Until last week. Following a campaign singularly devoid of the usual violence and lavish electioneering, India’s have-nots shattered the country’s political order – and the dream that a sole party could bridge the country’s bitter divides. The Congress Party was an also-ran, with fewer than half the seats that gave it a slim majority in the last Parliament, when the ballots of 300 million voters were counted. ““The masses of the people have gone away from us,’’ conceded Congress party leader Sharad Pawar. The prime minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao, resigned even before the counting was over. But there was no single kingmaker to replace him. Although they made huge gains, populist parties representing narrow caste, language and regional interests were splintered. The most likely prospect: a shaky government led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which took 185 seats of the 545-seat Lok Sabha, Parliament’s lower house.
The irony was that recent economic reforms finally promised to lift living standards in India’s dusty villages and fetid slums. When he took office in 1991 following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, Rao inherited an economy with dwindling foreign-exchange reserves, 14 percent inflation and a budget deficit. Jettisoning protectionist policies in effect since independence, he lowered trade barriers, dismantled complex licensing laws, devalued and floated India’s currency, began simplifying the tax system and allowed private-sector banking. Nike running shoes appeared in shops and Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises opened in the markets. Inflation declined by half, exports tripled and India last year attracted a record $2 billion in direct foreign investment.
Issues of caste and religion eclipsed the economic gains. ““We could not project our achievements properly,’’ said Pranab Mukherjee, Rao’s foreign minister. Congress’s opponents both signed on to economic liberalization and played to nationalism by taking potshots at Pepsi, KFC and other visible symbols of U.S. capitalism. A kickback scandal within Rao’s government evoked a different brand of economic policy. And the rising clamor of populist politics has been inexorable since independence. Low-caste leaders now effectively attack both Congress and the BJP as upper-caste parties that serve the traditional elites: Brahmans, the priestly class; Kshatriya, the warriors; and Vaisyas, tradesmen.
As in America, affirmative action has polarized the electorate. In 1990 a short-lived government led by the left-leaning National Front implemented new job quotas for ““backward castes’’ not covered by earlier programs. The BJP responded by launching a campaign to rebuild a Hindu temple at Ayodhya, site of a Muslim mosque. Two years later Hindu zealots demolished the mosque, triggering bloody Hindu-Muslim riots across the country. Muslims lost faith in the Congress government that had failed to prevent the violence. The bloodshed also severely damaged the BJP’s ability to form alliances with secular parties.
But to govern, the BJP must win allies. That challenge fell to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, 69, a bachelor poet who has been untouched by any corruption scandal. Vajpayee immediately sought to reassure Muslims. ““There will be no more demolition of mosques,’’ he said. And he told foreign investors not to worry about a BJP government. ““We do not want to be cut off from the world,’’ he said. For the moment, Vajpayee was silent on when a BJP government might carry out a promise to build nuclear weapons – a policy that would bring it squarely into confrontation with Washington. The other winners in the voting, six centrist and communist parties banded together as the Third Front, hoped to keep the BJP out of power by forming an alliance with Rao. But the BJP seemed poised to take command through alliances with smaller regional parties.
Can the Hindu nationalists govern? They may have to promise sweeping decentralization, diluting their own authority. Violence could wash away their promises to uphold India’s cherished secularism and protect minorities. Rao will be ready in the wings. But any coalition Congress might form also would have to depart sharply from its usual style of governing. And that might not be a bad thing. ““Italy and Japan have had coalitions for a long time,’’ says Ashis Nandy, a leading political scientist in New Delhi. ““India will have to evolve a procedure by which stable coalitions can also propel growth and social justice.’’ From the ruins of tradition, India may salvage a new political maturity.
