the intrusion of religion into politics, as well as to the systematic use of violence. Campaigns have rapidly begun to fall in tune with the city.

While the following history is well-known, let me reiterate the salient points to provide a basic chronology here. The "Hindu nationalists" constitute a current of some longevity, as the first Hindu Mahasabha (Great Hindu Assembly) that assumed the task of politically promoting or consolidating Hindu...