Cleavages, Conflicts, and Electoral Politics In

Home , 2002 Gujarat riots, 2013 Canning riots, 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, Akbaruddin Owaisi, Bombay Dog Riots, Furfura Sharif

MINORITY AND MAJORITY: CLEAVAGES, CONFLICTS, AND ELECTORAL POLITICS

IN THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT

Soham Das

APPROVED BY SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:

______Paul Diehl, Chair

______Jennifer S. Holmes

______Vito D’Orazio

Soham Das

IN THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT

SOHAM DAS, BA, PGDM, MA

DISSERTATION

Presented to the Faculty of

The University of Texas at Dallas

in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN

POLITICAL SCIENCE

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS

August 2020 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many people to thank for the completion of this dissertation. First and foremost, I express my gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Paul Diehl, who had stood by my side through thick and thin. The years in graduate school can turn out to be extremely exhausting at times, but I had the firm support and able guidance of an experienced and enthusiastic supervisor who did not allow me to dwindle my faith in my research. Moving on, Dr. Vito D’Orazio with his computational analytical skills and measurement approaches helped me immensely with the quantitative elements of my dissertation. His warm and friendly personality allowed me to approach him whenever I needed any assistance. My dissertation also benefitted a lot due to the advice that was given to it by Dr. Meghna

Sabharwal; her insights about Indian politics helped me formulate my theoretical premises firmly.

Apart from sharing academic knowledge, she has always acted as a morale booster for me and has time and again restored my faith in academia and research. I am also grateful to Professor Jennifer

Holmes for extending her support to me throughout my graduate studies and solving my problems whenever I had one. Moreover, I cannot forget the help extended to me by Dr. Thomas Gray, who aided me with methodological puzzles and analytical coding principles, which came to me at a time when I needed it the most.

I would like to thank the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences for the tuition waiver and teaching/research assistantship that was offered to me for my entire doctoral program. I would also like to thank the Office of Graduate Education in The University of Texas at Dallas for offering me travel grants so that I could present my research findings in various academic conferences during my doctoral studies.

v Being an international student in Texas for a prolonged period of five years gave me an opportunity to spend time with many people, who have become a part of my extended family. I am extremely grateful that in the last five years I have been able to forge these wonderful friendships. I would take the liberty of thanking Rohit, Abhishek, Joy, Shaivya, Bhargav, Ishita, Piyush, Sumod, Rajarshi, and

Arnava for helping me see through both happy and troubled times in this five-year long journey. A special mention goes for the esteemed colleagues and friends I had at the School of Economic,

Political, and Policy Sciences. Five years at the TA room would not have been same without Prajakti,

Blake, Nathan, Furkan, and Misty’s constant company.

I am also grateful for having an extremely supportive family who were my source of strength all my life. My parents, sister, and brother-in-law were the happiest people on earth when I received my acceptance letter from the university back in the year 2015. To see me sail through this journey would make them even happier. I must also acknowledge my in-laws, who have showered me with love and affection throughout. Last but not the least, I will thank my wife Garima for keeping my head above water all these years. Garima has been my pillar of strength, and has been my most faithful, dutiful, and loyal supporter. I thank her for keeping me grounded, positive and happy.

June 2020

vi MINORITY AND MAJORITY: CLEAVAGES, CONFLICTS, AND ELECTORAL POLITICS

IN THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT

Soham Das, PhD The University of Texas at Dallas, 2020

ABSTRACT

Supervising Professor: Paul Diehl

This dissertation examines the aspects of ethnic conflict not only through the lens of the minorities, but studies the apprehension and threat perspective of the majority as well. This makes the research significant and adds valuable contribution to the theoretical literature of ethnic politics. The first part of the dissertation, using social constructivist and horizontal inequality theories, argues that socioeconomic conditions, religion, and language are the three broad cleavages that influence the political behavior of minority groups in state. The dissertation analyzes the impact of multiple, simultaneous cleavages rather than only one in isolation, which is a unique contribution. Theoretical arguments are tested over 60 ethnic groups of the Indian Sub-Continent over 1947 – 2013. The second part of the doctoral research examines ethnic tensions from the majority’s point of view. The reasons for the apprehension or mistrust among dominant majority can be a number of factors including militancy, higher growth rate of minorities, and minority nationalism. The research examines these conditions through the lens of security dilemma among the Hindus against Muslims over past four election cycles in India. Thereafter, the dissertation argues that right-wing political organizations often exploit the majority’s phobia against minority nationalist ambitions in pursuit for electoral benefits in a multi-party democratic system.

vii TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………………...... v

ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………………vii

LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………...... ix

LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………...... x

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………...... 1 CHAPTER 2 ETHNIC CONFLICT IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT: ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF MULTIPLE CLEAVAGES………………...... 13

CHAPTER 3 ENDANGERED MAJORITY: ELECTORAL DYNAMICS OF INDIA………...46 CHAPTER 4 MINORITY NATIONALISM, RECOGNITION POLITICS, AND MAJORITARIAN ELECTORAL OUTCOMES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF WEST BENGAL AND KERALA………………………...... 78

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………...... 121

BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………...... 131

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH……………………………………………………………………142

CURRICULUM VITAE

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: Impact of marginalization on group mobilization……………………………………...45

Figure 2.2: Marginal Effect of Economic Marginalization with respect to Religious Marginalization on Conflict Occurrence…………………………………...... 45

Figure 3.1: Descriptive Visualization of seats won by the majoritarian political coalition with the terrorism-related incidents in India (2004 – 2019)…………………………………………………74

Figure 3.2: Comparative Growth of Majority and Minority Population (2001 and 2011 census)……………………………………………………………...... 75

Figure 3.3: 2014 General Elections NDA Seats and Minority Nationalist Parties in Federal Units of India………………………………………………………………………………………………76

Figure 3.4: 2019 General Elections NDA Seats and Minority Nationalist Parties in Federal Units of India………………………………………………………………………………………………77

Figure 4.1: National and Bengal NDA Seats (2004-2019)…………………………………....…....118

Figure 4.2: Vote Shares of Major Political Parties of West Bengal (2009-2019)…………………...118

Figure 4.3: Parliamentary Seats won by Political Coalitions at National Elections in Kerala – 2014 and 2019……………………………………...... 119

Figure 4.4: Vote shares of the major coalitions in 2014 and 2019 National Elections in Kerala……………………………………………………...…...... 119

Figure 4.5: District Level Religious Demographics of Kerala……………………………....……..120

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: Summary Table of Independent Variables……………………………………………...42

Table 2.2: Descriptive Statistics for Categories of Marginalization (1947-2013)…………………....43

Table 2.3: Conflict Occurrence – (0-1) (1947-2013)…………………………………………...... 44

Table 3.1: Minority Nationalist Parties…………………………………………………………….72

Table 3.2: Autocorrelation Matrix………………………………………………………………....72

Table 3.3: Terrorism Related Incidents……………………………………………………………73

Table 3.4: The Effect of Endangered Majority Stimuli on Majoritarian Electoral Results……...... 74

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Do ethnic divisions and marginalization based on identity promote violence? What were the differences between Tutsis and the Hutus that resulted into a genocide in Rwanda? Which cleavages of identity are more salient such that violence is more likely? These are the relevant questions in understanding ethnopolitical violence and electoral politics in fractionalized societies. In 1994, during the Rwandan genocide, 800,000 Tutsi minority people were murdered by the members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the east-central African nation of Rwanda. Started by the Hutu nationalists in the capital of Kigali, the genocide spread across the country with shocking speed and brutality before the

Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front took control of the country through military action. Hutu-Tutsi tensions date to colonial times when the Belgian colonialists favored the minority Tutsis over the

Hutus. Ethnically motivated violence continued in the years following Rwanda’s independence in

1962. Similar examples are found in Sri Lanka, where the minority Tamils were favored by the British over majority Sinhalese. Post-independence, the Sinhalese gained political power and marginalized the

Tamils in multiple ways.

Scholarly studies find that the incidents of ethnopolitical violence across the globe are often based on communal, ethnic, and socioeconomic interests among the various warring parties.

According to some studies, 64 percent of the civil wars have been fought along ethnic lines in recent decades (Denny and Walter 2014; Themner and Wallensteen 2012) and 14 percent of the ethnic minorities have been involved in significant violence against the state (Fearon, 2008; Gurr, 1996;

Seymour and Cunningham, 2016). Moreover, nonstate conflicts have also increased in the recent past with 82 active nonstate conflicts being recorded in 2017 (Pettersson and Eck, 2018). Thus, regional

conflicts based on ethnic identities have become a source of persistent problems in various parts of the world. Militant organizations functioning as units belonging to a common ethnic group threaten the lives of people in regions around the world, including not only state officials but also rival ethnic groups and other civilians. More than one-third of terrorist organizations in the world operate to advance the interests of ethnic groups, and ethnic forms of terrorism are considered to be most prevalent in terms of a number of attacks and casualties (Masters, 2008). Apart from common ethnic interests, religious intolerance and conflict are also visible in various parts of the world, and religion is often manipulated by political elites to advance their principal goal of political survival (Maoz &

Henderson, 2020).

Nevertheless, not all ethnic and religious groups are prone to violence or secessionist movements. Many ethnic and religious groups are integrated into society and adhere to both their state and ethnic identities simultaneously. Thus, the broader question is: why do some ethnic groups adopt violence as their weapon to challenge the government whereas others adopt peaceful means or do not take issue with the status quo? The first part of my doctoral dissertation examines this question.

It also elaborates on the key idea of reinforcing versus cross-cutting cleavages of marginalization that might lead to adopting violent practices by ethnic groups. Explicating the theory about underlying versus facilitating conditions of ethnic-civil conflicts, the research examines some prerequisites of ethnic conflicts.

The traditional focus of ethnic politics studies is on minorities and their behavior. The second part of my doctoral research, however, examines the majority’s point of view and behavior as well.

Power threat theory (Blalock, 1967) stipulates that the proximity of different ethnic groups often increases the probability of interethnic violence. Nevertheless, only a few studies cover the mistrust and angst that majority communities often exhibit towards migrants and disadvantaged ethnic and

religious groups. Theorizing the concept of endangered majority in line with Posen (1993), Blalock

(1967), and Kopstein et. al. (2018), the dissertation explores the reasons for majority’s apprehension and considers whether a relationship exists between the apprehensions of majorities against the minorities and the electoral behavior of the majorities of a country. The domain of the research is

India, and it assesses the contributory effect of terrorism-related incidents, minority nationalism, and growing population of the minorities on the electoral victory of the conservative right-wing in India during 1999-2019. Thereafter, we focus on the dynamics of the process through comparative case studies of two Indian provinces, Kerala and West Bengal over the 2014 – 2019 period.

India and her neighbors make a good laboratory for analyzing our theory and hypotheses.

Being a British colony, the historical institutions and sociopolitical conditions are same for these states.

Focusing on this region allows us to control for several including geography, history, and political systems. Moreover, the ethnic groups are spread across the region transcending the modern international border, making this a thorny region of ethnic violence and ethnopolitics.

The Indian Subcontinent: A Region of Ethnoreligious Conflict

The first characteristic that makes the Indian subcontinent a suitable laboratory to explore the previous questions is the frequency of violent conflict there. Because of its vast size and heterogeneous society and polity, India has been the subject of various conflicts between subnational regions and the central government (Malone and Mukherjee, 2010). India has a high rate of political violence, and over 90 percent of all events are riots and protests (Summary of Political Violence and

Protests, 2018a). The number of demonstrations is highest in northern India, including the Jammu and Kashmir region. The second most active conflict zone contributing to almost a third of political violence in India is the so-called ‘Red Corridor’, which spans over a vast territory in eastern, central, and southern India. Political violence in that area is connected to the ongoing Naxalite-Maoist

insurgency led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist). The third conflict zone – contributing to about a tenth of the overall political violence in India -- is in northeast India, where several ethnic groups including different tribes as well as migrants from other parts of India and neighbouring countries (e.g., Bangladesh) are engaged in a multi-layered conflict between separatist groups and the

Indian government (Summary of Political Violence and Protests, 2018b).

Additionally, Pakistan has the second highest rate of political violence and protests in South and Southeast Asia, accounting for over 20 percent of all politically violent events in the region

(Summary of Political Violence and Protests, 2018c). One hundred and fourteen distinct non-state actors operate in Pakistan. From 2010 to mid-2017, rebel ethnic groups were involved in most events of political violence. The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) participated in over 80 percent of politically violent events, resulting in almost 17,000 fatalities. Baloch separatists were the second most active non-state actors in Pakistan, involved in 336 events. Baloch Separatists and Lashkar-e-Jabbar (LeJ) are operational in Baluchistan, while the TTP, Afghani Taliban, Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Islam (LeI), and

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar are mostly functional in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Khyber

Pakhtunkhwa. Additionally, a large majority of the activity in Sindh are riots and protests (Summary of Political Violence and Protests, 2018d).

Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have also been besieged with violence and protests over the last several decades. A series of political coups and the Chittagong Hill Tracts mobilization disturbed the democratic stability of Bangladesh in the 1970s through the 1990s. Various events in 2013, including the February 2013 International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) verdict against the Jamaat-e-Islami leader, spurred widespread political instability across Bangladesh, particularly sparking violence by Islamist groups. The instability continued into January 2014, during which a general election was held, and widespread election-related violence occurred (Summary of Political Violence and Protests, 2018e).

Sri Lanka suffered with civil war from the 1980s until 2009 when the Tamil Eelam militants were finally defeated by the Sinhalese government. Nevertheless, the key cleavages of marginalization against the minority Tamils still loom large in this island state.

Indian subcontinent also has numerous cases of ethnic and religious groups that are not involved in violent conflict. Focusing on this region thus provides us control groups not involved in conflict, to compare with groups that are involved in violent conflict. For example, while the ethnic groups such as Oriya, Kannada, and Maratha are not involved in violent conflicts, Kashmiri Muslims, and Bodo people of India, and Pashtuns of Pakistan are involved in conflict for decades. Studying them together provides us variation within our sample of cases.

Apart from ethnic violence between the majority and minorities in these countries, conservative populism is on the rise in India, the world’s largest democracy. The multicultural and diverse political heritage of India is witnessing growing popularity of conservative nationalists over past 10 years. The conservative right-wing of the country – the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) also known as the Indian People’s Party has won two consecutive national elections in 2014 and 2019. Their vote shares are more than 50% in 15 provinces in India, and the party organization has largest membership in the world. Moreover, Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister of India, was accused of tacitly supporting Hindu extremists during the 2002 Gujarat riots between Hindus and Muslims, when he was the chief minister of the state. Although the Indian supreme court did not find any evidence, he was denied visa to enter the United States on religious freedom grounds in 2005. The political agenda of the Hindu Nationalist Party revolves around populist and conservative promises and addresses the perceived security dilemma among the Hindus of the country against Muslims. These factors make

India a good context to test not only the onset of violent conflict (as ethnic/religious tensions are high), but also a good case to examine instances of political actions to sway endangered majorities.

Overall, the above-mentioned factors make India and her neighbors a good test case for the study. South Asia is a hotspot for economic development and global security in the twenty-first century, and the countries are beset with domestic violence and a rise in populist conservative political movements along ethnic and religious cleavages.

The following sections of the chapter describe the theoretical and empirical contribution of our thesis, the policy implications, as well as an overview of the rest of the dissertation.

Theoretical and Empirical Contributions

This dissertation examines the aspects of ethnic conflict not only through the lens of the minorities, but studies the apprehension and threat perspective of the majority as well. This makes the research significant and adds valuable contribution to the theoretical literature of ethnic politics. The first part of the dissertation, using social constructivist and horizontal inequality theories, argues that socioeconomic conditions, religion, and language are the three broad cleavages that influence the political behavior of minority groups in state. It was inspiration from two erstwhile works – Stewart et. al. (2008) and Gleditsch et. al. (2011). Cederman and Gleditsch (2011) argued that the horizontal inequalities between politically relevant ethnic groups and states at large can promote ethnonational conflict. Using geocoded data on ethnic groups’ settlement areas with special wealth estimates, they found in highly unequal societies, both rich and poor groups fight more often than those groups whose wealth lies closer to the country’s average (Cederman et al., 2011). On the other hand, Stewart

(2008) focused on multiple cleavages of differences between ethnic groups and linked those to horizontal inequality and related group grievances as a reason for mobilizations. She found economic marginalization, political discrimination, lingual marginalization and cycles of deprivation associated with those to be contributory towards the onset of ethnic violence.

Previous studies did not assess the impact of multiple cleavages of marginalization simultaneously;. the cleavages of disadvantage leading to grievances were studied in isolation. This did not allow analysts to understand the salience of one cleavage of marginalization while the other is also present. Moreover, researchers could not determine the relevant marginal effects of different cleavages or combinations thereof on probability of violence. For instance, the Tutsis were marginalized for over four decades by majority Hutus not only economically, but also politically.

Similarly, the Tamils in Sri Lanka are marginalized not only economically, but also along religious and linguacultural lines. Thus, in order to assess the effect of these horizontal inequalities on the probability of ethnic conflict, the cleavages must be studied individually and in combination with one other. This dissertation fills that gap in the literature. First, it considers the impact of multiple, simultaneous cleavages rather than only one in isolation. Cleavages are studied individually, in combinations of two, and finally all together, providing a unique contribution and addition to past work. Second, it provides greater precision concerning the magnitude of the effect of cleavages, both individually and in combination. For instance, Woodward (1995) found that ethnic conflicts are really driven by underlying economic inequalities that lead ethnic identities to become politicized, and Harff and Gurr (2004) theorized that grievances among members of the discriminated groups build up against the members of better-off groups. These seminal works, however, did not test if one cleavage of marginalization has more effect on the probability of conflict than the other. This research examines the absolute and relative effects empirically. Thus, it adds value and makes it explicit that socioeconomic equitability is necessary for long-term stability and that states should prevent indigenous groups from becoming religiously and economically alienated.

The focus of ethnic conflict studies is usually on minorities, ignoring that the actors and interests of the government and majorities are relevant for understanding violence. The number of

politically relevant groups that can be responsible for any ethnic-communal violence in a country is much more than the ones studied in Minorities at Risk (MAR) project. We argue that it is important to analyze the perspective of the majority groups as well for understanding ethnic-conflict and electoral behavior in a country. To bridge the gap in the literature of ethnic politics, the second part of the doctoral research examines ethnic tensions from the majority’s point of view. An endangered majority becomes a facilitating condition for conflict when it originates from an identity crisis. It is common to assume that identity crises are more acute for the minority communities in a multinational state.

Nevertheless, only limited scholarly literature (Kopstein and Wittenberg 2018; Chhibber and Verma

2018) covers the sense of mistrust and angst that the majority community often harbors against migrating aliens, the existing clustered minority, and disadvantaged ethnic and religious groups.

Theoretically, this research explains that the security dilemma among majorities plays an important role in shaping their political perspectives, which then influences the aggregate voting pattern of the majorities in a country. The reason for the apprehension or mistrust can be a number of factors, which are detailed and examined in Chapter 3. Thus, the thesis argues that this threat perception stimulates a dominant majority group to elect right-wing leaders and parties in national and/or provincial elections.

Political history confirms that the conservative right-wing accumulates support through manipulation and distortion of threat perspective of the majority populace against the minorities. The

Nazis in Germany and the National Fascist Party of Italy are some of the notable examples. The research here explores if the aforementioned factors compel a significant percentage of the majority populace to support right-wing conservatives. The research argues that right-wing political movements often exploit the majority’s phobia against the minority nationalist ambitions in pursuit for electoral benefits in a multi-party democratic system. To add value to the theoretical literature of

ethnic politics and to explore ethnic electoral politics from the angle of security dilemma among majorities against minorities, this research analyzes the interactive dynamics through two case studies of West Bengal and Kerala, over the period of 2014 -2019. Empirical data is often incapable of explaining intangible threat perspectives that the conservative right-wing builds among majorities against minorities for electoral benefits. Additionally, aggregate results of empirical analysis often hide the case specific phenomenon, which case studies help in unpacking. The in-depth case studies further allow us to explore those dynamics with greater precision and analytical angle and enable us to identify the contexts when appeals based on the security dilemma fail. Thus, the case studies in Chapter 4 adds value to our empirical findings and indicate that crosscutting cleavages of castes act as a barrier to the electoral victory of the conservative right-wing in world’s largest democracy.

Policy Implications

This study not only offers new theoretical insights for the study of ethnic violence and politics, but policy implications as well. The first policy implication is that diminishing horizontal inequality is necessary for long-term stability and states should prevent ethnic groups from becoming religiously and economically alienated. The focus of recent studies is directed more towards the triggers of conflict dealing with external support to militants, bureaucratic structures, rebel recruitment, and so on (Fearon and Laitin, 2003). This research shows that the first step towards achieving a sustainable peace is to alleviate alienation based on cleavages of identity. Policymakers should focus on diminishing the horizontal inequality between advantaged majority and disadvantaged minorities, and on loosening existing political restrictions based on religious and cultural discriminations.

The second policy implication is about electoral strategy. The right-wing politicizes the security dilemma of the majorities against the minorities for electoral benefits. The threat perception is often built around a particular identity that is common among the majority populace, and differs from the

minority - for example either religion or language. However, we find that other internal identity differences among the majority (for instance castes or language) can mitigate or eliminate the threat perspective built around the particular cleavage. Thus, the research suggests that pluralist political groups should try and diminish the salience of the identity cleavage along which threat perspective is built.

The third policy implication is associated with the second. It implies that recognition politics and statism (explained in Chapter 3 and 4) should not be carved along religious lines in India.

Recognition politics for the betterment of marginalized sections of the society is politicized and exploited by conservative right-wing as minority appeasement, helping the conservatives to accumulate support on religious grounds. If the recognition policies backfire and elections are lost, the marginalized parts of society might be worse off in the long run.

The fourth policy implication questions the political viability of the electoral strategy of threat perspective for the right-wing. Our study suggests that the strategy of politicizing threat perspective might not be effective for conservatives in long term depending on various factors. For example, if the right-wing is already in power, they cannot criticize the government for recognition politics anymore. Additionally, if the mindset of the populist support base for conservatives’ change, the same strategies of threat perspective might become redundant. Hence, right-wing would need to carve alternate populist strategies for political survival.

Dissertation Overview

Chapter 2 (Ethnic Conflict in the Indian Subcontinent: Assessing the Impact of Multiple

Cleavages) is the first empirical chapter of the dissertation. At the beginning, the chapter defines the concept of identity cleavages and differentiates between cross cutting and reinforcing ones. Thereafter, the chapter analyzes the underlying conditions of conflict (i.e., the cleavages of marginalization) and

evaluates which individual cleavages and combinations increase the probability of conflict occurrence in the Indian subcontinent. A sample of 60 ethnic groups of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka are studied over the period of 1947-2013. The chapter first establishes the relationship between identity cleavages and conflict through the existing theoretical literature. Next, through descriptive and inferential statistical analysis, the chapter reports on the individual and interactive effects of the cleavages on conflict occurrence.

The chapter ends with a detailed analytical explanation and the examples of multidimensional marginalization – the ethno-secessionist movement of Kashmiri Muslims and the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict respectively.

Chapter 3 (Endangered Majority: Electoral Dynamics in India) is the second empirical chapter of the dissertation. This chapter focuses on endangered majorities and analyzes the majority’s electoral behavior when faced with a “security dilemma.” The reasons for the apprehension or mistrust that this chapter analyzes are greater population growth of the minority groups, terrorism-related activities targeting the state and/or majority group(s), and the minority nationalism and recognition politics of some political parties towards minorities. The chapter first elaborates on the concept of security dilemma that creates a threat perception among the majority vis-a-vis minorities. Thereafter, it presents the testable hypotheses and explains the theoretical perspectives for each. Next, through descriptive and inferential analysis, the chapter examines how minority nationalism increases the probability of majoritarian electoral outcomes in various provinces of India.

Chapter 4 (Minority Nationalism, Recognition Politics, and Majoritarian Electoral Outcomes:

A Comparative Analysis of West Bengal and Kerala) continues the theme of the previous chapter and delves into explaining the empirical finding and the dynamics of the causal process through in-depth descriptive and qualitative case studies of West Bengal and Kerala – two Indian provinces over the

period of 2014 – 2019. This chapter first theorizes and explains the core idea of Hindu nationalism and the birth of Bhartiya Jana Sangh. This establishes our argument that there is a political coalition within India that was and is against the multireligious and multicultural nation-building as espoused by the Indian National Congress for decades. Thereafter, the next section explains the politics of recognition, statism, and divergent views associated with it in India. This connects the readers to the following section on the rightist ideological coalition that has formed against inclusive recognition politics, has upheld Hindu nationalism, and has unfolded in the electoral campaigns and outcomes since 2014. The chapter thereafter lays down JS Mill’s method of difference and explains the background of the two case studies. Finally, two illustrative case studies on West Bengal and Kerala are presented.

The West Bengal case study addresses the change in Bengal’s voting behavior because of a coalition against the recognition politics along communal lines. The Kerala case study indicates that the Bhartiya Janata Party (the right-wing majoritarian political party of India) was unable to consolidate

Hindu votes because of internal caste fault lines of Hinduism present among Malayalee (people of

Kerala). This brings us to the conclusion that crosscutting cleavages of castes act as a barrier to the conservative electoral trend that engulfed the world’s largest democracy.

Chapter 5, the concluding chapter, provides a discussion of the results, theoretical and policy implications, and a future research agenda. This consists of a summary of findings pertaining to core thesis of paper, the shortcomings and ways to address these, and avenues for future research. The main outcome of this research is to indicate that group level marginalization and multidimensional alienation along the lines of religion and economy should be avoided for sustainable peace.

Additionally, recognition politics should be enacted carefully, which can otherwise develop a politicized threat perception among the majorities against the minorities.

CHAPTER 2

ETHNIC CONFLICT IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT: ASSESSING THE

IMPACT OF MULTIPLE CLEAVAGES1

Introduction

Our world is a diverse planet not only in the terms of flora, fauna, and species, but the diversity runs within the humankind as well. Racial, ethnic, religious, and linguacultural cleavages cut across societies and states. One hundred and eighty-one states of the world have reported the presence of at least 1 politically relevant ethnic group within their boundaries (Vogt et al., 2019). Additionally, according to the Ethnic Power Relations (EPR) dataset, the total number of politically relevant ethnic groups is 639 (Vogt et al., 2019). Not all these groups have equitable access to government power, and available statistics confirm that there are at least 283 endangered ethnopolitical groups in the contemporary world because of their political status and actions (Minorities at Risk Project, 2009). To classify ethnic groups as ‘at risk’ or endangered, Minorities at Risk (MAR) project assessed their political significance using two criteria: the group’s collective suffering from systematic discriminatory treatment vis-a-vis other groups in a society, and the group’s political mobilization and collective action in defense, respectively (Minorities at Risk Project, 2009). Scholarly literature finds that highly fractionalized societies might be more prone to the onset of conflict (Esteban and Ray, 2008). This study focuses on the occurrence of conflict in the Indian Subcontinent resulting fractionalizing cleavages of language, religion, and socioeconomic conditions.

1 Portions adapted, with permission, from Das, Soham. (2019). Ethnic conflict in the Indian subcontinent: Assessing the impact of multiple cleavages. Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, 6(3), 229–253. https://doi.org/10.1177/2347797019886689.

Some 64 percent of the civil wars have been fought along ethnic lines in recent decades (Denny and Walter 2014; Themner and Wallensteen 2012). Nevertheless, not all ethnic and religious groups are prone to violence and/or secessionist movements. Many ethnic and religious groups are integrated and cling to both their state and ethnic identity. Why do some ethnic groups choose violence to fight against the state? This chapter examines this question and tries to explain which factors make some ethnic groups more prone to violence vis-à-vis others. In doing so, it elaborates the key idea of reinforcing versus cross-cutting cleavages of marginalization that might lead to adopting violent practices among members of an ethnic group. Following ETH Zurich’s Ethnic Power relations dataset

(Vogt et al., 2015) and EPR Ethnic Dimensions dataset (Bormann, Cederman, and Vogt, 2017), this chapter thereby categorizes ethnic groups and the causal factors leading to the use of violence by various ethnic groups on the Indian subcontinent.

Although there is debate among scholars about the most important causal factors behind the onset of the civil conflict, the more nuanced task is to determine how these factors exist in combination leading to the onset and severity of the conflict. The ‘Minorities at Risk’ (MAR) survey shows that about 80 percent of the politically active ethnic groups in the 1990s were disadvantaged because of historical or contemporary discrimination. Forty percent of these groups (111 out of 275) surveyed face discriminatory policies and practices harmful to their material well-being (Harff and

Gurr, 2004), but relatively few promote violent conflict. This study combines prerequisites of ethnic conflict into three broad cleavages – religion, culture, and socioeconomic status -- arguing that these three broad cleavages and marginalization influence group behaviour. A combination of these stated cleavages develops a continuum of peaceful to violent politics. The present literature has established that individual cleavages are important by analysing the impact of one cleavage at a time. This research

assesses the cleavages individually, in combinations of two, and finally all together; providing a unique contribution and addition to past work.

Conflict and Cleavages: Theoretical Literature and the Proposed Hypotheses

According to past findings, 14 percent of the ethnic minorities in the world have been involved in significant violence against the state (Fearon, 2008; Gurr, 1996; Seymour and Cunningham, 2016).

When violent conflicts are organised by identity, cleavages must be sufficiently important for the masses to prepare them to fight, kill, and even die. Personal motives are important, but without group motives and grievances, they may not be a principal driving force.

Theoretically, ethnic conflict has been explained by primordialism, instrumentalism, and constructivism. According to primordialists such as Horowitz, group allegiances and comparisons are fundamental aspects of social life (Horowitz, 1985). Indeed, primordialists argue that dichotomy between backward and advanced groups arose during the colonial period out of the differential distribution of resources, leading to select migration, education, and employment for some but not for the others. Thus, differential modernization led to the dichotomous characterisation of ethnic groups (Horowitz, 1985). The instrumentalist approach offers a different view. In instrumentalism, ethnic identity formation is a process created in the dynamics of elite competition within the boundaries determined by economic and political realities (Brass, 1991). Instrumentalism argues that because identities are malleable, they are subject to manipulation by the elites. In doing so, however, the instrumentalists tend to undermine the congenital identity of the people of a community and the process through which these ethnic boundaries are (re)constructed. For instance, individuals have many ethnic and non-ethnic identities with which they might identify politically. The challenge for politicians, according to instrumentalists, is simply to ensure that the identity that favors their political interests is the one that is most salient in the minds of a plurality of the voters (Wilkinson, 2006).

Social constructivists also argue that ethnicities are frequently used instrumentally for political purposes, but their emphasis is on ‘making’ and ‘remaking’ of ethnic boundaries that must occur to make such instrumentalism possible (Stewart, 2008). For example, both religion and linguistic symbols are potential bases for differentiating one ethnic group from the other (Brass, 1991), and constructivism successfully explicates the process of promoting multi-symbol congruence or incongruence using these innate cleavages of identities. Nevertheless, both instrumentalists and constructivists recognise that there need to be some differences in behavior, customs, ideology, or religion to make it possible to raise ethnic or other consciousness in an instrumental way (Stewart et. al., 2008). These distinct group level cleavages causing conflict are the focal point of this chapter.

In his seminal work on nationalism, ‘Imagined Communities’, Benedict Anderson argued that the nation is ‘an imagined political community’ (Anderson, 2006). In this sense, the nation is a cultural construction because most members of a nation would probably never meet their fellow members but will retain the strongest emotion for their shared national membership (Taras and Ganguly, 2006). In the subcontinent, the idea of ‘state’ has evolved much after the idea of group-specific nationalisms.

The feeling of Telegu, Tamil, Punjabi, Bengali, Bodo, Mizo, Balochi, or Kashmiri nationalism dates to centuries while the ‘states’ of India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan are barely seven decades old, with

Bangladesh being younger. Hence, it is essential to understand the behavioral pattern of these ethnic groups through a constructivist prism in order to manage the conflicts, and to attain long-term stability.

What are Cleavages?

Cleavages include racial, political, and religious divisions in society. Stewart (2008) categorized these into four areas: political participation, economic aspects, social aspects, and cultural aspects. She

argues that these four broad categories are relevant for every society Stewart (2008). I incorporate the additional cleavage of religion in this analysis.

According to Cederman, Weidmann, and Gleditsch (2011), and Stewart (2008), group level cleavages lead to collective identity formation. A cross-cutting cleavage exists when some characteristics of a group overlap or are in common with another group(s). For example, the Tuareg group in Mali shares a common religion (Islam) with dominant Bambara, but speak Tameshaq language, which is different and is not recognised in the country. Another example is the Bengali Muslims of

Bangladesh (erstwhile East Pakistan), who shared the common religion with the dominant majority of

Pakistani Muslims, but spoke a different language than the Urdu-speaking Muslims.

In contrast, reinforcing cleavage occurs when identities have no overlapping or commonality across groups. For instance, if two groups speak different languages, follow different religions, and belong to different ethnic groups, they have little in common, and their cleavages of difference are reinforcing. For example, the Sudanese Arabs and South Sudanese are religiously, culturally, and economically distinct from each other. The Sudanese Arabs (North Sudanese) are predominantly

Muslim, economically better off than South Sudanese who are Christians, and are culturally distinct as well. The southerners have been economically, socially, and religiously marginalized for decades.

Role of Cleavages

Cleavages divide people into various groups having similar characteristics and common identity. These work in combination to influence group behaviour. Therefore, one group may regard themselves as distinct from another group and be distrustful or wary of the behavior of that another group. If they share nothing (all reinforcing cleavages of distinction), or few things in common (cross- cutting cleavages of distinction), intergroup proximity, bilateral exchanges, and trust shrink, giving rise to a void that is filled with mistrust and hatred, potentially leading to communal or ethnic mobilization.

Cleavages can also spur violence. The process of modernisation in developing societies causes rapid social and political mobilization by breaking down the traditional order and expanding the communications and transportation networks (Taras and Ganguly, 2006). When this leads to a sharp increase in political participation in a multi-ethnic society, an equitable distribution of resource and socioeconomic benefits is not necessarily achieved through public services and public goods. Thus, some groups benefit more than others, leading to a widening horizontal inequality between them. The

Tamils and Sinhalese of Sri Lanka, and the dominant upper caste Hindus and scheduled tribes of India are few of many examples.

Following the logic that group level cleavages lead to collective identity formation, group- based discrimination and inequality lead to common grievances and could spur group-based mobilization and violence (Stewart 2008; Cederman 2011). In testing the likelihood of conflict, Stewart

(2008) examined the effect of socioeconomic, political, and cultural cleavages of horizontal inequalities, as well as their effect on the likelihood of conflict. Nevertheless, the lack of cultural recognition and equity on group mobilization were not studied in combination with each other. Below,

I consider group specific measures of religious, cultural, and economic marginalization in all possible combinations to study their effect on conflict likelihood.

Inequality, Cleavages, and Mobilization

Cleavages make a society deeply divisible. Thereafter, inequality often runs along the lines of cleavages as not every group develops equally in a deeply divided society. This leads to discrimination not merely between individuals, but groups as well. In such cases, groups become further differentiated beyond the divisions by cleavages, as members of one group are politically and economically better off than members of another group. Consequently, grievances among members of the discriminated groups build up against the members of better-off groups and reinforce the ethnic

cleavages, further leading to ethnic mobilization and violence. To explain the impact of marginalization on group mobilization, Harff and Gurr indicated:

“Finding like-minded individuals with similar grievances intensifies discontent and increases willingness to take

action. The more strongly a person identifies with an ethnic group that is subject to marginalization, the more

likely he or she is to be motivated into action. Factors other than shared grievances, including a shared religion,

language, history and culture, and place of residence strengthen group identity. The greater the number of traits

common to a group, the stronger the group identity” (Harff and Gurr, 2004, pp 103-104).

The causal argument mentioned can be summarized through a chart (Figure 2.1) given below.

Harff and Gurr (2004) developed a model for understanding the facilitating conditions of ethnic conflict. Their model focused on contexts and other facilitating conditions, including societal norms of the disadvantaged groups, regime type, government response, group cohesion or factions, external support, and other factors. The evolving gap between individual aspirations and their actual socioeconomic status (Davies, 1962), and ethnic grievances stemming out of horizontal inequalities between social groups are considered as underlying conditions in conflict studies literature. On the other hand, factors other than ethnic diversity, such as, military technologies, decolonization, political instability, and limited administrative control are the facilitating conditions (Fearon and Laitin, 2003).

Contrary to Fearon and Laitin (2003), we evaluate the causal relationship of group level marginalization on the likelihood of conflict and identify the significant underlying necessary conditions of conflict – the cleavages of marginalization.

The Cleavages of Distinctive Identity and Associated Marginalization or Discrimination

Religion is a common source of division or marginalization and had been a predominant divisive cleavage in the Indian subcontinent. Temples, churches, and mosques have not only been the houses of prayers. Traditionally, social exchange, cultural practices, and governance have been linked

to religion. Group grievances can also emerge out of inferior treatment to the religious practices of groups. Designating a national religion or being biased in favor of a sect of a religion can generate resentment among others in a heterogeneous society. An example is predominantly Muslim Indonesia, with episodes of violence between Hindus and Muslims and Muslims and Christians, and where minority Hindus and Christians had been mistreated as well. Similarly, India is besieged by conflicts from religious resentments between groups. After the mid-to-late 1970s, a rising curve of violence can be observed, reaching its peak in 1992 during the demolition of Babri Mosque and the subsequent

Mumbai riots (Varshney, 2003). After a brief downward trend, communal clashes began erupting again after the early 2000s. The 2002 Gujrat riots and Fedayeen attacks on Raghunath temple in Kashmir, the 2010 Deganga riots in West Bengal, and the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots and Canning riots are the such instances.

H1: Religiously marginalized groups are prone to conflict.

Economic inequality and associated active or passive repression have been the source of popular uprisings globally. The Maoist rebellion in the central Indian jungles is also primarily based on economic inequality between the sharecropper tribal group and the economically better off upper- caste. Since the end of colonial rule, the communists campaigned against “false independence” and argued that the transfer of power has only benefited the horizontally better off sections of India. One may indicate that such claims are too simplistic, but the mineral-rich Indian inland repeatedly witnessed sporadic instances of violence between the state and the Maoists who are supported by poor tribal villagers.

Humphreys (2003) reported a striking negative relationship between the wealth of a nation and its chances of having a civil war (Humphreys, 2003). On the other hand, case study work also suggests that it is not inequality between individuals that matters for conflict, but rather inequality

between ethnic groups or between regions – sometimes referred to as horizontal or categorical inequality (Tilly 1999). The concept of horizontal inequality indicates that ethnic groups find themselves in radically different situations for various historical reasons. Whereas some ethnic groups came out on top of the geopolitical game, others were conquered early on, and therefore lost out in the competition for wealth and influence (Horowitz, 1985). Thus, the distribution of power and wealth became a very crucial component of ethnic conflict. Woodward (1995) argues that alleged ethnic conflicts are really driven by underlying economic inequalities that lead ethnic identities to become politicized. If group-based income inequality combines with individual greed, grievance, and other cleavages of conflict, it becomes a more significant issue. Thus, I argue that wealth is a crucial component of ethnic conflict.

H2: Economically marginalized groups are prone to conflict.

Another major cleavage of marginalization is language, as group grievances often emerge out of the inferior treatment of minorities’ cultural practices. Globally, language has been a symbol of identity and culture. The expression of distinct culture is observable in language or the mother tongue.

The festivals, music, and literature in which people grow up, listen to, and read define who they are in communitarian societies. Nationalism grew in Europe in the period 1814 to 1848 and beyond, and language played a key role in the process (Barbour & Carmichael, 2000).

Similar to Europe, Asia has experienced political movements (often violent) under lingual- cultural influence. Although promoting one single language as the national language can develop a cohesive national identity, it can also generate resentment among minority lingual groups in a heterogeneous or multi-ethnic society. For instance, the dominance of Urdu language and culture had been a reason for resentment in East Pakistan leading to the widespread language movement and the war of independence in 1971. Similarly, in the 1950s, India faced major language movements by

Telegu, Marathi, and Punjabi speakers. Telegu speakers had a rich literary history and were associated with such symbols of Andhra glory as the Vijayanagar Empire (Guha, 2008). Post-independence, the

Telegu community demanded the Congress implement its old resolution of linguistic states. Creation of linguistic states meant the formation of provinces with homogenous lingual identity. In other words, the demand was to demarcate states within the republic of India on the basis of linguacultural identity. For instance, the provinces of Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Orissa for Punjabi, Tamil,

Bengalis, and Oriya speaking groups respectively and so on. Initially, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime

Minister of India, was against such a lingual demarcation, fearing it would weaken the republic and promote secessionist tendencies. There were people on both sides of the divide. The section that demanded lingual states used petitions, marches, and fasts as methods of protest. (Guha, 2008). Potti

Sriramulu began his fast unto death on 19 October 1952 and died 58 days later. The news of his death triggered violent clashes in the Andhra province, where government offices were attacked, trains were defaced, and police fired on protesters, killing several. Two days later, Prime Minister Nehru declared that the state of Andhra would come into being for Telegu speakers. This incident spiked lingual demands across the country, and finally, a States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) was set up to make recommendations on the broad principles that should govern the solution of the linguistic problem (Guha, 2008).

H3: Lingual-culturally marginalized groups are prone to conflict.

Are Reinforcing Cleavages More Dangerous Than Cross-Cutting Ones?

The central story of this study revolves around the multidimensional cleavages (i.e., cross- cutting versus reinforcing). Resentments from marginalization on one cleavage (for example, only linguacultural marginalization) are easier to address when two groups have many other things in common (for example, religion, political power, socioeconomic status). When two groups differ

and/or one is disadvantaged vis-a vis the other based on a single cleavage, it means that they share some other common identities. Having some connections with the other groups can change the attitudes of the people. They might celebrate common festivals or speak a common language, which reduces the alienation, anxiety, and mistrust between them. The members of both groups in such cases have some shared identities and interests that lessens the feeling of discrimination, grievances, and alienation especially if the shared identities are considered more salient than divisive identities to those involved (Guelke, 2012).

The scenario changes when the groups are fully alien to each other. When the cleavages of marginalization overlap with each other, it can further heighten the division (Guelke, 2012). When an ethnic group is shares nothing in common, and is disadvantaged in various aspects, it also means that some other group is enjoying reinforcing cycles of privilege (Stewart, 2008). This makes it harder for the disadvantaged group to improve its condition in the future. Horizontal inequality in such cases persists because of asymmetries in social capital and overt (or implicit) discrimination or favoritism by nongroup members (Stewart, 2008). For example, in Burundi in the 1990s, half of government investment went to the Bujumbura region and its vicinity, as it is the home of the elite Tutsi group

(Gaffney, 2000). There are also synergistic connections between economic and social elements as lack of access to education leads to limited economic opportunities, as low-income status tends to result in poor educational access. The Chinese-Malay inequalities in Malaysia and the Tamils-Sinhalese inequalities of Sri Lanka are a few examples of such cycles of deprivation.

The presence of sharp, reinforcing horizontal inequalities and cleavages can either provide strong motives for political mobilization or make the marginalized ethnic groups incapable or too weak to organise an effective political movement. If the political mobilization happens, however, it can become violent with the power of identities binding people together as group leaders find violence

is the only way to secure political power or concessions. In this manner, the groups facing reinforcing cleavages become prone to mobilization and violence.

Hence, it is important to study the various possible combinations of reinforcing cleavages. We study the cleavages singularly, in groups of two, and finally altogether, which is a novel contribution to the literature. For instance, group A might be religiously and economically disadvantaged, while group B are at a religious and cultural disadvantage. The cleavage of religion is common for both; but the overlapping cleavages are different. It is important to study these kinds of combinations, as it helps to understand the reason for group-based violence and which combinations of cleavages have causal impact on conflict occurrence. This research, therefore, analyses the effect of all the possible combination of reinforcements of religious, economic, and lingual-cultural marginalization on conflict likelihood. This leads to four additional hypotheses.

H4: Economically and religiously marginalized groups are prone to conflict.

H5: The economically and lingual-culturally marginalized groups are prone to conflict.

H6: The lingual-culturally and religiously marginalized groups are prone to conflict.

H7: Lingual-culturally, religiously, and economically marginalized groups are prone to conflict.

Research Design

Spatial-Temporal Domain

Ethnic groups have some unique features and a network of connections among them within a geographical region. Although many studies are global, it is a deliberate decision to restrict the geographical focus of this study in order to deal with the sub-national variations and ethnic divisions that are unique to a region. Subnational variation in South Asia matters both in theory and for its empirical properties. Focusing on this region allows us to control for several factors including geography, history, and political system. Yet, we still have substantial variation in their empirical

outcomes. Thus, India and her neighbors became a good test case for the theory. Another associated reason for selecting politically active ethnic groups of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh is because they were one single country before the independence and partition of India in 1947. Ethnic groups are spread across the region and on both sides of the modern international border, and it is a challenge to justify our choice if all of them are not considered. Accordingly, Sri Lanka is also included; because of the presence of a significant Tamil population there, which is also a notable ethnic group of south

India.

The time frame for Bangladesh is 1972-2013 (as Bangladesh gained independence in 1971

December), and for others it is 1947-2013. A comprehensive study since 1947 is essential to include the language movements, the ethnic rebellions, and the class rebellions over time and space. As the data on the groups are available up to and including 2013, the timeline extends through that year.

Following ETH Zurich’s Ethnic Power relations dataset (Vogt et al., 2015) and EPR Ethnic

Dimensions dataset (Bormann et al., 2017), the unit of analysis is group year. The data consists of 60 ethnic groups in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. The total sample of observation (N) is

3001 group years.

Dependent Variable

The study analyzes the occurrence of conflict defined by battle-related deaths. “Conflict occurrence” is a dichotomous variable coded based on the “‘intensity” indicator of the Uppsala

Conflict Data Program (UCDP) (Gleditsch, Wallensteen, Eriksson, Sollenberg, and Strand, 2002;

Melander, Pettersson, and Themnér, 2016). The original intensity indicator ranges from 0-2, where

“1” signifies casualties between 25-999, and “2” represents full-scale war with deaths greater than or equal to 1000 in a year. UCDP codes the protests and limited casualties (less than 25 deaths per year) as “0” and thereby makes small-scale conflicts beyond our purview. Nevertheless, this analysis has

bridged this gap by recoding the intensity indicator. According to the UCDP codebook, variable ‘start date' represents the date of the first battle-related death in the conflict and ‘Startdate2’ is when a given episode of conflict activity reached 25 battle-related deaths in a year. The battle deaths that are fewer than 25 (between ‘start date’ and ‘startdate2’), are coded as “1” to signify protests and limited casualties. The “2” code describes riots and small-scale rebellions in which the number of casualties is between 25-999, and “3” represents full-scale rebellion with deaths greater than or equal to 1000. After creating the index ranging from 0 to 3, they were finally recoded into a dichotomous index in which

“1” signifies any battle-related deaths or presence of conflict (recoded codes 2 and 3) and ”0” signifies no battle-related deaths or the absence of conflict.

Independent Variables

The primary drivers of India’s mass politics have been religion and caste on the one hand, and poverty on the other (Varshney, 2019). Religious nationalism, linguacultural nationalism, and poverty have been the prime determinants of mass politics in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka as well (Huque and Akhter 1987; Herath 2015). When politics in the subcontinent is a reflection of cross- cutting and reinforcing cleavages of religion, economy, and language, we can argue that marginalization against groups based on these cleavages is a combination of political discrimination with their respective cleavages of distinction. For instance, the animist and Christian Bodos are religiously and lingually distinct from the dominant-plural Hindi-speaking Hindus of India.

Additionally, they have faced political discrimination ranging from passive neglect to social exclusion.

Thus, we are not just looking at cleavages, but studying the cleavages that represent marginalization in this chapter. To delineate the cleavages representing marginalization, we combine the levels of political discrimination of the ethnic groups with their respective cleavages of distinction using a multiplicative index.

The independent variables are economic, lingual-cultural, and religious marginalization respectively. The indicators are derived from Minorities at Risk (MAR) data (Minorities at Risk Project,

2009). We created a religious marginalization and another lingual marginalization index for all the ethnic groups across the spatiotemporal domain as the MAR data does not have a comprehensive index for group level religious and lingual marginalization before 2004. A multiplicative index of respective cleavages of distinction and political discrimination has been created for the purpose. The

Political Discrimination (poldis) index ranges from zero to four in MAR, quantitatively representing the levels of political discrimination faced by the groups included in the MAR project (Minorities at

Risk Project, 2009). According to the coding principles of the ‘poldis’ index of MAR, “0” represents no discrimination, “1” represents substantial neglect with remedial public policies to improve the conditions of the affected group, “2” represents substantial neglect without remedial policies, “3” represents social exclusion by dominant groups, and “4” represents repressive policies restricting the group's political participation (Minorities at Risk Project, 2009). We used the same scale as ‘poldis’ index to identify the levels of political discrimination of the ethnic groups in our study. Thereby, a multiplicative index of political discrimination and religious distinction has been created for each unit of analysis – representing religious marginalization, and another multiplicative index of political discrimination and linguacultural distinction has been created for each unit of analysis – representing linguacultural marginalization.

The “Religious Marginalization” variable is created as a multiplicative index based on the

Religious Distinction and Political Discrimination indicators of Minorities at Risk (MAR) data. The

“belief” index (0-2) in MAR represents religious distinctiveness of ethnic groups, in which “0” determines same religion as the plurality group, “1” defines a different sect within same religion as the plurality group, and “2” indicates a different religion than the plurality or majority ethnic group

(Minorities at Risk Project, 2009). In this analysis, we have created a bivariate variable: groups that score either 1 or 2 in MAR are recoded as 1 in this study, and other groups, which are not religiously distinct, are coded as 0. Thereby, a multiplicative index of political discrimination (0-4) and religious distinction (0-1) has been created for each unit of analysis – representing religious marginalization (0-

4). For example, the Kashmiri Muslims of India have been subjected to severe restrictive policies.

Recurring state repression against civilians and nonviolent political actors, repeated lockdown enforcements, as well as the Indian government's continued interference in the political affairs of

Kashmir significantly restrict Kashmiri Muslims’ political participation (Minorities at Risk Project,

2009). The political discrimination (poldis) indicator indexed the level of Kashmiri Muslims’ political discrimination as “4” (repressive policies) in most and “3” (social exclusion) in some of the years of our study. On the other hand, the Kashmiri Muslims adhere to Islam in comparison to India's majority who are Hindu; thus, we have coded Kashmiris as religiously distinct (1). Thereafter, a multiplicative index of political discrimination and religious distinction has been created to determine their yearly religious marginalization index. This procedure has been followed for all the 60 ethnic groups of our study.

The “Lingual-cultural Marginalization” variable is created as a multiplicative index of the lingual distinction and political discrimination indicators of MAR data. The lingual distinction is derived from the “language” index of MAR data. Language, in MAR, determines different lingual- cultural groups of a country. I argued that language is a determinant of culture as well. The value “1” signifies non-plural groups speaking multiple languages, at least one different from plurality group

(Southern Sudanese in Sudan). And, “2” defines non-plural groups speaking a different language from the plurality group language, for example, the Boro people in India speak Bodo language, which is absolutely different from Hindi (Minorities at Risk Project, 2009). A group scoring either 1 or 2 is

considered lingual-culturally distinct and recoded as “1” in our data, 0 otherwise. The ‘poldis’ index ranges from zero to four in MAR, and we used the same scale to assess political discrimination of ethnic groups in this study. Thereby, a multiplicative index of political discrimination (0-4) and linguacultural distinction (0-1) has been created for each unit of analysis – representing linguacultural marginalization (0-4).

The third independent variable – “Economic Marginalization” is derived from the Economic

Disadvantage (ECDIS) indicator of MAR. This index ranges from 0-4, in which “0” indicates no discrimination, “1” indicates neglect/remedial policies, “2” indicates neglect/no remedial policies, “3” indicates social exclusion by the dominant group(s)/neutral policy by the government, and “4” indicates exclusion/repressive policy by the government (Minorities at Risk Project, 2009). The same scale of ‘ECDIS’ indicator of MAR project determines the levels of economic marginalization of the ethnic groups in our study.

For example, the tribal communities of India (scheduled tribes in our study) are geographically and socially isolated groups that have been subjected to economic underdevelopment since the colonial period. Scheduled tribe status under the Indian constitution means that seats are reserved for the group in political forums such as the Indian parliament, along with job quotas in the civil service and educational institutions. Despite official policies aimed at improving the status of the tribals, significant disparities remain (Minorities at Risk Project, 2009). The Economic Disadvantage (ECDIS) indicator of MAR indexed the level of economic disadvantage as “1”, which means although the government has designed public policies to improve the condition of the members of the group, it still undergoes significant poverty and under-representation due to historical marginality, neglect, or restrictions. The economic marginalization level of scheduled tribes in our study is “1”, replicating the

ECDIS indicator of the Minorities at Risk Project.

Four interaction terms combining the three independent variables (religious, lingual-cultural, and economic marginalization respectively) have been generated to test Hypotheses 4-7. These are the interactive terms derived from the combination of the individual variables mentioned above.2 The four interaction variables are

• LIN-REL (interaction of lingual-cultural marginalization and religious marginalization)

• LIN-ECO (interaction of lingual-cultural marginalization and economic marginalization)

• REL-ECO (interaction of religious marginalization and economic marginalization)

• LIN-REL-ECO (interaction of religious marginalization, lingual cultural marginalization, and economic marginalization)

The summary table (Table 2.1) of the different independent variables is given below.

Control Variables

Regime type and group population are two of many facilitating conditions for internal conflict

(Harff and Gurr, 2004) and are included in the statistical analysis. The size index of ETH Ethnic

Power Relations dataset determines population size (Vogt et al., 2015) and Polity score (Marshall and

Gurr, n.d.) determines the regime type. It is often seen that larger groups are better able to mobilise, protest, and fight due to their numerical strength. Thus, the population ratio of various groups to the state’s total population is used to measure group size. Hence, if a marginalized group is 10 percent of

2 Minorities at Risk (MAR) dataset does not have measures for linguacultural and religious marginalization. As mentioned above in the research design section, this paper has created measures for such marginalization using multiplicative indexes of political discrimination and lingual and religious distinction, respectively. Thereby, the marginalization indexes have been combined with each other as an interaction effect or multiplicative effect to assess the effect of multiple cleavages of disadvantage on the group behaviour. The marginalization indexes are discrete variables having many levels and have been treated as continuous variable in our regression analysis. This complicated and minute recoding of the existing data makes the paper unique and establishes a point of departure from the present literature.

the total population, the indicator codes it as 0.1; if a marginalized group is only 2 percent of the population, then it is coded as 0.02 and so on.

According to Selectorate theory, the size of the winning coalition determines whether policies have a private or public focus (Bueno de Mesquita et. al., 2005). When the size is small, as in autocracies and monarchies, the small number of supporters receive private benefits (Bueno de Mesquita, 2005) keeping the larger mass devoid of such benefits and spurring grievances in them. When the coalition is larger, as in democracies, however, the private goods are insufficient for maintaining power and leaders are compelled to switch to policies with a public focus (Bueno de Mesquita, 2005). In this manner, the acute marginalization of various groups diminishes in democracies compared to autocracies. Thus, regime type becomes an important facilitating condition for culminating grievances among disadvantaged ethnic groups. We use ‘Polity score’ (Marshall and Gurr, n.d.) to measure the regime type, which is a 20-point scale determining the level of democracy or autocracy in a country.3

Values closer to 20 represent a high level of democracy, and those around zero determines autocracy.

As democracies have higher audience cost, it is difficult to repress an ethnic group for decades.

Whereas autocracies have a limited audience cost, thus repression of rebel groups and ethnic minorities can be higher.

Results and Analysis

Table 2.2 presents the descriptive statistics of the cleavages of marginalization, and Table 2.3 reports the occurrence (presence/absence) of conflict defined by any battle-related death.

3 Polity Score is rescaled from -10 to +10 to 0 to 20.

Individual Effects of the Cleavages

Among the sample of groups analyzed in this research, only Shia Muhajirs are affected by religious marginalization alone. Table 2.2 indicates that religious marginalization as a cleavage alone is associated with 78.12% violent conflicts across the timeline of the research. From Table 2.3 we infer that religious marginalization has a significant positive effect on the probability of occurrence of conflict, and the effect was consistent across different model specifications. This means as a single cleavage, religious marginalization can instigate violence, or in other words groups affected by religious marginalization alone are likely to engage in sporadic instances of violent conflicts. For example, the spewing violence in Karachi by the Muhajirs, who demand their own province is an uprising by a non- plural religious group against the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and has claimed many lives. The Human

Rights Commission of Pakistan indicated that 490 people were killed in Karachi in ethnic and political killings in the first six months of 2011.

Although language is a critical part of a collective identity, none of the groups studied had only linguacultural marginalization; linguacultural marginalization was always found with one or the other cleavages. Thus, any effects were only in combination with another cleavage type. Nevertheless, the

Gorkhaland movement in India has clamoured against the linguacultural alienation by the culturally and ethnically different Bengalis, and as a result the Gorkhas have been demanding separation from

West Bengal since 1903. Similarly, the Assamese instability also represents an apparent clash of two exclusive lingual groups – the Assamese and the Bengalis. Nevertheless, a closer look at these cases establishes that language is a contributory factor for conflict occurrence in association with others and may not be causal. Indeed, there is a considerable economic difference between the Gorkhas and the

Bengalis of West Bengal; hence, we cannot exclude the causal effect of economic marginalization as a cleavage in this case.

On the other hand, the Assam movement of 1979-1985 was a popular uprising against illegal immigrants to Assam. The movement, led by All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the All Assam

Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP), developed a program of protests and demonstrations to compel the Indian government to identify and expel illegal immigrants from Assam who fled Bangladesh during the liberation war of 1971. Recently, the citizenship bill of 2016 also declared the Bengali- speaking Muslims without proper residency permits as illegal immigrants, whom the federal government seeks to deport back to Bangladesh. Objection is directed not only against the Bengalis

(who can be Hindus as well), but against the Bengali Muslims. In terms of this research, the marginalization in Assam is thus two-fold – both religious and linguacultural, instead of being only lingual. In other cases, communities with lingual differences often live happily unless other variables of alienation are present. For example, the Oriya speaking Hindus and Hindi speaking Hindus have coexisted peacefully ever since in India.

Even as linguacultural marginalization is not a primary cleavage for conflict occurrence, economic marginalization alone is associated with 83.01% violent conflicts across the spatial-temporal domain of the research (Table 2.2). Moreover, economic disadvantage has a significant positive effect on the probability of occurrence of conflict (Table 2.3). These were consistent across different model specifications. In other words, the result indicates that groups that are economically marginalized, despite sharing the common religion and language with the dominant group(s), are prone to conflict.

Our findings comport well with the Marxist analyses of group conflict or social conflict theory.

In the classic example of historical materialism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued that the human history is the result of conflict between classes, which evolved over time in accordance with changes in society’s means of meeting its material needs. Therefore, the first chapter of the Communist

Manifesto starts with ‘the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’ (Marx

and Engels, 1848). According to the social conflict theory, contradictions in interests and conflict over scarce resources between groups is the foundation of a social society. Nevertheless, an equitable distribution of resource and socioeconomic benefits is hardly achieved in any society because of a lack of public service and public goods. Thus, some groups develop faster than others leading to a widening horizontal inequality between them. This research empirically validates the social conflict theory and finds that when the horizontal inequality is economic, it significantly increases the disadvantaged groups’ proneness towards violence.

Among the groups analyzed in this research, 9 have been subjected to economic marginalization alone. For example, the Pashtuns (both Shias and Sunnis) of Pakistan have been economically marginalized for decades despite facing no religious or lingual marginalization, and they have been involved in sporadic instances of violence with a conflict intensity of 1 (less than 25 deaths per year) and 2 (25-999 casualties per year). The Pashtun ethnic clashes have claimed many lives over the decades, and the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan remains violence-laden at this writing.

The Maoist rebellion in the central Indian jungles is also primarily based on economic inequality between the sharecropper tribal and the upper caste economically better-off populace.

The Maoist rebellion in India began as an armed peasant revolt in 1967 at the Naxalbari block of Siliguri subdivision in Darjeeling district, West Bengal. The movement was organised according to the logic of a protracted people’s war (a Marxist military strategy developed by Mao Zedong) to maintain the support of the population and draw the state forces deep into the countryside where the militia aimed to bleed them through a mixture of mobile and guerrilla warfare. Although the Naxalite movement in India apparently seems to be an ideologically motivated radical communist uprising by some members of Communist Party of India (Marxists), a closer look at the mobilized participants indicates an ethnic component of it and the result of economic marginalization. For organizing the

sharecroppers and tribes in 1967, the communists created peasants’ cells throughout the Siliguri subdivision in Darjeeling District. In March 1967, the sharecroppers mobilized under the peasants’ cells started seizing lands from landlords (jotedars), who owned relatively extensive tracts of land. In contrast to the property owners or jotedars, who were upper caste members, the sharecroppers or bargadars belonged to lower castes and tribes and were landless tillers (Iqbal, 2010). Although the

Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 was abolished after the independence of India, the erstwhile landlords continued to enjoy the socio-economic privileges that sustained the existing horizontal inequality between the groups. The Naxalbari uprising was suppressed in July 1967 when paramilitary forces were deployed by the government. The CPI (M) expelled many of its members supporting the uprising who organised themselves into the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). CPI (ML) remained at the center of the Naxalite movement till 1975, gathering enthusiastic urban youth support as well as expanding to various scheduled tribes of the east, southeast and central Indian jungles.

The conflict in its present form began in 2004 after the formation of the Communist Party of

India (Maoists) or CPI-Maoists. The ongoing conflict has taken place over a vast territory (around half of India’s 29 states) with hundreds of people being killed annually in clashes between the CPI-Maoists and the government every year since 2005 (Harbom, Melander and Wallensteen, 2008).4 Presently, the

Naxalites control territories through Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, and Jharkhand and are supported by poorest of the rural population and many tribes of this region (Garda, 2011). The

Naxalites utilize the persisting issue of socioeconomic inequality between the dominant groups of

India and the aboriginal tribes to organise evasive support among the Adivasis in central and eastern

Indian jungles (Garda, 2011). These poor nomadic tribal groups commonly categorized as scheduled

4 Also see PRIO's webpage

tribes of India have faced serious socioeconomic marginalization since the colonial period and were branded as criminals under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. In February 2009, the government of

India adopted the Integrated Action Plan (IAP) for funding grass-roots economic development projects in Naxalite-affected areas as well as increased special police funding for better containment and reduction of Naxalite influence to the tribes. Moreover, under the Delimitation Act of 2002, the

Delimitation Commission of India refined the list of parliamentary constituencies to ensure apt legislative representation of scheduled castes and tribes of India. As a result, the Naxalite violence has reduced significantly since 2010.

The key contributions of this research, however, are not only the individual effects of the single cleavages, but also their interaction effects. Often cleavages intersect with each other, and this chapter reviews the interaction effects in the next section.

Interactive Effects of the Cleavages

Among the groups studied in this research, the combination of religious and economic marginalization affects four groups -- Bengali Hindus of Bangladesh, Christians of Pakistan, Punjabi speaking Hindus of Pakistan, and Hindi speaking Christian and Animist scheduled tribes of India.

Table 2.2 reports that the groups affected by the combination of religious and economic marginalization are associated with 74.4% violent conflicts across the period of our research. When these two cleavages intersect, it has a significant positive effect on the occurrence of conflict as well

(Table 2.3). In other words, the groups that are both religiously and economically marginalized, despite speaking the same language as the dominant ethnic group, are prone to conflict.

The Hindi speaking non-Hindu scheduled tribes of India (Animists and Christians) have sporadically revolted against the union government in central Indian jungles under the banner of

Naxalite movements, despite sharing a common language with the plural Hindi speaking population.

These tribes have been religiously and economically discriminated since the 1950s and engaged in limited sporadic violence during 1950s and early 1960s. The conflict intensity increased during the

Maoist rebellion in the late 1960s and since 2005. The Maoist movement is often seen as an ideological and class struggle, but their targeted groups of mobilizations have always been various scheduled tribes of India who face various cleavages of marginalization. The ethnic dimension is an important component in the Maoist movements. The findings indicate that the combination of religious and economic marginalization has the potential to cause protests and violence, even if the lingual cleavage cuts across the groups. The statistical findings also show that as the intensity of religious marginalization moves up from level 1 (neglect) to level 4 (acute repression), the chances of economic disadvantage positively affecting the probability of conflict gradually go up from 7.5% to 10.5%.

The marginal effect plot (Figure 2.2) graphically represents the result. Figure 2.2 shows that as the levels of religious marginalization (on the X axis) goes up from 0 to 4 ( i.e., increases from no neglect to acute repression), the marginal effect of economic marginalization on the probability of conflict occurrence (on the Y axis) also increases. The cleavage of economic disadvantage has a 5.7% positive marginal effect on conflict occurrence when a group is not religiously marginalized. The positive marginal effect of economic disadvantage rises to 7.5% when the affected group is subjected to religious marginalization with existing remedial policies. The marginal effect rises further to 9.6% when the affected group is subjected to religious marginalization without remedial policies from the government. When the religious marginalization is at level 3, the positive marginal effect of economic disadvantage on conflict occurrence reaches 10.4%, and, when the group is subjected to repressive religious marginalization (level 4), the cleavage of economic disadvantage has 10.5% positive marginal effect on the probability of conflict occurrence. This finding strengthens the argument that economic

disadvantage and religious marginalization are the ordering principles in some parts of the world.

Figure 2.2 is given below.

Table 2.2 indicated that the combination of lingual and economic marginalization affects eight ethnic groups, and the groups affected by this cleavage of marginalization are associated with 67.07% of violent conflicts across the period of the research. Table 2.2 also reports that the combination of lingual and religious marginalization affects two ethnic groups, and the groups characterized by this cleavage of marginalization are associated with 60.52% of violent conflicts across the period of study.

Nevertheless, the empirical results (Model 2 of Table 2.3) finds no statistical significance for the combined effect of lingual and religious marginalization on the occurrence of conflict when economic commonalities exist across the groups. Similarly, according to Model 3 of Table 2.3, we find no significant evidence of the combined effect of lingual and economic marginalization on conflict when they share a common religion. The statistical insignificance can be attributed to factors like the absence of a greater number of groups experiencing marginalization. According to our data, only 8 groups are affected by the combination of lingual and economic marginalization, and only 2 have experienced the combination of lingual and religious marginalization. Additionally, the intensity of conflict in those cases is also low. These aspects might explain the statistical insignificance.

In addition, we find that the likelihood of conflict is greater when all the cleavages of marginalization are reinforcing. Among the groups analyzed in this research, the reinforcing marginalizations of economy, religion, and language affect 20 ethnic groups. The groups are the

Ahmadis, Shia Balochis, Shia Sindhis, parkari and Sindhi speaking Hindus in Pakistan, Christian and animist Bodos, indigenous Tripuris, Kashmiri Muslims, Mizos, Nagas, Shia and Sunni Muslims, and non-Hindi speaking animist scheduled tribes in India, Tamils and Moors in Sri Lanka, and Tribal-

Buddhists in Bangladesh. These groups have been associated with 62.55% of violent conflicts across the period of our research (Table 2.2). The empirical results in Table 2.3 also suggest that the probability of conflict occurrence is high and significant when a group is totally distinct and marginalized (economically, culturally, and religiously) from the dominant group.

India and Sri Lanka have each been fighting a protracted war against Kashmiri militants and

Tamil militants respectively. Not surprisingly, the contexts are quite similar – multifaceted marginalization. During the 1987 state elections in Indian administered Kashmir, various Islamic anti- establishment groups including Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir were organised under a single banner named

Muslim United Front (MUF), that is largely the current Hurriyat.5 Its slogan included the demand to introduce Sharia law of Quran in the state assembly (Schofield, 2010), which is against the secular ethos of the Indian constitution. The MUF lost the election, and it is believed that the elections were rigged in favour of Farook Abdullah, who had an alliance with the Congress party (Behera, 2006).

The perceived rigged election results led to the rise of an armed insurgency movement, and

Pakistan supplied these groups with logistical support, arms, recruits and training (Jamal, 2009). As the protests and rallies intensified in the valley, largely organised by Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front

(JKLF), the government of India deployed Border Security Force (BSF) and paramilitary forces under

Armed Force Special Power Act (AFSPA) to suppress the insurgency by giving armed forces the powers to kill and arrest without warrant to maintain public order (Behera, 2006). Religiously and culturally distinct from the majority Hindus, now politically disadvantaged as a result of interventions of the federal government and AFSPA, and economically backward because of lack of opportunities; the Kashmiri Muslims were marginalized and alienated from the rest of the country. As the grievances

5 All Parties Hurriyat Conference, or Tehreek e Hurriyat, is an alliance of 26 political, social and religious organizations formed on 9 March 1993, as a united political front to raise the cause of Kashmiri separatism in the Kashmir conflict.

grew, JKLF used Islamic themes to mobilise crowds and justify the use of violence. The available battle-related deaths and events data indicate that Kashmiri Muslims have engaged in active violence over the period of this study, and its intensity increased since the late 1980s.

On the other hand, the Tamil–Sinhalese friction in the island state dates to the colonial period when the British established a centralised government in 1833. Right after independence, conflict over lingual rights took the form of the Swabhasha movement (the people’s own language movement), which pushed for the Sinhalese language to become the official one of Sri Lanka instead of English (Taras and Ganguly, 2006). Thus, in terms of this research, we find that linguacultural marginalization has been a contributory factor in Tamil militancy. Aside, the Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948,

Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Act of 1949, and Official Language Act of 1956 made the vast majority Tamils stateless. These also reduced the parliamentary capacity to defend the minority civil rights and granted no concession to the Tamils to use their language for education and administration respectively (Taras and Ganguly, 2006). These factors successively made the Tamils both economically and religiously marginalized. Faced with Tamil protests, the Tamil Language Act was passed in 1958 but its implementation was minimal. Hence, by the end of the 1950s, the Tamils were multidimensionally marginalized.

The Tamils protested the lingual and religious supremacy of the Sinhalese, and the economic disadvantages to which they were subjected. In 1978, the Jayewardene government introduced a new constitution that provided some concessions to the Tamils including the status of a national language and a new system of voting to count the minority votes in national politics (Taras and Ganguly, 2006).

Nevertheless, these concessions were again barely implemented, transforming the existing Tamil grievances to organised militancy. Several Tamil insurgent organisations arose and the Liberation

Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) led by Velupillai Prabhakaran was the largest of them. The Sinhalese

government disrupted the distribution of necessities of food and water in the Jaffna region and carried out pogroms against Tamils during the anti-Tamil riots of 1983. The situation soon evolved into a civil war. According to the Tamil Centre for Human Rights, over 45000 civilians lost their lives in the

Sri Lankan Civil War that lasted for 27 years.

The Tamils and Kashmiri Muslims are both marginalized in multiple ways. The former fought a three-decade long civil war, but the latter is still engaged in active militancy against the state. Hence, we can conclude that reinforcing cleavages of marginalization are likely to increase the probability of violent conflicts. The death of Velupillai Prabhakaran; the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in 2009, left the Tamils without a capable leadership to reorganise an effective political movement even as the Sri Lankan Tamils remain face serious hardships.

Conclusion

The research in this chapter analyzed the underlying conditions of conflict – the effects of religious, economic, and lingual marginalization. Our argument was that studying these cleavages alone is not enough as many groups are often affected by more than one disadvantages at a time.

Additionally, the existence of various reinforcing and cross-cutting cleavages within society make it harder to manage these conflicts. An analysis of the politically active ethnic groups of the Indian subcontinent, this research finds that the reinforcing cleavages significantly increase the probability of conflict in this region. The combination of religious and economic marginalization and the overlapping cleavage of religious, economic, and lingual disadvantages respectively increase the probability of conflict.

Although reinforcing cleavages do lead to the occurrence of conflict, we found that cross- cutting cleavages do not necessarily decrease the probability of conflict occurrence. If any group experiences only economic marginalization, despite having religious and lingual similarity, it is still

conflict prone. This strengthens the argument that economic disadvantage is an ordering principle in certain sections of the world. The interactive effect of religious and economic marginalization also has a significant impact on conflict occurrence, thus proving that these two cleavages of marginalization are the ordering principles in the Indian subcontinent. In brief, our empirical findings support the concept of horizontal inequality, which indicates that grievances develop from group level marginalization and unequal economic development.

This research has a group-specific focus and instead of a realist approach, undertakes a constructivist approach of analysing group level marginalization. Thus, it adds value and makes it explicit that reinforcing cleavages of disadvantage increase conflict. Additionally, the chapter suggests that socioeconomic equitability is necessary for long-term stability and states should prevent ethnic groups from becoming religiously and economically alienated.

Appendix

Table 2.1: Summary Table of Independent Variables Name of Variable Derivation Method Religious Marginalization Multiplicative index of Political Disadvantage and Religious Distinction Linguacultural Marginalization Multiplicative index of Political Disadvantage and Lingual Distinction Economic Marginalization Economic Disadvantage index of MAR Lingual and Religious Marginalization (LIN-REL) Interactive Effect of Linguacultural Marginalization and Religious Marginalization Lingual and Economic Marginalization (LIN- Interactive Effect of Linguacultural ECO) Marginalization and Economic Marginalization Religious and Economic Marginalization (REL- Interactive Effect of Religious Marginalization and ECO) Economic Marginalization Religious, Lingual, and Economic Marginalization Interactive Effect of religious marginalization, (LIN-REL-ECO) lingual cultural marginalization, and economic marginalization

Table 2.2: Descriptive Statistics for Categories of Marginalization (1947-2013)

No Religious Linguacultural Economic REL- LIN- LIN- LIN- Marginaliza Marginalization Marginalization Disadvantage ECO ECO REL REL- tion ECO

Category Percentage for 60.52 62.5 10.31% 78.12% NA 83.01% 74.4% 67.07% Conflict % % Occurrence

Category Percentage for 18.4 7.8% 46.9% NA 51.9% 67.4% 30.5% 29% Low Intensity % Conflict (Level 1)6

Category Percentage for 42.1 26.9 1.92% 15.6% NA 25.0% 6.0% 35.4% Mid Intensity % % Conflict (Level 2)7

Category Percentage for 0.56% 15.6% NA 6.1% 0.9% 1.2% 0 6.6% High Intensity Conflict (Level 3)8

Groups 22 1 NA 9 4 8 2 20

Total Years 1251 32 NA 212 215 407 76 1055

No Conflict Years 1122 7 NA 36 55 134 30 395

Cumulative Number of years 129 25 NA 176 160 273 46 660 for Conflict Occurrence

6 Recoding the Intensity indicator of UCDP Battle Deaths Data, Level 1 signifies 1-25 deaths (per years) in our study. 7 Recoding the Intensity indicator of UCDP Battle Deaths Data, Level 2 signifies 26-999 deaths (per years) in our study. 8 Recoding the Intensity indicator of UCDP Battle Deaths Data, Level 3 signifies 1000+ deaths (per years) in our study.

Table 2.3: Conflict Occurrence – (0-1) (1947-2013)9 Panel Panel Logit Panel Logit Panel Logit model Panel Logit model with Logit model with model with with interaction interaction between model interaction interaction between religious language-culture, with No between lingual- between lingual- marginalization and religion and economic interaction cultural and culture and economic disadvantage (1) religious economic disadvantage (5) marginalization disadvantage (4) (2) (3)

Religious 0.407* 0.594** -1.194*** 0.180 marginalization (2.35) (2.97) (-5.80) (0.64)

Lingual Cultural -1.433*** -0.920*** -1.269*** 0.354 marginalization (-7.77) (-4.92) (-6.32) (0.85)

Economic 1.482*** 1.419*** 0.773*** 1.558*** disadvantage (9.34) (6.98) (4.53) (5.67) LINREL Lingual-cultural 0.068

and Religious (1.33) marginalization LINECO Lingual cultural 0.0744

and Economic (0.98) marginalization RELECO Religious and 0.229**

economic (3.12) marginalization LINRELECO Religious, 0.209*** cultural, and (4.61) economic marginalization -11.66*** -12.67*** -11.56*** -12.65*** -12.42*** Size (-3.69) (-3.78) (-3.80) (-3.94) (-3.84)

0.013 0.0131 0.014 0.022 0.013 Polity score (0.84) (0.87) (0.94) (1.48) (0.86) Notes: N = 3001. Standard errors in parentheses. *** is significant at .001. ** is significant at .01. * is significant at .05

9 Effects of country dummy variables were tested in the models but have dropped them in the final table, as they did not show any significant effect. Their inclusion did not affect the results on the key variables.

Groups develop unequally in Discrimination not merely such deeply divided societies Cleavages divide a society between individuals; but breeding inequality based on between groups. cleavages

Groups become differentiated Grievances among members of by cleavages, and members of the discriminated communities Further Ethnic Mobilization one group are better off than build up against the members and Civil Violence members of another group of better-off communities

Figure 2.1: Impact of marginalization on group mobilization

Figure 2.2: Marginal Effect of Economic Marginalization with respect to Religious Marginalization on Conflict Occurrence

CHAPTER 3

ENDANGERED MAJORITY:

ELECTORAL DYNAMICS OF INDIA

Introduction

Elaborating on the key idea of reinforcing versus cross-cutting cleavages of marginalization that might lead to adopting violent practices among members of an ethnic group, the previous chapter explained why some ethnic groups are prone to violence vis-à-vis others. We found that ethnic groups affected by the reinforcing cleavages of religious and economic marginalization, and religious, economic, and lingual marginalization engage in active violence. Additionally, the ethnic groups facing economic disadvantage alone, despite having religious and lingual similarity, also engage in violence.

Scholarly research suggests that fractionalized societies with a dominant majority and a marginalized minority are prone to violence (Esteban and Ray, 2008). Most notable previous studies in ethnic politics have focused on the minorities. For example, Cederman et al. (2011) and Stewart (2008) analyzed the grievances of minorities because of horizontal inequalities. They found group-based discrimination and inequality lead to common grievances and might spur group-based mobilization and violence among minorities and marginalized groups. At the same time, not much research has been done to evaluate the aspect of ethnic politics from the perspective of majorities. While the previous chapter adds value to the literature of horizontal inequality, marginalization and ethnic violence, to bridge the gap in the literature this chapter shifts the focus to endangered majorities.

Horizontal inequality or cycles of deprivation affecting a community in a deeply divided society indicates cycles of privileges and benefits for a particular ethnic group. According to the power threat theory (Blalock 1967), race relations are not always peaceful. Moreover, when the minority groups

threaten the dominance of the majority, the majority takes actions to suppress the minority. The findings of the previous chapter indicate that when an ethnic group is subjected to certain cleavages of marginalization, they are more likely to engage in violence. When such acts of violence are scrutinized through the lens of power threat theory, the chances of majoritarian retaliation against minorities cannot be disregarded. This chapter explains the reasons for majority’s apprehension and considers whether a relationship exists between those factors and the electoral behavior of the majorities of a country. Whereas Kopstein and Wittenberg (2018) studied the effect of majority’s apprehension on pogroms, this research focuses on right-wing voting behavior of majorities.

Since the 1980s, populist parties such as the Austrian Freedom Party, French National Front, and the Dutch List Pim Fortuyn have come into existence in Europe. The recent elections in Germany also indicate a surge in populist right-wing electoral success (McKenzie 2019). In addition, this

European trend is unfurling around the world. From Donald Trump, the current President of the

United States, to Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, the electoral victories of these populist leaders and their rightist majoritarian political parties are indicative of a trend over the past several years. The key features of the populist radical right ideology – nativism, authoritarianism, and populism have a manipulative effect on the mass attitudes, aiming to change the perspective of the general people for electoral benefits of the conservative parties. Mudde (2010) refers to this as a radicalization of mainstream values (Mudde, 2010). A question arises about the reasons behind this phenomenon.

Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to use India as a case study and explore reasons behind the growing popularist sentiments, assess the apprehension or mistrust among the majority population against minorities, and examine the threat perception influenced by conservative right-wing’s propaganda.

The Evolving Political Culture

The People’s Party of India, alias Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), has won two consecutive national general elections, in 2014 and 2019, amidst severe criticisms from its domestic political rivals and a section of the liberal elite. The electoral victories of the conservative party come when its political rivals are struggling with weak leadership. The Indian National Congress (INC) dominated the political spectrum of the country for decades. But the current leadership of the century old political organization is incompatible and weak (P. K. Dutta, 2019). The other political opponents of BJP, such as, the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Samajwadi Party (SP), and

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) lack pan-India political support bases. Although the weak leadership of competing parties and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah’s political maneuvering has complemented each other to secure the electoral victories, they are insufficient to explain the change in the voting patterns of 1.3 billion people. In other words, weak opposition and charismatic leadership cannot fully explain the changing electoral pattern of India and a closer look at the political psychology of the majority voters is required.

Indian electoral politics was dominated by the Indian National Congress party over six decades until the 1990s. A change was first evident in 1995 when the era of coalition politics began as Congress alone could not secure the required majority in the national legislature. Nevertheless, the party won by a large margin in the 2004 general election and with the support of few regional parties and ethnoreligious minorities secured another term in 2009. This era of Congress Raj (rule) was challenged by “the saffron wave” with Modi as the new face of the nation in 2013. The weak Congress leadership now faced a charismatic opponent and lost the 2014 election and thereafter the latest one in 2019 as well. The National Democratic Alliance (BJP and its allies) in India won 38.5% of the 554.1 million polled votes in the 2014 general elections and 45% of the 603.7 million polled votes in the 2019

elections. The tally of seats of BJP also rose from 282 in 2014 to 303 in 2019. Additionally, NDA’s vote share in 2019 was more than 50% in many states including Uttar Pradesh (50.57%), Uttarakhand

(61.01%), Rajasthan (60%), Maharashtra (50.88%), Madhya Pradesh (58%), Karnataka (51.38%),

Jharkhand (55.29%), Himachal Pradesh (69.11%), Haryana (58.02), Gujarat (62.21%), Goa (51.18%),

Delhi (56.56%), Chhattisgarh (50.70%), Chandigarh (50.64%), and Arunachal Pradesh (58.22%).

By definition, a democracy is the ‘rule by people.’ Thus, any political party in a multiparty first- past-polls system requires the confidence of a large section of the populace to secure a single-party majority in the parliament. The BJP, under Modi’s leadership, has both won the confidence of a significant portion of the Indian populace and secured a single-party majority in the house starting in

2014. BJP supporters and benefactors popularly brand this era of politics as ‘New India’ and, from an analytical angle, one must argue that the ‘New India’ has a ‘new’ political culture too – Hindu

Majoritarianism.

Although analyzing ethnic politics is usually on minorities, we examine the issue from the majority’s point of view. The power threat theory of Blalock (1967) argues that the proximity of different ethnic groups always does not lead to peaceful coexistence. Rather it often increases the probability of interethnic violence (Blalock, 1967). An endangered majority becomes a facilitating condition when it originates from an identity crisis. Nevertheless, only a limited scholarly literature covers the sense of mistrust and angst that the majority community often harbors against the migrating aliens, the existing clustered minority, and the disadvantaged ethnic and religious groups. Theorizing the concept of endangered majority in line with Posen (1993), Blalock (1967), and Kopstein et. al.

(2018), this research aims to assess the reasons for the Hindu majoritarian electoral victory from an angle of a security dilemma among the majorities of a nation. In other words, it studies if any relationship exists between the factors that raise anxiety and security threat among majorities and their

electoral behavior. The primary contributory factors causing majority groups to feel threatened are the increasing relative growth of the minorities, presence of minority nationalist parties, and terrorism- related events initiated by minority militant groups.

Endangered Majority Stimuli: Security Dilemma, Identity Perception,

and Triggers of Threat

Harff and Gurr (2004) framed a model for understating the facilitating conditions of ethnic conflict. The model explains the causality of conflict with a focus on contexts of conflict that include societal norms of the disadvantaged groups, regime type, government responses, external support, and the like. Similar to Harff and Gurr (2004), most scholarly literature focuses on resource and support for the disadvantaged minorities, their group cohesion, group factions, and their ideologies and grievances. Thereby these pieces of literature explain how the afore-mentioned factors facilitate conflict or determine the behavioral patterns of disadvantaged communities.

The Minorities at Risk (MAR) project (2009) focuses only on minority groups in a country.

The listed groups assessed by MAR in India are Assamese, Bodos, Kashmiris, Mizos, Muslims, Nagas,

Scheduled Tribes, Sikhs, and Tripuris. The shortcoming of MAR is in its focus on minorities only and in restricting its scope within that group. We argue that it is important to analyze the perspective of the majority groups as well for establishing the totality of ethnic-civil violence and electoral behavior in a country. Therefore, to bridge this gap in the literature, this chapter focuses on endangered majorities and aims to analyze the majority’s electoral behavior as a result of the security dilemma of the majorities against minorities.

The Security Dilemma

The spiral model of Jervis (1978) explains that according to the dynamic of security dilemma, anarchy makes a state prepare military forces, which threatens its neighbors and pushes them to arm

in response. The resultant arms race makes all sides less secure, and war occurs out of fear and not greed (Reiter, 2003). While the occurrence of war is an international phenomenon, we can use this concept of security dilemma in explaining subnational group relations, which we delineate below. In the spiral model of Jervis (1978), there are two reasons why a state might end up in war. Preemptive war might take place as one state decides to attack first when it perceives the balance of power shifting to the other side, creating an advantage in attacking sooner rather than later as conditions may not be as favorable in the future as in the present. On the other hand, preventive war might take place as a state decides to attack another state first to forestall the other state from attacking or to obstruct the other state's attack because it fears the other state is preparing to attack (Reiter, 2003). The later condition of preventive war is relevant to our research. Jervis (1978) theorized that decision makers engaging in war act in terms of the vulnerability they feel during the resultant arms race (Jervis, 1978).

Moreover, the security dilemma becomes most salient for the decision makers when commitments, strategy, or technology dictate that the only route to security lies through expansion. Status-quo powers act aggressively in such situation(s) (Jervis, 1978), leading to a war because of security dilemma.

Posen (1993) applied the realist concept of security dilemma to explain post-cold war Eurasian nationalist, ethnic, and religious conflicts. His study theorized that when an imperial order breaks down, the ethnonationalist groups find themselves newly responsible for their security in the absence of a hegemonic power (Posen, 1993). In other words, the ethnonationalist groups are suddenly compelled to guarantee their own security and following the spiral model of Jervis (1978), consider the other groups as probable threats. Realism argues that the lack of supreme power of the international system makes security the primary concern of the states. As in the international system, within a multi-ethnic heterogeneous state, groups of people are divided along ethnic/religious/cultural lines. The absence of a strong state creates an anarchy within the country equivalent to the

international system and makes each group worry about its own survival. In such a scenario, those groups compete for security and political power. This competition continues to a point at which some of the groups acquire more power than needed for basic security, and the situation poses a threat to other groups and they respond either democratically (vote for conservative parties dedicated to their nationalist ambitions) or through violent means. If the relative power of non-majority groups rises over time, the majority group(s) fears of losing the status quo and the current, favorable balance of power within the country. Finally, because the dominant group(s) wish to remain secure and maintain power, they react by trying to strengthen its (their) own positions or diminish the power of the rising groups, and thereby counter mobilize against the minorities (Posen, 1993).

The Triggers of Threat

This chapter examines the security dilemma faced by majority Hindus in India, who fear their socio-economic control and dominant status is being threatened by the growth of minorities, terrorism-related incidents by the national minority groups, and rising minority nationalism.

The apprehension or mistrust among the majority population against minorities can develop because of various factors. In this section we examine several of them and introduce the testable hypotheses. First is an unbalanced change in demographics against the current majority population; the greater population growth of the minority groups is a cause of alarm for the majorities as the latter fear being outnumbered in the future (Kopstein and Wittenberg, 2018). When electoral competitions in a state are ethnic-based, (i.e., political parties target specific ethnic groups for support in a multiethnic state), the numerical strength of ethnic groups determines election outcomes. If the population growth rate of the current minority group is significantly higher than that of the majority, the dominant majority might feel alarmed about a probable scenario where their numerical advantage would be challenged in distant future. Jervis (1978) found that decision makers act in terms of the

vulnerability they feel, which can differ from the actual situations. The unbalanced demographic shift with higher growth of minorities is one such situation in which the threat perspective could overshadow reality. The reflection of this threat perspective has been found in the Israeli-Palestine conflict before,; demographics have been a major political issue within Israel and the fear of being outnumbered by the Palestinians has been used by right-wing Israelis who fear Israel will lose its Jewish identity (Khwaja, 2018). There is a similar conjecture in the minds of Indian people and conservative politicians as well (Jaiswal, 2018).

On the other hand, the feeling of insecurity by Jews led to pogroms in Poland in 1940s wherein the likelihood of a pogrom increased in tandem with the proportion of Jews in the population. Part of this was probably about increased Jewish visibility, which made Jews easier targets (Kopstein and

Wittenberg, 2018). Kopstein and Wittenberg (2018) illustrate the positive correlation between the

Jewish population proportion and the occurrence of a pogrom using interwar census data on ethnic and religious affiliations. The research here examines whether a relationship exists between the minority population proportion and the majoritarian electoral outcomes in India. Hence, we argue that the relative increasing growth of the minority population enhances ultranationalist sentiments, which result in majoritarian electoral outcomes. Thus, we hypothesize that:

H1: Higher relative growth of minority population has a positive effect on electoral support

for majoritarian right-wing parties.

A second reason for apprehension among majority populace against minorities is terrorism- related activities initiated by minority militant groups. Looking at the Israeli-Palestinian context,

Berrebi and Klor (2008) use the variation in Palestinian suicide terrorism over time and space to argue that attacks shift Israeli voters toward right-wing parties that are less supportive of granting political concessions to Palestinians (Getmansky and Zeitzoff, 2014). Moreover, suicide attacks increase the

support for the right-wing bloc even beyond those localities in which they take place. Political psychology studies suggest that terrorism can also strike fear into a targeted populace (Huddy,

Feldman, and Cassese 2007), and affect voting through the fear of future attacks rather than past casualties (Getmansky and Zeitzoff, 2014).

Additionally, the impact of an act of militancy spreads beyond the immediate fear of the people and the loss of lives. The incident of violence disrupts the existing peace within the country and strikes a blow to any mutual trust between the minority and majority groups. After the 2006 Mumbai attacks, which were orchestrated by a Pakistan based terrorist organization (Lashkar-e-Taiba), C. Raja Mohan, a member of the National Security Advisory Board of India told that a small section of the Indian

Muslim community has been radicalized, which makes it even more challenging for the state to manage. (S. Sengupta, 2006). The terror attacks thus carry repercussions not only for the immediate national security, but also for domestic politics and group relations within a country (S. Sengupta,

2006). The majorities feel threatened and expect the authorities to be responsible for security and group interests. In the realms of electoral politics, the majorities favor conservative right-wing parties with the belief that majoritarian parties will cater to their interests and will implement severe measures against the actors behind such terrorism attacks.

Hence, we argue that growing local mobilization against majorities increases ultranationalist sentiments, which culminates in majoritarian electoral outcomes. Owing to the past research, we hypothesize that:

H2: Terrorism-related incidents have a positive effect on electoral support for majoritarian

right-wing parties.

The third reason for the growth of apprehension among the majority population is the presence of minority nationalist parties (Kopstein and Wittenberg, 2018). As non-dominant ethnic

groups become wary of their security, they form nationalist organizations that uphold their personal interests and bargains for special privileges (Chhibber and Verma, 2018). Akali Dal, a Sikh nationalist political party in India; the All India Majli-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), an Islamic regional party of India; or the Irish Republican Army, an Irish nationalist party in Northern Ireland are a few of many examples. Additionally, many pluralist political parties also have an inclusive approach in their policy making as they believe that the horizontal inequalities and cleavages of marginalization should be bridged to ensure peace and stability between the ethnic groups in a multi-ethnic state. Chhibber and Verma (2018) referred to those inclusive multicultural policies as politics of recognition and statism (Chhibber and Verma, 2018). Conservative sections of the dominant groups are wary of these policies because they fear of losing the status quo (Chhibber and Verma, 2018). The growing number of active minority nationalist organizations, thus, raises the apprehension of the majority group(s).

The difference in perception about recognition politics among minorities and majorities is explained below.

The idea of recognition was first advocated by Taylor (1994). Its theoretical underpinnings have been debated in the political theory of multicultural societies (Fraser 1997; Willet 1998; Banting and Kylmicka 2006). Chhibber and Verma (2018) define recognition as a state’s effort in the correction of group-based inequalities and its accommodation of the interests of historically marginalized social groups. For example, the Black population in the United States is a significant minority and a horizontally marginalized community. Their marginalization is not new, with a history of enslavement

since 1565 till 1865. The Civil Rights Act of 196410 and the Voting Rights Act of 196511 are some examples of recognition policies that a state uses to correct the group-based inequalities. Chhibber and Verma (2018) further indicate that in postcolonial states such as India, the transition to democracy and equality was sudden, and it required the development of institutional mechanisms for sharing power with historically marginalized groups (Chhibber and Verma, 2018), which made multicultural politics of recognition and statism indispensable.

In contrast, according to the majoritarian ideology of state-building, homogenization unifies the people subduing their innate differences. The homogenization of national identity seems necessary for dominant group(s), as they believe minority nationalism and politics of recognition will weaken their state. The power-threat model, initially developed to understand the dynamics of U.S. race relations (Blalock, 1967), explains the differences in perceptions of identity formation. The power- threat theory argues that when minority groups threaten the dominance of the majority, the majority will take actions to suppress minority power. According to Kopstein and Wittenberg (2018), the theory maintains that, in the United States, where blacks constituted a substantial minority and racially exclusive parties were popular, whites intent on preserving the racial status quo prompted measures of social control such as electoral disenfranchisement, Jim Crow legislation, and lynching.

The application of the power threat theory is observed in India as well. Chhibber and Verma

(2018) carried out a survey research to test the behavioral pattern of the voters in India, who feel threatened or at least do not receive any benefit from the recognition policy legislations. They

10 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and employment; authorized the attorney general to bring school desegregation suits and the federal government to withdraw funds from schools and other governmental entities receiving federal funds if they discriminated; and provided enhanced enforcement mechanisms for protecting civil and voting rights. 11 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 enforced the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and provided for substantial federal supervision of voting and election procedures in order to eliminate racial discrimination and protect the right to vote.

estimated a logistic regression model to test if the voters’ ideologies influenced their decision to vote for Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), the conservative right-wing party. Their findings suggest that the voters who were opposed to quotas and special privileges for minorities (the politics of recognition) or who preferred a reduced role for the state in the economy and social norms (politics of statism) were more likely to have voted for the right-wing coalition in India in the 2014 general elections.

Minority nationalist and pluralist political parties’ bargain for special privileges (recognition policies) for disadvantaged groups within a state. Thus, the higher number of minority nationalist parties and their growing activism pushes a significant section of majority populace to vote for conservative right- wing political coalition.

The findings of Chhibber and Verma (2018) indicate that the large proportion of voters consider minority nationalism and preferential treatment (politics of recognition) to the minorities by few political parties as a security dilemma. Such feelings develop because the majoritarian populace considers adherence to a common identity and symbol is necessary for the common solidarity; regionalism or the existence of diverse national identities and multiethnic mobilizations are thought to be antithetical to the interests of the state and its unity. As the number of minority nationalist parties grows, the apprehension among the majority against the minority also rises. This happens because number of minority nationalist parties and recognition policies are visible manifestation of the threat.

Moreover, the minority nationalist parties act as pressure groups and bargain with pluralist political organizations for favorable benefits for their communities in return for electoral support. Hence, any social movement or campaigns by non-majority ethnic groups and/or political parties make the majorities suspicious of the minority communities (Kopstein and Wittenberg, 2018). The suspicion develops because the populist leaders and their supporting groups consider increasing heterogeneous diversity to be the source of a disunified state that lacks a common nation-state ideology and ethos.

The dominant group also believes that a state without a common identity and ideology would be a weak one prone to secession. Finally, the majorities fear that in such a state with diverse identities, the currently dominant group(s) will lose their power, making them ‘endangered’.

As the security dilemma grows among the apprehensive majority, it demands that the government be responsive and implement policies in line with its protection. Populism argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people (Mudde, 2004).

Hence, the electoral campaigns of the conservative right-wing parties also fall in line with the majority’s apprehension against minorities, and the right-wing blames the minority nationalist parties and other pro-minority political parties for any impediments to national security, growth, and integrity.12 Hence, we hypothesize that that the presence of minority nationalist parties’ increases ultranationalist sentiments, which culminates into electoral outcomes favorable to the majority parties.

H3: The presence of Minority nationalist parties has a positive effect on electoral support for

majoritarian right-wing parties.

Blalock (1967), Kopstein and Wittenberg (2018), and Chhibber and Verma (2018) indicate that the perceptions of national identity and security vary between majority and minority groups. In other words, the dominant group(s) in a state often considers minority nationalism, the politics of recognition, and heterogeneous nation-building as a threat to majoritarian homogeneous national culture or identity. The next section on research design presents the data on which the regression analysis is performed.

12 For example, the Hindu nationalists blamed a Muslim religious conference held on 25th March 2020 for the surge in COVID cases in India, claiming that the attendees did not follow social distancing rules and did not self-quarantine themselves purposefully (Sharma, 2020). While many cases of coronavirus infection have indeed been traced to this gathering in Delhi, the rhetoric of blame and verbal abuse against all Muslims is alarming.

Research Design

Spatial-Temporal Domain

This chapter uses a subnational study of India, and the units of analysis are the provinces of the Indian Union from 1999 – 2019. India is a federal union comprising 28 states and 8 union territories. The total sample of observation is 144, i.e., 4 election × 36 provinces. We study the impact of terrorism-related incidents, population growth of minorities, and minority nationalist parties of

India on the national general election results of 2004, 2009, 2014, and 2019, respectively. After the

2019 general elections, the Government of India divided the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two federally administered union territories – Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Because the domain of our study is until 2019 election, we consider Jammu and Kashmir as a state instead of two federal territories.

Independent Variables

The independent variables are terrorism-related incidents, population growth of minorities, and minority nationalist parties of India. Data on terrorism-related incidents initiated by militants and non-state actors came from the South Asia Terrorism Portal datasheets (Datasheet-Terrorist-Attack-

Major-Incidents, n.d.). The time-period is from 1999 until 2018. The granularity of the data is yearly and covers all the provinces and union territories of India. To assess the contributory effect of terrorism- related incidents on electoral results, the yearly count of terrorism related incidents has been aggregated in five year blocks (1999 – 2003, 2004 – 2008, 2009 – 2013, and 2014 – 2018) for each unit of analysis. Terrorism- related activities of Jammu and Kashmir have not been incorporated in our study, as it would have skewed our results. The state of Jammu and Kashmir is a militarized zone and the terrorism-related activities in that region are related to cross-border militancy and border disputes between India and Pakistan. This research does not analyze the dynamics of international conflict;

thus, the terrorism related incidents of Jammu and Kashmir have not assimilated in the empirical analysis.

Demographic data on the growth of minority populations have been collected from ‘Indian

Census’s digital archives’ (Census Digital Library, n.d.). The granularity is decadal, and the 2001 and

2011 censuses contain state-level data on total population of every religious group. We collected and indexed these data for analyzing decadal population growth rate of all religious communities across states. The population of all non-Hindu religious communities, which includes Muslims, Christians,

Sikhs, and Buddhists, has been summed up as the total minority population in each state. Similarly, we tabulated the population of Hindus in each state directly from the census data. Thereafter, we calculated the decadal growth rate of total minority population for each province of India using the following formula:

푇표푡푎푙 푀푖푛표푟푖푡푦 푃표푝푢푙푎푡푖표푛 (2011) −푇표푡푎푙 푀푖푛표푟푖푡푦 푃표푝푢푙푎푡푖표푛 (2001) Minority Growth Rate (m) = × 100 푇표푡푎푙 푀푖푛표푟푖푡푦 푃표푝푢푙푎푡푖표푛 (2001)

Similarly, the decadal growth rate of Hindu population for each province of India has been calculated using the following formula:

퐻푖푛푑푢 푃표푝푢푙푎푡푖표푛 (2011) −퐻푖푛푑푢 푃표푝푢푙푎푡푖표푛 (2001) Majority Growth Rate (M) = × 100 퐻푖푛푑푢 푃표푝푢푙푎푡푖표푛 (2001)

Thereafter, a bivariate demographic index has been created. When the majority growth rate

(M) is more than the minority growth rate (m), it has been indexed as 0 for each units of analysis. And, when the minority growth rate (m) is higher than the majority growth rate (M), we have indexed it as

1. This bivariate measure has been used to determine the relative population growth.

The list of political parties is accessed from the ‘Election Commission of India’ archives.

Registered political organizations focusing on a non-majority ethnic and religious community are considered as minority nationalist parties in this research. To determine if the registered parties cater

to non-majority ethnic and religious communities, we investigated the party ideology through election manifestos, respective party constitutions, and assessed if the head of the party is a non-Hindu. For instance, the Akali Dal in Punjab has emphasized Sikh nationalism since its inception; similarly, All

India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and Rashtriya Ulama Council (RUC) have emphasized on Islamic rights and nationalism for decades. Akali Dal is predominantly present in Punjab, while

AIMIM and RUC are present in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh, respectively.

Additionally, there are many other such parties active in the Indian provinces. We tabulated the number of minority nationalist parties for each province during the period of the study. The number of parties remains constant over the period of our study. The list of minority nationalist parties is given below (Table 3.1).

We also tested for autocorrelation between the independent variables. Correlations measure the strength and direction of the linear relationship between the two variables. The correlation coefficient can range from -1 to +1, with -1 indicating a perfect negative correlation, +1 indicating a perfect positive correlation, and 0 indicating no correlation at all (Correlation | Stata Annotated Output, n.d.). Table 3.2 reports the correlation coefficients, which confirms that the causal variables in our study are not strongly correlated with each other.

Dependent Variable

The outcome variable of our research is the total number of parliamentary seats that the conservative political alliance (NDA) won in the 2004, 2009, 2014, and 2019 parliamentary elections of India, from each provinces of India. We collected Indian National Parliamentary Elections data from ‘Elections in India’ database. Indian People’s Party or Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies have emphasized Hindu nationalism since their inception. The coalition of BJP and its allies formed the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) bloc in May 1998. The seats won by NDA in 2004, 2009,

2014, and 2019 national elections from each province in India represent the right-wing majoritarian electoral results. We conducted exploratory OLS regression to assess the contributory effects of the independent variables on the right-wing majoritarian electoral results.

Results and Findings

Before presenting the inferential statistics and the visual observations, we report some basic data on the independent variables and their association with election outcomes over time. Table 3.3 presents the descriptive data on terrorism-related activities.

Major terrorism related incidents during 1999 – 2003 in India numbered more than 700. The incidents rose to more than 1100 between 2004 – 2008. Although a slight reduction is evident between

2009 – 2013, the number of incidents rose again to more than 1000 in the final five years. Terrorism and militancy have always been one of the primary agendas for all national parties during parliamentary election. BJP and its allies, the conservative right wing of India has always taken a hardline stand again cross border and domestic militancy. For example, after the Uri attack on 18th September 2016, where four armed gunmen belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad attacked an Indian army base camp near the Uri town, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said “there is no good or bad terrorism” (Sahoo, 2017). The

Indian army backed by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) launched a cross-border surgical strike into

Pakistan Administered Kashmir 11 days after the militant attack as well. The BJP leaders and campaign managers claimed the retaliation was possible only because of the strong, decisive, and proactive leadership of Narendra Modi, bolstering his position further (S. Singh, 2016). The strong leadership rhetoric was also a message to the voters who elected BJP to power in 2014, that the government is determined to protect the national security and avenge any terrorism related fatalities (S. Singh, 2016).

Additionally, three months before the 2019 parliamentary election, a security convoy was attacked by

a suicide bomber in the Pulwama district of India, killing 37 paramilitary members. Amidst panic, anger, and hysteria, BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) secured 353 parliamentary seats out of 545, while INC managed to win only 52 in the consecutive national election. Within a year of the second term of NDA government, BJP fulfilled one of its key promises related to national security and terrorism. The Indian government amended the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in 2019, which conferred power to the administration to designate an individual as a terrorist and seize that person’s property (Ranjan, 2020). The policy initiative addressed the security dilemma of the majority against the minority group and reassured the voters that this right-wing conservative party understands and responses to the apprehension about national security.

Figure 3.1 represents the association between seats won by the majoritarian political coalition

(NDA) and the terrorism-related incidents in India (2004 – 2019). The result is not perfectly linear.

Although the terrorism-related incidents increased between 2004 and 2009, NDA seats decreased in the 2009 elections. Lack of political leadership within the Bhartiya Janata Party and faulty campaign strategies were major reasons for the decline (Nayyar, 2009). Terrorism-related incidents declined slightly between 2009 and 2014, but remained much higher than they were between 1999 and 2004

(see Figure 3.1). NDA won by a large margin in the 2014 general elections and the Modi government came back to power with an even greater tally of parliamentary seats in 2019. The number of terrorism- related incidents also increased slightly over this period and was at a relatively high level compared to the previous decade. Additionally, it also finds evidence in line with political psychology literature that terrorism can strike fear into a targeted populace (Huddy, Feldman, and Cassese, 2007), and affect voting through the fear of future attacks rather than past casualties (Huddy et al., 2016).

The comparative growth rate of the majority Hindus and the minorities (Muslims, Christians,

Buddhists, and Sikhs) for each province is represented in Figure 3.2, a stacked bar graph. We find that

the growth rate of minorities is significantly higher than the majority’s population growth in most of the provinces.13 At the same time, the difference in population between the Hindus and other minorities is so vast, that it is very unlikely that the population of the other groups would surpass the total Hindu populace in near future. Despite that, the higher minority growth rate has been a campaign issue by the Indian People’s Party (BJP) and its allies. For instance, referring to Muslims, the Union

Minister of State Giriraj Singh has said that Muslims are responsible for India’s population growth and that curbs development (Jaiswal, 2018). Facebook posts and WhatsApp groups spread the conspiracy theory that the number of India's Muslims will at some point surpass the 966 million- strong Hindu population (Purohit, n.d.). The manipulative campaign, underpinned by Islamophobia, is far from demographic reality and is only a perception. Nevertheless, it is deliberately promoted by conservative populists in the real and virtual worlds for establishing a falsehood in the minds of the voters for electoral benefit. Figure 3.2 is given below. The Y axis on the left represents the total population growth. The green color represents the growth rate of minorities (Muslims, Christians,

Buddhists, Sikhs) in each state, and the orange part of the bars shows the growth rate of Hindus in each state. The corresponding state names are given along the X axis.

The following geocoded heat maps represent an exploratory analysis of the presence of minority nationalist parties and right-wing majoritarian electoral victories across Indian provinces. The

Indian map to the left in Figure 3.3 presents the number of seats BJP and its allies won in Indian provinces in the 2014 general election. Because it is a color-coded heat map, the darker shade

13 The growth rate of the Hindus is higher only in Punjab, Chandigarh, Nagaland, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nager Haveli, Goa, Pondicherry, and Andaman Islands. None of these are one of the most populous provinces of India. The most populous state of Uttar Pradesh has a minority growth rate of 24.29% in contrast to 18.91% growth rate of the majority Hindus. Similarly, the growth rate of the minorities is significantly higher than Hindus in other populous states of Maharashtra, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka

represents higher number of parliamentary seats won by NDA. The map to the right in Figure 3.3 delineates the number of active Minority Nationalist Parties in the Indian provinces, who bargain for their nationalist interests. Figure 3.4 also follows the same principles where the left map represents

NDA seats in 2019 and the map to the right represents Minority Nationalist Parties in that same year.

Apart from the maps, the positive correlation between minority nationalist parties and NDA seats can be explained with some examples. The state of Uttar Pradesh has five minority nationalist parties, highest among all Indian provinces. The parties are the Peace Party of India, Social Democratic

Party of India, Rashtriya Ulama Council, Indian Secular Party, and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul

Muslimeen (AIMIM). Since the Muzaffarnagar riots14 in 2013, these minority nationalist parties have campaigned against aggressive Hindu nationalism and demanded for benefits and security for Muslims and other backward classes of the state. BJP had been a staunch opposition to their political demands and criticized the other pluralist political parties, such as the Indian National Congress (INC),

Samajwadi Party (SP), and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for implementing policies of recognition. The darkest shade of orange on the left maps in Figure 3.3 and Figure 3.4 represent the highest number of seats among all the provinces of India that BJP led NDA secured in the 2014 and 2019 general elections – 73 and 64, respectively.

Populist conservative parties often secure electoral victories through manipulation and perceptions, rather than real facts and figures. Jervis (1978) also mentioned that decision makers are often estranged from facts in security dilemmas. Following illustrative examples will further explain

14 The clashes between the Hindu and Muslim communities in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh, India in August–September 2013 resulted in at least 62 deaths including 42 Muslims and 20 Hindus and injured 93 and left more than 50,000 displaced. A girl from the Hindu Jat community was allegedly harassed by a Muslim youth in Kawal village, whom the girl’s relatives killed in retaliation. When the two murderers tried to escape, the Muslim mob lynched them to death. After news of the killings spread, the members of both communities attacked each other and soon riots spread across the district of Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh.

the positive correlation between minority nationalism and majoritarian electoral outcomes, i.e., NDA’s electoral victory) and how the conservative right-wing manipulated the perceptions of the voters. The minority nationalist parties included in our research have bargained for favorable recognition policies.

For instance, the Indian Union Muslim League lobbied the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) government through its civic bodies in the state of West Bengal prior to the 2014 elections (Gazette,

2013). When BJP launched its electoral campaign against AITC targeting the 2019 general elections, it criticized AITC’s recognition policies that favored the Muslims at the expense of the majority

Hindus in West Bengal. It denounced the AITC leadership for alleged Muslim appeasement, and BJP won 18 parliamentary seats in Bengal in 2019, in contrast to 2 in 2014. This finding supports our theoretical argument that minority nationalism threatens the majorities, who tend to vote for majoritarian right-wing political parties.

Minority nationalist campaigns and hate speeches can influence right-wing electoral outcomes as well. For instance, a leader of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) party, Akbaruddin

Owaisi, in his controversial remark made in 2013 said that if police forces are removed for fifteen minutes, Muslims will finish (kill) hundred million Hindus (India Today Web Desk, 2019). In 2014, the leader of the party, Asaduddin Owaisi was criticized for referring to Hindus as dogs in a political gathering in Uttar Pradesh. A few months later, BJP’s candidates won in 73 out of the 80 parliamentary constituencies in Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 general elections. These examples support the argument that communal remarks and many others such as these sow the seeds of fear among the majorities.

The communal populist leaders oppose the established parties, call for a new kind of party, and express anti-party or anti-established sentiments (Mudde, 2004), which threatens the majority group(s).

Apart from the descriptive statistical observation and visualization of the available data, we performed an ordinary least square regression to test the causal effect of terrorism related incidents,

population growth rate of majority and minorities, and minority nationalist parties on seats won by

BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Table 3.4 shows the results of the multivariate analysis.

We did not find significant association between the minority population growth rate and NDA seats. Neither did we find an effect from terrorism related incidents on NDA’s electoral victory to be significant. At the same time, we found a significant relationship between the presence of minority nationalist parties and electoral victories of NDA, which confirms that the presence of minority nationalist parties increases the probability of right-wing’s (NDA) electoral victories in respective provinces.

The reasons behind the insignificant effect of terrorism related incidents and minority population growth rate can be varied. First, the impact could be confined to certain provinces and not others. Hence, the effect diminishes and becomes statistically insignificant in an aggregate regression analysis. For example, the Basirhat riots15 and the Burdwan explosion in West Bengal in 2017 and

2014 respectively were local incidents that raised the security dilemma of majority Hindus of the province against minority Muslims. BJP led conservatives won 18 seats in the following 2019 parliamentary election, raising their tally by 16 from the 2014 election. A second possibility is tied to the first. Conservative populism manifests itself through perception and manipulation. Thus, unless an incident is politicized and attached to the rhetoric of the security dilemma, the incident alone often fails to draw attention of the masses. Based on the logic of populism, majoritarian political parties such as BJP must take advantage of this scenario. Hence, instead of an effect of demographics and

15 On 2nd July 2017, a blasphemous Facebook post by a teenager boy triggered a riot in Basirhat region (30 miles north of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal). Ratha Yatras or the Chariot Festival processions at several places were attacked, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker was killed, and the clashes left around 25 people, including 20 policemen injured. Muslim mobs set fire upon shops and houses belonging to Hindus in Baduria and in retaliation on 6th July, Hindu mobs attacked a Dargah and vandalized shops and houses in the locality.

terrorism related incidents, the perception of threat influenced by BJP’s propaganda influences the people to vote for the conservative right-wing.

Threat perception influenced by right-wing’s propaganda also explains the significant effect of minority nationalist parties on NDA’s electoral victory. The presence and activities of minority nationalist parties are visible to the voters. Additionally, the voters connect to the threat more easily than population growth for example, when the minority nationalist groups rally publicly, organize conferences, and bargains with pluralist political parties for favorable policies of recognition. Because the core concept of populism is the people (Mudde, 2004), the right-wing often harbors the majority’s phobia against the minority nationalist ambitions for electoral benefits in a multiparty democratic system. As the pluralist political parties’ campaign for special benefits to the disadvantaged minorities, minority nationalist parties demonstrate publicly, bargain for stronger policies of recognition, and/or give public hate speeches against the majority, the fear among the majority grows. This fear and the associated security dilemma further alienate the dominant and the non-dominant ethnic communities.

Moreover, when the pluralist governments (national and/or provincial) adopt politics of statism and recognition (as done by Indian National Congress or All India Trinamool Congress), much to the dislike of the conservative section of the majorities; the majoritarian voters express their strong discontent through the ballot (Chhibber and Verma, 2018).

A good illustration of the dynamics of recognition politics and threat perception occurred during the 2017 state assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP), when the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) tried consolidating the Dalit-Muslim votes to return to power. It launched an electoral campaign to address the horizontal social inequality that the Dalits and Muslims suffered under the upper-caste

Hindus. In contrast, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) left no stone unturned in consolidating Hindu votes in the state. In public rallies, its leader stated that under the opposition party’s rule, there was

discrimination in the provision of certain public services on religious grounds. Prime Minister Modi claimed during a rally that the Samajwadi Party (SP) government in UP ensured adequate electricity supplies during Muslim festivals, but failed to do so during Hindu festivals (Chhibber and Verma,

2018). A significant percentage of the Muslims in Uttar Pradesh support BSP and/or INC (Press Trust of India, 2019). The Ulema Council, a Muslim outfit, and the Peace Party, another Islamist pressure group publicly rallies in the state, takes part in state legislative elections since 2009, and bargains for favorable policies with BSP and INC. BJP has repeatedly targeted the alliance between Muslim nationalist parties and INC or BSP, accusing them for minority appeasement. The message that there was discrimination in the provision of certain public services on religious grounds was aimed at building a perception among the Hindu voters (dominant majority groups) that the Muslims (minority) were getting disproportionate state benefits (Chhibber and Verma, 2018). Additionally, this message followed the trend of populist politics, addressed the apprehensive mindset of the voters, and created a perception through conservative propaganda that both the state government led by SP and the other political opponent – BSP and INC, preferred the Muslims over the Hindus in allocating such benefits.

BJP cherished a landslide victory in the 2017 state legislature elections of UP and won 65 out of 80 parliamentary seats in the consecutive national election.

Conclusion

This chapter explored the factors contributing to perceived threats to “endangered” majorities.

Thereafter, it examined both the impact of these threats on the majoritarian electoral behavior in India across four national election cycles. The chapter finds some evidence supporting the security dilemma

(Posen, 1993), and reiterates the claim that minority nationalism threatens the majorities (Kopstein and Wittenberg, 2018). As a unique contribution to the theory, this chapter assessed the aspects of ethnic politics from the perspective of the majorities. It also explored the sources of apprehension of

the majority populace against minorities, that the populists manipulate to secure electoral victories.

Thereafter, the chapter assessed the impact of majority’s apprehension on electoral behavior instead of communal and ethnic violence.

The chapter provided a theoretical understanding behind the majoritarian electoral trend in

India. The conservative right-wing in India is led by Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). The chapter explained the evolving political culture of India at the beginning. Thereafter, we theoretically explained how the concept of security dilemma affects the threat perception of the majority group against the minorities.

Next, we explained the three triggers or perspectives of threat – terrorism related incidents, growth rate of minority groups, and presence of minority nationalist parties.

The research found that terrorism-related incidents initiated by minority militant groups act as an associated factor for right-wing electoral outcomes (see Figure 3.1). We did not find a significant causality between these two factors, but it could be because the effect became insignificant in an aggregate regression analysis that obscured underlying effects in select provinces. The study found that apart from 8 units of analysis, the growth rate of minorities is higher than the majority Hindus

(see Figure 3.2). Again, we did not find a significant statistical association for this factor on NDA’s electoral victory. Nevertheless, perception of threat influenced by BJP’s propaganda influenced the people to vote for the conservative right-wing parties. While descriptive statistical analysis indicated contributory effects between minority nationalist parties and electoral victories of the conservative right-wing, the regression analysis also found some significant causal inference between the two factors. This strengthened our argument that when minority nationalist parties’ bargain for benefits, and pluralist political parties implement policies of recognition, the security dilemma of the majority against the minority increases. Often, the perception of threat is fueled by the manipulation effect of

the conservative right-wing political organizations. As a result, a significant section of the majority votes for the conservative parties.

The next chapter unpacks the empirical finding that minority nationalism positively affects the probability of majoritarian electoral outcomes in respective provinces. Through an in-depth comparative case study of two states of India – West Bengal and Kerala, the next chapter extends those empirical findings and assesses the implications. Empirical results always do not explicitly explain the reasons for observed causal or contributory outcomes. The following qualitative case study chapter bridges that gap in our understanding, unpacks the reasons of the observations, and explains the scenario through the lens of politics of recognition.

Appendix

Table 3.1: Minority Nationalist Parties States/UTs Minority Names Nationalist Parties ANDAMAN and 0 NICOBAR ISLANDS ANDHRA PRADESH 2 All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), SDPI ARUNACHAL 1 National People's Party (NPP) PRADESH ASSAM 3 All India United Democratic Front, Bodoland People's Front, SDPI BIHAR 1 Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) CHANDIGARH 0 CHHATTISGARH 0 DADRA and NAGAR 0 HAVELI DAMAN and DIU 0 DELHI 1 Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) GOA 1 SDPI GUJARAT 2 SDPI, Muslim Coordination Committee (MCC) HARYANA 0 HIMACHAL PRADESH 0 JAMMU and KASHMIR 2 PDP, PPU JHARKHAND 1 SDPI KARNATAKA 2 SDPI, Welfare Party of India (WPI) KERALA 4 SDPI, WPI, Indian National League (INL), Indian Union Muslim League LAKSHADWEEP 0 MADHYA PRADESH 1 SDPI MAHARASHTRA 3 Bharatiya Minorities Suraksha Mahasangh (BMSM), SDPI, WPI MANIPUR 3 SDPI, NPP, NPF MEGHALAYA 2 NPF, Hill State People's Democratic Party MIZORAM 3 Mizo National Front, Mizoram People's Conference, Zoram Nationalist Party NAGALAND 3 Naga People's Front, NPP, Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) ORISSA 0 PONDICHERRY 0 PUNJAB 1 Akali Dal RAJASTHAN 2 Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), WPI SIKKIM 2 SDF, SKM TAMIL NADU 2 SDPI, WPI TRIPURA 1 Indegenous People's Front of Tripura, UTTAR PRADESH 4 Peace Party of India, Social Democratic Party of India, Rashtriya Ulama Council, Indian Secular Party, AIMIM UTTARANCHAL 0 WEST BENGAL 4 SDPI, Gorkha National Liberation Front, Gorkha Janamukti Morcha, Welfare Party of India (WPI)

Table 3.2: Autocorrelation Matrix Correlation Matrix Growth Index Minority Nationalist Parties Terrorism related Incidents Growth Index 1 Minority Nationalist Parties 0.36 1 Terrorism related Incidents 0.20 0.20 1

Table 3.3: Terrorism Related Incidents 1999- 2004- 2009- 2014- States 2003 2008 2013 2018 Andaman and Nicobar Islands 0 0 0 0 Andhra Pradesh 5 35 4 1 Arunachal Pradesh 62 75 96 203 Assam 42 101 36 9 Bihar 36 36 29 4 Chandigarh Chhattisgarh 9 117 57 36 Dadra and Nagar Havelli 0 0 0 0 Daman and Diu 0 0 0 0 Delhi 93 74 44 47 Goa 0 2 1 2 Gujarat 0 2 10 2 Haryana 1 3 9 5 Himachal Pradesh 1 0 2 2 Jharkhand 51 66 49 21 Karnataka 3 45 26 24 Kerala 4 31 25 19 Lakshadweep 0 0 0 0 Madhya Pradesh 11 11 21 18 Maharashtra 72 127 16 147 Manipur 37 107 23 13 Meghalaya 11 2 17 3 Mizoram 32 35 42 32 Nagaland 9 27 6 4 Orissa 9 17 16 10 Puducherry 0 0 0 0 Punjab 64 31 58 62 Rajasthan 4 22 11 7 Sikkim 1 1 0 0 Tamil Nadu 30 15 15 13 Telangana 23 191 Tripura 0 18 143 50 Uttar Pradesh 57 48 40 46 Uttarakhand 4 4 4 5 West Bengal 55 56 56 52 Grand Total 703 1108 879 1028

Table 3.4: The Effect of Endangered Majority Stimuli on Majoritarian Electoral Results Variable Unstandardized Standard Coefficient Error Terrorism Related Incidents -0.0094162 (-0.41)

Minority Population Index 2.280 (0.73)

Minority Nationalist Parties 2.326* (2.31)

N = 144 (Number of Provinces × Number of Elections)

Note: t statistics is in parentheses. * p<0.05

Figure 3.1: Descriptive Visualization of seats won by the majoritarian political coalition with the terrorism-related incidents in India (2004 – 2019)

Figure 3.2: Comparative Growth of Majority and Minority Population (2001 and 2011 census)

Figure 3.3: 2014 General Elections NDA Seats and Minority Nationalist Parties in Federal Units of India

Figure 3.4: 2019 General Elections NDA Seats and Minority Nationalist Parties in Federal Units of India

CHAPTER 4

MINORITY NATIONALISM, RECOGNITION POLITICS, AND MAJORITARIAN

ELECTORAL OUTCOMES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF

WEST BENGAL AND KERALA

Introduction

The focus when analyzing ethnic politics is usually on minorities, but we seek to examine the issues from the majority’s perspective as well. The Power threat theory of Blalock (1967) theorized that the proximity of different ethnic groups always does not lead to peaceful coexistence. In fact, the close proximity of the ethnic groups often increases the probability of interethnic violence (Blalock,

1967). Nevertheless, only limited scholarly literature covers the sense of mistrust and angst that the majority community often harbors toward the migrating aliens, the existing clustered minority, and the disadvantaged ethnic and religious groups. Theorizing the concept of endangered majority in line with Posen (1993), Blalock (1967), and Kopstein et. al. (2018), the previous chapter aimed to assess the reasons for the Hindu majoritarian electoral victory from the angle of a security dilemma between the majorities and minorities of a state. Through descriptive and inferential statistics, the previous chapter studied if any correlation exists between the factors that raise anxiety and security threat among majorities and their electoral behavior. The primary contributory factors were increasing relative growth of the minorities, the presence of minority nationalist parties, and terrorism-related events initiated by minority groups.

The exploratory data analysis affirmed a positive correlation between the presence of minority nationalist parties and the electoral victory of Hindu nationalist National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the 2014 and 2019 general elections. Additionally, we also found significant causal inference

between the two factors. The previous chapter concluded that the presence of minority nationalist parties significantly and positively increases the probability of a majoritarian electoral outcome in

India. This chapter extends those empirical findings and assesses the implications through an in-depth comparative case study of two states of India – West Bengal and Kerala. The empirical analysis in the previous chapters covered the religious dimensions and communities of India, but not the caste dynamics. The case study of West Bengal reinforces the empirical findings of the last chapter and provides details on the causal process. The Kerala case study, on the other hand, emphasizes that cross-cutting cleavages can mitigate the ethnic appeal that conservative right-wing harbors to consolidate electoral support in their favor. Empirical results always do not explicitly explain the reasons for observed causal or contributory outcomes. This qualitative case study chapter bridges that gap in our understanding, unpacks the reasons of the observations, and explains the scenario through the lens of politics of recognition.

The findings in the previous chapter suggest a general association between the number of minority nationalist parties and electoral victory of the conservative right-wing in respective provinces, but do not necessarily reveal the dynamics of the process. Additionally, we found the causal effect of terrorism related incidents to be not significant, while national security and domestic terrorism have been two of the primary electoral agendas for the conservative right-wing – Bhartiya Janata Party

(BJP).16 We argue that the empirical findings in the aggregate hid the cases in which there were similar appeals but did not result in majoritarian outcomes. Alternatively, instead of tangible causal effect of demographics and terrorism related incidents, the perception of threat influenced by BJP’s propaganda

16 The 2019 election manifesto of BJP mentions that securing the country against internal and external aggression is the first step for achieving the long-term goal of economic growth (BJP Manifesto 2019, 2019).

influenced the people to vote for the conservative right-wing. This chapter explains the dynamics of the process through the case studies.

The minority nationalist parties included in our research have traditionally bargained for favorable recognition policies. For instance, the Indian Union Muslim League through its civic bodies lobbied with the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) government in the state of West Bengal prior to the 2014 elections (Gazette, 2013). When BJP launched their electoral campaign against AITC targeting the 2019 general elections, they criticized AITC’s recognition policies that favored the

Muslims over the majority Hindus in West Bengal. BJP won 18 parliamentary seats in Bengal in 2019, in contrast to 2 in 2014. This qualitative comparative analysis using JS Mill’s method of difference argues that the politics of statism and recognition, and the core idea of Hindu Nationalism, as opposed to secular nationalism of Indian National Congress, are keys to understanding the trend of majoritarian electoral outcomes.

Deep divisions on the appropriate role of the state have changed the pattern of the Indian party system since independence (Chhibber and Verma, 2018). Chhibber and Verma (2018) define politics of recognition as the state’s efforts in the correction of group-based inequalities and its accommodation of the interests of historically marginalized social groups (Chhibber and Verma,

2018). The debate over whether the state should attempt to change social norms, and whether it should give special treatment for disadvantaged groups or favor the upper caste Hindus, has a long historical lineage. This politics of statism and recognition is an integral part of Indian politics and plays an important role in understanding the populist political behavior and assessing the apprehension of the majority Hindus against the minority Muslims of this country.

This chapter first theorizes and explains the core idea of Hindu nationalism and the birth of

Bhartiya Jana Sangh. Explaining Hindu nationalism at the onset of the chapter establishes our

argument that there is a political coalition within India that was and is against the multireligious and multicultural nation building as espoused by the Indian National Congress for decades. Chhibber and

Verma (2018) explain these Indian National Congress policies as politics of recognition and statism.

Thereafter, the chapter explains the politics of recognition, statism, and divergent views associated with it in India. This analogy connects the readers to the rightist ideological coalition that has formed against the inclusive recognition politics, has upheld Hindu nationalism, and has unfolded in the electoral campaigns and outcomes in the past five years, which our case studies examine.

Bhartiya Jana Sangh and the Core Idea of Hindu Nationalism

Bhartiya Jana Sangh (BJS) was an Indian right-wing political party that existed from 1951 –

1977 as a political arm of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra

Modi and many other frontline leaders of Bhartiya Janata Party are members of RSS and maintain a close relationship with this Hindu nationalist organization. Sangh, the first and principal founding body of BJS, and thereafter BJP are not new. The formal beginning of Sangh took place in Doctor

Keshav Baliram Hedgewar’s house in Sukravari in Nagpur on September 27, 1925. As group activities, they started training their members in drills, marches, and national affairs discourses (Timeline, n.d.).

Sangh had been a traditional opponent of the Muslim League in the pre-independent India and was a vehement proponent of a majoritarian Hindu-united India. The Sangh activists strongly criticized the then Bengal governor, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, for the persecution of Bengali Hindus on August

16, 1946, and the following few days, when over four thousand Hindus were killed and many more were injured (Suranjan Das, 2000), in the incident is known as the 1946 Calcutta Killings. Sangh’s split with Indian National Congress became explicit when Congress accepted the partition of India and adopted a secular, socialist, and democratic constitution instead of a Hindu Republic.

On the other hand, many of the leaders of the Indian independence movement, especially in the Congress Party, did not want religion to be granted any special status in the independent Indian state. At the same time, groups such as Hindu Mahasabha openly wanted a role for themselves within the Congress party at the local level. Congress stalwarts, including Nehru himself, however, did not want to give institutional shape to what he saw as a vestige of tradition destined to fade away through the operation of the inexorable laws of history (Chhibber and Verma, 2018). This intraparty division created space for the formation of Bhartiya Jana Sangh (BJS), which promoted itself as the protector of Hindu interests. Its members were primarily former Congress members who did not support the party’s secular policy preference and opposed the Hindu Code Bill17 amongst others (Chhibber and

Verma, 2018).

Politics of Statism, Recognition, and Divergent Views

The idea of recognition was first advocated by Taylor (1994). Its theoretical underpinnings have been debated in the political theory of multicultural societies (Fraser 1997; Willet 1998; Banting and Kylmicka 2006). Chhibber and Verma (2018) define recognition as a state’s effort in the correction of group-based inequalities and its accommodation of the interests of historically marginalized social groups. For example, the Black population in the United States are a significant minority and a horizontally marginalized community. Their marginalization is not new and has a history of almost

17 The Hindu Code Bills in India came in four separate parts – Hindu Marriage Act in May 1955, Hindu Succession Act in May 1956, the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act in December 1956, and Dowry Prohibition Act in July 1961

three hundred years. The Civil Rights Act of 196418 and the Voting Rights Act of 196519 are some examples of recognition policies that a state adopts to correct the group -based inequalities.

The process of state formation in India was very different from that of the Western Europe.

State formation in the West was a slow and steady process. For instance, in the United States, it took almost a century for African American men to gain voting rights, and women of all races had to wait another fifty years. The redistributive state developed only after a massive economic growth. In postcolonial states such as India, however, the transition to democracy and equality was sudden, and it required the development of institutional mechanisms for sharing power with historically marginalized groups (Chhibber and Verma, 2018), which made both politics of recognition and statism indispensable.

The politics of statism and the politics of recognition were the central questions at the time of state formation in India. Whereas the former assessed whether the role of the state should be limited to be an agent of economic development or also encourage social transformation, the later dealt with how various groups with differential levels of modernization could be accommodated within the political and economic sphere. As India became independent, there was a wide political agreement around the idea that the state would have to play an active role in economic development and social policy to transform India from a traditional to a modern society. At the same time, ideological divisions appeared in connection with another element associated with statism – the question of whether the

18 Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and employment; authorized the attorney general to bring school desegregation suits and the federal government to withdraw funds from schools and other governmental entities receiving federal funds if they discriminated; and provided enhanced enforcement mechanisms for protecting civil and voting rights in the United States. 19 Voting Rights Act of 1965 enforced the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and provided for substantial federal supervision of voting and election procedures in order to eliminate racial discrimination and protect the right to vote.

state should dominate society and actively change social norms and practices and make policies of redistributive wealth (Chhibber and Verma, 2018).

According to Chhibber and Verma (2018), the ideological division regarding state’s role in changing social norms and enacting policies of recognition is stable, and there are enough people with divergent views on both sides of the line. For example, when the Hindu Code Bill was launched in

1952, the Bhartiya Jana Sangh, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and other majoritarian Hindu organizations strongly criticized the state for curbing their social rights and privileges. They argued that while the Hindu Code Bill in the 1950s reformed the Hindu Law in India, brought registration of marriages and divorces under state purview, enforced monogamy, granted women’s rights to property and in marriages, the Congress government did not bring in similar legislation to reform the Muslim

Personal Law.20 The Muslim Personal Law continued and an All India Muslim Personal Law Board

(AIMPLB) came into existence in 1973 to adopt suitable strategies for the protection and law’s continued applicability. Social conservatives have always been critical of these policies. The critics of these recognition policies argued that freedom of “preach and propagate” should not apply selectively to certain groups and not others (Yaajnaseni, 2020).

A key political objective of independent India was to accommodate the interests of social groups – especially religious, caste, linguistic, regional, and tribal groups. In other words, for a long period of time, the Indian state aimed for social justice by giving marginalized groups power or privileges. For the proponents of quotas, minority safeguards were important, because such policies ensured that the principles of fairness, equal treatment, and accommodative policies were formally

20 Article 14 of the Indian Constitution grants “equal protection of law” to all its citizens. But when it comes to personal issues (marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody of children, etc.), Muslims in India are governed by the Muslim Personal Law which came into force in 1937. All the Muslims in India are governed by the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937. This law deals with marriage, succession, inheritance, and charities among Muslims.

established. For instance, in 1990, Prime Minister V.P. Singh adopted the Mandal Commission’s recommendations, proposing 27 percent of openings in government jobs be reserved for the members of other backward classes (OBCs).

There had been movements opposing these laws. Most of the opposition came from the dominant upper-caste Hindu populace, whom we classify as the endangered majority. They opposed the quotas and various special treatments that the minorities, especially the Muslims, enjoy in the country. The opponents to the politics of recognition argued that the state was giving too much importance to religious and caste identity, and as such would endanger the national unity. The opposition also reflects the prejudices against Muslims, Dalits, and the tribal populations, and the fear of losing the hereditary status-quo.

Who are these majoritarian voters? A closer look at the voting patterns since 2014 shows that

BJP has stitched together an unprecedented coalition of social groups, with support not only from the traditional upper castes, but also from the backward castes, Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Scheduled

Castes (SCs). For the first time in the country, instead of caste and class politics; a united Hindutva wave has engulfed the mainstream electoral politics by alienating the other religious groups, especially the Muslims.

A national coalition of social and economic conservatives led by Narendra Modi gave the right-wing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) a clear majority in the Indian Parliament – Lok Sabha. In the

2014 Parliamentary elections, the BJP won 2 out of every 3 seats it contested, or 282 of the 428 seats for which it put up candidates (Chhibber and Verma, 2018). In total, BJP and its allies – the National

Democratic Alliance (NDA) -- won 38.5% of the 554.1 million votes in the 2014 general elections.

Moreover, apart from its traditional bastions – northern, western, and central India -- the BJP won a large share of votes in Arunachal Pradesh (46.1%), Assam (36.5%), Jammu and Kashmir (36.4%),

Orissa (21.5%), and West Bengal (16.8%), without the support of any allies (Chhibber and Verma,

2018).

To analyze this trend of majoritarian populist politics, explicate our empirical finding that growing minority nationalism has a positive effect on electoral support for majoritarian right-wing parties, and describe the electoral behavior of the conservative majoritarian voters of India in response to the politics of recognition and statism, we use two substantial case studies of West Bengal and

Kerala.

Case Selection: Method of Difference and Background

John Stuart Mill's methodology attempts to isolate a cause from a complex sequence of events.

In the method of difference, two or more instances of an event (effect) are compared to assess what they do not have in common.

If an instance in which the phenomenon under investigation occurs, and an instance in which it does not occur,

have every circumstance save one in common, that one occurring only in the former; the circumstance in which

alone the two instances differ, is the effect, or cause, or an indispensable part of the cause, of the phenomenon

(Mill & Robson, 1981, p. 454).

The multiple sociopolitical similarities and the dissimilarity between the two provinces – West

Bengal and Kerala are given in detail below. First, both the provinces have a political history of socialism. Since the legislative elections of 1987, the Communist Party of India, and Communist Party of India (Marxist) have dominated the political spectrum of Kerala. West Bengal was also ruled by the

Communist Party of India (Marxist) from 1977 until 2011, when another ideologically socialist party

– the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee secured an absolute majority in the state legislature. Second, a significant section of Bengalis and Malayalee follow

Islam as their religion. Although Kerala and West Bengal have deep-rooted socioreligious ties to

Hinduism, both Malayalee21 and Bengalis have challenged the Hindu religious orthodoxy in respective ways. Kerala is considered to be the cradle of ancient Indian civilization, and the home of a clan of

Hindu Brahmins who worship the God of fire and pass along the incantations verbally from one generation to another. At the same time, Kerala’s inhabitants are the Malayalee, who are not only religiously Hindus (54.73%), but also Christians (18.38%), and Muslims (26.56%). Kerala has the highest percentage of minorities in the province (Chhibber and Verma, 2018). Similarly, Bengal is the birthplace of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, the founder of Bhartiya Jana Sangh – the first Hindu

Nationalist Party of India. Moreover, it was the center of the Indian Renaissance and had been critically noted in modern Indian history as the epicenter of the cultural, social, intellectual and artistic movement in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent (Sengupta, 2001). Additionally, 27.01% of

Bengalis are Muslims. Finally, there are four minority nationalist parties in both the states, and the

Indian Union Muslim League has a political alliance with AITC in West Bengal (Gazette, 2013) and is in coalition with Indian National Congress in Kerala. In the qualitative study, these preconditions act as control variables and delineate that the two states share similar political, historical, and certain sociopolitical characteristics.

As a difference, Kerala is influenced by caste politics while West Bengal has traditionally been devoid of narrow caste politics since the independence of India. The Bengal society has a clear-cut division along the religious cleavage – Hindus and the Muslims. In contrast, the identity difference in

Kerala is more complex and caste-laden. The socioeconomic differences and mistrust between the

Hindu upper caste Nairs and Hindu lower caste Nadars are so strong that the Hindus are themselves

21 The residents of Kerala irrespective of their religion speak Malayalam, the local language. Hence, the inhabitants of Kerala are referred as Malayalee. Similarly, the residents of West Bengal, both Hindus and Muslims speak Bengali as their primary language (mother tongue) and are referred as Bengalis.

divided against each other in this state. Thus, we argue by the method of difference, that the cases of

West Bengal and Kerala are similar on many dimensions, but one that will affect the outcome of interest – voting for the right-wing BJP party.

Through method of difference, we argue that because of the one difference mentioned above, the BJP has not been able to make inroads in Kerala, while it has consolidated 40.2% of total polled votes in Bengal. Minority nationalism and the politics of recognition in Bengal operate along the religious cleavage that triggers the security dilemma between the Hindus and the Muslims. In contrast, the Hindus in Kerala are internally divided because of the caste cleavages. The politics of recognition in Kerala is also largely caste-based, which makes the Muslims one-among several minority groups clamoring for political rights.

Theoretically, this particular difference is critical because caste differences split the Hindus into smaller mutually exclusive caste groups within the religion. Additionally, the implications of caste- based politics have traditionally impacted the Indian society. If the salience of caste identity is greater than that of the religious identity in a province, the common united Hindu identity which BJP upholds for its electoral victoriesis compromised. When the Hindus are not united, BJP often finds it difficult to gather mass electoral support for itself based on common religious identity.

West Bengal: A Case Study of the Rightist Ideological Coalition – 2014 - 2019

The West Bengal case study begins with a comparative assessment of the vision statement of All India

Trinamool Congress (AITC or TMC) and Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). Thereafter, we discuss several political incidents and some pro-minority policies (recognition politics) taken by AITC, which we argue have framed the security dilemma and attracted criticism from its political opponents such as the BJP. Finally, we analyze how these policies and incidents have polarized the voters in West Bengal and find evidence for the argument of Chhibber and Verma (2018) that the voters against politics of

recognition are more likely to vote in favor of BJP – 14 of the 18 constituencies won by BJP in 2019 parliamentary election have high percentage of Hindu voters.

Figure 4.1a shows the steady growth of National Democratic Alliance - NDA (BJP and its current political allies) seats across India in the past ten years. Figure 4.1b shows how drastically the

NDA seats increased in West Bengal in the last five years. The number of NDA seats have been visualized using the color attribute of Tableau in which darker color shades represent greater number of NDA seats and vice versa. The change in Bengal’s voting was triggered by the policies and incidents as explained in the previous section and in the hypothesis. This case study unpacks and explains the

Bengal trend with analysis and examples.

West Bengal, the left front bastion, saw a paradigm shift in political governance in 2009 when the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) and its allies – Indian National Congress and Socialist Unity

Centre of India (SUCI) won 26 out of the 42 parliamentary seats in the parliamentary election (West

Bengal’s Red Fort Falls, TC Tastes Victory, 2009). The political clout in the capital, New Delhi, was also transformed, as the Indian National Congress (INC) led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) managed a comfortable victory with a plurality of 260 seats out of 543 seats and gathered additional external support from some other political parties (Smooth Sailing for UPA, Parties Scramble to Support, 2009). In contrast, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies (NDA) managed to win only 160 seats.

The Indian national political system changed substantially in the next five years. The 2014 general election results were overwhelmingly in favor of the Indian People’s Party (BJP) and its allies, whose political campaign against statism and recognition won them the support of almost two-thirds of the voters in the country (Chhibber and Verma, 2018). Although the 2014 general elections witnessed a surge of Hindutva and the sweeping victory of rightist populist politics all over India, the political environment in West Bengal was different. While the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)

bagged 336 parliamentary seats across the country, it won only 2 out of 42 seats in Bengal, and most of the seats remained with the AITC. In the following 2019 national election, however, NDA won 18 seats in Bengal, increased its vote share by 22.27%, and gathered 40.25% of total votes, trailing the

AITC by less than 3% of votes and only 4 parliamentary seats.

In Bengal, the 2019 election outcome was not driven by a development agenda promised by any party, but precipitated by communal animosity. In other words, it was predominantly Hindus supporting the BJP and Muslims in favor of the AITC. Figure 4.2 represents the change in vote shares for four major parties of the state. AITC is a single leader driven party that had minority favorable policies (politics of recognition) and steadily increased its vote share over 10 years. In contrast, CPIM

(the communist party that was in the power of West Bengal for 34 years), a cadre-based party, and the

Indian National Congress, a dynastic party (Munshi, 2017) steadily lost vote shares and became marginalized in state politics. The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), on the other hand, has emerged as the principal contender to AITC over the period of study. Its rise illustrates that the active presence of minority nationalist parties and policies favoring minority nationalism have positive effect on electoral support for majoritarian right-wing parties.

In this research, we assess the electoral outcome through the lens of the security dilemma and populist politics. In the next subsection, we focus on the political values of AITC and BJP – the socialist and conservative blocs present at the opposite sides of the political spectrum.

Differences in Political Values and Ideology

A closer look at the respective constitutions of the AITC and BJP parties establishes the differences by which these two political rivals’ function. Although the AITC mentions the

“multilingual, multifaceted, multiethnic, rich culture and heritage of India,” BJP, emphasizes proudly drawing inspiration from “India's ancient culture and values” – Hindutva.22

AITC is a single leader driven political party (Munshi, 2017) that believes in upholding the plural political culture of India. Article I of the party constitution states – “The aim of the party shall be to make all-round development of India in the political, economic, industrial, social, culture, agricultural, sectors, and to establish India as global power keeping in view the multilingual, multifaceted, multiethnic,

(emphasis added) rich culture and heritage of India” (All India Trinamool Congress, n.d.). The AITC was founded by Mamata Banerjee, who was a member of the Indian National Congress (INC) for over two decades before establishing her own party in 1998. Even after breaking out of INC, Banerjee maintained proximity with Nehru-Gandhi families, and was part of the INC led United Progressive

Alliance in the 2009 general election. However, AITC severed ties with INC in 2012 due to several differences over economic policies.

In contrast, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is an ideology-driven party (Munshi, 2017), and Article II of its constitution mentions that – “The Party is pledged to build up India as a strong and prosperous nation, which is modern, progressive and enlightened in outlook and which proudly draws inspiration from India's ancient culture and values (emphasis added) and thus is able to emerge as a great world power playing an effective role in the comity of Nations for the establishment of world peace and a just international order” (Bhartiya Janata Party, n.d.).

The focus on traditional Hindu religion and culture is a central theme of the BJP’s political existence.

In addition, there is a significant faction within BJP that wishes to build an undivided, united, and a

22 Hindutva is different from Hinduism. While Hinduism is thousands of years old and have many central texts including the Vedas, the Puranas, the Upanishads and many more, Hindutva was first introduced as a political idea by Savarkar in 1923. According to ‘Essentials of Hindutva’ by V.D. Savarkar, Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva.

predominantly Hindu nation. The vision and mission statement of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

(RSS), the religious organization to which Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and a majority of BJP leadership belong, denounces multireligious coexistence and openly calls for a homogeneous Hindu state. The mission statement of RSS mentions ‘nourishing of Hindu culture’, and that the ‘Hindu culture is the life-breath of Hindustan’ (Bhartiya Janata Party, n.d.). Additionally, they indicate a homogeneous nation-building process, devoid of multiculturalism when their mission calls for every

Hindus to ‘consolidate the Hindu society’ (Bhartiya Janata Party, n.d.) and cautions against a ‘non-nation geographical lump’. Contrary to the constitution of India, which establishes India as a secular democratic republic, the RSS mission idealizes the geographic land as Hindustan (Land of the Hindus) and upholds the spirit of a majority Hindu republic. Hence, the electoral campaigns and game plan of

BJP also align against the politics of recognition and so-called minority (Muslim) appeasement policies.

The RSS mission statement is given below.

“The Hindu culture is the life-breath of Hindustan. It is therefore clear that if Hindustan is to

be protected, we should first nourish the Hindu culture. If the Hindu culture perishes in

Hindustan itself, and if the Hindu society ceases to exist, it will hardly be appropriate to refer

to the mere geographical entity that remains as Hindustan. Mere geographical lumps do not

make a nation. The entire society should be in such a vigilant and organized condition that no

one would dare to cast an evil eye on any of our points of honor.

Strength, it should be remembered, comes only through organization. It is therefore the duty

of every Hindu to do his best to consolidate the Hindu society. The Sangh is just carrying out

this supreme task. The present fate of the country cannot be changed unless lakhs of young

men dedicate their entire lifetime for that cause. To mold the minds of our youth towards that

end is the supreme aim of the Sangh” (Vision and Mission, n.d.).

The practical functioning of BJP and AITC is also divergent, and therefore, they criticize each other’s politics. Whereas AITC is a pro-minority political party ruling West Bengal that spends state money on religious festivals and opposes the National Register of Citizens23, BJP is staunchly against any such policies of recognition and statism (“CAB Expected to Set the Tone for 2021 Bengal Polls,”

2019). Since the 2014 election, the BJP played these communal cards, criticized AITC for its pro- minority state policies, campaigned against the politics of recognition by AITC in West Bengal

(Chhibber and Verma, 2018), and encouraged the security dilemma feelings of the majority Hindus of

West Bengal. In turn, a significant section of electors, mostly Hindus, voted in favor of BJP in the last national election.

In the next section we elaborate on minority nationalism in Bengal and focus on AITC’s

Muslim supportive politics for securing electoral support from the 26% of the people in that state.

The following subsection then analyzes three tipping point incidents in West Bengal during the five years preceding the last national election.

Minority Nationalism and Trinamool’s Recognition Politics in West Bengal

Modi’s rise to power in 2014 was characterized by a nationwide electoral mass mobilization of

Hindus around the Hindutva theme of the BJP. Although West Bengal was an outlier in terms of the election mandate towards BJP in 2014, a few forces worked in favor of BJP to capitalize on the communal vote banks24 in 2019. First, certain sporadic instances of terrorism-related activities and

23 The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a register of all Indian citizens whose creation is mandated by the 2003 amendment of the Citizenship Act, 1955. Its purpose is to document all the legal citizens of India so that the illegal migrants can be identified and deported. It has been implemented for the state of Assam starting in 2013–2014. The Government of India plans to implement it for the rest of the country in 2021. 24 In the political discourse of India, the term vote bank refers to a loyal bloc of voters from a single group, who consistently support a certain candidate or political formation in democratic elections. Such behavior is the result of an expectation of real or imagined benefits from the political formations, often at the cost of other communities. Votebank politics is the practice of creating and maintaining electoral support through divisive policies. As it encourages electors to cast their votes on the basis of religious considerations, often against their better judgement, it is considered harmful to the principles of representative democracy.

communal riots such as the 2014 Burdwan blast and the 2017 Baduria riots25 made Bengali Hindus apprehensive about their security. The sporadic incidents of communal violence across the state were new, and Hindus developed a collective distrust of Muslims.

Second, the narrative regarding the Trinamool Congress (AITC) leader Mamata Banerjee’s

Muslim policies alarmed a section of Hindus who did not receive any benefit from those policies. For example, the eagerness of the AITC government to increase Imam allowances and Madrasa budgets against a reluctance to implement the latest pay commission recommendation that would increase the salaries of the state government employees was not taken well by many. This combined with the growing fear of constrained economic resources during cross border migration along the Bengal-

Bangladesh border led to apprehension among many residents of Bengal. Additionally, the BJP seemed much more enthusiastic about the National Register of Citizens issue to oust Muslim migrants without valid documentation, while these migrants were viewed as potential supporters of the AITC.

Third, the AITC government took bureaucratic actions for suspending a Hindu ritual, in order to prevent it from clashing with Muharram during festival seasons. The issue was successfully politicized and criticized by right-wing BJP officials as an anti-Hindu policymaking. Additionally, the social media groups controlled by BJP and RSS started spreading rumors around these and other incidents of communal tension (Dutta, 2017). Although the state police tried to contain the sporadic riots, they were largely unsuccessful.

25 On 2nd July 2017, a blasphemous Facebook post by a teenager boy triggered a riot in Basirhat region (30 miles north of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal). Ratha Yatras or the Chariot Festival processions at several places were attacked, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker was killed, and the clashes left around 25 people, including 20 policemen injured. Muslim mobs set fire upon shops and houses belonging to Hindus in Baduria and in retaliation on 6th July, Hindu mobs attacked a Dargah and vandalized shops and houses in the locality.

The following section explains these incidents and their implication in changing the electoral pattern of Bengal as confirmed in the previous chapter – minority nationalism and recognition policies along the religious cleavage positively affects majoritarian electoral outcomes.

The First Incident: 2014 Burdwan Blast

On 2 October 2014, an explosion occurred in a two-story building in the Khagragarh locality of

Burdwan (Press Trust of India, 2014). The building was owned by Nurul Hasan Chowdhury, an AITC leader. Moreover, the ground floor of the house, where the blast took place, was used as a local party office of AITC (Chakraborty, 2014). Local people informed the police when they heard sounds of explosions and saw smoke billowing out of the house. Two women held the police on gunpoint when they arrived, threatened to blow up the entire house, and delayed authorities long enough to burn several documents and other evidence. Among the half-burnt papers found later were leaflets of Al–

Qaida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who had warned of ‘Jihad’ in India in September 2014 (Chakraborty,

2014). Shakil Ahmed, who had rented the location and hailed from Karimpur in Nadia district (a border district of West Bengal and Bangladesh), died on the spot, and the police arrested several people.

Police recovered fifty improvised explosive devices (IED), sim cards, tools used to make IEDs, micro

SD cards containing propaganda songs, Taliban training videos, and fake Indian identification documents. Further investigation by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of India hinted at the involvement of a terrorist fringe group (Al-Jihad), which received support from local Trinamool

Congress (AITC) leadership (Eisamay Digital Desk, 2014).

Although this incident constituted a severe loss of face for the AITC leadership, the event was not random. The Government of Bangladesh and the Indian government repeatedly accused AITC leaders in previous months of funding militant groups operating in Bangladesh and providing safe- havens to militants crossing into West Bengal through the porous Indo-Bangladesh border.

Four months after the 2014 national elections in May, the Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul

Hassan Mahmoud Ali accused the Trinamool Congress (AITC or TMC) leaders of supporting banned radical Muslim organizations in Bangladesh. He urged the Indian government to act against Trinamool

Congress leaders for sending money to Jamaat-e-Islami, an illegal group in Bangladesh (Dinda, 2014).

Following a meeting between Sushma Swaraj, then foreign minister of India, and Abul Hasan

Mahmoud Ali, the foreign secretary of India informed the media that:

“Bangladesh is extremely worried about the reports that money collected in the Sharadha scam

in West Bengal has been used to fund the Jamaat-e-Islami, the terror group which has been

trying to destabilize the Shaikh Hasina government. We have assured them of all possible

help…” (Dinda, 2014).

In addition to the accusation of monetary support to radical Islamism, the foreign secretary of

Bangladesh accused the West Bengal government of providing safe havens to Jamaat-e-Islami leaders who have fled Bangladesh during country-wide operation against radical leaders (Dinda, 2014).

Following these claims, BJP leaders began political campaigns against AITC in West Bengal. Siddharth

Nath Singh, the BJP national secretary, alleged that Jamaat helped Trinamool Congress win seats in

Bengal by providing support to Jamaat and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) against the ruling

Awami League in Bangladesh (HT Correspondent, 2014).

The October 2014 blast in the Burdwan district of West Bengal helped the Hindu majoritarian political party BJP justify its political campaign, and substantiate that the AITC was unduly practicing the politics of recognition, and therefore was antithetical to the national security and the political interests of the Hindu Bengalis. The political image of the AITC was further jeopardized when NIA linked the primary suspect in the Burdwan case (Sahanur Alom) to the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen

Bangladesh’s (JMB) module in Assam's Barpeta district (Nath, 2020). Soon after this incident, Mr. Amit

Shah, the BJP President and the present Home Minister of India directly accused AITC leader –

Mamata Banerjee -- of the wrongdoing. On 30th November 2014, during a rally in Kolkata, he said:

“The accused in the Sharadha scam and the Burdwan blast are linked to TMC. The owner of

the house where the blast took place is linked to TMC” (PTI, 2014).

The terror act and the responses of the BJP leadership opened up a new political front against the Mamata Banerjee regime, with the opposition accusing the AITC of indulging in appeasement politics (politics of recognition) and undermining the gravity of the incident in order to guarantee electoral support from certain sections of the society. While AITC accused BJP of trying to flare up its “communal agenda” in the state by using the blast, BJP accused Bengal Chief Minister Mamata

Banerjee of not doing enough to stop infiltration from Bangladesh in order to pursue vote bank politics (PTI, 2015). The BJP political campaigns aimed at consolidating the Hindu support in this state, a majority of whom were shocked to witness terrorism linkages to the governing political party.

We tested whether terrorism-related incidents have a positive effect on electoral support for majoritarian right-wing parties in the previous chapter. Although, we did not produce statistically significant findings on an aggregate basis, the results indicated towards a contributory effect of the terrorism-related incidents on majoritarian electoral outcomes. The in-depth qualitative case study of this chapter reaffirms our conclusion that the effect of terrorism related incidents on electoral victories of conservative right-wing depends on associated factors, found in West Bengal. Populist conservatives gathers electoral support through manipulation effect and threat perception, and BJP is no exception. Thus, instead of direct tangible causal effect of terrorism related incidents, the perception of threat influenced by BJP’s propaganda influenced the people to vote for the conservative right-wing.

The Second Incident: 2017 Durga Puja Idol Immersion versus Muharram

India is a land of Gods and festivals, and Durga Puja is the primary and holy ritual for the

Bengalis (ethnic residents of Bengal). The Ramayana mythology says that Lord Rama (the holy warrior prince of Ajodhya) waged a war against Ravana, the king of Sri Lanka to save and rescue his wife Sita, whom Ravana kidnapped. During the battle of Lanka, Rama worshipped and offered a prayer to goddess Durga (goddess of war and symbol of power in Hindu philosophy), in return for her favor to win the war. According to the Gregorian calendar, the war took place in the month of October (Ashwin month in Bengali). Northern Indian Hindus celebrate the holy victory as Dussehra and the return of the holy trio (Rama, Sita, and his wife Laxman) to Ajodhya as Diwali. At the same time, the ethnic

Bengali Hindus in the eastern part of India worship the goddess Durga, just the way Lord Rama did, with great pomp and circumstance to celebrate the victory of virtue over vice. Thereafter, they immerse the Durga idols in nearby water bodies and rivers on Dussehra and on its next day in the evening. Thus, the holy festival of Durga Puja holds primary importance in the lives and sentiments of Hindus.

In 2017, the Dussehra was dated on September 30th. By the religious calendar, the days to carry out the grand immersion processions (celebrated among the Bengalis as Visarjan) were on September

30th and the 1st and 2nd of October. Muharram, the day of mourning for Muslims according to the holy

Islamic calendar, however, also fell on 1st October, and the AITC-led West Bengal government issued an executive order to stop Dussehra celebrations and all Visarjan processions on the 1st of October

(Singh and Bagchi, 2017). This decision offended Hindu Bengalis, and the BJP took advantage, making it a part of its political agenda to criticize the AITC government. We argue that incidents such as this and BJP’s populist political campaigns criticizing recognition policies had a long-lasting effect on the voting behavior of the electors in West Bengal. Hindu electors of West Bengal voted overwhelmingly

in favor of BJP in the consecutive 2019 election, which reaffirms our hypothesis that minority nationalism has a positive effect on electoral support for majoritarian right-wing parties.

Although the executive decision was made very judiciously to avoid any unwanted communal tension, many Hindu Bengalis felt that their government is giving away way too much to appease the minority Muslims. A petition was filed at the state high court, which then ruled against the executive order stating that the state government is “exercising extreme power without any basis” (Gupta and

Ghosh, 2017). Despite mass dissent, the AITC leader and West Bengal chief minister, Mamata

Banerjee remained adamant in upholding the executive order by not allowing the Hindu processions to be carried out after 10 PM on 30th September night (Gupta and Ghosh, 2017).

The Third Incident: Imam Pension and Grants for Islamic Religious Bodies

After April 2013, the West Bengal government started paying a monthly stipend to thousands of Imams and muezzins in West Bengal; Imams and muezzins are religious officials who organize prayers in a mosque. The political opposition criticized this public policy of the AITC-led government for spending taxpayers’ money on religious mollification to secure electoral benefits and not the broader development of the state. Although the Kolkata High Court, in September 2013, rejected this policy, Idris Ali, the lawyer fighting the case on behalf of Waqf board to continue payments to the

Imams and muezzins said, “what Mamata Banerjee (Chief Minister of West Bengal and the AITC leader) had done for the imams is absolutely correct. This order will be quashed definitely by the

Supreme Court” (Banerjee, 2013). The government continued to pay stipends to the Imams, and this became a political campaign focus for the BJP starting at end of 2014.

The controversial policy became a source of conflict again in 2018 when hundreds of clerics and Muslim youth, led by the All Bengal Minority Youth Federation (ABMYF), brought central

Kolkata to a standstill with slogans against the Mamata Banerjee government and demanded an

increase in the monthly stipend (Kundu, 2018); the group insisted that the honorarium amount given to imams must be doubled. The government was already paying 56000 imams and muezzins a monthly stipend of Rs 2,500 (around $33) and Rs 1,000 (around $20) respectively.

Another allocation of large grants for Islamic religious bodies also deepened Hindu alienation that the BJP used to criticize the AITC government. In December 2016, at a rally led by influential spiritual leader Toya Siddiqui, the chief minister announced creating a development authority for

Furfura Sharif, a prominent shrine in Hooghly district, and allotted 100 Million Indian Rupees to the project. In addition, she announced projects worth 750 Million Indian Rupees at Furfura Sharif, which some observers said would trigger a communal backlash (Kundu, 2018). In contrast, a few months later, Banerjee allocated only 50 fifty Million Rupees for Tarakeshwar Development Authority to clean and restructure the three centuries old Tarakeshwar Temple, a famous Hindu site in West Bengal. In doing so, the AITC alienated a section of Hindus who felt threatened by the open appeal to minority groups (Chatterjee, 2017). Additionally, in June 2017, Banerjee appointed Firhad Hakim, the first

Muslim mayor of Kolkata since national independence to the helm of the Tarakeshwar Development

Authority, the organization responsible for the Hindu site.

The BJP was outraged, opposing the decision to appoint a ‘non-Hindu’ at the head of a temple board and made the charge of ‘Muslim appeasement’ at Mamata Banerjee. The temple’s priests welcomed the move and its head priest, Dandiswami Sureshwar Ashram, was quoted in December

2017 by Times of India as saying that “any help is welcome…why should we not welcome this?”

(Ghoshal, n.d.). Nevertheless, for Mamata Banerjee, who strategically polarized Muslim votes in the

2014 Lok Sabha elections to win 8 of the 14 Muslim-dominated seats, the charge of appeasement stuck. Her government’s announcement of a monthly honorarium for nearly 30,000 imams in the state saw the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) launch a campaign for a similar honorarium to Hindu priests

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and unemployed youths. Thereafter, competitive communal politics continued, polarizing the electorate, and weakening the Left. The BJP, meanwhile, gained traction and consolidated the pro-

Hindutva, pro-Modi, and anti-Mamata votes (Ghoshal, n.d.).

Islamic Nationalism and the Security Dilemma: West Bengal’s Polarized Voting Behavior

Chhibber and Verma (2018) estimated a logistic regression model to test if the voters’ political beliefs influenced their decisions to vote for BJP or not in the 2014 election. They controlled for several demographic variables, such as economic class, age, education, caste/community, locality, and gender of the respondents (Kundu, 2018). They found that the voters who were opposed to quotas and special privileges for minorities (the politics of recognition) or who preferred a reduced role for the state in the economy and social norms (politics of statism) were more likely to have voted for the

BJP. Given that a large proportion of the voters (almost two-thirds) did not benefit from such schemes, the BJP had a much larger pool from which it could mobilize its votes (Kundu, 2018). The same explanation is applicable in understanding the electoral swing favoring BJP in West Bengal during the 2019 general election. BJP launched a nationwide campaign against INC’s recognition policies before the 2014 parliamentary elections, which reaped them electoral benefit. In the next five years they targeted AITC’s recognition policies in West Bengal in the similar fashion, allegedly calling out AITC leaders as anti-Hindu and corrupt. The Hindu voters of the state, who are about 70% of the population, did not benefit from the recognition policies of the AITC government. This large proportion of voters considered minority nationalism and the above-mentioned preferential treatments (politics of recognition) to the minorities by AITC through the lenses of a security dilemma and antithetical to their interests. Based on the available electoral statistics as mentioned below, we attest that these are the people who voted for BJP, confirming our hypothesis that minority

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nationalism and pro minority government policies enacted by pluralist political parties have a positive effect on the electoral support for conservative right-wing parties.

A closer look at the 2019 electoral outcome provides a clearer picture of the voting pattern of

West Bengal. It establishes the argument of Chibber and Verma (2018) that the voters against politics of recognition are more likely to vote in favor of BJP. In 2019, the northernmost constituency of

Darjeeling showed the largest winning margin in Bengal for the BJP candidate. The BJP candidate

Raju Bista secured 59.19% of total polled votes in contrast to 26.56%, which the AITC candidate

Amar Sing Rai won. This margin came from the district with the smallest percentage of Muslim population in Bengal: 5.69% according to the 2011 Census. Indeed, 14 of the 18 constituencies won by the BJP in West Bengal were characterized by a switch in allegiance from the TMC in 2014 to the

BJP in 2019. Most of these 14 constituencies fall within districts that have a very high percentage of

Hindus. From 2014 to 2019, AITC gained the two seats of Murshidabad and Jangipur from the CPIM

(Communist Party of India, Marxists) and INC (Indian National Congress) respectively, with Muslim candidates and winning margins of over two hundred thousand votes in both the cases. Not so surprising is that both these constituencies fall under the Murshidabad district, which hosts the largest proportion of the Muslim population in the province – 66.28% according to the previous census.

These descriptive statistics and electoral outcomes indicate that AITC’s recognition political strategy worked in gaining seats among Muslims, but backfired for Hindu-dominated constituencies.

Why did the AITC favor Muslims and carry out policies of politics of recognition to this extent? The probable answer lies in the demographics and the electoral support base of AITC.

Muslims constitute 27% of the total population of West Bengal and there are at least three Muslim majority districts in the state. Because, the Muslims have traditionally voted as a group in India, AITC used Muslim votes as swing voters in their favor in the 2011 state legislative elections in West Bengal.

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It was after 2007 that Muslims, traditionally voters of the Left, first turned towards AITC. Land protests in Nandigram and Singur that year and later the Rizwanur Rehman case (in September 2007, the 30-year-old computer graphics trainer who had married a Hindu girl, the daughter of a hosiery baron in Kolkata, was found dead on the railway tracks) steered the minority vote, especially that of the Muslim peasantry, away from the Left and toward the AITC.

When AITC, led by Mamata Banerjee, first came to power in 2011, riding the ‘Paribartan

(change)’ wave, Muslims played a key part. Except for the Congress bastions of Malda and

Murshidabad, Trinamool won all other areas of the state where the Muslim population was more than

25%. Since then, Mamata has strengthened her position as the undisputed leader of West Bengal by betting on simple math: getting the Muslim community, which accounts for 27% of the population

(according to Census 2011), on her side (Bhattacharya, 2018). AITC also upheld Bengali nationalism and cultural heritage of Bengal which won her the support of a significant section of the Bengali

Hindus in 2011 state election and the 2014 parliamentary election (Ghoshal, 2019).

Since assuming power in West Bengal in 2011, the Trinamool Congress (AITC) leaders have channeled much of the government’s financial and other resources to improve the status of Muslims, seeking to dispel concerns that she hadn’t delivered on her election promises. The AITC strategy initially worked well as they have been able to reach out to the Muslim leaders and secure their future support (M. Das, 2016). The proximity between some Muslim religious leaders and the AITC leadership proves that AITC has been successful in winning the electoral support of the Muslims in the state. The recognition political strategy along religious cleavage worked as long as AITC was running against INC and CPIM, and not the BJP. Unlike BJP, INC and CPIM do not consolidate electoral support based on religious divide; hence, AITC did not have to worry about a religious coalition of voters against it. Since 2014, when BJP started politicizing and criticizing the AITC’s

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policies, a religious division among the voters was created. The Hindu electors of West Bengal voted overwhelmingly in favor of BJP in the succeeding 2019 election, which reaffirms our hypothesis that minority nationalism has a positive effect on majoritarian electoral outcomes.

First, the Burdwan blast, then the immersion ban, and thereafter the payments to Muslim clerics and more grants to Islamic sites increased the frustration among a section of Hindu voters in

West Bengal. Although the blast and evidence of existing terrorist networks within the state generated a security dilemma within the general public, the decision of the AITC government to continue providing money to Muslim clerics alienated the educated youth and a subsequent section of erstwhile

AITC supporters. The frustration was clearly along communal lines in which the Hindu Bengalis felt threatened and alienated in their own land. BJP politicized this dilemma, consolidated the Hindus under one umbrella, and successfully secured 40.2% of total polled votes and won 18 parliamentary seats in the 2019 election. A similar strategy did not work in case of Kerala, however, because of the internal caste fault lines among the Hindus in the state. Because of these internal divisions, BJP could not consolidate the Hindu votes under one umbrella and ended up losing the election yet again. The next case study on Kerala analyzes these caste fault lines and explains the reasons of BJP’s failure to make inroads in that state.

Kerala: A Case Study of Communal Politics, Coexistence, and Hindu Caste Politics

With 8.8 million Muslims, Kerala ranks sixth among India's states in its Muslim population

(Census of India Website : Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, n.d.), and the Mappilas are the only Muslims in post-independence India to have sustained an organized Muslim political party that has been in government for much of the last quarter of the twentieth century (Chiriyankandath,

1996) , and beyond. Islam came to Kerala in the eighth century via the ancient maritime trade route linking the Malabar coast with Arabia and the Gulf. The last of the legendary Cheraman Perumal rulers

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of central Kerala became a Muslim and died in Mecca. Even as the cultural attributes contribute to a shared regional identity, the most important of these common bonds is the Malayalam language.

The Unique Socio-Cultural Niche and Lack of Suspicion about Muslim Nationalism

The case study of Kerala begins with an explication of its unique sociocultural niche and the reasons behind the lack of concern with Muslim nationalism. Thereafter, we focus on the caste fault lines of Kerala and on the different recognition politics in that state, acting as a limitation on BJP efforts to consolidate Hindu votes. The case study ends with an example of the Sabarimala temple incident, which the BJP leaders failed to exploit for electoral benefits.

Kerala is a byzantine state going by its socio-cultural, educational, and political constructs. It needs a special focus and treatment if the rightist ideological coalition – the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)

-- is to make inroads. Kerala has a significant population of minorities – 26.6% Muslims and 18.4%

Christians. Although Hindus are still the majority, they constitute only 54.7% of the population and are internally divided into several castes. Traditionally, Kerala politics has been dominated by centrist

United Democratic Front (UDF) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) led Left Democratic Front

(LDF). The BJP has the potential to emerge as a strong political alternative to CPIM and Congress in

Kerala, as it did in West Bengal, at the cost of CPIM if it is either able to split the minorities or emerge as an alternative to Congress. The 2019 electoral results also underscore that the voters have rejected the strong-arm politics of both Narendra Modi and Pinarayi Vijayan. The Indian National Congress

(INC)-led UDF swept the polls, winning 19 out of 20 seats. The CPIM saved itself from obscurity by winning a single seat in Alapuzha while the National Democratic Front – NDA (BJP and its allies) were shut out. The saffron party failed to secure a single seat, belying expectations that it would break its electoral jinx by riding on the Sabrimala temple issue that had touched a raw nerve with a section of Hindus in the state (Benedict, 2019).

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The descriptive statistics in Figure 4.3 and Figure 4.4 elucidate the electoral trend in the province. Figure 4.3 presents the seats won by the three major coalition fronts of Kerala in 2014 and

2019 general elections. Figure 4.4, on the other hand, presents the vote shares of these coalitions in the last two national elections of Kerala.

From the figures above, we see that although NDA (BJP and its allies) could not win a single seat in the last two general elections, their vote share increased by 5%. The CPIM led LDF could only win 1 parliamentary seat in 2019 general election, in contrast to 8 in 2014. LDF’s vote share was reduced by 5% as well. On the other hand, the Congress-led UDF not only increased its vote share by

5%, the coalition emerged victorious in 7 additional parliamentary constituencies. As for party-level performance, INC won 15 parliamentary seats in 2019, increasing its tally by 7 from the 2014 general elections; its vote share also increased from 31% to 37.27% in five years. The Indian Union Muslim

League (IUML), a major coalition partner of INC, won 2 seats and 5.45% of the total votes in both the elections (“Rise in UDF, BJP Vote Share,” 2019). The electoral performances of the Congress and

BJP in Kerala stand in contrast with their overall national performances. The Indian National

Congress won only 52 out of the 542 parliamentary seats in 2019 general election and 19 of them came from Kerala. The NDA won 353 seats in the 2019 national election and did not win a single seat in Kerala.

Existing literature, our theory, empirical data, and qualitative analyses suggest that the politics of recognition alienate a section of the population who do not benefit from it (Chibber and Verma,

2018). Moreover, those alienated are more likely to vote for a rightist ideological coalition, and the case study of West Bengal along with analysis based on available data confirms such expectations.

Although having a significant minority population and an active Muslim League party in the state,

Kerala does not follow the pattern. Several factors reduce the suspicion about minority nationalism in

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Kerala, and minority politics have become a part of the mainstream. Thus, the public policies that do not support the traditional Hindu interests are not considered as Muslim appeasement policies, but rather as policies favoring other social groups, castes, and classes.

Three factors combined to work in favor of the carving out of a Muslim niche in Kerala's body politics and diluting the suspicion towards minority nationalism. First, the state's plural socio-religious composition is distributed across the state in various districts (see Figure 4.4 below). Additionally,

Kerala's Hindus and Christians are internally differentiated by a multiplicity of salient caste and sectarian divisions in addition to the appeal of the class (Chiriyankandath, 1996). This means that unlike in West Bengal, where the Muslim population appears as a distinct minority with unique demands and nationalistic ambitions, the Muslims in Kerala are less of a beleaguered minority and more as one among several important communal groups, along with Syrian Christians, upper-caste

Hindu Nairs, and the ‘backward class’ Hindu Ezhavas (Chiriyankandath, 1996).

Additionally, reinforcing such pluralism are aspects of the political culture that have evolved in cities such as Travancore and Kochi for many decades. Even prior to the formation of Kerala, politicians who used to mobilize support along communal lines, developed considerable skill in avoiding confrontations through repeatedly engaging in bargaining and cutting deals with the state administration and with each other. Thus, the label ‘communal’ carried a less damaging connotation in Kerala than in post-partition north India (Chiriyankandath, 1996). In other words, in contrast to

West Bengal, which received shocks of communal violence (2016 Dhulagarh riots, 2017 Baduria-

Basirhat riots, 2018 state-wide Panchayat election-related communal violence) and witnessed a surge of minority nationalism in the past 10 years, minority politics are a part of the mainstream political current and synced with the sociopolitical culture in Kerala.

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Figure 4.5 denotes the distribution of religious groups across the districts of Kerala. The

Malappuram district has the highest Muslim population, the place where most Mappila Muslims live.

Not only in Malappuram, but Kozhikode, Wayanad, Kannur, and Kasargod districts also have significant presence of Malayalee Muslims. On the other hand, the Christian population is mostly concentrated in the Kottayam, Idukki, Ernakulam, and Pathanamthitta districts. Kochi, a major city of Kerala known for its multicultural character, is part of the Ernakulam district. The demographic distribution shows that the non-Hindu religious groups are present in many districts across Kerala and have lived in proximity with the Hindu Malayalee populace for decades if not a century. This association and coexistence have lessened the suspicion of the majority Hindus about Muslim nationalism in Kerala.

Second, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) is a powerful pro-Muslim community- oriented party, which was started as the Muslim League before the partition of India. When the original

Muslim League went to Pakistan after partition in 1947, IUML decided to retain its allegiance to India.

The IUML-Kerala unit is the only Muslim League unit and hence became a state party in post- independent India. This dilutes the suspicion towards the minority nationalism in Kerala. The party has strongholds mostly in Muslim dominated districts such as Malappuram, Kozhikode, Kannur, and

Kasargod, and IUML and forms the second-largest party within United Democratic Front (UDF)

(Krishnakumar, 2009). The allegiance to the Indian Union since independence, participation in mainstream electoral democracy for the last seventy years, and a restricted regional operation make

IUML less of a threat to the majority Hindus of the state.

The third factor was the historic weakness of the Congress party in Malabar, dating back to the alienation of the mass of Mappilas in the wake of the 1921 rebellion and the formation of the

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Communist Party by the Congress Socialists in 1939. The post-independence Congress was left with only minority support among Muslims, with many non-caste Hindus as well as more radical-minded caste Hindus supporting the Communists. This allowed the IUML to become the second-ranking party in Malabar after the Communist Party of India (Marxist or CPI (M)) in terms of seats.

Additionally, the IUML was pragmatic in using its electoral clout to win office and wield influence over important areas of policy. It first gained office as part of the Marxist-led United Front in 1967 before changing sides in 1969 to become a chief coalition member in the succession of mainly

Congress-dominated ministries that governed Kerala for nineteen of the next twenty-five years

(Chiriyankandath, 1996).

These factors combined, along with other political conditions, to prevent the victory of the right-wing Hindutva politics of Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in Kerala – God’s own country (according to the Hindu mythology). The next section explains the caste fault lines and the ethnic, but not communal, character of the state politics.

Divided Majority – Caste Fault lines in Kerala

Similar to the sectarian differences among Christians and the Shia – Sunni divide among

Muslims, Hinduism is besieged by the cleavages of caste politics and social prejudices. In such divided societies, inequality often runs along the lines of cleavages as not every group develops equally. This leads to discrimination not merely among individuals, but between groups (Das, 2019). Consequently, the economic needs and social practices of these communities differ from each other, pushing them towards political opposition and hatred. Caste politics in Kerala, however, represent cross-cutting rather than reinforcing cleavages. For instance, the Nairs and Ezhavas are both Hindus, but the former are upper castes and the later are lower castes, and these groups consider themselves to be mutually exclusive communities. The social marginalization of the Ezhava and Nadar community was so great

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that they were always asked to keep a 32 feet distance from the Savarnas (upper caste community).

Touching or even approaching the upper castes (Namboothiri, Nair, Kshatriya) by a member of lower castes such as Ezhavas and Nadars was considered polluting (Baburaj, 2019).

The division of labor, social prestige, marital relations, and sociopolitical aspirations are dependent on caste divisions. Caste is not a major factor everywhere in India, but it plays an important role in Kerala and Malayali society. The majority of Hindus of Kerala (54.7%) are not united as a single

Hindu community; rather, they are divided into upper and lower castes. The Namboothiris, Nairs, and

Kshatriyas are upper castes, whereas Ezhavas are lower castes (untouchables). The caste division is so deeply-rooted that instead of religion, the caste identity is regarded as primary identity for most of the

Hindus in this area. Political parties, such as Congress, CPIM, and BJP, try to consolidate votes through caste politics; thus, they are unable to unite the Hindu votes under one umbrella. For instance, the Nair community, along with Christians, is the backbone of the Congress in the state, while a major chunk of the Ezhava community has traditionally supported the Communist parties. Although both

Nair and Ezhavas are Hindus, their mutual hatred and disrespect prevent Hindu majoritarian parties such as BJP to secure their votes.

The Nair – Ezhava divide is reflected in the following excerpt about Kerala.:

“Religious practice is important for Ezhava identity and mobility ambitions in three major

ways: first, as a means by which the poor and low-status hope to improve their condition and

by which those already doing well seek to maintain progress; second, for marking group or

familial status and culture, and third – and importantly for currently upwardly mobile sections

of the community – as a chance for wealth conversion… However, orthoprax Hinduism is a

realm particularly associated with Brahmans; it also offers arenas of participation and

performance deeply rooted in the local, unlike employment or consumption; it arguably offers

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the means par excellence of capital conversion. Just as employment is central in accumulation of

economic capital, religion continues to remain a privileged site for the conversion or

conservation of money into status and prestige, making it sometimes possible to present class

mobility as status mobility. This goes beyond narrow processes of ‘Sanskritization’ and into

areas such as (re)- construction of family temples and shrines, where status is dominated by

models loosely associated to the Hindu jajman, the patron of life-giving/regenerating sacrifices,

hence practice is drawn from the community most closely associated with former landlords

and jajmans – Nayars” (Osella and Osella, 2000).

The role of caste in politics has been a highly debated topic in India. Scholars argue that

Indians vote their caste rather than cast their votes (Sharma, 2019). To a certain extent, this is true of

Kerala as well. In a sense, the emergence of democratic politics in the state during the pre- independence period was a by-product of political mobilization undertaken by various religious and caste-based movements. Hence, Kerala has a strong tradition of community organizations and political parties existing in a symbiotic relationship. This also produced a convergence between the leadership of caste organizations and political parties as the first generation of political leaders were none other than the leaders of their respective communities (“The Role of Caste as a Coordinate in Kerala’s

Politics,” 2019).

From the existing literature and pieces of evidence from the state politics, we find that caste identity is crucial in Kerala and the splitting of Hindu votes based on castes in Kerala keeps the rightist ideological coalition from gathering Hindu votes under a singular banner of Hindutva. The Nair

Service Society (NSS) representing the Hindu upper-caste Nairs has traditionally supported Congress in Kerala, while Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalan (SNDP) representing the Hindu lower caste Ezhavas has backed the Leftist coalition (Harikumar, 2013). In addition to the divided castes, Muslims act as

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another important communal group that has traditionally supported the Congress-led United

Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala (Krishnakumar, 2009).

Because of the cross-cutting cleavages of identity and inequality, a unique political coexistence is found in Kerala. There, the upper caste Hindus (Namboothiri, Nayar, and Kshatriya) and Muslims are favored in return for electoral support of a common political party – the Indian National Congress.

In contrast, the Hindu lower caste Ezhazas and Nadars, who are predominantly workers in factories, support the Leftist Bloc in return of recognition politics by the Leftist Democratic Front (LDF). In contrast to West Bengal, where the AITC (Trinamool Congress) rolled out the politics of recognition for Muslims, alienating the Hindus as a single community, the politics of recognition in Kerala are split along caste and ethnic lines – dividing the Hindu community. Overall inequality in a society, divided into groups, is a combination of between-group and within-group disparities (Darity and

Deshpande, 2000). In Kerala, the within-group element takes precedence, making the politics of recognition complex. According to Chhibber and Verma (2018), the people against politics of recognition and statism are more likely to vote for BJP, but that party is unable to unite the Hindu votes in Kerala because the people against the politics of recognition there are split along caste lines and not communal cleavages.

The following section explicates a recent political dispute in the state of Kerala in which the right-wing BJP tried to utilize in its favor, but failed. The Sabarimala verdict of the Supreme Court divided the people along the cleavages of caste and gender and not communal lines, with a section of orthodox upper-caste Hindus expressing dissent against the verdict. Although some people remained opposed to the verdict, the lower castes along with liberal-minded members of the Nair, Namboothiri, and Kshatriya communities of Hindus welcomed the change. Such a complex split along the cross-

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cutting cleavages of the political spectrum illustrates how the BJP was unable to succeed with its

Hindutva politics in Kerala, something with which it could do with ease in West Bengal.

The Sabarimala controversy and BJP’s failure in consolidating Hindu votes

Sabarimala Sree Dharma Sastha Temple, dedicated to Lord Ayyappa, is the most famous and prominent among all the Sastha temples in Kerala and is situated in Pathanamthitta district (About

Sabarimala, n.d.). The year 2018 witnessed a countrywide controversy regarding the entry of women into the temple, when the right-wing Bhartiya Janata Party and orthodox Hindu organizations vehemently opposed the Supreme Court verdict that allowed all individuals entry into the temple. In the past, women devotees of menstruating age were not permitted to worship there, and the ban was said to be out of respect for the celibacy of the deity in this temple (“Ayyappan, Hindu Deity,” n.d.).

A Kerala high-court judgment in 1991 had legalized this interpretation and forbade women from entering the temple (About Sabarimala, n.d.). The Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held that any exception placed on women because of biological differences violated the Indian Constitution , specifically that the ban violates the right to equality under Article 14, and freedom of religion under

Article 25 of the Indian Constitution (Suri, 2018) (Tripathi, 2018).

Orthodox Hindu organizations, such as Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Rashtriya Swayamsevak

Sangh, and above all the Bhartiya Janata Party, opposed the verdict. Similar to the vehement opposition to the Hindu code bill26 in the 1950s, which the Hindu organizations considered unwanted politics of statism by the Congress government, the protests against the Sabarimala verdict were

26 The Hindu code bills were several laws passed in the 1950s that aimed to codify and reform Hindu personal law in India. Following India's independence in 1947, the Indian National Congress government led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru completed this codification and reform. The Hindu Code Bills in India came in four separate parts – Hindu Marriage Act in May 1955, Hindu Succession Act in May 1956, the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act in December 1956, and Dowry Prohibition Act in July 1961.

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launched in the state of Kerala. All senior leaders of the BJP were adamant about maintaining the temple’s tradition of keeping women out. The Kerala-BJP general secretary, K. Sunderan told that the decision of the court to refer the matter to a larger bench is a blow for the stand taken by the Kerala government. Thus, no one should attempt to disgrace the temple’s tradition only because the court has altered the previous verdict. Veteran leader and BJP’s only elected representative in the Kerala state assembly, O. Rajagopal also warned of a strong repulsive action if anyone attempts to break the tradition at the Sabarimala temple in the name of renaissance (Mathew, 2019).

Following the declarations of the BJP leadership, seven strikes against allowing women to enter Sabarimala Temple were organized in Kerala by various Hindu groups and their umbrella outfit

Sabarimala Karma Samithi. The first strike was observed in the Pathanamthitta district on 7 October

2018 (Hartal in Pathanamthitta on Sunday, 2018). BJP called for this strike in response to police beating up Prakash Babu, state president of Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha during a protest march held on 6th

October 2018 (“BJP-Sponsored Hartal Peaceful in Pathanamthitta,” 2018). Thereafter, six more strikes followed, along with clashes between party workers of the BJP and CPIM. Media reports confirmed that over 3000 people were arrested and around 500 cases were lodged at various police stations across Kerala in relation to the protests, including strike-related violence, since the Supreme court verdict (Total 3,345 Sabarimala Protestors Arrested till Now, 2018).

Despite the forceful demonstrations by rightist political organizations under the BJP, it did not win a single seat in the parliamentary election during the following year. The reason for such an outcome lies in the caste laden nature of the controversy. The verdict divided the people on the cleavages of caste and gender and not communal lines, with a section of orthodox upper-caste Hindus expressing dissent against the verdict. Even though some people remained opposed to the verdict, the lower castes along with liberal-minded members of the Nair, Namboothiri, and Kshatriya

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communities of Hindus welcomed the change. Such a complex split along the cross-cutting cleavages of the political spectrum prevented the BJP from successfully using its Hindutva politics in Kerala.

Secondly, unlike in West Bengal, where the decision of providing pension to Muslim clerics and the decision to postpone Hindu festivals were executive ones, the Sabarimala verdict in Kerala was enforced by the judiciary. This prevented the rightist party from gathering support from the people against politics of statism because the Congress and the Left front steered clear of the blame that they

‘initiated’ this change of religious custom in the state. Although NDA’s vote share increased marginally from 10.85% in 2014 to 15.63% in 2019, the majoritarian coalition yet again failed to secure any seats.

Conclusion

The West Bengal case study addressed the change in that area’s voting behavior as a result of a coalition along communal lines against the politics of recognition. In contrast, the Kerala case study explicated how the BJP was unable to consolidate Hindu votes because of the internal caste fault lines dividing voters of that religion. The cross-cutting cleavages of castes acted as a hindrance to the saffron wave that had engulfed the world’s largest democracy. In conclusion, we summarize the findings and unpack the implications of caste dynamics on the electoral performance of the majoritarian right-wing coalition.

The BJP faces a steep challenge when its political campaign addresses divided castes within

Hinduism in a particular state. Our hypothesis suggested that minority nationalism and politics of recognition increases the probability of majoritarian electoral results. The empirical analysis in the previous chapters covered the religious dimensions and communities of India, but not the caste dynamics. The case study of West Bengal successfully reinforced the empirical findings of the last chapter and provides details on the causal process. The Kerala case study, on the other hand, showed

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the shortsightedness of the BJP in addressing caste dynamics by using similar communal electoral strategies to those in Bengal.

Unequal treatment because of caste is illegal in India. Article 15 of the Indian Constitution says that the State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them (Cadindia, n.d.). Nevetheless, caste dynamics remain an important subtle factor in many parts of India. The division between the upper caste Nairs and lower caste Nadars in Kerala, or the division between Jadavs and Gonds in Uttar Pradesh, reveals that caste cleavages cuts across the Hindu religion in some locations. The Bhartiya Janata Party’s united Hindutva campaign targeting politics of recognition along religious cleavage fails to bridge these boundaries in areas where the salience of caste identity is greater than communal divisions.

Our finding that BJP’s united Hindutva agenda failed to consolidate Hindu votes where caste fault lines were more salient than religious cleavages, opens new dynamics for Indian electoral politics.

Bhartiya Janata Party and its allies have stressed a united India (Akhand Bharat) movement and the

Hindutva campaign to counter the politics of recognition and statism carried out by its political opponents in India. The electoral campaign of BJP in 2014 primarily focused on criticizing Congress’ corruption, their recognition politics favoring the Muslims, and the national economic downturn. In doing so, BJP leadership gave a religious color to the Congress’s recognition politics. In other words, the minority nationalism and favoritism politics that the RSS, BJP, and its right-wing allies criticized were more communal and less ethnic. After a landslide victory of the 2014 election, BJP continued this agenda, which they thought would reap benefits in future elections as well. Even though the winning strategy did work in Bengal, it failed in Kerala because of the caste dynamics and sectarian differences amongst the Malayalees.

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The case studies substantiated our expectations and empirical findings that presence of minority nationalist parties and minority nationalist policies positively affects majoritarian electoral tendencies. The case study of West Bengal explained a few political incidents and some pro-minority policies taken by All India Trinamool Congress, which made the Hindu populace insecure. The rightist political coalition led by BJP took advantage of it and consolidated Hindu votes of the state in the

2019 general elections by opposing the AITC’s politics of recognition. In contrast, despite following the same model or political strategy (Mishra, 2019) they could not make inroads into Kerala yet. The case study on Kerala explained the different nature of recognition politics in the state and the internal caste fault lines, which acted as a hindrance for the conservative right-wing to consolidate Hindu votes there.

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Appendix

Figure 4.1a Figure 4.1b Figure 4.1: National and Bengal NDA Seats (2004-2019). Descriptive Visualization is done on Tableau based on the data of the Election Commission of India

Vote shares of the Major Political Parties of West Bengal 2009 - 2019 50 43.3 39.05 40.2 40 33.1 31.18 29.71 30

20 17.02 13.45 9.58 10 6.14 6.3 5.61

0 TMC BJP CPM INC

% Vote Share in 2009 % Vote Share in 2014 % Vote Share in 2019

Figure 4.2: Vote Shares of Major Political Parties of West Bengal (2009-2019). Data Source: Election Commission of India

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20 19 2014 18 2019 16

14 12 12

10 8 8

2 1 0 0 0 NDA LDF UDF

Figure 4.3: Parliamentary Seats won by Political Coalitions at National Elections in Kerala – 2014 and 2019 50 47.48 2014 45 42.08 40.23 2019 40 35.29 35

20 15.63 15 10.85 10

0 NDA LDF UDF

Figure 4.4: Vote shares of the major coalitions in 2014 and 2019 National Elections in Kerala

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District level Religious Demographics of Kerala (Based on 2011 Census) 80.00%

70.00%

60.00%

50.00%

40.00%

30.00%

20.00%

10.00%

0.00%

Muslims Hindus Christians Figure 4.5: District Level Religious Demographics of Kerala. Data Source: Government of Kerala, Vital Statistics Division, Department of Economics and Statistics Thiruvananthapuram (Vital Statistics Reports, 2016).

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CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

In Chapter 1, this dissertation put forward two main questions. The first question concerned why some ethnic groups adopt violence as their weapon to challenge the government whereas others adopt peaceful means or do not challenge the status quo? This was examined in the context of the

Indian subcontinent (60 ethnic groups of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) over a period of

1947 – 2013. The second focus was one the reasons for majority’s apprehension against minorities and the relationship exists between those factors and the electoral behavior of the majorities of a country? This was studied across different provinces in India over a period of 2000 – 2019, including four national election cycles.

Throughout the dissertation, the central argument has been that crosscutting and reinforcing marginalization along the cleavages of religion, economy, and language makes ethnic groups prone to violence. Additionally, the apprehension or mistrust among the majority population against minorities can develop because of terrorism-related incidents, higher population growth rate of the minorities, and minority nationalism coupled with enactment of recognition policies. The research further argued that right-wing conservative political parties often secure electoral victories through manipulation and threat perceptions of ethno-religious fears. The next section summarizes the findings pertaining to core thesis of paper and indicates the theoretical contributions.

Core Findings and Theoretical Contributions

The Impact of Multiple Cleavages

Ethnic cleavages make a society deeply divisible. Thereafter, inequality often runs along the lines of cleavages as not every group develops equally in a fractionalized society. This leads to

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discrimination not merely between individuals, but between groups as well. In such cases, groups become further differentiated beyond the divisions by cleavages, as members of one group are politically and economically better off than members of another group. Consequently, grievances among members of the discriminated groups build up against the members of better-off groups and reinforce the ethnic cleavages, further leading to ethnic mobilization and violence. Previous studies

(e.g., Cederman et. al., 2011; Stewart et. al, 2008) did not assess the impact of multiple cleavages of marginalization simultaneously or in combination; the cleavages of disadvantage leading to grievances were studied in isolation. This did not allow the analysts to understand the salience of one cleavage of marginalization while the other is also present.

When looking at reinforcing and crosscutting cleavages impact on the occurrence of violent conflict, we found that religious marginalization had a significant positive effect, and the effect was consistent across different model specifications. As a single cleavage, religious marginalization can instigate violence or in other words, groups affected by religious marginalization alone are more likely to engage in violent conflicts against the government. Additionally, economic marginalization had a significant positive effect on the probability of occurrence of conflict. These were consistent across different model specifications. In other words, groups that are economically marginalized, despite sharing common religions and languages with the dominant group(s), are prone to conflict. This finding is consistent with the Marxist analysis of group conflict or the social conflict theory.

In addition, the results suggested that the groups affected by the combination of religious and economic marginalization are associated with 74.4% violent conflicts across the period of our research. Moreover, when these two cleavages intersected, it had a statistically significant and positive effect on the occurrence of conflict. The combination of religious and economic marginalization has the potential to cause protests and violence, even if the lingual cleavage cuts across the groups. The

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findings also indicate that as the intensity of religious marginalization moves from the lowest level (no repression) to the highest level (acute repression), the chances of economic disadvantage positively affecting the probability of conflict almost doubles.

Furthermore, we also found that the likelihood of conflict is greater when all the cleavages of marginalization are reinforcing. Among the groups analyzed in this research, the reinforcing marginalization of economy, religion, and language affected 20 ethnic groups. Therefore, the research concludes that the cleavages of marginalization, some individually and in combination, increase the probability of ethnic groups to engage in violence.

This dissertation analyzed the cleavages individually, in combinations of two, and finally all together, providing a unique contribution and addition to past work. Second, it provides greater precision concerning the magnitude of the effect of cleavages, both individually and in combination.

Endangered Majority and Indian Electoral Dynamics Summary

The second part of the dissertation assessed the threat perception of the majority against the minorities. The research examined the reasons for majority’s apprehension against minorities and whether a relationship exists between those factors and the electoral behavior of the majorities of a country.

As a contribution to the literature in this area, this research assessed the aspects of ethnic politics from the perspective of the majorities. It also explored the sources of apprehension of the majority populace against minorities, that populists manipulate those fears to secure electoral victories.

The key features of the populist radical right ideology – nativism, authoritarianism, and populism -- have a manipulative effect on the mass attitudes, aiming to change the perspective of a section of the general people for electoral benefits of the conservative parties. Mudde (2004) refers to this as a radicalization of mainstream values (Mudde, 2004). This research used India as a case study and

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explored reasons behind the growing popularist sentiments, assessed the apprehension or mistrust among the majority population against minorities, and examined the threat perception influenced by conservative right-wing’s propaganda. It theoretically examined the security dilemma faced by majority

Hindus in India, who fear their socio-economic and dominant status is being threatened by the growth of minorities, terrorism-related incidents by the national minority groups, and rising minority nationalism.

We did not find a statistically significant association between terrorism-related incidents and right-wing electoral outcomes, but it could be because the effect became insignificant in an aggregate regression analysis that obscured latent effects in select provinces. The study also found that apart from eight provinces of India, the growth rate of minorities is higher than the majority Hindus. Again, we did not find a significant statistical association for this factor on the seats won by BJP led National

Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the parliamentary elections. Nevertheless, perception of threat influenced by BJP’s propaganda influenced the people to vote for the conservative right-wing parties.

The descriptive statistical analysis indicated contributory effect between minority nationalist parties and seats won by conservatives’ in the Indian parliamentary elections, and the regression analysis also found a significant association between the two factors. This strengthened our argument that when minority nationalist parties’ bargain for benefits, and pluralist political parties implement policies of recognition, the security dilemma of the majority against the minority increases, making them feel ‘endangered’. This could be because the presence of minority nationalist parties, their public rallies, and enactment of (minority) favorable policies by pluralist governments are more visible threats to the majority than higher population growth of minorities. Often, the perception of threat is fueled by the manipulation effect of the conservative right-wing political organizations. As a result, a significant portion of the endangered majority votes for the conservative parties.

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Case Studies of Endangered Majorities and Electoral Outcomes

The minority (Muslim) nationalist parties of India represent the nationalist interests of their community and bargain with the regional and national political parties for receiving additional benefits.

Chhibber and Verma (2018) labelled these benefits and minority friendly policies as “politics of recognition.” The research theoretically argued that the recognition policies enacted by pluralist parties increase the threat perspectives among the majority against minorities for electoral benefits. The case studies of West Bengal and Kerala – two provinces in India, over a period of five years (2014-2019) -

- were used to examine the theoretical expectations and to elaborate the empirical findings of the previous section.

The case study of West Bengal accounted for key political incidents and selected pro-minority policies taken by All India Trinamool Congress (AITC), which made the Hindu populace insecure.

The political divide was clearly along the communal lines where the Hindu Bengalis felt threatened and alienated in their land. The right-wing led by Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) politicized the perceived security dilemma, opposed the AITC’s politics of recognition, and consolidated the Hindus under one umbrella. In contrast to 2014, when BJP won only 2 parliamentary seats in West Bengal, it successfully secured 40.2% of total polled votes and won 18 parliamentary seats in the 2019 election, posing a major threat to the dominance of pluralist AITC party.

The West Bengal case study addressed the change in that area’s voting behavior as a result of a coalition along communal lines against the politics of recognition. This case study demonstrates that minority nationalism, minority nationalist parties’ bargaining with pluralist political parties, and the enactment of minority friendly policies of recognition appears as a visible threat to the majority. This threat perspective is thereafter politicized by right-wing political parties through manipulation and

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populist campaigns, which enables the conservative parties to consolidate the electoral support of a significant section of the majority.

In contrast, despite following the same model or political strategy, the right-wing conservative parties could not make inroads into Kerala. The case study on Kerala explained another aspect of recognition politics, the internal caste fault line, which acted as a barrier for the conservatives (BJP) to consolidate Hindu votes there. The division of labor, social prestige, marital relations, and sociopolitical aspirations are dependent on these caste divisions in this area. Caste is not a major factor everywhere in India, but it plays a major role in Kerala and Malayali society. The majority of Hindus in Kerala (54.7%) are not united as a single Hindu community, but rather are divided into upper and lower castes. The caste division is so deep-rooted, that instead of religion, the caste identity is regarded as primary one for most of the Hindus there. Thus, the mutual hatred and disrespect among different

Hindu groups prevent Hindu majoritarian parties such as thus BJP from securing their votes in a collective fashion.

The finding that BJP’s united Hindutva agenda failed to consolidate Hindu votes in Kerala where caste fault lines were more salient than religious cleavages, opens new dynamics for ethnic politics research. The threat perception among majority against minorities is often built around a particular identity that is common among the majority populace and differs from the minority - for example either religion or language. The Kerala case study implied that other identity differences among the majority (for instance castes or language) can mitigate or eliminate the threat perspective built around the particular cleavage. This suggests that some cleavages can offset other ethnic divisions. Thus, we cannot just look at the cleavage of distinction between minorities and majority, but need to assess the ones within the majority as well. Additionally, makes us conclude that if the other identity cleavages have greater salience than the particular cleavage along which threat

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perceptions were built, the threat perspective will not allow political groups to exploit the original cleavages for electoral gain.

Policy Implications

In addition to theoretical consequences and research findings, this study also provides implications that can be useful for policy makers. One major policy implication is that economic equity is necessary for long-term stability, and states should prevent ethnic groups from becoming religiously and economically alienated. Ideologically, a centrist governance with balanced policy making focussed on equitable distribution would be better off than enacting recognition policies favoring minorities over majorities. To do otherwise makes the ruling group vulnerable to appeals from nativist and nationalist parties in the next election. In this regard, policymakers should provide some special benefits to the disadvantaged minority, but ensure that the policies do not hurt certain salient identities of the majority. Otherwise, the conservatives would take advantage of the threat perception and use it for electoral benefits. If the recognition policies backfire and elections are lost, the marginalized parts of society might be worse off in the long run.

A second policy implication is that the pluralist political groups should try and diminish the salience of the identity cleavage along which threat perspective is built by right-wing. The pluralists should promote unity, enact laws that would not choose the minority over majority, but rather should develop the ethnic groups together. For instance, promoting primary education to all children could be a better policy choice than simply reserving seats for minorities in legislature. Additionally, emphasizing on unity and upholding the appeal of cross-cutting cleavages during electoral campaigns could diminish the salience of the cleavage of threat perspective as well.

The other policy implication is focused specifically on the Indian electoral and party politics and questions the political viability of the electoral strategy of threat perspective for the right-win. Our

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findings regarding the shortcoming of the ‘Hindutva’ campaign indicates that when caste and/or other linguacultural identities are more salient than the religious identity for some Hindu communities in

India, the BJP will face difficulty in consolidating its support on the basis of communal political agenda. For instance, the majority people of the Oriya, Marathi, Bengali, Assamese communities are

Hindus. Nevertheless, their culture, language, festivals (even religious festivals), dietary practices are different from each other – making India a land of diversity. Wrapping these communities under a single saffron code of Hinduism and politicizing their threat perception along religious identity can reap temporary electoral victories, but cannot be a long-term solution for any political organization.

BJP leadership must adhere to this loophole in their electoral strategy before the upcoming electoral campaigns.

Additionally, Hindu conservatives criticized ruling pluralist government, opposed recognition and found a home in the BJP, allowing BJP to pursue anti-Muslim and anti-Christian politics without any direct electoral reprisals (Chhibber and Verma, 2018). However, when the right-wing is already in power, they cannot criticize the government for recognition politics anymore. Additionally, the BJP leadership must keep in mind that the younger citizens of India may opt for a merit-based system and not favor recognition, but they could have little sympathy for majoritarianism or anti-Muslim politics

(Chhibber and Verma, 2018). Thus, if the party upholds the communal political agenda for another

10-15 years, they might become irrelevant in Indian politics. According to Chhibber and Verma (2018), all parties engage in competitive populism, but the targeted group for BJP’s communal politics is unfortunately not the younger generation of India.

Future Research Agenda

Moving forward, there are several avenues for further research. Chapter 2 analyzed the necessary underlying conditions of conflict besieging the Indian subcontinent and found support for

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horizontal inequality arguments. As a continuation of the study, future research might also address the disputes about between two equally marginalized ethnic groups. Discrimination and cleavages lay the groundwork for the occurrence of the violent conflict. Other associated factors, however, such as government response, availability of resource, external support and so on intensify the conflict. Future research should explore those areas for a more cohesive understanding of the ethnic–civil conflict as well.

In Chapter 3, we found the presence of minority nationalist parties to have significant causal effect on right-wing parties’ electoral victories. The result is based on aggregate data, and the field of ethnic politics will benefit if a survey analysis and field study could be done for assessing the individual voter’s behavior. For example, was the BJP successful because it persuaded individual Hindu voters as was its strategy or was its winning coalition more broadly based? Additionally, through the case studies we found that when the other identity cleavages have higher salience than the particular cleavage along which threat perceptions were built, the threat perspective diminishes. Caste Politics plays a very important role in the Indian electoral politics and is salient in many provinces including the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). BJP is currently in power of the UP-state legislature, while it has not won a single parliamentary seat in caste besieged Kerala. This raises the possibility that the salience of identities varies within a country, from one province to another. A research focused on what makes some cleavages more salient than others should be an interesting study for the identity politics. A subnational analysis through ethnographic and field survey research is essential to understand these dynamics which affects the 1.3 billion people of this world.

The dissertation did not assess the implication of leadership in ethnic conflict or electoral politics. One cannot deny that magnetic leadership often guides the politics of a nation. They can accentuate the threat perspective of majority and minorities along a cleavage, or even diminish it by

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unifying the divided countrymen. For instance, while leaders such as Gandhi, Churchill, Roosevelt,

Washington covered up cleavages of distinctions through charismatic leadership, Hitler and Mussolini cultivated it for political purpose. Similarly, other Indian stalwarts such as Nehru, Ambedkar, Sardar

Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose, and others played an important role in consolidating the idea of a single

Indian nation among the divided residents of this land. Another avenue for future research could be to take this into consideration and assess the impact of leadership on accumulating electoral support of the majority.

Finally, the arguments, theoretical contributions, empirical findings, and qualitative assessments in this dissertation is focused on the Indian subcontinent. Future research should determine the applicability of these significant findings on other regions of the world. The rise of conservative, nationalist political movements is not unique to India. The global trend suggests that majoritarian electoral victories, either in provincial or federal level, are a common feature in North

America, Europe, and Australia as well. For instance, although Trudeau is the current Prime Minister of Canada and is globally known for his liberal image, the United Conservative Party is in power of the province of Alberta with Jason Kennedy as the current premier. Future research should assess the reasons for conservative’s electoral victories in the United States of America and Canada from vantage point of security dilemmas espoused by political leaders. Thereby, respective reasons for the increase in vote shares of conservatives in each country could be compared using in-depth case studies. Such research will significantly contribute to the field of electoral, behavioral, comparative, and ethnic politics.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Soham Das was born in Kolkata, India. After finishing his studies in International Relations at

Jadavpur University in India, he decided to further his education and applied to The University of

Texas – Dallas’ Political Science doctoral program in 2015. In addition to receiving his PhD in Political

Science in 2020 with a concentration in Research Methods, he simultaneously earned a Master of Arts in Political Science in 2017. Das’s research focuses on ethnopolitics and civil conflict. Overarching themes in Das’s writing include underlying and facilitating conditions of ethnic conflict, ultranationalist and populist electoral trends, social movements and positive peace approaches in the

United States, Canada, and South Asia.

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CURRICULUM VITAE

EDUCATION PhD, Political Science, The University of Texas at Dallas. August 2020 MA, Political Science, The University of Texas at Dallas 2017 MA, Political Science with International Relations, Jadavpur University, India 2015 PG Diploma, Human Rights and Duties Education, Jadavpur University, India 2014 BA, Political Science, Jadavpur University, India 2013

PUBLICATION Das, S. (2019). Ethnic conflict in the Indian subcontinent: Assessing the impact of multiple cleavages. Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, 6(3), 229– 253. https://doi.org/10.1177/2347797019886689

WORKING PAPER Soham Das, 2020. “Endangered Majority: Electoral Dynamics in India.” In Preparation for Submission to The Social Science Journal. Ryan Lux and Soham Das. 2020. “International Organizations and Their Effect on Why States Abrogate Agreements: Replication and Extension of Leeds, Savun 2007”. Draft in Progress.

AWARDS Ph.D. Research Small Grants, UT Dallas 2019 and 2018 Best Graduate Paper Award, Western Social Science Association 2018 Conference Second Runner Up at the Second Annual Business Case Competition, 2018 Center for Global Business, University of Texas – Dallas and Naveen Jindal Institute for Indo-American Business Studies. Debesh Kamal Scholarship, RKM India 2015

RESEARCH GRANT Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference Travel Grant 2019 University of Texas - Dallas Departmental Travel Grant 2018, 2019 University of Texas - Dallas Graduate Studies Travel Grant 2018, 2019

RESEARCH INTERESTS Indigenous Politics, Comparative Politics, Identity and Electoral Politics, Asian Studies, Conflict

Studies, International Relations, Measures and Dynamics of Peace, Public Policies and Civil Conflict, Political Representations, Political Parties and Ethnicity.

SKILLS Data Analytics Statistical Procedures and Modeling Data Visualization and Presentation Analytical and Statistical Programming Problem Solving Public Speaking Instructional Design and Content Writing and Reporting Development

METHODOLOGICAL COMPETENCY Regression and Multivariate Analysis Time Series Analysis Data Management in Social Science Research Qualitative Research Methods Data Visualization Social Concepts, and Measurements

STATISTICAL COMPETENCY STATA Tableau SPSS TwoRavens Microsoft Office R

PEDAGOGICAL TRAINING Graduate Teaching Certificate, Center of Teaching & Learning, The University of 2018 Texas at Dallas. The program requires three workshops with reflective essays, passing four pedagogical online courses, and independent teaching evaluation by a faculty. International Studies Association Innovative Pedagogy Conference 2018 Advanced Graduate Teaching Certificate, Center of Teaching & Learning, The In Progress University of Texas at Dallas

ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT The University of Texas at Dallas 2015-Present

Independent Instructor Summer 2018, Spring 2020 Graduate Research Assistant Summer 2020 Graduate Teaching Assistant 2015 - 2019 Graduate Administrative Assistant Summer 2017, Summer 2019

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

INSTRUCTOR Ethnic Politics Spring 2020 Ethnic and Civil Conflict Summer 2018

TEACHING ASSISTANT Approaches to Peace Fall 2019 Comparative State and Local Government Spring 2019 Comparative Politics Fall 2018 War on Drugs Fall 2018 Introduction to American National Government 2016 – 2018 Introduction to State and Local Government 2015 – 2016

ADDITIONAL COURSES QUALIFIED TO TEACH Theories of International Relations, Theories of Comparative Politics, International Law, Religion and Politics, Politics of South Asia, International Conflict, Conflict Management, International Organization.

OTHER UT DALLAS SERVICES Editorial Contribution in the undergraduate textbook Readings Summer 2017, in American National Government by Miller and Holmes. Summer2019

OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Instructor – Communicative English & Corporate Communication. 2013 – 2015 I.C.E. Management Institute, Kolkata, India.

INTERNSHIP Child Rights and You (CRY), India 2013 -2014 Field surveyed four cities and two tea estates in West Bengal, India using snowball effect and elite interview method to prepare a report – Girl Child Abuses and Rights on rehabilitation approaches of trafficked women for CRY.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION “Endangered Majority: Electoral Dynamics in India.” ISA Midwest Annual Conference, November 2019.

“International Organizations and Their Effect on Why States Abrogate Agreements: Replication and Extension of Leeds, Savun 2007.” (Co-presenting with Dr. Ryan Lux). ISA Midwest Annual Conference, November 2019.

“Ethnic Conflict in the Indian Subcontinent: Assessing the Impact of Multiple Cleavages.” Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference, June 2019.

“Ultra-Nationalism in India: The Impact of Endangered Majorities.” Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference, June 2019.

“Ethnic Conflict: Assessing the Causal Cleavages.” ISA Midwest Annual Conference, November 2018, and Western Social Science Association Annual Conference, April 2018.

“Impact of Radical Islam and its consequences in the recent developments of India-USA ties.” International Conference on Changing Contours of Indo-US Relations: Perception, Continuity, and Change. Indian Council of World Affairs, Brookings India, NCAOR. November 2014.

“Rabindranath Tagore’s Humanism & Internationalism.” Vishwakabi & Internationalism Conference. Ministry of Culture, Government of India and Jadavpur Association of International Relations (JAIR) under the Tagore Commemoration Grant Scheme. Jadavpur University, India, July 2012.

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS International Studies Association (ISA) Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA) Western Social Science Association (WSSA

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY English Bengali Hindi Marathi

REFERENCES Prof. Paul F. Diehl, Ashbel Smith Professor of Political Science. Associate Provost and Director, Center for Teaching and Learning. [email protected] GR 3.214. 972-883-3519

Prof. Jennifer Holmes, Dean, School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. Professor of Political Science, Public Policy and Political Economy. [email protected] GR 3.104D. 972-883-6852

Dr. Vito D’Orazio, Assistant Professor of Political Science. [email protected] GR 3.108D. 972-883-6212

Dr. Banks Miller, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. Associate Professor of Political Science. [email protected] GR 3.104A. 972-883-2930

Dr. Meghna Sabharwal, Associate Professor and Program Head of Public & Nonprofit Management. [email protected] GR 2.238. 972-883-6473