Conquering the last bastion: The growth of Hindutva in Kerala | Sanjana K.S.

BOOK REVIEW:

Hindu Nationalism in South India: The Rise of Saffron in Kerala
by Nissim Mannathukkaren

Routledge
1st edition (31 July 2024) 272 pages
ISBN-10 : ? 1032003065
ISBN-13 ?: ? 978-1032003061

A decade since the remarkable victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014 with Narendra Modi in the fore has opened a plethora of academic debates on the party’s consolidation of new social bases, changes in its mobilisational strategies and its commitment towards the Hindutva ideology. The ‘saffronisation of the Public sphere’ (Anderson and Jaffrolet, 2015) has been achieved by exponential rise in communal violence rarely spontaneous and newer forms of violence such as lynching and the bulldozer action. These are more visible mobilisational strategies but the ‘tactical movement of Hindutva’ has other covert programmes the potency of which might go underexplored. Social welfare strategies such as Seva are overtly non-political yet might yield political gains. This remains understudied especially in regions where BJP does not have a significant electoral presence. It is the gradual ideological groundwork in the non-electoral domain where the success of the Sangh lies. It is this current predicament that Nissim Mannathukkaren’s (2024) edited volume Hindu Nationalism in South India: The Rise of Saffron in Kerala addresses.

Keywords: Hindutva, Kerala, bjp, mobilisation, non-political

Making a case for South India

Most studies on Hindutva have kept its focus on North India leaving an academic lacuna in making sense of the growth of Hindu Right in the South. Through Modi’s populist appeals the Party has made headway in the North East and Southern India in particular, it is not an adequate explanation for its persistent success in the regions. Therefore, the focus on South India is important to decipher the resonance of Hindutva in a region where there are not many takers of BJP’s shrill communal pitch. Much of South India has witnessed powerful anti-Brahmanical movements that have assured political and social mobility to few non-dominant castes. How does Hindu nationalist movement which is in its essence brahmanical appeal to these groups? Additionally, the regional parties offer resistance to both national parties like BJP and Congress. Thus, despite these factors, what explains the growth of BJP in these regions?

The book under review aims to examine how the BJP transcends regional, linguistic and cultural variations while keeping its nationalising tendencies intact? The book urges the reader to look at the contextual mediations of Hindutva, synthesising local regional issues with its national meta-political strategies. Thus, to understand the growth of Hindutva in the south it is important to understand the ‘translations of Hindutva into local idioms’ (Mannathukkaren, 2024: 2). The merit of the book lies in Mannathukkaren’s extension of Hansen’s vernacularization argument to comprehend both the nationalising and unificatory process. This dual movement produces a dialectic that allows a seamless synthesis between the regional and national while affording genuine contradictions to exist. The prime example being the paradoxical politicisation of beef eating in Uttar Pradesh on one hand and in Goa and Kerala on the other.

Beyond the electoral domain

As one of the first comprehensive collections on Hindutva in Kerala, the book is preoccupied with the question that despite a weak, even non-existent electoral success in Kerala, how has Hindutva gradually grown? Despite a striking number of scholarly attention this subject has received very few accounts for the site where the social and the political meet-the cultural. In Kerala, given the weak electoral prospects for the BJP, the cultural arena gains importance. The most compelling argument in the book is in urging the reader to look beyond their fixation on BJP’s Electoral numbers to the shadows of non-electoral domains where the Sangh primarily operates. To any keen observer of Hindutva politics, it is clear that the RSS’s identification as a cultural organisation and its expansion through ‘non-political’ activities renders it the flexibility that very few organisations in the world have.

The chapters in the book effectively bring out these concerns. They are neatly categorized into four parts each of which offer a comprehensive account of political, historical, social and cultural factors constitutive of Hindutva’s presence in the region. The book begins with Jaffrelot’s examination of the fate of secularism in India which has taken a hit with BJP’s continued attack. He is optimistic that the reactivation of caste identities by the BJP might indirectly benefit secularism by undermining religious identities and internally subverting the pan-Hindu coalition. This sets the tone for the following chapters that examine Kerala’s internal caste and gender dynamics vis-a-vis the development of Hindutva. Mannathukkaren highlights the ‘extraordinary targeting of Kerala’ for its globally recognised development model and mutual coexistence of diverse religious communities. He addresses different fissures in the region including some sections of Christians and the Church’s ambivalent relationship with Sangh groups on Love Jihad. He also notes that the electoral support for communists does not mean that the voters necessarily align with them ideologically. Varughese in the next chapter studies the media landscape and campaign dynamics with the focus on party strategies and campaign styles in the 2019 Parliamentary Elections. He proposes that the BJP’s framing of the Sabarimala verdict with the use of religiously-coded campaign messaging rendered it a formidable force in the state but its growth is showing signs of plateauing. Sreekumar and Devika’s chapters highlight the re-representation of older patterns of caste and gender relations in the contemporary milieu that might align with hindutva’s own project of preserving social hierarchies. Through a textual reading of Chattampi Swamikal’s work and theology Sreekumar determines its impact in the history of civil societies in Kerala that has unintendedly benefitted the Nayars ‘to articulate a hegemonic new savarnata’ (ibid: 113) Devika’s engagement with the long-term process of the expansion of neo-savarna cultural and social power under the aegis of neo-savarna women that might explain the women’s mobilisation in support of conservative accharam at Sabarimala in 2018. Her striking conclusion that the left’s un-self-reflexive engagement with the pervasiveness of aachaaram and its inability to offer an alternative discourse is concerning. The further chapters in the book bring out the way these non-political processes operate in the cultural realm. This is most clear in the last Part of the Book consisting of Chapters on the Remaking of Temples, Nisar Kannangara’s Political Ethnography of the RSS in Thalassery where he highlights the role of RSS pracharak and Sambark in making the expansion of Hindutva practise steady and stable in Kerala. A very important insight that he draws is that the loyalty of activists in RSS is more culturally rooted than that for CPI-M and INC. The final chapter explores the seemingly non-instrumental but political function of ‘Seva’ in forming social cohesion among diverse caste groups. This brings to the fore the organisational heft of the RSS that might account for both the continued electoral success of BJP in elections and support for Hindutva.

Conclusion

The book challenges the notion that Kerala is a socio-political exception to the National Hindutva logic. Diverse chapters present a cohesive narrative of the growth of Hindutva by looking at the aspects neglected in explaining the present moment of Indian politics. The book is pivotal in shaping the course of research in considering the regional nuances in the rise of the Saffron party within the South. Though the book is committed to explain the phenomenon in the region, it steers clear from making big claims on southern exceptionalism in its analysis. It also pays close attention to how the Sangh draws diverse communities within its fold, often moderating its pitch to recognise the nuances of the particular context within which it operates. Further questions this book provokes one to contemplate include when and how does Sangh’s cultural mobilization translate into electoral gains? How does the Sangh’s appropriation of cultural practices and their resignification impact the social fabric of a region? How, in the process of creating a pan-Hindu identity, caste identities are accommodated?

The key takeaway from the book is in bringing one’s attention to the shifting strategies of Hindutva in the south- the downplaying of conventional Hindutva modus operandi of violence. The relentless pursuit of conquering the last frontier representative of progressive, socialist politics by the Saffron brigade is reflected in the political push of the movie Kerala Story. The subsequent mass-appeal of the movie across India might be a tell-a-tale sign of Hindutva’s background cultural work underway for decades! The book is successful in sending political smoke-signals to academics and activists on defending their safest bet against Hindutva.

(Review author: Sanjana K.S., PhD student at Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)