AAP vs BJP: A proxy fight between two Grand Narratives of India

By Rajiv Malhotra Beneath the dramatic victory of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) hides a serious long-term issue – there are two competing Grand Narratives of India. One espouses unity and identity based on our ancient civilisation that once thrived across the subcontinent. The other nurtures smaller sub-identities with separate Grand Narratives for each – such as minorities, Dalits and other marginalised groups. The latter sees India as a messy collection of ‘fragments’ forced to share a geography. Both visions promise modern economic prosperity, good governance and transparency. But their differences represent the divergent poles in India’s polity, of which Delhi was a loud expression. Partha Chatterjee’s famous 1993 book, “The Nation and its Fragments”, became an intellectual milestone in encouraging many such fragments. It positioned India and its majority as the common enemy of all the fragments. My own book, “Breaking India”, treats these fragments as a serious threat to India’s sovereignty. I show that these fragments often serve foreign nexuses. They cannot be understood as purely domestic phenomena. They need to be evaluated as instruments of global clashes and competing interests of various kinds. Seen in this light, AAP has (consciously or unconsciously) served as the latest vehicle for these fragments to come together and assert power. We are witnessing the Fragments versus Nation clash in a new form. But this is not a local phenomenon, not even merely a national one. [caption id=“attachment_2099715” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal.[/caption] Neither AAP nor BJP fully understand this clash, although they are the main combatants in it. Some AAP leaders might be consciously serving such divisive nexuses, but my sense is that many leaders are naïve about the broader ramifications of their actions. They see themselves playing on a small game board to win, and are oblivious of the bigger Kurukshetra in which their actions produce long term consequences. The masses who follow are insufficiently educated on world affairs to be able to understand the full picture; AAP is merely a means to better local governance. My India trip for this past month has shed new light on the new BJP government. I had assumed it would have a high priority to formulate a unified Grand Narrative, to educate the leaders and intelligentsia about it, and to embed its policies and political messages in this narrative. But I was seriously wrong in my assessment. I find the BJP and its related organisations preoccupied in immediate political tactics, with no sign of serious strategic thinking of the kind I have tried to engage with. In fact, I did not meet anyone who would be qualified and experienced to carry out such work. This kind of thinking takes years and must be ongoing. It is amazing that the government has not yet appreciated its importance. BJP has roughly 30 percent vote share and non-Hindus comprise 20 percent of the population. This leaves a huge 50 percent of the population who are broadly “Hindus” but not BJP supporters. These are the voters who swing in various directions and decide the outcomes. These ‘non-Sangh Hindus’ are without a Grand Narrative which they would accept as theirs. They are rootless, and vulnerable to political promises, rhetoric and the influence of fresh scandals. President Obama’s recent scolding of India on charges of religious intolerance and human rights took the Indian government by surprise. It was timed to be just a few days before the Delhi elections. This advice to Obama came from the notorious US Commission on International Religious Freedom, the official US watchdog set up to track such opportunities for foreign intervention by the USA. It has not a single Hindu member, and is dominated by the Christian Right. Organisations such as Dalit Freedom Network based in Denver (run by Christian fundamentalists), World Vision, Joshua Project, Mormon Church and Lutheran Church, as well as several other groups, have a well-oiled machinery for global political activism on behalf of India’s fragments. Their Grand Narrative is against the legitimacy of a unified Indian past. It sees India as an artificial nation-state, one that oppresses its fragments. I am not saying that Obama alone caused the AAP sweeping victory. But his statement helped make the victory bigger than it would have been. Though I wrote details on this in my 2011 book, BJP leaders seem to have ignored the mechanisms that cause such interventions. The nexus of fragments is what got a major boost in Delhi. AAP-like movements will now emerge in other states - bringing all anti-BJP parties behind one party, and consolidating the vote. Such state-level successes could then be the basis for a national revival of a Third Front type of concept - uniting the anti-incumbency sentiments into an alternative. My point is not about whether this materialises in the near term or not. The deeper issue of conflicting narratives will remain even if AAP fails, because the same fragments will create yet another (reincarnated) body to show its head. Has India crossed the tipping point where the fragments spin out of control and unity becomes ever more difficult and tentative? Rather than ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ or even ‘AAP-mukt Bharat’ slogans, it is time we started to discuss ‘fragments-mukt Bharat’. Why has the BJP failed to understand this? (Rajiv Malhotra is the author of the widely-acclaimed Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism, Breaking India and Indra’s Net. The first part of this article can be read here )