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As the traditional party of banias
or traders, the BJP's opposition to FDI in retail is not
surprising. There is also an element of cogency is this stance of
both the Left and the BJP.
While the comrades are motivated by their ideological aversion to
anything linked to America, the BJP is guided by considerations of
safeguarding one of its major support bases - the lower middle
class trading community of orthodox Hindus.
What is interesting, however, is the BJP's decision to firm up
this strategy even though it is at odds with the growing
consumerist culture, which is reflected in the burgeoning malls,
multiplexes and Indian supermarkets. Its warning, therefore, to
prospective foreign investors in retail that they will have to
quit if the BJP comes to power can be interpreted as an effort to
hold on to its only seemingly secure group of supporters even if
it alienates other sections of the middle class. Arguably, it
denotes a sense of desperation about the party's chances in 2014.
Apart from its present compulsions, what this stance indicates is
how the Left and the Right are changing their positions in India.
For a major part of India's post-independence history, the Jana
Sangh, which was the BJP's earlier avatar, was known as a
pro-business and pro-American right-wing party while the Congress
was seen as left-of-centre and not particularly fond of the US.
If it is now the opposite, the reason is, first, the sense of
pragmatism which has enabled the Congress to evolve while the BJP
has remained static and even regressed. Secondly, behind the
Congress's evolution is an appreciation of modern economic
imperatives, which is absent in the BJP and some of the other
parties either because of dogma or expediency or blindness to
worldwide trends.
The BJP's shift can perhaps be explained by two factors. One is
its greater proximity to power compared to the Jana Sangh period.
The other is a deepening of its anti-minority outlook. It is not
accidental that the appearance of militant organizations
affiliated to the BJP like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the
Bajrang Dal and the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) coincided with the
BJP's political ascent. While the VHP and the Bajrang Dal targeted
the minorities, the SJM focussed on an autarkic economy, where the
banias and small businesses will face no challenge from the
foreign capitalists. Narendra Modi's charge against Manmohan Singh
that he runs a government of, by and for foreigners is based on
this perception.
The shunning of foreigners - like the demonising of Muslims - is
not related only to the idea of economic self-sufficiency. Like
all fundamentalists, the saffron brotherhood sees the Western
world as a source of intellectual contamination, of which
cosmopolitanism presents the most potent threat to the Hindutva
group's insularity. It is a straight line from the description
during the Ramjanmabhoomi movement of the supposedly deracinated
speakers of English as Macaulay's children to the present
resistance to FDI. If the Left sees FDI as a conspiracy of
international financial institutions to dominate the economy, the
Right views it as a Western ploy to culturally enslave the
country.
The BJP's campaign against foreign investment dates back to the
period immediately after the Babri masjid demolition in 1992. The
fiery rath yatri of that time, L.K. Advani, castigated American
company Enron's entry into the power sector in 1993 as "loot
through liberalization" and the Shiv Sena-BJP government in
Maharashtra scrapped the company's project soon after coming to
power in the state in 1995 - just as the BJP wants to do with FDI
in retail.
What the BJP does not seem to realize is that it is swimming
against what the communists will say, the tide of history. Because
of its blind anti-Congressism, a certain recklessness has been
influencing its behaviour, as the stalling of parliament, the
recent hold-up of Rajdhani trains in Jharkhand and participation
in a Bharat bandh in the Left's company showed. Having been
sidelined by civil society activists for much of last year and
reeling under the accusations of corruption against its former
Karnataka and Uttarakhand chief ministers B.S. Yeddyurappa and
Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, the BJP seized upon the coal scam to
berate the Congress. But, worried that the latter's reforms pitch
will rob it of its sole plank, the BJP has evidently decided to
climb on to the anti-reforms bandwagon to whip up xenophobia.
But the party is probably making as big a mistake now as when it
thought that the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation was the road to Hindu
rashtra (nation). The party has already been cautioned about its
folly by one of its former union ministers, Arun Shourie, and a
former Uttarakhand chief minister, B.C. Khanduri. One of its
allies, the Akali Dal, is also in two minds about FDI in retail.
But the BJP apparently believes that supporting the measure will
boost the Congress, something which the party isn't broadminded
enough to do although the government's move is likely to be of
benefit to the economy.
Amulya Ganguli
is a political analyst. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com
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