The Transformation of Politicised Religion This page has been left blank intentionally The Transformation of Politicised Religion From Zealots into Leaders
Edited by
Hartmut Elsenhans University of Leipzig, Germany
Rachid Ouaissa Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany
Sebastian Schwecke University of Göttingen, Germany
Mary Ann Tétreault Trinity University, USA © Hartmut Elsenhans, Rachid Ouaissa, Sebastian Schwecke and Mary Ann Tétreault 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Hartmut Elsenhans, Rachid Ouaissa, Sebastian Schwecke and Mary Ann Tétreault have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: The transformation of politicised religion : from zealots into leaders / edited by Hartmut Elsenhans, Rachid Ouaissa, Sebastian Schwecke and Mary Ann Tétreault. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-4881-1 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-4724-4882-8 (ebook) – ISBN 978-1-4724-4883-5 (epub) 1. Religion and politics–Middle East. 2. Religion and politics–India 3. Islam and politics–Middle East. 4. Hinduism and politics–India. 5. Religious fundamentalism–Political aspects–Middle East. 6. Religious fundamentalism– Political aspects–India. 7. Political parties–Middle East. 8. Political parties–India. 9. Middle East–Politics and government–21st century. 10. India–Politics and government–21st century. I. Elsenhans, Hartmut, 1941– author, editor of compilation. II. Ouaissa, Rachid, 1971– author, editor of compilation. III. Schwecke, Sebastian, author, editor of compilation. IV. Tétreault, Mary Ann, 1942– author, editor of compilation. BL65.P7T73 2015 320.55–dc23 2014023429 ISBN: 9781472448811 (hbk) ISBN: 9781472448828 (ebk-PDF) ISBN: 9781472448835 (ebk-ePUB)
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Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited, at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Introduction: New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements in South Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa 1 Rachid Ouaissa and Sebastian Schwecke
SECTION I
1 Algeria’s Islamists in Times of Political Change – An Exceptional Case? 15 Rachid Ouaissa
2 The Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism and the Reconfiguration of the Indian Bourgeoisie 33 Sebastian Schwecke
SECTION II
3 Globalisation and Islamic Radicalism in the Arab Gulf Region 57 Mary Ann Tétreault
4 The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood 75 Ivesa Lübben
5 The AKP or the Success of a Hybrid 105 Gérard Groc
6 Similarities and Differences in the Strategies and Programmes of the BJP and the Congress in India 121 Randhir B. Jain
7 Power Games or Programmatic Evolution in the BJP 131 Klaus Julian Voll vi The Transformation of Politicised Religion
SECTION III
8 Middle Classes and New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements: Perspectives 143 Hartmut Elsenhans
9 How to Build a Viable Economic Policy on Islamic Foundations: The Case of the MSP Party, Algeria 163 Abdelkrim Dahmen
10 The Bharatiya Janata Party: Identitarianism and Governance Agenda 183 Rajvir Sharma
SECTION IV
11 Rivalry, Failure of the Secular Nationalists, Geography, History: Embedding the Rising New Cultural-Identitarian Movements in Africa and Asia in the Emerging Multipolar System 205 Hartmut Elsenhans
Bibliography 225 Index 253 Notes on Contributors
Abdelkrim Dahmen is an architect and senior lecturer at Blida university, Algeria. He specialises in architectural heritage and is qualified by the Algerian ministry of culture as an architect of monuments and preserved sites since 2010. He has worked on architecture, town planning and restoration projects with several consultant firms in various regions of Algeria. He is also a member of the Algerian MSP political party since its creation in 1991 and a member of its national executive secretariat from 1998 to 2008. He was Member of Parliament for two terms (1997–2007) and used to be president of the Permanent Committee on Housing, Equipment, Hydraulics and Town Planning (1998–1999) as well as president of the MSP parliamentary group (2001–2002). His membership at the Permanent Committee on Finance and Budget (2002–2007) has enlarged his interests to economic challenges regarding Algeria and the Mediterranean region. He knows about the problems of the cultural identitarian movements from within and continues his political activities as member of the MSP national board.
Hartmut Elsenhans is Professor Emeritus at Leipzig University, Germany. He specialises in the economy and the history of the capitalist world system, the theory of development and underdevelopment, and the political economy of state classes and new social movements in rent based societies. Before Leipzig University, he taught in Berlin, Frankfurt, Marburg, Constance, Montreal, New Delhi, Mangalore, Dakar, Lisbon, and Salzburg and did empirical field research in Algeria, France, India, Bangladesh, Senegal, Mali, and Vietnam. His analysis of the Algerian War of Liberation is actually under publication in an abridged version in Arabic and French in Algeria; after publications in France and Germany, his book on the State class has been published in German and English in India (1996) and his work on the political economy of the capitalist world system in German and English (Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists) in Germany, Algeria and India.
Gérard Groc is a research fellow at the Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman, Aix-en-Provence, specialising in Turkology. He was a member of the team Transitions politiques et recompositions sociales dans le Monde arabe et musulman and is now a member of the research group: Social Sciences of the Contemporary World, with major areas of research in Turkey in International Relations, political development in contemporary Turkey, religious renaissance 1980–90 and the Euro-mediterranean. He has published Formes nouvelles de l’Islam en Turquie, les annales de l’autre Islam (1999), Le Renouveau viii The Transformation of Politicised Religion religieux à l’aune de la Laïcité, texte présenté pour l’Habilitation (1999), and numerous articles on the AKP (1995) and political Islam in Turkey.
Randhir Bahadur Jain, Professor Emeritus, is former Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and a Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, Delhi (India), Professor and Head of the Department of Public Administration at Punjabi University, Patiala, and Professor of Public Administration at the Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi. He has held various positions as visiting professor in Canada, USA and Germany, and has lectured in universities and research institutions all over the globe. He was on the Editorial Board of the Indian Political Science Review (Delhi), the editor of the Indian Journal of Political Science, Asian Editor of Governance, a member of the Editorial board of Environment and Security (Canada), and is currently on the Editorial Board of the Indian Journal of Public Administration (New Delhi), and of the Journal of Developing Societies (Sage publications). He is a member of the board of directors of the Centre for Business and Public Sector Ethics at Cambridge. He has published or edited around 32 books and published more than 200 articles in refereed journals. He has headed for long periods, and is now the President Emeritus of the International Political Science Association’s Research Committee (RC) 4 on Public Bureaucracies Developing Societies, and has been the Vice President of RC33 on the Study of Political Science and RC 20 on Electoral Reforms and Political Corruption. Amongst his most cited works are Contemporary Issues in Indian Administration (1976); Public Administration in India: 21st Century Challenges for Good Governance (2001 and 2004), and Governing Development Across Cultures; Challenges and Dilemmas of an Emerging Sub-discipline in Political Science (2007).
Ivesa Lübben works as a researcher at the Center for Near and Middle East Studies (CNMS) at Marburg University, Germany. She is specialised in Islamic movements in the Middle East and North Africa. Her research interests comprise democratisation processes and the transformation of state structures in Middle Eastern countries, social movements as well as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She has lived and worked as an author and researcher in Germany, Egypt and Syria and has done field research in Egypt, Sudan, Tunis, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Occupied Territories. She is currently working on the role of Islamic parties in the transformation processes in the MENA region.
Rachid Ouaissa is Professor for Middle East Politics at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the Phillips-University, Marburg. His main fields of research are political, economic and societal developments in the Near and Middle East since the nineteenth century, the rise of Islamist movements in the region, and the EUs Mediterranean policy. Notes on Contributors ix
Sebastian Schwecke is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), University of Göttingen, Germany. He specialises in identity- based politics in India and Pakistan, entrepreneurship, brokers and the everyday state in India, and informal financial markets in India. He has taught South Asian politics at Leipzig University and Heidelberg University, Germany. His recent publications include New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements in Developing Societies. The Bharatiya Janata Party (2011).
Rajvir Sharma is Associate Professor Emeritus at the University of Delhi, India. He specialises in Indian government and politics, urban governance, police administration and criminal justice, good governance, development administration, party system in India, and human rights. He has taught both undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the University of Delhi for about 42 years besides having been a visiting faculty member at Loyola University of Chicago, Pandit Deen Dayal Petroleum University, Gandhi Nagar, Mizoram Central University, Aizawl, Mizoram and invited guest lecturer at Leipzig and Frankfurt, Germany. He is/ has been on the board of studies, advisory committees of university academic staff colleges. He has done several empirical field studies on the security of senior citizens and the political empowerment of women in India, and on consumer rights and consumer’s role in Delhi as well as environmental management and the role of citizens in Delhi.
Mary Ann Tétreault has taught at Old Dominion University, Iowa State University, and is presently the Una Chapman Cox Distinguished Professor of International Affairs Emerita at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She has conducted field-work and/or taught abroad in Vietnam, Japan, Slovakia, Syria, Turkey, Kuwait and Bahrain. Her publications include books and articles about social movements, gender, oil markets, war crimes, international political economy, world politics, US foreign policy, and social, economic and security policies of the Gulf states. Her works on the Middle East include two books on oil markets and two on Kuwait.
Klaus Voll heads the India-Europe-Consultancy and is Advisor on Asia for the Foundation for European Progressive Studies in Brussels. As Honorary Lecturer he taught East African Politics and History between 1970–1980 and Indian Politics from 1984 till 2006 in the Department of Political Science, Freie Universitaet in Berlin. The former diplomat in the German Embassy in New Delhi and Representative of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation in India specialises in Indo- European relations as well as in India’s foreign and domestic politics. He is also author and editor of several books on Indian politics, for example: Rising India – Europe’s Partner? Foreign and Security Policy, Politics, Economics, Human Rights and Social Issues, Media, Civil Society and Intercultural Dimensions (2006). This page has been left blank intentionally Introduction: New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements in South Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa Rachid Ouaissa and Sebastian Schwecke
The rise of religious identity-based political movements in major parts of the ‘Global South’ after the 1970s, as Elsenhans wrote (Elsenhans 2011), ‘creates apprehensions’ in the western world as well as among ‘westernised’, educated, and broadly either liberal- or socialist-minded segments within these societies. These apprehensions have during the past decades contributed to the emergence of a vast body of literature both supportive and critical of the fundamentalism paradigm which – while showcasing the dangers involved in identity-based exclusion and ‘Othering’ – has tended to re-assert notions of ‘Otherness’ in non-western societies associated with this rise, of a radically non-liberal character of the movements propagating these forms of identity. This appears to be at odds with the predominantly middle class character of these movements in many parts of the world which is certainly bourgeois as well as with some of their ideas and programmes which include select recourses to bourgeois liberalism. More importantly, it is often ahistoric in its portrayal of ‘liberal’ values. It superimposes a post-war image of liberalism and a ‘global’ bourgeois society which neglects the meandering development of liberal and bourgeois values in the western world, the present state of which is taken almost as a blueprint for other societies to follow without this process of contestation and reformulation. The purpose of this book is not to prove these often very real apprehensions of danger wrong. Rather, we seek to portray the movements which create these apprehensions as part of a continuing process of contestation and evolution of bourgeois values in specific parts of the ‘Global South’. These processes may, at times, resemble specific aspects of western historical experience but, crucially, they take place in different cultural as well as politico-economic contexts and, therefore, tend to follow quite different paths. The transfer of power to indigenous elite segments after decolonisation can by and large be characterised as a ‘success’ in that it managed to keep out of political power the social segments which had not benefited from the colonial encounter. Accordingly, even where the transfer of power happened after 2 The Transformation of Politicised Religion protracted and in some cases violent conflict (prominently in Algeria), the newly dominant strata tended to remain within the limits of a discourse of modernisation that broadly followed a trajectory which had already been introduced by the colonial rulers. In what can be considered a historical irony, decolonisation happened very much along the lines of the ‘civilising mission’ often claimed by French and British colonial authorities. The transfer of power left the dominant strata among the indigenous bourgeoisies in a situation which was rather different from the one faced by European and North American middle strata in the nineteenth century: As inheritors of a ‘modernising’ state apparatus, they dominated their respective societies without having achieved a full consolidation of the bourgeois class; their dominance depended on state power (and education) more than their central role in ‘the market’. Utilising state-controlled resources, they were in a position to reach out to poorer and politically less influential social segments, in the process co-opting various divergent social interests with the promise of a state-controlled agenda of development. Discursively, this agenda was flanked by recourses to the two major unifying concepts of social order of the time: nationalism and secularism. Both promised a harmonious process of transition to a more prosperous and just social order in which class conflict was mediated, even replaced by the benevolent presence of the state. The utopia of secular nationalist modernisation, however, rested on two interlinked dimensions:
1. the ability of the state to ensure sufficient economic growth for the credibility of its political project, one that was sufficiently equitable to set in motion a process of social upward mobility at least among some social sections; and 2. the ability of the state to extract a sufficient share of the surplus for allocation to the politically organised and influential groups whose allegiance to the project of modernisation could thus be ensured. Access to the state and state largesse emerged as one of the most prominent ‘themes’ for collective action and political mobilisation in much of the Global South and especially in the areas covered in this book – South Asia and the MENA region.
Unifying ideological concepts such as nationalism and secularism provided a stable discursive background to the project as long as the contestation of access to the state remained within the limits posed by the constraints to increases in rent extraction. Rent allocation formed one of the most important instruments to ensure the allegiance of upwardly mobile groups seeking to extract a larger share from state-controlled resources. When the extraction of rent was or became insufficient to fulfill politically organised demands for rent allocation, conflicts over the respective shares in rent allocation in absolute terms turned into contestations of the relative shares allocated to specific groups. The unifying discursive concepts which had accompanied the establishment of the early post-colonial order in South Asia and the MENA region in situations Introduction 3 of increasing rent scarcity were much less suitable to articulate socio-economic interests in times of heightened political contestation. Instead, they were perceived by more and more disadvantaged groups as anachronisms or even as remnants of the old repressive social order they sought to overcome. At the same time, these concepts were (and at times still are) stridently maintained by elite groups which continue to be linked to the politico-economic structures underlying the project of modernisation. One major trajectory of political conflict in both South Asia and the MENA region coalesced around the contestation of the comprehensively inclusive concepts of secular nationalism prevalent in these societies by rival identity- based discourses that needed to be at least partially exclusive in order to designate political opponents in terms of group identity rather than differences over policy. Two of the prominent ideological strands associated with this contestation of secular nationalism – Islamism and Hindu nationalism – form the basis for all movements classified here as New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements (NCIPM), though it is important to note that the definition of the concept is not based on any ideological constructions that are specific to these two ideological spectrums. Hindu nationalism and Islamism have much in common in terms of their conceptions of a culturally defined identity and even ‘cultural nationalisms’, yet they also differ strongly from each other and show similarities that link them rather to other community-based ideological strands within their areas of operation. Rather than identifying the ‘cultural’ content of these ideologies, the concept classifies these movements according to their positions as contesting discourses of the established politico-economic structures underlying the project of modernisation as envisaged by the originally dominant elites in post-colonial South Asia, North Africa and West Asia. From a macro-perspective NCIPM simply form yet another manifestation of the opaque but nevertheless almost ubiquitous ‘Third Way’, though the pre-occupation of academic analysis with features of identity when dealing with these movements has tended to overshadow their classification according to their socio-economic aims. Identity forms a potent tool both to maintain and to contest social orders. A concept of identity which seeks to challenge the predominance of a comprehensively inclusive discourse needs to provide an avenue for unification which is sufficiently distinct from the dominant conception of identity in order to be acceptable as a viable alternative, an ideological discourse which allows the incorporation of select but differing or even conflicting social interests in a new way. Political mobilisation may centre on this distinctiveness. Yet as long as these discourses are sufficiently inclusive in this way, they may also be characterised by elements of exclusion which serve as additional instruments for political mobilisation by creating designated collective enemies. While this particular aspect of ‘Othering’ accounts for much of the apprehension of so many observers regarding Islamism and Hindu nationalism, it would be incorrect in this assessment to neglect their relative success in challenging an often cherished conception which came to embody the aspirations of the early post-colonial state and its dominant social 4 The Transformation of Politicised Religion strata, a sanitised image of which may seem even more alluring at a time when its predominance is threatened. What matters to us in this volume, however, are not so much the inherent flaws in different conceptions of identity but rather the ways in which identity-based discourses are shaping and are being shaped by a contestation of social orders and structures of political economy. In this, Islamism and Hindu nationalism may be ‘modernising’ in their own way, that is, they may form important aspects in the formation of new dominant social arrangements and coalitions that reflect and are reflected by changes in the socio-economic structures of South Asian and MENA societies and are thus likely to have not only national but also global repercussions. Beyond the apprehensions, what we are looking for is long-term developments that shape the societies in which specific conflicts have emerged which appear to be centred on identity. The concept of NCIPM is both spatially and temporally bounded. Rather than being derived from inherent cultural notions propagated by the respective movements, it forms a category which seeks to describe a pattern of reactions to specific contexts formed by the evolution of political economies in a part of the non-western world. Broadly speaking, NCIPM have emerged as viable political forces and at least partially successful contestants to the established political orders from the mid-1970s onwards (with important regional fluctuations as well as periods of growth) in countries stretching in an arc from Morocco in the west to South Asia (and even parts of South-east Asia) in the east. Even setting aside regional and temporal differences within the development of specific NCIPM, they can be grouped loosely into different sub-categories according to various parameters, including their establishment as ruling or at least major oppositional forces, the longevity of their impact on their respective societies, their precise ideological persuasions, and the extent to which they have emerged as either moderate or radical challengers to the established political order. At present the most prominent NCIPM may very well be the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, although the most successful one, both in terms of the duration of its period in government and – arguably – its impact on the political and socio- economic order in its country, is the Turkish Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP), followed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India. This classification leaves out the Iranian experience which will not be dealt with in this book because the differences between a comprehensively established political order and movements contesting a political order would require another volume to analyse adequately. Providing a framework of (cross-cultural) comparison in such a diverse area is fraught with major analytical problems. In essence, resemblances between these movements and their programmatic and ideological discourses may appear to be more pronounced than they actually are, while the importance given to some aspects of their development may be over-stated vis-à-vis others. The analytical framework places the greatest emphasis on the background against which the development of NCIPMs into major political forces commenced. This is the ‘thesis’ to the ‘anti-thesis’ provided by the NCIPM among others in broadly Introduction 5 dialectical terms: the establishment of the politico-economic order of the project of modernisation in these areas of the world, and its subsequent (partial) successes as well as its (incremental and partial) decline which provided the space for NCIPM to grow and – to some extent – shaped their development as contesting forces. This framework will seem overly deterministic to some, though its intention is rather limited: to define a context in which various developments, shaped by a large variety of factors, were and are taking place. As such, the analytical framework is a description of various case studies of political movements across cultural patterns reacting to a set of conditions (with major variations among these) rather than a comparative analysis. The subsequent chapters of this book will assemble a variety of facets to this reaction which – analytically – stand in their own right and together provide a more comprehensive explanation of the developments discussed in this book. Some broad trends are discernible from the analytical framework that we shall outline below: The rise of NCIPM as viable political forces, as political actors able to emerge as the principal contestants of the secular nationalist order is linked to crises in the various processes, apparatuses and mechanisms of rent extraction. Here rent is defined broadly as surplus derived on markets which are sufficiently imperfect to allow the direct political utilisation of this surplus by the established elite segments of society irrespective of the precise form of organisation of these segments. Rent in this sense refers both to the forms of rent which are prominent in the literature (Beblawi 1990) on the MENA region, especially internationally traded mineral resources, and to other – less prominent – forms such as politically controlled large-scale public sector involvement in the economy, unrequited transfers such as foreign aid or remittances from abroad, or indirect forms of economic control exerted by the state administrations such as India’s ‘license-permit-raj’. It is clear from this argument that there cannot be a uniform development of NCIPM across regions and time. Instead, what we see are patterns of reactions to changing contexts. Where rents as defined above remained sufficient to ensure the continued co-optation of rising social strata by the established elites, NCIPM may still have emerged in one form or another, among other reasons due to the spread of discourses from other areas of each ‘cultural’ region. Yet their rise as significant political forces will have been impeded from the outset, and they are unlikely to emerge as effective contestants of political power in their own right. It should be noted that the ‘Arab Spring’ so far has had lasting effects only in countries where rent as defined above was insufficient. An NCIPM in a context characterised by continued rent sufficiency may be included in government as a junior partner but will – through this participation – become associated with the established elite and its political practices and therefore be compromised as an oppositional force. Political experiments with an NCIPM as junior partner to the ruling establishment have taken place in the Gulf States. Where rents are insufficient to ensure the continued co-optation of rising social strata, the ensuing developments depended to a significant extent on the 6 The Transformation of Politicised Religion precise nature of the respective crises of rent extraction. Temporary crises of rent extraction are likely to end with the re-assertion of the established elites unless the challenging political forces are able to emerge as newly dominant strata in the meantime (in which case the social order may be significantly transformed, though its basis in rent extraction will likely remain.) The example of the Algerian civil war forms a good example for a temporary crisis of rent extraction with subsequent elite re-assertion. Subsequent to this re-assertion, the main NCIPM in Algeria began to face the participation dilemma outlined above. Temporary crises of rent extraction have to be distinguished from sustained crises of rent extraction. In sustained crises, the order established after de- colonisation is likely to be transformed over time depending on the specific features of the respective crises. This can be incrementally, in cases where rent extraction relative to the demand for rent allocation by politically influential groups is gradually declining; OR abruptly, in cases where rent extraction collapses over a short period of time. In the former, we can expect an outcome of gradual accommodation between the ruling and the contesting groups. Turkey and India serve as illustrations of this particular case, although – obviously – the nature of accommodation between the NCIPM and the established elites will depend on other factors as well. In all cases, NCIPM may emerge as either radical or increasingly moderate political forces, though sudden crises are more likely to lead to radicalism. In recent years, a large body of literature has dealt with processes of moderation, supplementing the earlier emphasis on NCIPM radicalism which had been associated with the predominance of the fundamentalism paradigm. It is not necessary here to review this literature as a number of contributors to this volume have commented on it with regard to their own discussions. Rather, we note what we mean by moderation and radicalism: From the perspective of the threat posed to the inclusive concepts of secular nationalism in the countries dealt with here any NCIPM may well appear to be radical, and often is. Even the arguably most comprehensively moderate NCIPM, the Turkish AKP, has been presented in a significant body of literature as well as in parts of the non-academic public discourse in precisely this way, as a radical threat, as discussed by Groc in chapter 5. Such an interpretation, however, assigns a positive value to specific political ideas and in this way creates a model which ‘respectable’ political movements must adhere to. As mentioned above, however, the aim of this volume is not to discuss flaws in concepts of identity propagated by various political actors. Outside this interpretation of radicalism and moderation, what matters is primarily the aim of the respective movement to affect comprehensive (and sudden) changes of the political, social and economic order or, accordingly, its revolutionary potential. Secondarily, radicalism and moderation as a process refers to the effects that the movement’s rise has on its domestic opponents and on the international order. The extent of moderation or radicalism of an NCIPM at any given moment depends on a large variety of factors and will differ on various aspects of policy and political Introduction 7 strategy, so that any portrayal of an NCIPM in this book as either radicalising or moderating will only refer to general tendencies which are discernible over periods of several years. Clark (2004) has outlined the positive effects on political moderation from the inclusion of Islamist movements. We have, however, to distinguish between two forms of inclusion – co-optation and assertion. Co-optation certainly forces a movement to adapt to the predominant discourses in a way that creates a significant potential for moderation. Participation in the benefits of state power (however limited) forms a crucial incentive to change policies. Co-optation nevertheless appears to be less stable in its effects on political moderation because the co-opted movement faces the participation trap outlined by Ouaissa in Chapter 1. As its utility to the predominant political forces lies in its potential to contain oppositional activities within the limits imposed by the established socio-political order, a co-opted movement periodically needs to re-assert its occupation of oppositional space. This is difficult from a position of co-optation- induced moderation. Co-opted movements therefore face a dilemma: whether to break their relationship with the predominant political forces to re-establish their oppositional credentials or continue the arrangement of co-optation and gradually lose popular support, in the process becoming less and less relevant to its senior partners. In the latter case, the co-opted movement will also cede political space to other forces which have an incentive to pursue radical policies. Assertion as a process in which an NCIPM emerges as a viable contender for political power in its own right but, crucially, (mostly) within the respective political order, inherently favours political moderation. In a typically more incremental yet at the same time more sustainable process defined by the gradual enlargement of the movement’s support base as well as an adaptation to the changing interests of this support base, the political assertion of the movement leads ideally to significant results in terms of achieving positions of influence within the socio- political order. This process of moderation does not necessarily result in a clear refutation of radical policies, especially in terms of adherence to major symbols of ‘cultural identity’ that forms an area cherished by its original supporters and can be refuted only with major difficulties. Yet, radical policies will increasingly have to be managed in a way that does not compromise the movement’s acceptability to the larger public. It is important to note that such a process of moderation may very well fail eventually as its outcomes depend on political contestation both within the movement and with opposing political forces. What is described here is a context favourable to sustained moderation, not a context which inexorably leads to a specific or desired result. One major factor for the precise development of NCIPM faced by contexts defined by co-optation or assertion is the development of socio-economic factors which affect the composition of its social support base. For an NCIPM, class matters just as much as community, even though the ideological orientation of NCIPM typically does not reflect this and, in fact, segments among the NCIPM leadership may actively attempt to oppose an orientation of policy along the lines 8 The Transformation of Politicised Religion of class interest(s). A crucial component of socio-economic development in much of the region covered by this book, and especially in countries defined by crises of rent extraction (whether sustained or temporary), is the at times arrested rise of new middle- and lower middle- class strata, partially as an outcome of state-led development policies. The background of the development of NCIPM is defined to a significant extent by the transformation of the bourgeois social strata in the respective countries. It can be characterised as an incremental and at times at least temporarily arrested decline of the effendiyya features of the early post-colonial elites and the corresponding rise of other characteristics among the bourgeois strata, notably bazaari and corporate elements, though this description is far from precise enough to capture the complexities of the on-going changes within the bourgeoisies in South Asia and the MENA region. Far from being the only contenders for the political support of these new middle classes, NCIPM still have emerged as one of the major representatives of these strata and as such are likely to have an important impact on bourgeois values and world-views which may turn out to develop in a rather different way than anticipated by both Marxist- and modernisation theory- inspired approaches. From a macro-level perspective, it is the impact of NCIPM on this evolution of bourgeois values rather than on the international order which may have the most long-lasting impact on future developments. However, in contexts where these rising middle classes are absent, the rise of religion may occur without leading to powerful NCIPM, but rather to politically more restricted, perhaps even more violent challenges to the established order. The theoretical approach outlined above was originally developed by Elsenhans in the early 1990s, at the height of the fundamentalism debate (Elsenhans 1994). It was subsequently elaborated to a significant extent in a collaboration between Hartmut Elsenhans, Rachid Ouaissa and Sebastian Schwecke from 2005 and 2009, in a comparative research project on NCIPM in Algeria and India. Other contributors to this book have placed greater emphasis on different aspects, and focused on other movements belonging to the spectrum of NCIPM. In this way, they have been of immense help in providing a critical evaluation of the argument, and adding to it as well. This book is divided into four sections. Section I consists of Chapters 1 and 2 by Ouaissa and Schwecke, respectively. These chapters deal with the evolution of the two case studies (Islamism in Algeria and Hindu nationalism in India) which formed the centre of our research efforts and contributed to the elaboration of the theoretical approach. Ouaissa analyses the development of Islamism in Algeria with an emphasis on the evolution of the MSP after the end of the civil war against the backdrop of the failure of the ‘Arab Spring’ to lead to the renaissance of an Islamist movement as in Tunisia and Egypt which could use public disenchantment with the secular nationalist elites to emerge as a main contender for political power. Rather than superficially linking the failure of the MSP to an abundance of rent, his contribution examines the precise mechanisms of rent allocation which led to the participation dilemma outlined above. It was supported by a fracturing of the Islamist movement and the Algerian middle class both of which are torn between Introduction 9 conflicting interests in market (de-)regulation and participation in rent allocation in a political economy which lacks many features of a capitalist society. Schwecke’s contribution takes up the idea of the fractured middle class and its evolution in the Indian context. Based on dispersed state control over the Indian economy and beset by crises from the outset, rent allocation in India was insufficient to guarantee the continued stability of the early post-colonial socio- political order, providing a context which was relatively conducive to the rise as well as the subsequent moderation of an NCIPM. Hindu nationalism emerged as one of the main contenders for the support of a gradually consolidating middle class, in the process leading both to an imminent danger to the erstwhile notions of secular identity and state-led development and to an on-going trivialisation of Hindu nationalism itself. Section II consists of Chapters 3 to 7. These contributions add further aspects of the development of NCIPM which figure less prominently in the approaches of Chapters 1 and 2. They also deal with NCIPM in countries which were not prominently covered by our own research work, though the empirical input from these countries has significantly helped in the elaboration of the concept of NCIPM. The contributions in Section II have been grouped according to the respective ‘cultural’ area. Not all movements which turn to religion show the characteristics of NCIPM. Tétreault’s contribution to this volume (Chapter 3) discusses the social background of radical and militant Islamism in the Gulf region. There, secularism is explicitly rejected as an element of development ideology. Instead, nationalism is attenuated by counter-discourses incorporating transnational religious principles, control over which is sought by both Islamist groups and the state. Despite the emergence of middle classes in the Gulf region, the mechanisms of political contestation remain tightly linked to different social formations including tribe- and family-based groups. In turn, the prevalence of these social formations corresponds to an overwhelming dominance of the state and authoritarian state politics bolstered by a resort to religion as a legitimising force. Although they are struggling to emerge as viable contenders for political power and can at times form politically attractive allies to a variety of actors, Islamist activists in the Gulf region are fragmented participants in a political spectrum of protest movements which appear premature when comparing them to the sophisticated political forces that we characterise as NCIPM. In Chapter 4, Lübben provides a detailed account of the development of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and its ideology in the context of the rise of the effendiyya and the subsequent contestation of its pre-eminence which recently led to the establishment of an Islamist government. With a special focus on the historical development of economic thought within the MB-dominated Islamist political spectrum in Egypt, her contribution to this volume narrates the Islamist search for a pragmatic ‘Third Way’ economic programme and its various reformulations in the face of newly rising social groups and societal interests. In Chapter 5, Groc delineates the various processes, mechanisms and negotiations by which the Turkish AKP has managed not only to come to power 10 The Transformation of Politicised Religion but also to maintain and even extend this power and its position as the predominant force in Turkish politics – the only NCIPM which has so far managed to achieve such a position. In the wake of this political success, he argues, the AKP has managed to significantly shift the political discourse and, in fact, inculcated ‘a new political discourse in a new political audience’, based on a significant transformation of Turkish society and the rise of newly influential social groups after migration to the urban areas. This ‘conciliation between the religious dimension and public or political space’ still remains far from comprehensive, however, leading to a variety of problems of political management. Leaving the MENA region and turning back to South Asia, Jain in Chapter 6 presents a gloomy picture in which the BJP cannot avoid being drawn into the crisis of the secular nationalist state. For Jain, the shift towards political moderation constitutes a process of integration into a rent-dominated society. As Indian secular nationalists increasingly rely on the presence of their NCIPM challengers to justify their ideological project, the BJP needs to adapt to the secular nationalist political discourse by shedding elements of its original ideology. Jain provides a detailed discussion of the various political issues, strategies and social bases on which secular nationalism and Hindu nationalism in India are divided as well as the (at times) significant overlaps between the two movements. Across the two political spectrums, he finds a gradual decline in rigid ideological postures linked to institutional pressures, the necessity for political parties to articulate broad social interests, and the coalitional compulsions of a highly fragmented political system. In Chapter 7, Voll discusses the various problems of political management faced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after its loss of power in 2004 and the subsequent turbulent political infighting within the party and among member organisations of the ‘fraternity’ of political movements which make up the dominant strand of Hindu nationalism in India, the so-called Sangh Parivar. Dissidence within the party extends to programmatic issues as well as factional conflicts but parts are closely linked to a conflict over the extent towhich the party and the larger movement should adapt to the changing interests of the Indian middle classes, in the process becoming a party ‘corrupted’ by its proximity to political power. These various struggles which are taking place within the BJP, he argues, ‘will decide if the BJP can reinvent itself’ as a major contestant for political power. One of the original aims of our work on NCIPM has been to deal specifically with the self-representations of NCIPM. Section III serves to add the voice of representatives of the respective movements. The contributors, Abdelkrim Dahmen of the Mouvement de la Société pour la Paix (MSP) and Rajvir Sharma of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), were of immense help in providing information on the Algerian Islamist and Indian Hindu nationalist movements and in establishing contacts for our research at both the local and the national levels of Algerian and Indian politics. Both contributors were instrumental in our research activities from an early stage and we wish to take this opportunity to express our gratitude for all their efforts. Their respective contributions in Chapters 9 and 10 Introduction 11 discuss the two movements’ programmes, ideologies and strategies as well as their historical development and in this way provide an additional level of analysis to the overall argument developed in this book. Finally, the argument developed in this volume concludes in Section IV consisting of Chapter 11 by Hartmut Elsenhans. Elsenhans goes beyond the case- study approach followed by the other contributors to discuss the macro-level reasons for and ramifications of the rise of NCIPM in the MENA region and South Asia and the newly emerging international system. These in turn shape their global positioning and will, at least to some extent, be shaped by their emergence and their influence in their respective societies. Elsenhans depicts a world system of ‘diverse cultural identities that will not clash’, an international order which will be largely conservative, yet at the same time highly stable and in which (mostly) bourgeois movements based on local interpretations of both cultural identity and pragmatic ‘Third Way’ approaches will play a major role. This page has been left blank intentionally SECTION I This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 1 Algeria’s Islamists in Times of Political Change – An Exceptional Case?
Rachid Ouaissa1
Introduction
The events spurred by the self-immolation of the young Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi in December 2010 have fundamentally changed the political landscape throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Tunisia, where the latest developments have their origin, is walking the difficult path towards a more democratic system, led by a coalition comprised of a moderate Islamist party and two centre-left, secular parties. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, while still struggling over power with the military, has also entered the same path. In Syria, the armed conflict between the regime and the opposition aggravates and increasingly affects Turkey and Lebanon as neighbouring countries, while in Libya the future development is still marked by uncertainty despite the largely peaceful elections to the General National Congress on the 7 July 2012. The monarchies in Jordan and Morocco were forced – although to different degrees and in different ways – to make concessions to the pressures from the street. Even the Arab Gulf countries felt the political repercussions of the uprisings, with Bahrain becoming a hotspot for popular unrest. Yet, at first glance, it appears that only in Algeria things have not changed despite frequent news about demonstrations and social unrest in Algiers and several medium and smaller sized towns throughout the country. Other than in Tunisia or Egypt, no broad popular movement has emerged demanding political change and the resignation of the political elite. Most surprisingly, the success story of moderate Islamists being elected into government in many of the Arab change states has not been repeated in Algeria. On the contrary, the past election for the country’s national assembly on 10 May 2012 resulted in significant losses for the moderate Islamist party MSP (Movement of the Society for Peace) which had been part of the ruling coalition since 1996. The ‘Alliance de l’Algérie Verte’ (Alliance of the Green Algeria), which the MSP formed with two smaller Islamist parties to enter the ballot, gained 48 seats – four less than the MSP alone had won in the previous elections in 2007. Cleavages and dissensions troubled the party even before the
1 I thank Kerstin Fritzsche, Berlin, for research support. 16 The Transformation of Politicised Religion elections brought new momentum, enhancing the party’s political marginalisation and bringing it close to the brink of splitting into its various fractions. The objective of this chapter is to explore the reasons behind the internal struggle within the MSP and to provide an answer to the question why, in contrary to other Islamist parties in the region, the party failed to profit from the political and social dynamics spurred by the Arab Spring. Much has been written over the past months shedding light on the exceptionalism of the Algerian case (for example, Achy 2012, Holm 2012). The strong political and economic role of Algeria’s military as well as the ability of the state to assuage popular unrest by the means of its oil wealth has been a frequently offered explanation. What is more, Algeria’s specific historical experience is viewed as an obstacle to popular discontent developing into a strong protest movement that might provide an electoral basis for moderate Islamists: in 1991, a time of economic decline and political unrest, the Islamist FIS (French acronym of Islamic Salvation Front) gained a sweeping victory in the first round of the parliamentary elections. The cancellation of the electoral process by the military and the dissolution of the FIS led to more than a decade of bloody civil war, which is deeply engraved in the collective memory of the Algerian people. These explanations about Algeria’s ‘resistance’ to the Arab Spring and the weakening of the MSP contain strong arguments. However, this chapter aims to illuminate both these explanations by placing them in a theoretical context. I argue that the so-called Arab Spring is the result of the failure of the state classes in power to provide the political, social and economic justice they originally promised. Furthermore, the participation of Islamist parties in the governments of rentier societies leads to programmatic conflicts within the party and fosters the fragmentation of the Islamist spectrum. The Algerian MSP is a showcase of this argument. The ‘participation dilemma’ (Ouaissa 2008a) that the party faces is based on two structural factors: first of all, the constituency and supporters of Islamist parties are extremely heterogeneous as the party’s discourse allows for the mobilisation of broad and diverse segments of society. The schism which has developed within the MSP after more than ten years in the ruling coalition demonstrates the heterogeneity of the middle classes that the party mobilised. Two different segments of the Algerian middle classes can be identified: On the one hand, the party cadres which are willing to join strategic alliances with the reformist part of the state class; and, on the other hand, the market-oriented middle class which consists of pious entrepreneurs that are in favour of state regulation but who also demand a role for markets. The first group rallied behind Amr el Ghoul and Bouguerra Soltani, the second group, the pious entrepreneurs behind Mnasra. Secondly, the political behaviour of the middle classes is dependent on the rent-seeking strategies of the ruling state class. Due to a lack of capitalist structures which would allow the development of a market-oriented and politically emancipated middle class, the state’s strategies targeting the middle classes are directly reflected in the internal conflicts of the Islamist parties. Indeed, the possibilities for economic growth based on the market and profits earned under conditions of competition are limited in Algeria. The socialist attempt to restructure Algeria’s Islamists in Times of Political Change – An Exceptional Case? 17 the Algerian economy via state planning following independence failed because of inefficiencies in translating actual achievements made in targeting investment spending into increases in productive capacity. Also, because of a reliance on sophisticated imported technology the effects on employment were limited and, as a consequence, so too was any transformation of the marginalised masses into regularly employed workers with social and political negotiating power. Only such a transformation would have led to an expansion of the internal mass market. The transformation of the social and economic structure into a mass consumption society on the basis of which accumulation and even the local production of technology could have been launched did not take place. On the other hand, the immense earnings derived from the export of hydrocarbons, oil and gas kept the exchange rate for the Algerian currency at levels where most [export oriented] industrial activities in Algeria were internationally uncompetitive. State spending and the increasing circulation of oil money triggered a stratum of nouveau riches which detractors and Western analysts described as bourgeoisie. The lack of dynamism in the local economy and of non-oil exports made these new middle classes dependent on the state. The constitution and the degree of intensity in the opposition between the two tendencies within these middle classes as well as their relations with the state class and other classes are largely determined by the amount of rent available. Rent allows the dominant state class to develop alliances with groups inside the discontented middle classes and to destroy the cohesion of these rivals when the state class considers them to be dangerous. Here, rent is also used to give credibility to promises made by the state class to enlarge the potential number of beneficiaries. As long as this promise is believed, the exhaustion of rent due to unproductive spending will not lead to an intensified cohesion among the middle classes in their opposition to the state class, or the search for allies in other more disinherited classes. When this promise is no longer credible, the rising middle classes tend to behave like a textbook bourgeoisie, at least in the political realm. In the Algerian case, however, in times of crisis the availability of huge amounts of rent made the state class capable of, at least temporarily, buying off the resistance of the lower classes.
The Rise of Moderate Islamism in the Middle East and North Africa
The instrumentalisation of religious values or of ethnic feelings of belonging – including the activation of existing cultural structures – is typical of deficient capitalist structures, either because of the failure to empower labour through high levels of employment or of the bourgeoisie through high levels of profits earned through investment spending. Such a configuration is normal in the case of the transition to capitalism or during capitalist crises. It is not, however, a sign of typical Islamist culture or characteristic of Middle East and North African countries, whereas it can be observed in a large variety of underdeveloped countries which succeeded in initiating industrial transformation but without the 18 The Transformation of Politicised Religion successful empowerment of labour (cf. Elsenhans in this book). Similar cases were documented in the earliest instances of the transition to capitalism in nineteenth century European development and in terms quite comparable to current critics of the new cultural identitarian movements (Brunschwig 1947). In order to understand the development of Islamist movements in the MENA region and their transformation into political parties, these movements need to be analysed within a historic and global socio-economic context. The ascent and decline of the middle classes in the region has significantly influenced social and political structures in the region since the middle of the nineteenth century (Watenpaugh 2006). Due to the lack of capitalist structures which prevented a direct confrontation between labour and capital, the socio-economic interests of the middle classes shifted to the religious sphere (Elsenhans 2011b). The rise of the Salafi movement since the middle of the nineteenth century, the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1930s, and the formation of so- called fundamentalist movements since the mid-1980s were the results of such a transformation of the middle classes. Edmund Burke understands the socio-economic movements with cultural and nationalist influences as the result of three massive structural changes (Burke 1988: 27): first of all, modernisation spurred by the Tanzimat reforms during the Ottoman Empire which inevitably led to a clash between a reform-oriented state bureaucracy and local elites. Eager to maintain their traditional rights and economic structures, peasants and artisans supported those opposed to the state. The second major transformation lies in the inclusion of the Middle East in the global economy with its expanding capitalist powers. The new economic orientation of the region towards exports led to the development of a new urban middle class whose economic well-being was directly dependent on Europe. At the same time, this new orientation led to the disempowerment of peasants and artisans by a comprador bourgeoisie with high earnings because of its access to foreign exchange and Western products which could be bought with these earnings. Finally, the third major factor for social change in the region was European colonial rule (Burke 1988: 26). According to Lapidus, the rise of religious movements can be understood as a result of the deformation of the original social, economic and political structures in the region caused by internal and external factors which, however, did not lead to a transformation of capitalist development into self- sustained growth. Changes in rural agrarian structures spurred the decline of the former and the development of new elites. This explains the heterogeneity among groups that revolted and which mobilised religious leaders, farmers, artisans as well as local notables and Ottoman janissaries (Lapidus 1997: 450). The rise of the state classes was the response triggered by the failure to develop – as was the case in Asian and African countries during colonialism, as well as in non-colonised countries which remained open to the globalised economy of the late nineteenth century. Their own failure to develop – the so-called crisis of the Third World state in the early 1980s and the Third World debt crisis – created new rival forces so that the rise of today’s Islamist movements is caused, on one hand, Algeria’s Islamists in Times of Political Change – An Exceptional Case? 19 by the failure of the state class to defeat underdevelopment using a rent-based development model, and, on the other hand, by the crises of global ideologies, in particular Arab Nationalism. These movements are predominately made up of middle classes (Bayat 1998: 157) who were the former clientele and most often organic clientele (Elsenhans 1981) of the state class and the development state, respectively. Their social advancement had been definitively blocked. Due to the development path taken in the 1960s and 1970s, the distribution of rent for mass education, free medical care, as well as support for private investment by the state, a broad middle class developed in the countries of the MENA region – as was the case in many other development states. Decolonisation and economic development, as well as import substitution, led to an explosive growth of the middle classes in the MENA region (Watenpaugh 2006), which, however, was based on state spending, infrastructure and social services, whereas employment in private manufacturing activities grew more slowly. Aside from direct co-optation by the state class by providing different opportunities for advancement through mass organisations, parties and the bureaucracy, a large public sector offered a channel for upward mobility. The state class in Algeria achieved remarkable social improvements by making use of rent derived from oil. The creation of employment, rising incomes and purchasing power, low prices for consumer goods (underpinned by state subsidies) and free health care and education, all helped to foster the development of a broad urban middle class (Bayat 2002: 9). Following the decline of the world oil prices in the early 1980s the economic crisis in the MENA region also peaked by the end of the decade. Bread riots, which had already occurred occasionally since the early 1980s, became more frequent and reached major cities and urban centres. The protests developed increasingly into politicised social movements, supported by Islamist groups and organisations which were no longer limited to underground activities as in the 1970s but increasingly captured public spaces and discourses. The crises of the rentier state also led in turn to the decline of those distinct distribution strategies for securing loyalty in many of the more populous oil countries. Algeria was a leader in this process, as the state class reacted to the inefficiencies of the state- led process of industrialisation by various attempts to reorganise the economy following the Western belief in privatisation. It did not succeed because it was not able to launch small scale industrial production on the basis of its own expanding internal mass market. Because of this failure, the October 1988 unrest initiated major political changes. The Algerian state class reacted to the crisis with formal political liberalisation as did all state classes which had lost the financial resources derived from exports since the early 1980s (characterised by a decline in the terms of trade for virtually all raw materials).The fall of the Berlin Wall also contributed to the decline of the state classes in the South. Aside from changes in the constitution and the organisation of elections, political parties were also permitted and came into existence, including those with religious motivation. In this way, the different Islamist movements developed more and more into parties 20 The Transformation of Politicised Religion which tried, on all levels, to exploit their potential for political participation. In these circumstances, political Islam offered a new channel for social protest. Islamist movements are often described as platforms for the poor and marginalised. However, even limited sociological analyses (cf. Losurdo 2003: 8; Narli 2003) show that they are predominately urban movements which rarely recruit their followers among the rural, poor and illiterate segments of the population. Their bases among the poor are the uprooted plebeians which were also feared by the late colonial powers as a potential threat to the existing order, especially in Algeria and during its liberation war. Indeed, the literature speaks of a ‘coalition of losers’, which comprises segments of the bourgeoisie, proletarianised state employees, industry proletariat, underemployed intelligentsia, notables, agrarian- capitalists and students (see, for example: Djabi 1998; Ayubi 1980; Krämer 1986: 106; Ibrahim 1996). This literature remarks that the success and the fortune of the Islamists are not based on the mobilisation and inclusion of the lower classes, but rather on their ability to create a synthesis between the lower classes and the middle classes in revolt (that is, pious middle classes). The Islamists cultivate a radical discourse that mobilises the frustrated lower classes. At the same time they advocate middle class-oriented economic programs which present potential upward mobility for the middle classes (Clark 2004), as did all the petty bourgeois movements which had hitherto mobilised Fanon’s ‘wretched of the earth’. With their integration into the Islamist movement, the Algerian middle classes hoped to force the ruling state class to launch reforms while the lower classes insisted on the removal of the corrupt ruling elites, if necessary by means of force (Pelletiere 1995: 33). The secular state claimed to work on behalf of the poor when it kept the rising middle classes from getting too larger a share of the cake. Now, the middle classes could capitalise on their previous opposition to the state class and as such they needed an ideology which discredited the claims of the state class with its reference to secular Western socialist ideologies and to the state class’ weakening of private property rights. In doing so, the middle classes could secure their own privileges. In her analysis of the activities of Islamist charity organisations in Egypt, Jordan and Yemen, Janine Clark (2004) discovered that moderate Islamist groups secure their support by applying two different strategies: they establish horizontal relationships with the middle classes and vertical clientelistic (patron-client) relations with the lower classes. In addition, Clark observed that relief actions and services targeted the middle classes much more than the lower classes. This led her to the conclusion that charities such as hospitals and schools were primarily established for the middle classes. In this way, the Islamist movements offer a receptacle for the frustrated lower classes and a bureaucratic apparatus in their different organisations creating opportunities for advancement of the marginalised middle classes (Bayat 2002: 24). For example, unemployed university graduates found employment in hospitals and banking. Finally, during times where the state withdraws from providing its welfare duties, these movements create a parallel rentier system par excellence (Müller 2002: 126–9). However, the high degree of political and sociological heterogeneity Algeria’s Islamists in Times of Political Change – An Exceptional Case? 21 among their supporters results in diametrically opposed political expectations. Therefore, Islamist movements have tended to develop into modern political parties and face failure or separation into adverse groups.
The Evolution of Algeria’s Islamist Movement
The development and rise of the Islamist movement in Algeria can be traced back to the colonial period. From 1830 up until the 1940s religious movements dominated the struggle against the colonial power. Aside from the famous rebellion of El Amir Abdel Kader in western Algeria, several uprisings were initiated by religious leaders in alliance with local notables and merchants in different regions of Algeria. A thorough analysis of the different revolts in Algeria since the middle of the nineteenth century is provided by Sivers (1988). He compared the role of religious leaders in regions with complete agrarian self-sufficiency with regions with only partial self-sufficiency. His analysis showed that in particular inthe latter, so to speak, market-dependent regions such as the mountainous region of Kabylia and in desert areas, the religious actors had the greatest capacity to mobilise the population. The swamping of local markets by French products as well as the protection of transport routes consolidated such alliances between farmers, land-owners and religious leaders. Following the turn of the century, the ideas of the reformist Salafiyya reached North Africa, and Algeria in particular. The ideas of Muhammad Abduh, al-Afghani and Rashid Rida influenced North African students which spent some time in the Arab East. After graduating from religious institutions there, the students returned and spread the ideas of the reformist Salafiyya. The movement had three main objectives: first, to push back the influence of the Sufi orders, to foster the Arab and Islamic education and to strengthen the cultural and national Algerian identity. One of the main figures of this new Islamic awareness was Abd al-Hamid Ibn Badis, who founded the Algerian association of the ulama in 1931. At the same time, the politics of ‘assimilation’, that is, the eradication of Islam and the Arab language from Algeria and the transformation of Algerians into either Frenchmen or foreigners in their own country, and the re-orientation of the economy and education system led to a rapid restructuring of Algerian society. The old non-capitalist segment of landowners and therefore the traditional religious entrepreneurs were deprived of their power in favour of a new European- educated urban class. What followed from this was the demand for change; for equal rights without abandoning one’s own cultural identity, especially in family law (Hourani 2000). The global economic crisis of the 1930s with its crash in prices for raw material amidst a rapidly deteriorating land-labour ratio for the increasingly landless and jobless Algerian rural population, as well as World War II clearly rendering France as no longer a great power (defeat by Germany and liberation by the Anglo-Saxon powers, facts which were highly visible in Algeria from 1942 onwards) led to an increasing politicisation of the rising classes. The 22 The Transformation of Politicised Religion graduates of the French School demanded access to higher positions in the French administration. In the literature, this group is described as ‘évolués’ (LeTourneau 1962, from the French word ‘évoluer’ meaning ‘to evolve’ or ‘to progress’). The first Maghrebian political party ‘Etoile Nord Africaine’ was founded in France (it existed previously but without a political presence in Algeria until the middle of the 1930s). Its leader was Messali El Hadj, initially a communist who drew upon a broad base of support among North African workers in France. In 1954, the National Liberation Front (FLN) was founded, which viewed armed struggle as the only possibility to gain independence from French colonial rule. Historically, this radical nationalism succeeded only because the FLN managed to integrate the marginalised petty bourgeoisie and the rural, often landless, peasants into a new mass organisation. After decolonisation, a state class took power, legitimised by its historical role as organisers of the national liberation war and the distribution of rent. The FLN as the only political party and the army ALN (National Liberation Army) were the two organs of power which were legitimised by the war of liberation, while the Algerian state class monopolised all spheres of articulation of autonomous social forces (symbolic, cultural) as well as the economic sphere on the basis of appropriating European property (for example, the nationalisation of the oilfields in 1971), used increasing oil rent for ambitious industrialisation programs. In the context of this process of monopolisation, religion became an element in the sphere of state power and merged with the official ideological discourse. Islam as the ‘religion d’Etat’ was written into the constitution and programmes of the young Algerian state. At the same moment, Islam became a vehicle of Algerian identity and a central element of the state-directed social integration (‘Vergesellschaftung’). Under the influence of a new Marxist elite, President Ben Bella pursued a clear policy of secularisation and modernisation. Nonetheless, he used religion as a means to successfully implement his reforms. Therefore, Islam was not considered as contradictory to a social, agrarian and cultural revolution. In this period, however, the religious wing of the FLN was almost completely marginalised. The ulama protested against the socialist path the country had entered, in particular against agrarian reform. Under Boumedienne (1965–1978), political Islam was proposed as a means to integrate a coalition for social and economic reform. The government continued its economic policy of collectivisation and state guided socialism, but gave the Islamist wing of the FLN control over areas such as education and culture in order to weaken the Marxists and to gain support from the party’s conservatives for the agrarian revolution. The ulama, too, were co-opted into power, largely on the basis of gratitude for their support of Boumedienne during the coup against Ben Bella in 1965. Frégosi (1995) described the co-optation of the ulama as follows:
The rapprochement of the two systems was mainly the result of a tactical alliance between the military and the religious whose interests converged. In exchange for their support of the coup d’Etat, the conservative ulama hoped for a change Algeria’s Islamists in Times of Political Change – An Exceptional Case? 23
in direction for the revolution, one that was more in accordance with their religious principles, as well as gaining control over key sectors such as education and culture. On the other hand, by broadening the social base of his coalition, Boumedienne aimed at deploying the ulama as possible intermediaries, which in the long run could be mobilized to implement his socio-economic concept. (Frégosie 1995: 105)
Under Boumedienne, the religious institutions were strengthened, but they remained under the rigid control of the state. The socialist president exploited religion in order to legitimise his power, but also in order to gain broader acceptance for his development policy. Thus, in the 1970s and the early 1980s, imams preached in their Friday sermons about the success and importance of the agrarian revolution and industrialisation. As in colonial times, the official discourse came directly from the ministry of religious affairs. There was only one Islam, that of the state. Under President Chadli, religious education was implemented on all levels of the educational system. Moreover, the five-year-plan (1980–1984) scheduled the construction of 160 mosques and madrasas (religious schools), the creation of 5,000 positions for teachers in religious education and the foundation of 26 Islamic centres. The presence of religion in the media was expanded, in particular through radio and television. In 1984, a new family law influenced by the Sharia was enacted (Lamchichi 1989). Since the early the 1980s, militant Islamist students at the universities had been used to oppose the Berber movement. This was only possible as President Chadli increasingly diverged from the socialist political course of his predecessors. In addition, the ulama gained further satisfaction following the government move to intensify the Arabisation of Algeria by bringing in additional teachers from Egypt and the Near East. The rise of Islamism and the state’s toleration and promotion of religion in all sectors and on all levels occurred at the same time as the first signs of economic crisis,2 the failure of the development model, and the crisis of rents due to the oil shock, whereas many authors view the failure of Pan-Arabism and the defeat of Arabs at the hands of Israel (1967 and 1973) as major factors in the rise of Islamism. With the decline of oil prices in the early 1980s, the rent-based development model began to crumble. The crisis of the rentier state led to a rupture of the ‘social pact’ between the state and society and therefore the termination of the ‘pax politica’. The adoption of radical market strategies in the course of implementing home-grown IMF type austerity measures after the oil price crisis of 1986 failed due to the resistance of the middle classes. They denounced these failures but, nonetheless, promoted the market and used this to develop a different type of market interventionism, a ‘moral economy’ under nationalist and state-oriented auspices (Müller 2002). The Islamists appeared to be able to unite the ‘active forces’ of the country, the middle classes, with the large disinherited deprived
2 On the failure of the Algerian model of development cf. Elsenhans 1986 and 1989 and Ouaissa 2005. 24 The Transformation of Politicised Religion masses in a populist project not too dissimilar to the old secular nationalist project, but without the negative aspects of excessive state domination, bureaucratic abuses, corruption and authoritarianism of officeholders and lack of moral integrity in the visible daily life. This was attractive to the traditional, but slowly growing middle class of the pious entrepreneurs, to the lower ranks, as well as to the less politicised, hence more technically or science oriented intelligentsia and the underprivileged masses. The state appeared as a rapacious collector of resources to those from whom something could be collected, that is, the middle classes, as an inefficient agent of waste through incompetence and corruption to those with a higher education, and as a remote mechanism of repression through arbitrariness to all who expected support. The first radical, militant groups were created in the early 1980s inthe form of the so-called MIA (‘Mouvement Islamique Armée’ or ‘Armed Islamic Movement’). The crisis of the economy and state led to a rise in new Islamist groups at the university which were, however, very heterogeneous. In October 1988, protests led to the creation and legalisation of the FIS (‘Front Islamique du Salut’ or ‘Islamic Salvation Front’). After the bloody unrest of October 1988, the Algerian state class was forced to launch political and economic reforms which were designed to maintain, to the extent possible, the former influence of the old party FLN. The new constitution of 1989 permitted the creation of political parties including Islamist parties, and it was hoped that a very large number of parties would emerge in order to give to the FLN the role of an arbitrator between multiple rival organisations. This strategy initially failed because the Islamist camp remained relatively united – the first free elections in Algeria, the local elections of 12 June 1990, resulted in the victory of the FIS which gained 54.3 per cent of the votes cast and won the position of the mayor in 853 municipalities (55.5 per cent). For the first time, the FLN had been challenged and received only 28.1 per cent of votes (providing only 487 mayors). In December 1991, the FIS gained 47 per cent of votes (approx. three million voters) during the first round of the parliamentary elections and had already clearly won 188 of the 430 parliamentary seats. With 23 per cent of the votes, the FLN reached 16 seats in parliament. However, in many of the constituencies without an absolute majority in the first round, the results were so favourable to the FIS that its victory in the second round was a given. The newly developed Islamist parties mobilised not only the marginalised classes and the sub-proletariat with their double-edged discourse, but also broad segments of the intelligentsia, primarily engineers, agronomists and physicians. This heterogeneity became clearly visible, however, through the different levels of education among the 856 FIS mayors elected into office in 1990. Twenty per cent of the elected mayors had no formal or only primary school education, 50 per cent attended secondary school and 30 per cent had graduated from university (Djabi 1998). The FIS won the elections thanks to the ‘moderate’ nationalist wing under Abdelkader Hachani supported by the middle class, who replaced Abbassi Madani Algeria’s Islamists in Times of Political Change – An Exceptional Case? 25 after the failure of the strategy of the radical wing to topple the political order by direct confrontation which resulted in the June 1991 crisis. This moderate wing of the FIS succeeded in disciplining the party’s radical wing and consolidated its power within the FIS. However, after the cancellation of the elections in early 1992, the radical wing felt strengthened and started a determined jihad hoping for the support of the social groups which had voted for the FIS. The moderate wing under Hachani became a minority. This led to the splitting of the FIS and the victory of the jihadists under the leadership of the terrorist AIS and GIA groups.3 A process of integrating the FIS through its moderate segments and establishing hegemony over these moderate forces within their camp was blocked by the intervention of existing powers which appeared to be most discredited. The previous shift in power within the FIS in favour of the moderate wing occurred in 1991 at the party congress in Batna. It had been a victory of the middle classes over the ‘populist’ segments of the party close to the ‘wretched of the (Algerian) earth’. This middle class, that Kepel describes as the pious middle class (Kepel 2000: 255–74), consisted of small and medium-sized private businessmen, local notables, students and graduates as well as small merchants who felt well represented by the moderate wing of the FIS. They did not aim for markets with full economic competition, but nonetheless they preferred denationalisation, a withdrawal of the state from everyday management of the economy and a weakening of the powerful state-owned enterprises, which were indeed comprehensive holdings which as a single entity covered whole branches of economic activity. Disempowered segments of the state class and actors with higher levels of education also belonged to the pious middle classes seeking participation in the distribution of rents. They rebelled against the state which was no longer able to co-opt these classes. This behaviour explains why these actors were not interested in the complete removal of rents despite the progress of privatisation: unlike the marginalised ‘hittists’ of the GIA (the unemployed youth, who were leaning at the walls which means ‘hit’ in Arabic), the pious middle classes had a lesser although fair chance of profiting from the allocation of rent. The larger the rents, the more probable that the cooperation of the pious middle classes could be secured and that its ideological influence within the Islamist camp would be assured. This perspective emerged after the Algerian state had recovered economically due to rising oil prices and loans from the West. Benefiting from wider support, the army eventually defeated the Islamists because the middle classes had distanced themselves from the FIS. This was facilitated by middle class-oriented programmes by the state class, which were financed by rising oil rents and foreign aid. In addition, the economic programmes of the mid-1990s were a manoeuvre by the regime to win back the middle classes (Mouffok 2001). In addition, the state class succeeded in the co-optation of moderate Islamists into rent-seeking structures, e.g. by inviting the moderate MSP (‘Mouvement de la Société pour
3 AIS: Armée Islamique du Salut; GIA: Groupe Islamique Armée. 26 The Transformation of Politicised Religion la Paix’ – Movement of the Society for Peace) into the Algerian government, which hoped to initiate a top-down islamicisation of Algerian society through its presence in the national parliament. As a result, the behaviour of Islamist movements and the division of power between their moderate and radical wings is influenced by the state’s strategies to win over broad segments of society. These strategies, however, depend on financial resources and therefore on the availability and absolute amounts of rents, in particular. They allowed initially weak parties outside the FIS to gain momentum. Even before the dissolution of the FIS, several moderate Islamist parties had been created in Algeria as a counterweight to the FIS. In 1990, Mahfoudh Nahnah founded the MSP, a branch of the international Muslim Brotherhood (Hamladji 2000). The party has close ties with the AKP, the Turkish ruling party, which it regards as a model. The MSP aims at reforming society on the basis of leading the active forces, the committed notabilities in society – neither the state, nor the uneducated masses – replicating the previous role of the effendiyya, those who were respected in traditional Arab society. In 1997, the party won 69 seats in the national assembly and became the third largest political power in parliament. Since 1996, the party was the junior partner in the government coalition. In 2002, it won only 38 seats in the national elections; in 2007 the party was back to 51 seats. Furthermore, the MSP controls Algeria’s largest student association (‘Union Générale des Étudiants Libres’, UGEL) and one of the most powerful charity organisations (al-Irshad wal-Islah). The party maintains good relations with the Algerian bourgeoisie as the Algerian social scientist Tasadith Yacine has remarked:
Hamas embraces a middle class from the business world (tradesmen) but also the Arabist technocrats and scientific elite. Hamas’ social base distinguishes itself diametrically from that of the FIS sphere of influence. Contrary to the FIS, which extols social justice, Hamas bases its strategy on order and thus respect for the ‘prince’. (Yacine 1998)
Like the secular nationalists, the moderate Islamists can maintain a heterogeneous social base of support only if they are capable of promoting economic growth which creates profit for the middle classes and jobs for the marginalised. After 14 years of participation in coalition governments as a junior partner, the prospects seem bleak, both for the MSP, and for the secular parties (cf. Abdelkrim Dahman in this volume).
Re-orientation or Decline of the Algerian Islamist Movement?
The chances of success for moderate Islamists depended not just on their capacity to achieve incorporation into the ‘ruling family’ – the group of parties which support the president and the powers behind him – but also, and especially, the army with an officer corps which behaves as an elitist order. Through their incorporation into Algeria’s Islamists in Times of Political Change – An Exceptional Case? 27 the dominant coalition the moderate Islamists need to restructure the economy in order to achieve growth. In this endeavour the positions of the moderate Islamists, shaped by notions of moral economy, were not sufficient. The rise of segments within the state class that were ready to negotiate with the middle classes is confirmed by the co-optation of the moderate Islamist MSP. By doing so, President Zeroual intended to win the middle classes for his own faction within the state class. For example, during the elections of 1997, the MSP abstained from nominating its own candidate in El Oued, a city in southern Algeria, and instead supported a candidate without party affiliation, Mehri, one of the richest men in Algeria and owner of the country’s largest brewery. The co-optation functioned as a way to curtail violence but also as an instrument to consolidate the segment within the state class that was ready for dialogue with the middle classes as their interests converged with those of the rising middle classes (Kepel 2000: 274). With this strategic alliance with the moderate Islamists, Zeroual aimed at the political isolation of the FIS as well as of the laic opposition parties in order to present his alliance as the only alternative. According to Martinez (1997: 502), the marginalisation of the FIS was fostered by two central processes: primarily the dynamics stemming from the presidential elections which led to a shift in the constituency of the FIS in favour of Mahfoudh Nahnah’s MSP, and secondly, the military defeat of the AIS which could not sustain the double attack of state security forces and the GIA guerrillas. By the MSP’s integration into the government of Ahmed Ouyahia, a major demand of the Islamic bourgeoisie was satisfied: the impact of the jihad by determined emirs on their economic activities was removed. In her analysis of the rise of the MSP, Noura Hamladji (2000) concluded that the party was fostered both by the military leadership – which was involved in a fierce conflict with the jihadi Islamist fractions – as well as the political leadership of Algeria. The members of the MSP belong to the generation that experienced the crisis of the rentier state and therefore had no interest in a conflict with the state and its security forces but rather hoped for better opportunities of advancement. Therefore, they were willing to accommodate the ruling elite. The capital of the MSP members consisted in their level of education, while their objective was secure income and prestige. Various examples from Asia, but also from the late industrialisers of the nineteenth century (Germany, Japan and Russia) already proved that the middle classes are not necessarily the basis for the development of a democratic political culture. Quite often new middle classes have no interest in democratisation but prefer a state-led transition to capitalism. They view the strengthening of the state’s functions as key prerequisite for their social ascent and increasing status (Schwinn 2006: 203). This tendency to prefer an accommodation with existing powers of which there are only a few historical examples of a middle class overcoming – and then always in alliance with lower classes which was compelled by the rejection of any compromise by those in power either as feudal classes or as state classes – is stronger in the today’s rent-based societies of the South, as there are more resources available for striking a compromise between the powers in place and new aspirant 28 The Transformation of Politicised Religion classes. As a result, the dynamism of the Algerian middle class remains limited. State welfare, free education and medical care spurred the development of broad middle classes which emerged from moderately endowed rural elites who moved to the urban centres where rents were accessible on the basis of employment or participation in the rent-financed modern economic sector. In these cities one major element of the emergence of a homogeneous profit- oriented middle class of entrepreneurs did not exist and could not emerge, that is, rapidly expanding markets for machine-manufactured products demanded in large quantities so that their mechanised production became possible. Due to climatic factors in the Arab countries and the import strategies of the ruling class, subsistence agriculture is not sufficient to support the rural population. The overpopulation in urban centres meanwhile increases the need for importation of foodstuffs and other consumer goods. Without an elastic supply of locally produced food with additional rural jobs and incomes, there is little opportunity for expansion of either the market for locally produced simple manufactures or for local machine production, and therefore little opportunity for locally generated profit. Because of the existence of resources in the form of rent and the absence of disciplining factors such as market competition and pressure for rising incomes from low income classes as the consequence of the scarcity of labour, the emerging middle classes need power and connections in order to have access to resources. In contrast to the profit-oriented middle classes, familiar from an industrialised Europe, the Algerian middle classes are rent-oriented. The newly emergent middle classes who are only marginally employed are not market-oriented and market-influenced in the sense of Weber (1985). For the Algerian case, I call these middle classes ‘Trabendo middle classes’ (Ouaissa 2012). They consume more than they produce and their social status is dependent on the ruling elite’s allocation of surplus for consumption. These middle classes are not the result of consumption based on production but of consumption financed by rents. Therefore, they can only be called middle classes due to their habitus and cannot be mobilised against the ruling elite (Bourdieu 1998). In Algeria, the most privileged segment of the new middle classes have always hoped for, and continue to hope for, access to public services and the bureaucracy dominated by the francophone elite. The analysis of the economic program of the MSP and a survey among members of the party revealed that since its inclusion in government it now calls less frequently for economic and political liberalisation. The MSP in accordance with the Algerian state was against the creation of a free trade zone between Algeria and the European Union within the framework of economic liberalisation fostered by the Barcelona Process. After the MSP was co-opted into power, its members profited directly and indirectly from the distribution of rents which is contrary to economic reforms and the establishment of a market economy. The new rentiers opted for a careful economic opening (infitah), however without removing the state’s control over the economy – which corresponded to the position of those in power. The new rentiers separated from the lower classes – Algeria’s Islamists in Times of Political Change – An Exceptional Case? 29 albeit from the more respectable segments among them – but tried to keep their loyalty by allocating rents in form of charity organisations and the creation of a solidarity fund (stipulated in their electoral programme) and thus to clientelise the lower classes (El Watan 2008). Due to the relatively high incomes among a proportion of MSP members, many are in favour of the privatisation of the education and health systems. However, they are against the privatisation of the overall economy, uncontrolled foreign investments in Algeria and ‘total’ liberalisation. Indeed, they plead for a stronger role of the state in the economy. In the Algerian government, the party played the role of the guardian of Islamic morality and enforced cosmetic laws in order to keep its credibility in the eyes of its constituency. For example, the broadcasting of ‘Star Academy’ was abolished by presidential decree.4 The interruption of the evening news for the call to prayer (adhan) or the prohibition of wine imports to Algeria also belongs to such cosmetic legislative initiatives. The position of the MSP concerning the revolts in Kabylia in 20015 and its support for a third presidential term for Bouteflika (despite the constitutional limitation to two terms in office) are further evidence that the new middle classes in the party are more interested in access to rent allocation than in democracy and political liberalisation. However, the co-optation of certain groups is only possible in times of high rents when the state class is economically as well as politically strong and can co-opt a junior partner to increase its political legitimacy. In times of low rents, when the leeway for allocation is reduced and conflicts between different segments of the state class intensify (Ouaissa 2005), it remains to be seen whether parties such as the MSP turn once again towards their former base among the marginalised within society. After the FIS failed to manage the conflicts between the different mobilised classes, the parliamentary elections of May 2012 have now led to a split of the MSP and its political marginalisation. The FIS failed due to the fact that its moderate middle class-oriented wing was not able to discipline the lower classes. Other parties also failed in this regard, such as En-Nahda of Sheikh Djaballah, due to the rupture of the coalition between the middle and lower classes.6 En- Nahda was seen as successor to the FIS and was electorally successful in the slums of Algiers. In contrast, the MSP, as Herta Müller has rightly concluded, is the representative of the Islamic ‘bourgeoisie’, respectively the rising middle classes (Müller 2002: 103). The MSP failed in part due to its long participation in the coalition government. This led to a separation of the party from the ruling elite. The middle classes preferred to find a strategic compromise with the state class, which also explains why the Arab Spring did not occur in Algeria. While the trauma of the civil war which resulted in more than 200,000 victims does
4 This show resembles ‘American Idol’. It is broadcasted from Lebanon into the whole Arab world. 5 The MSP urged the Gendarmerie to be harder against the demonstrators in the Kabylia. 6 Interview with Hassan, responsible for the organisation of Nahda, February 2007. 30 The Transformation of Politicised Religion play a decisive psychological role, no stable alliances could have been created between the different segments of society due to the rent based structure of the economy. In fact, rents lead to a separation of the middle classes into segments: an opportunistic one that waived idealistic values in order to maintain their interests, and a segment that insisted on the cohesion of the middle classes. The failure of the MSP is also exemplary for the failure of the Algerian middle classes to realise a ‘bourgeois’ revolution of political freedom and equality and economic freedom. The party broke apart and separated into several different factions instead of creating alliances across different classes, in a way that is reminiscent of the evolution of the Algerian middle classes. The heterogeneity of the MSP is also reflected in the professional background of its members elected to the parliament. From an analysis of the 1997 parliamentary elections, Djabi found that 82 per cent of the MSP deputies were employed by the state, especially in the educational sector, while approximately 17 per cent were freelance (Djabi 1998). This heterogeneity explains the ambivalent position towards the government. The separation of the MSP indicates that there are different opportunities for utilising rents. While the most important segment of the party profits from the state’s allocation policy, the segment of pious entrepreneurs opts to use rent to create market opportunities. In the course of the Arab Spring, the contradictions and conflicts between the two segments became even more severe. In reaction to the uprisings in neighbouring countries, large amounts of money were allocated to the population. Social aid programmes valued at 20 billion euros were planned, including, among other things, interest free loans for young people. Street vendors were no longer regulated, taxes on foodstuffs were reduced, and wage increases were promised in different sectors, for example, up to 300 per cent for university lecturers and up to 110 per cent for white collar employees. These measures strengthened the segment closest to the state and weakened the pious entrepreneurs within the MSP and fostered the scission within the party. By electing Abderrazaq Mokri president of the party during MSP’s last party convention in May 2013, the market-oriented representatives of the middle class dissociated themselves from the corrupt regime of Bouteflika. The MSP under Mokri became the main oppositional actor challenging the corrupt and autocratic regime in Algeria.
Conclusion
Many recent anthropological studies (Lindholm 1996) on culture and society in Arab countries show that ‘justice’ is one of the major pillars of the political philosophy and architecture of Middle Eastern societies. The rise of political groups with a religious agenda can therefore be understood as a substitute for the failed, state-led egalitarianism (often with a socialist agenda) as they offer a new concept of justice with a religious connotation. However, due to their heterogeneous Algeria’s Islamists in Times of Political Change – An Exceptional Case? 31 support base, moderate Islamist parties are challenged by moderating contradicting interests within their party. If they fail in this process the fracturing of the party into different factions becomes a significant threat. Considering the large economic and social challenges faced by Arab countries, two scenarios can be envisaged for Algeria and beyond: on the one hand, the Islamic influenced project could be realised with a combination of market- oriented and state-led justice by strengthening labour or, in other words, by industrialising (financial capitalisation) Arab societies by specialising in branches with comparative advantages. However, in order to become globally competitive and thus to imitate the Asian model – a currency devaluation would be central. In reference to economic policy, the problem of food security needs to be resolved in order to allow for a more productive deployment of rents.7 The fundamental changes in Arab societies and economies which are implied in order to conform with such an agenda require broad societal alliances beyond the Islamist spectrum. This creates a further dilemma for Islamist actors: their religious notion of the political risks becoming marginalised or rendered banal. Indeed, if such an agenda of development proves successful, the price would likely be a shift of the religious from the public into the private sphere and thus a decline of political Islam. Furthermore, social reforms and a devaluation of the currency will likely spur criticism, especially from the right wing of political Islam (Salafiyya). An ensuing clash among Islamists would then become possible, the shadow of which already extends across Algerian society. On the other hand, an alliance between moderate and radical Islamist groups for the creation of a theocracy is not unlikely, and could lead to international isolation and broad social resistance. This scenario would, therefore, also be commandeered as a failure of moderate Islamism.
7 Cf. Elsenhans model, Elsenhans 2011d, 2013. This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 2 The Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism and the Reconfiguration of the Indian Bourgeoisie Sebastian Schwecke
Introduction
Hindu nationalism differs from the spectrum of Islamist political parties and movements in that it forms a relatively unified political actor. Its cohesion is safeguarded by the pre-eminence of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in terms of ideological direction and the dominant position of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) within the Hindu nationalist spectrum in electoral politics. Nevertheless, Hindu nationalism is far less uniform than it is often depicted to be and has changed significantly over time. It encompasses strands of thought and organisational patterns which – in the equivalent spectrum of global Islamism – have been represented by different actors. It comprises various, at times even conflicting tendencies and narratives. The currently most visible trend of its evolution, however, is related to a reconfiguration of the Indian bourgeoisie which can be traced back in its beginnings to the 1960s but became visible only much later, especially from the mid-1990s onwards, and – at present – leads to the trivialisation of Hindu nationalism in its predominant forms. Essentially, it is argued here that Nehruvian state-led development policy magnified fissures within the Indian bourgeoisie that created a master cleavage between established and rising middle strata which came to dominate Indian politics for most of the post- independence period. Hindu nationalism forms one of two major political idioms that emerged as viable challenges to the established middle classes. With the onset of economic liberalisation in the early 1990s (though its roots can be traced back to the 1970s), a gradual reconfiguration of the Indian bourgeoisie resulted in a diminished significance of this master cleavage for Indian politics which is slowly facilitating a synthesis between the two predominant strands of (bourgeois) nationalist thought in India which includes the trivialisation of Hindu nationalism. Both the process of Hindu nationalist trivialisation and its roots in changes within the bourgeoisie correspond to similar patterns of evolution in parts of the global Islamist political spectrum. Yet, the evolution of Hindu nationalism is marked by its incremental character, very much in line with the pervasive gradualism of Indian politics. It lacks distinct ruptures and external interferences which seriously 34 The Transformation of Politicised Religion affected the evolution of many Islamist movements. The gradualness of its evolution leads to an extraordinary utility for the study of long-term developments and, therefore, for the effects of changes in the political economy on the shape of a political movement.
The Secular and its Other in Indian Politics
The emergence and rise of Hindu nationalism in Indian politics is typically understood in the framework of cultural studies as the most important challenge to the secular character of the composite Indian nation. A notable exception in this regard is constituted by Gooptu’s work on the topic. Gooptu (1997) clearly links the origins of Hindu nationalism to specific class configurations, especially in the urban but not metropolitan milieus of late colonial India which were characterised by a locally predominant mercantile middle class which needed to incorporate urban lower strata into a common political project. It is not as if the specific class character of Hindu nationalism has been otherwise overlooked: In fact, there is a broad consensus on the general middle class character of the Hindu nationalist movement (Chhibber 1997) not only among academic observers but also among Hindu nationalist activists (cf. Schwecke 2011: 122–8) and their political rivals. Rather, Gooptu’s interpretation is distinguished from that of many other observers in the precise location of the Hindu nationalist constituency within the Indian bourgeoisie which goes beyond the usual description of the Brahmin-Bania-trader network. The small-town petty bourgeoisie described by her can be characterised as a relatively stagnant social stratum that perceived itself to be endangered in its social and socio-economic status by the rapid and multiple transformations characterising early twentieth century India, including urbanisation, incipient industrialisation, and increased political mobilisation of (at least in the nineteenth century) relatively passive lower strata (Gooptu 1997: 879–81). Crucially, though, this small-town petty bourgeoisie had remained relatively unaffected by the direct encounter between the colonial rulers and the independence movement, especially in the Hindi heartland and the Bombay presidency as the colonial authorities preferred to adjust to local urban power structures (Bayly 1983). While nationalist sentiments had a profound impact among the petty bourgeoisie, the everyday socio- economic and political challenges faced by it were located within Indian society. The relatively strong permeability between the Indian National Congress and the Hindu nationalist movement, once again especially in the Hindi heartland and western India (Gould 2002), points to the small ideological differences between the nationalist movement and Hindu nationalism at the local level in this period as well as to the lack of major conflicts between the two. The lack of strong electoral support for Hindu nationalist organisations in the regional elections of 1937 – held under provisions that restricted the electorate almost exclusively to the higher and mid-level income strata – does not fit with the historiographical accounts of politics The Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism 35 in late colonial urban India as far as support of Hindu nationalist sentiments is concerned. Rather than showing the marginality of Hindu nationalism at the time, the electoral results can be interpreted as a sign that the confrontation with the British was perceived by much of the Indian bourgeoisie as an issue represented by the INC while local politics included an increased (though certainly not dominant or even equal) involvement of Hindu nationalist organisation. While post-colonial developments have led to a schism between the two strands of nationalist thought and – obviously – strong opposition to Hindu nationalist sentiments remained widespread within the national liberation movement, the two alternative nationalist conceptions to some extent operated in functionally different spheres of politics in the first half of the twentieth century. The widespread interpretation of the emergence and rise of Hindu nationalism as primarily the outcome of a challenge to the secular idea of the composite nature of the Indian nation, accordingly, has to be supplemented by an analysis of the fissures within the Indian bourgeoisie which emerged as relevant cleavages only after the successful conclusion of the anti-colonial endeavour. The academic discourse on community needs to be supplemented by a discourse on class. The secular nationalist bourgeoisie which so strongly came to dominate the post- colonial Indian state encountered its very own Other in the twin class-based challenges to its primacy, Hindu nationalism and lower caste assertion.
Évolués and Upstarts
The French colonial discourse derogatively characterised the social stratum that eventually succeeded colonial power as the évolués. The term – in contrast to the more openly racist connotations of the English ‘brown sahib’ – stresses a civilizing idiom: a patronising and grudging acceptance of the increasing importance of an indigenous social stratum which had acquired status but not yet ‘sufficient’ social and cultural capital. While the British colonial discourse lacked a direct equivalent to the term, the sentiments evoked by the incipient transfer of power were hardly different. The historiography of the Indian national liberation movement tended to interpret the anti-colonial struggle as an endeavour encompassing the entire ‘nation’, in terms of a unified community rather than an agglomeration of social segments. In recent decades, however, and to a large extent in the wake of an increased focus on subalternity this interpretation has been considerably rectified. Nevertheless, subalternity implies a dichotomy in class terms between the bourgeoisie and the subalterns (or whichever terminology is used to describe the lower sections of society) in line with both Marxist and modernisation theory inspired social configurations. It therefore tends to neglect the above mentioned fissures within the bourgeoisie. The confrontation between established and rising middle class strata, however, forms one of the master narratives of post-colonial Indian society and politics. This confrontation is more often than not hidden in a discourse on community (caste 36 The Transformation of Politicised Religion or religious) which strongly corresponds to the needs of Indian political actors who seek to integrate select lower social strata into common political projects that are, nevertheless, dominated by the (rising or established) middle classes. Lower caste assertion, especially after the Lohiaite1 embrace of many of the land- owning rising agrarian castes, does not correspond to lower class assertion: Even the Dalit-centric Bahujan Samaj Party in northern India emerged to a significant extent from the mobilisation of Dalit white-collar employees (Pai 2002; 2010). Lower caste assertion is mostly related to castes in which significant caste segments benefited from post-colonial socio-economic and political developments – including agrarian reforms, industrialisation, the spread of education, state- led affirmative action, and the logic of democratic political processes. The rise of Hindu nationalism, however, was at least originally anchored in the hitherto relatively stagnant small-town petty bourgeoisie which already possessed (lower) middle class status in colonial India and comprised to a large extent upper castes. Crucially, however, both above mentioned segments of Indian society emerged as rising social strata from the late 1950s onwards and for various reasons could not be incorporated fully into the structure of India’s political economy until the advent of liberalisation policy in the early 1990s (cf. Schwecke 2011: 36–42). The modernising agenda of post-colonial Indian politics has by and large safeguarded the continuation and even extension of policies designed to facilitate the rise of these social strata – in contrast to neighbouring Pakistan. At the same time, the political process and discourse has largely been shaped by the established middle classes’ encounter with their own évolués or, for want of a better term, the upstarts of Indian post-colonial society. As in the earlier, colonial encounter the rising middle classes have often been perceived to lack sophistication and finesse – social and cultural capital – while their increasing importance needed to be incrementally and grudgingly accepted. Both variants of the twin challenges to the established middle classes – ‘casteism’ and Hindu nationalism – were by and large unable to articulate this confrontation in class terms. The inherent logic of India’s democratic political process favours the incorporation of select lower class strata into political projects dominated by the middle classes, not only for reasons of electoral arithmetic but also since one of the most important conflicts in Indian politics until the 1990s centred on a political confrontation among segments of the Indian bourgeoisie. Accordingly, the respective political ideologies of the rising middle classes turned towards the utilisation of community, rather than class, and coalesced around two of the most salient features of Indian society which for various historical reasons had already emerged as the basis for distinct political idioms: caste and religious
1 Ram Manohar Lohia was one of the leading socialist politicians in independent India. He played a major role in both the shift from lower class to lower caste politics within the socialist political spectrum in India and the establishment of anti-centrist left-right alliances between socialists and Hindu nationalists which attempted to overcome Congress predominance since the late 1960s. The Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism 37 community. Both challenged the original modernising conception of the Indian nation as espoused by Indian secular nationalism in various ways. The concept of secular nationalism was discursively better adapted to incorporate the ‘casteist’ challenge, even though the caste-wise composition of the core constituency of Hindu nationalism was undoubtedly closer to that of the established middle classes.
The Separation of Secular and Hindu Nationalism in Post-Colonial India
Hindu nationalism forms an ideology that was derived from one of the two main strands of social reform movements in colonial India, both of which attempted to modernise Indian society in order to create an Indian nation and expel foreign rule. While secular nationalism, especially in its Nehruvian variant, included a greater proclivity for adaptation to the (successful and therefore dominating) western social orders, Hindu nationalism was to a far greater extent oriented towards ideas of re-establishing Indian society’s perceived former glory – and power – by reinforcing ideas that supposedly had made this perceived Indian society strong. While this notion appears – at first glance – backward-looking, it is important to note that it constitutes a modernising instead of a reactionary political project. The distant (even mythical) past is used as a utopian guideline for a good and just social order in the distant future. This discourse has no use for the immediate past, and its policies for the immediate future are not stringently related to the utopia that defines the prospective distant future. Both strands of nationalist thought were highly distinctive in analytical terms but, at the same time, were (and to some extent still are) far less separated in everyday society and politics. While the RSS and the larger Sangh Parivar have emerged as the principal custodians of the nationalist strand of thought that turned into Hindu nationalism, their primacy in this respect is mostly due to post-colonial developments. In fact, the separation of the two strands in organised politics was still incomprehensive in the 1960s. Gandhi’s assassination and the fallout between Nehru and Shyama Prasad Mookherjee can be perceived as the first major steps towards this separation. Yet Nehru’s problems in managing the right-wing turn of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh (Gould 2002) or the role played by K.S. Munshi in preventing the collapse of the still fragile organisational structure of Hindu nationalism after the first ban of the RSS (Bhagavan 2008) show the extent to which the two strands were still organisationally interwoven in the early decades after independence. Much of the communal violence in post-colonial India until the 1980s has been associated with leaders and activists who remained outside Hindu nationalist organisations as illustrated by Brass’s work on Aligarh (Brass 2003). The often hyped role of the Indian state in promoting acceptance of the composite nature of Indian society at times barely hides underlying homogenising notions and policies which would be more in line with Hindu nationalism than the secular strand of Indian nationalist thought. 38 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
In the period of Nehru’s primacy within the Congress party the continued intermingling of the two strands was largely overshadowed by the strong focus on secular nationalist nation-building at the national level. It is also clear that Nehru pushed strongly for an exclusive orientation of the Congress towards secular nationalism and, therefore, an organisational and ideological separation of the two strands of nationalist thought. Nehru’s well documented efforts in this respect do not point to an already existing but, rather, to an emerging schism. The continuing efforts of many secular nationalist scholars and politicians to reinforce the divide between secular and Hindu nationalism play an important role in isolating Hindu nationalism, but their very necessity (in the eyes of their proponents) serves to illustrate that the schism between the two strands of nationalist thought is far less ‘natural’ than it is made out to be. It is impossible to conceive the extent to which this separation was ultimately due to efforts by the secular nationalist Congress leadership. However, if Nehru’s efforts had a significant impact, this impact only achieved a comprehensive division after his death and is clearly linked to the incremental decline of the Nehruvian social order from the mid-1960s onwards. In ideological terms, the division between the two strands of nationalist thought can be associated with Upadhyaya’s efforts to streamline and expand Hindu nationalist thought into a full-fledged ideology in the mid-1960s. With these efforts, Hindu nationalism finally acquired its position as a political counter-project against the secular nationalist conception of the Indian nation and the Nehruvian conception of Indian social order (cf. Schwecke 2011: 50–52). The ideological separation, however, is inextricably linked to the emerging class conflicts within the Indian bourgeoisie which, in turn, form just as much part of the Nehruvian legacy.
The Political Economy of Hindu Nationalism Until the Advent of Liberalisation
If the Nehruvian legacy from a history of ideas perspective can be characterised by its strong efforts to secure the secular nationalist orientation of the Indian state (and the Congress party), in terms of political economy its contribution to the post-colonial schism between the rising and the established segments of the Indian bourgeoisie is ambiguous, though just as decisive. The Nehruvian Indian state combined an educational project with regard to secular nationalism with a modernising project in terms of its developmental agenda. The cumulative impact of the Nehruvian modernising project can best be described as the proverbial glass of water which is either half full or half empty: It secured the fundament for the expansion of the Indian bourgeoisie but failed to provide the means to incorporate the newly rising social strata which aimed to find their place within the dominant Indian middle class. It also provided the means with which the newly rising social strata could be kept in check by the established middle classes, yet in doing so showed the ways by which this political hegemony could be successfully contested. By and large, the Nehruvian state set in motion a dialectic conflict The Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism 39 between the established and the rising segments of the Indian bourgeoisie which found its synthesis in the emergence of liberalisation as the principal paradigm of the Indian social order from the 1990s onwards. As mentioned above, Hindu nationalism can be interpreted as one of the twin challenges to the established middle classes by rising middle classes. The principal period of this conflict within the Indian bourgeoisie lasts approximately from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Symbolically, the twin challenges to the established middle classes in this period can be shown in the various left-right alliances against the dominant Congress party whose pervasive instability can rather be attributed to struggles for supremacy within the non-Congress political space than ideological conflicts, though the conflicts were occasionally couched in ideological terms as in the most prominent case of the splintering of the Janata Party. Hindu nationalism, in this challenge, formed the junior partner in these alliances and – accordingly – received much less scholarly attention until the Ayodhya campaign which broadly also corresponded with the re-statement of the fundamentalism paradigm by Huntington (1993) which magnified scholarly interest in ‘religious’ political movements. Hindu nationalism did not form a radical political project in terms of its political economy – notwithstanding the pervasive emphasis on its threat to minority rights (and livelihoods) in scholarly literature and the large-scale political violence it has been associated with especially towards the end of this period. Corbridge and Harriss (2000) have attributed the Hindu nationalist surge in the 1990s to an ‘elite revolt’ which sought to overcome the restrictions posed by the Indian state on these elite sections. While there are good reasons to include the rising middle classes within the category of the Indian elite, this characterisation misses the most salient point of the fissures within the Indian bourgeoisie and, accordingly, fails to identify the target of the Hindu nationalist challenge in class terms. Hindu nationalism, primarily, comprised a demand for inclusion within the framework of the Indian political economy, a larger share in the spoils which the rising middle classes perceived as their entitlement. The political economy of India until the advent of liberalisation emphasised political and bureaucratic control over state-controlled resources as the most salient route to socio-economic upward mobility. Political and bureaucratic control rested with the urban and metropolitan established middle classes, mostly through their control over the institutions of the Indian state and their advantages in terms of education. Lower caste assertion, in divergence from its Hindu nationalist twin, challenged the established middle classes directly on these accounts. It attempted to convert strength in electoral mobilisation into control over the bureaucracy and a demand for ‘social justice’ which targeted both the administration and the dominance of the established middle classes in the higher educational institutions which, in turn, decided the composition of the administrative personnel of the Indian state (Rudolph and Rudolph 1987: 54–5). Crucially, Hindu nationalism could not demand access to state-controlled resources in the same way as its primary focus, though some of its policies attempted 40 The Transformation of Politicised Religion to. The comparative advantage of its core constituency lay in its domination of the market at the local level. Its continued dominance there rested on its position in local finance, retail, and the technical professions rather than administration. In terms of education, its supporters typically maintained their status through college- level graduation in ‘bread-and-butter’ disciplines instead of striving for university- level degrees in disciplines which dominated the state apparatus. Their position on the market was threatened by lower class upward mobility and, in some localities, by Muslim economic success (Brass 2003: 200–201) at least outside areas and periods of economic stagnation. More importantly, though, it placed the rising urban middle classes in direct confrontation with an economically interventionist Indian state dominated by their betters, the established middle classes. As a political ideology, Hindu nationalism reached its mature stage in the mid- 1960s with the articulation of the concept of ‘integral humanism’ by Upadhyaya rather than with Savarkar’s alternative conception of Indian nationalism or the emphasis of the early RSS sarsanghchalaks on organisational discipline. It was through ‘integral humanism’ that Hindu nationalism emerged as a viable ideological counter-project to the Nehruvian state which incorporated socio-economic issues and stringently appealed to the interests of its core constituency. ‘Integral humanism’ emphasised de-regulation, though not always divestment. At the core of its economic conception were liberalised local market economies while it (partially) accepted the directive capacities of the Indian state at the larger national level, especially where they related to infrastructure and heavy industry (cf. Schwecke 2011: 56–7). The latter did not negatively impact the position of the urban petty bourgeoisie. On the contrary, state-led development in these sectors fitted well into the nationalist element of Hindu nationalist ideology and injected dynamic economic growth into the relatively stagnant economies of the Indian hinterland. The demand for de-regulation of the local economy was superimposed on the alternative conception of Indian nationalism first evoked by Savarkar not so much because of the latter’s inherent suitability to such a project. Rather, the association of ‘cultural nationalism’ with de-regulation was required by the preclusion of other political options: In the early years after independence – before the comprehensive establishment of the Nehruvian political economy – the realisation of urban petty bourgeois interests was still conceivable within the framework of the Congress party, an aspect which can be illustrated by the relatively large overlap between the two ideologies at the state level and below. Doubtless, participation within the dominant Congress provided a safer route for the articulation of petty bourgeoisie interest than opposition. However, with the emaciation of these strands of thought within the Congress at the height of the Nehruvian project, there was a need for an alternative. The ambiguous positioning of the Hindu nationalist movement vis-à- vis Indira Gandhi until after the imposition of the Emergency can be attributed to a lack of clarity with regard to her policies towards the local urban economies which only resolved with the strong push for centralising measures and state regulation after the 1971 elections. The Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism 41
The demand for de-regulation of the local market economies, however, did not translate into a ‘neo-liberal’ economic agenda. Instead, Hindu nationalist economic policy can best be described as a highly pragmatic agenda in which the fixed point of de-regulation of the local market economies was supplemented by moral economy and state-led development policies. In fact, Hindu nationalism – due to its discursive preoccupation with identity – was and is rather well suited to pragmatic adjustments of economic policies to changing circumstances. Apart from the emphasis on de-regulation, it typically stresses a vague perception of the common good which – in line with Hindu nationalist focus on group identity – tends to be articulated with direct reference to specific target groups. Ironically, in these references to target groups, the composite nature of Indian society is accepted to a degree which blurs the boundaries between secular and Hindu nationalism as alternative conceptions of the Indian nation. Moral economy policies obviously constitute a supplementary approach to articulate the interests of various supporting strata. Even today, when talking to Hindu nationalist politicians, both local cadres and national leaders, it is striking to see how much more detailed the descriptions of target groups for economic policies get, the more closely aligned to the Hindu nationalist movement a specific target group gets. The rise of Hindu nationalism in the 1990s necessitated a broadening in the overall outlook of BJP economic policy and the inclusion of much greater detail (see below), yet the detail in which economic interests are articulated within the party is still much greater when concerned with urban middle class social strata than, for instance, with rural or lower class strata. When talking to Hindu nationalist politicians, the ubiquitous ‘common man’ very often appears to be a salaried white-collar employee. Yet, the general pragmatism and vagueness of the Hindu nationalist economic agenda, and especially its moral economy component, served an important function: They facilitated the selective incorporation of various social strata outside the core constituency of rising urban middle classes. The Indian political economy which evolved under Nehru’s leadership comprised two contradictory elements – the ‘democratic’ rationale of numbers as well as the logic of a strong interventionist and educational state in which both the political discourse and the institutions were dominated by the elite. In order to function in a stable manner, the elite needed to be capable of ensuring sufficient mass support for its continued domination of the institutions. The Indian state created various enclaves of privilege within society for specific target groups, including the ‘labour aristocracy’ of the public sector (Rudolph and Rudolph 1987: 51; Parry 1999), which helped the established middle classes to facilitate the co-optation of select lower class strata. It also provided a structure of political and bureaucratic control over the implementation of welfare schemes which served to incorporate lower class strata into a common political project dominated by the established middle classes. As mentioned above, the logic of lower caste assertion as the preferred mode of opposition by the rising rural middle classes centred on challenging the dominance of the established middle classes within this system by the political mobilisation of numerically larger social strata. Hindu nationalism, due to the dependence of 42 The Transformation of Politicised Religion its core constituency on the market and its largely urban focus which restricted its capacity for mobilising greater numbers, needed to develop a strategy of co- optation which differed from the reliance on the state and its administration that characterised both the Congress and the centre-left spectrum of Indian politics. In the small-town milieu which comprised its area of strength, Hindu nationalism was able to draw on co-optation by market forces and, eventually, managed to create local civil society networks which buttressed its influence even in times when it failed to gain more widespread support at state-level or national politics. This pattern holds even today, as the example of the local unit of the BJP in Aligarh at a time of vastly reduced influence in the politics of Uttar Pradesh illustrates (Schwecke 2011: 109–20). There, the predominant position of its core constituency in the local market economy facilitates the co-optation of poorer sections of society through networks of both caste (primarily the two locally important Bania castes) and (Hindu) religion which generate support through employment opportunities both within the city and in the National Capital Region. This, in turn, is reinforced by Hindu nationalist influence in the local degree colleges and the closest state-level university at Agra with its various outlets in the area. Similar networks have been reported already in the late colonial period in parts of northern India (Gooptu 1997; Raman 2010), indicating a stable pattern in its areas of strength. More recently, similar developments have been reported especially from tribal areas in various parts of India (Froerer 2006). This pattern, however, remains severely restricted in spatial terms. Between the 1960s and 1990s, it led to the creation of relatively isolated Hindu nationalist enclaves throughout many parts of India which altogether failed to provide sufficient electoral strength above the municipal level. In order to generate additional support outside its urban core areas, the Hindu nationalist movement attempted to follow a discursive strategy which – while being diametrically opposed to secular nationalism in ideological terms – emulated much of its design. The alternative conception of nationalism that constitutes Hindu nationalism is certainly exclusive with regard to some of India’s religious minorities, yet it provides space for a highly composite counter project on its own. In combination with a pragmatic, target-group oriented economic agenda it served as a framework to incorporate highly diverse economic interests. At its centre, however, it lacked the strength of the control over the Indian developmental state and its resources and, accordingly, largely failed to evoke similar responses until the second half of the 1990s. The ability of the Hindu nationalist movement to co- opt lower class and rural strata into a unified political project under middle class leadership has in recent years been shown in Gujarat which is often referred to as a ‘hindutva laboratory’. The changes in the political economy which allowed the entrenchment of Hindu nationalism in Gujarat from the mid-1990s onwards (though not in most other parts of the country), however, emerged fully only after the advent of liberalisation policies. The rise of Hindu nationalism in the late 1980s and early 1990s facilitated the utilisation of these strategies there but itself was based on the incremental growth of the rising urban middle classes and a The Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism 43 reconfiguration within the Indian bourgeoisie as a reflection of larger changes in the Indian political economy.
Hindu Nationalism, the New Middle Classes, and the Political Economy of Liberalisation
The rise of Hindu nationalism is typically associated with the Ramjanmabhumi campaign in the early 1990s which, obviously, formed the most visible and most threatening aspect of it. The campaign itself (or the BJP involvement in it) has often been interpreted as a reaction to the Mandal controversy (Basu 2001; Jaffrelot 1996; Hansen 1999) – which can equally be interpreted as the symbolic height of lower caste assertion – a diversion of public opinion from the idiom of ‘social justice’ which marked the Mandal controversy. The Ramjanmabhumi campaign and the events which surrounded it certainly formed the most radical and violent phase of the Hindu nationalist movement. Its success in electoral terms is, accordingly, attributed to the shifting allegiance of upper castes from the Congress to the BJP and, at the same time, to the party’s ability to reach out to select groups among the Other Backward Classes (OBC), therefore to the inroads of Hindu nationalism into what earlier had been the mainstay of lower caste political assertion. As the third major turning point in Indian politics in the early 1990s, the liberalisation of the Indian economy, was implemented by a Congress government (though with strong Hindu nationalist support), it is referred to within this narrative as a parallel but rather unrelated development. This is in direct contradiction to the BJP portrayal of its political designs at the time as, for instance, illustrated by the preamble to the BJP election manifesto in 1991 – at the height of the Ayodhya campaign. The above mentioned narrative is certainly correct in its description of the impact of the Ayodhya campaign, yet by (largely) leaving out the aspect of liberalisation and by focusing on community (both caste and religious) as the principle variable instead of class, it closely follows the typical reading of Indian politics as based on the interplay of often hostile politicised identities. Crucially, it neglects the impact of the threefold turning point of Indian politics in the early 1990s on the evolution of the Indian bourgeoisie. The image created by this narrative is that of a surge of the base features of Indian politics which had earlier been kept in check by the leadership qualities of the most important (secular nationalist) political leaders. All in all, this is an image which is fundamentally in line with the world- views of India’s left and liberal (and secular) intellectual elite. The radicalism of the Ayodhya campaign, however, does not fit well with its overall impact of changing the nature of bourgeois control over Indian politics which, after all, had been dominated by parts of the bourgeoisie since independence. Instead of being a reactionary backlash, the threefold turning point of the early 1990s, in class terms, needs to be interpreted as the starting point for the consolidation of the Indian bourgeoisie and, therefore, the resolution or synthesis of the earlier conflict between rising and established sections among the Indian bourgeoisie. 44 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
The implementation of the Mandal Commission Report showed the extent to which the old structure of Indian politics since the 1960s had been collapsing by the early 1990s. Despite the tensions evoked by this decision, it had not anymore been possible to keep the dominant sections of the OBC from political power and after an initial surge of protest the established middle classes quickly acquiesced to the changed circumstances. The Ayodhya campaign may have been designed as a diversion in tactical terms, yet electoral studies from the early and mid-1990s show that the Mandal issue lost its potency only several years after the destruction of the Babri Masjid and, crucially, only after the issue of reservations for OBC had been adopted by all political parties (Chhibber 1999), including both the BJP and the Congress. Instead, the main cleavage after 1993 appeared to be centred on the idea of secularism. Notably, however, the ‘long decade’ of the 1990s until the defeat of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in 2004 formed a period in which the main parameters of the Indian political discourse increasingly shifted away from a community-based to an increasingly class-based discourse, especially concerning the so-called new middle classes (Fernandes 2000b). While Hindu nationalism as the political counter-project to secular nationalism lost much of its radicalism throughout this ‘long decade’ – despite the Gujarat pogrom – the new middle classes themselves adapted to a significant extent to (increasingly trivial) Hindu nationalist ideas and continued to do so even after 2004. Just as in the case of lower caste assertion, Hindu nationalism has been slowly incorporated into the dominant world-views among the new middle classes, itself changing considerably in the process. While the strategy of keeping a distance to the BJP is still salient for certain political parties, it has largely become merely a strategy, devoid of the original economic and discursive contents which necessitated the separation of the two strands of nationalist thought in India in the Nehruvian period. The surprising ease with which leading Hindu nationalist figures such as Shankersinh Vaghela or Sanjay Nirupam could shift to the Congress and become political leaders of this party in recent years demonstrates the continued permeability of the two ideological spectrums. If the early 1990s form a period characterised both by a paradigm change in Indian politics and an era of consolidation within the Indian bourgeoisie, the key to understanding these developments is the emergence of the new middle classes. The new middle classes form a heterogeneous social stratum, though some core features are identifiable: While caste still plays a major role even among the new middle classes (Fernandes 2000a), caste barriers for becoming part of this stratum have become less important. Similarly, Muslims are still disproportionally excluded from the new middle classes. However, religious community membership does not constitute major obstacles for becoming part of this social stratum in itself. Within the new middle classes as a social segment, the separation and segmentation of religious communities has typically become less visible, though there are indications that locally community still plays a role in the composition of neighbourhoods. However, it does not do so to a relevant extent at the supra-local The Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism 45 level. Increasingly, class is replacing community as the core feature of identity for the new middle classes. In terms of everyday life, there is a marked spread of metropolitan-origin lifestyle (or at least the aspiration to a lifestyle resembling it) to the Indian hinterland, marked by distinct patterns of consumption. One of the core features of the new middle classes, however, is their general reliance on the market instead of the political process for maintaining social status – corresponding to a decline in political participation (Yadav 2000) – which marks the gradual eclipse of the developmental state in its interventionist capacity, at least in ideological terms (Rajagopal 2011). The shift in outlook towards the market is accompanied by a shift from the national towards the global (Fernandes 2000a). As a consequence, the idea of the Indian nation as depicted by the new middle classes has lost much of its earlier preoccupation with the criteria for membership in the national community – whether in inclusive or exclusive terms. Instead, the perception of the Indian nation by the new middle classes is increasingly fixated with the position and status accorded to the vaguely defined entity called ‘India’ in a globalised world. This, in turn, corresponds to the needs of a social stratum which is increasingly concerned with competitiveness on a perceived globalised market (Schwecke 2011: 178). These features mark the coalescence of a distinct class identity, incrementally replacing older conceptions, of an Indian bourgeoisie in which the market is gradually replacing the state as the pivot of bourgeois society. The Indian bourgeoisie – in a broad sense – gradually loses its gens de robe attributes and becomes truly capitalist in a Schumpeterian sense. The apparent instability of Indian politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s which was characterised as a crisis of governability by Kohli (1990), therefore, does not so much constitute an ‘elite revolt’ (Corbridge and Harriss 2000) as a reconfiguration of the Indian bourgeoisie. The main driver of the master narrative of Indian politics since the 1960s – the twin challenges of lower caste assertion and Hindu nationalism over access to state controlled resources – reached its climax but, at the same time, was at least partially resolved by liberalisation. In terms of class relations, the liberalisation of the Indian economy formed a straightforward process of removing the dynamic, fast growing sectors of the Indian economy from direct political intervention and control. It therefore removed employment in these sectors, the crucial issue for the new middle classes, from political contestation. Jenkins (1999) and Bardhan (2005) show that the first attempt to liberalise the Indian economy under the Rajiv Gandhi-led government in the second half of the 1980s failed largely due to opposition from within the bureaucracy and the Congress party. Jenkins’ argument that liberalisation eventually was introduced and implemented ‘by stealth’ in a moment of externally induced crisis is certainly correct, yet it disregards the major changes accompanying Mandal and mandir in terms of the reconfiguration of the Indian bourgeoisie. While the 1980s can summarily be interpreted as the last effort by the established middle classes to prevent – even if only in the politically crucial Hindi heartland – the rising middle classes from access to the power of the developmental state, the early 1990s symbolise the eventual failure to do so. The arrival of the OBC and the urban 46 The Transformation of Politicised Religion petty bourgeoisie in positions of political power did not lead to removal of the established middle class from political power but to a new class configuration among the dominant strata of Indian politics. The capacity of the Indian state to extend the allocation of privilege to much more numerous social strata, however, was limited: The inability of the Nehruvian state to co-opt the OBC and the urban petty bourgeoisie, after all, had been one of the most important factors for the emergence of the twin challenges in the first place. Accordingly, the strategy of maintaining and advancing socio-economic status by control over the state was compromised by the very arrival of the rising middle classes in positions of power. Simultaneously, the logic of political contestation of state controlled resources had led to the increasing organisation of communities which had so far failed to benefit significantly from Indian development. These now appeared to threaten the status of both rising and established middle classes. A section of the Indian Left interpreted the early 1990s as a time of increased class struggle – a challenge of the ‘subalterns’ to the upper castes – notably in the reaction to the formation of the Samajwadi-Bahujan Samaj Party coalition in Uttar Pradesh in 1993 which prevented the formation of a BJP-led government in the state and to some seemed to embody this ‘subaltern’ challenge (Hasan 1998). The arrangement, however, did not last long and the collapse of the coalition combined with the positioning of both parties afterwards showed the continued centrality of ‘centrism’ in Indian politics. The combination of the failure of the developmental state to provide sufficient resources for securing the socio-economic status of the reconfigured Indian bourgeoisie, a perceived threat of lower class assertion, and the overall favourable inclination towards the market at least among some sections of the reconfigured bourgeoisie provided a much more conducive context for the liberalisation of the Indian economy. In removing the dynamic sectors of the Indian economy from political control, employment in these sectors was removed from political contestation. Essentially, the reconfigured Indian bourgeoisie ensured that employment in these sectors became restricted by market-based notions of ‘merit:’ the comparative advantages of the new middle classes in formal education, information, and even ‘respectable’ social behaviour. Upadhya (2007) has shown the extent to which social stratification plays a role in gaining employment in the Indian IT industry as well as the resulting reproduction of class-based hierarchies. Liberalisation facilitated the dissection of the Indian political process into two co-existing discourses: a middle class-based discourse which centres on consumption, economic reform and ‘merit’ and has largely been removed from electoral contestation by a general consensus among most major political parties, and a lower class-based discourse which still centres on community and access to state- controlled resources. The political contest in the latter has become accentuated since the 1990s since on-going liberalisation steadily weakens the state’s capacity to serve as a vehicle for upward mobility by political organisation and electoral mobilisation. It is interesting to note the extent to which the social welfare programmes and ‘special economic packages’ of the current Congress-led government have been based on an increase in deficit spending. Indian political parties, however, still need The Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism 47 to straddle both political discourses as an exclusively middle class-based political mobilisation does not constitute a feasible political strategy. In the ‘long decade’ of the 1990s, the main benefiter of the new paradigm of Indian politics was the Hindu nationalist BJP. Though the party never managed even to come close to emerging as the sole representative of the new middle classes, it managed to represent a significant section of the latter. At the same time, the Hindu nationalist discourse provided a powerful tool to mobilise support within the lower class-based political discourse and it also benefitted from the still prevalent legacy of the Congress which associated the main rival of the BJP with the old political paradigm and some of its excesses. The BJP can also draw upon the capabilities of its Sangh Parivar allies to reach out to diverse social strata, especially at the local level where these at times form major parts of the local civil society (cf. Schwecke 2011: 109–20). Apart from its own inherent ability to link the two co-existing political discourses, however, the BJP for several years benefitted from the inability of its major rivals, the Congress as well as the splinter groups of the Janata Dal, to come to terms with the new political context. It was only towards the end of the second NDA government that its rivals developed a feasible counter-project based on large-scale welfare schemes which targeted specific lower class segments of society, initially under strong influence of the communist parties, as opposed to the BJP preference for integrating these through (middle class controlled) systems of market relations as illustrated by the ‘hindutva laboratory’ of Gujarat. The electoral defeat in 2004 became feasible once the BJP started to overreach in its increasing proclivity to concentrate on the interests of the new middle classes. Symbolically, this tendency culminated in the bharat uday/shining India election campaign of 2004 which corresponded to a significant extent to the discourse of the new middle classes and therefore neglected the second political discourse aimed mostly at the lower social segments. The overextension towards the new middle classes, however, was strongly linked to a broader evolutionary trajectory of the BJP (though not the entire Hindu nationalist movement) which facilitated a path- dependent turn towards increasing political moderation by associating ‘moderate Hindu nationalism’ with the aims and aspirations of the Indian bourgeoisie.
The Indian Bourgeoisie and the Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism
Hindu nationalism has often been associated with a radical political movement. This perception is due on the one hand to the political violence which continues to emanate from the movement and has at various times been directly linked to the BJP itself. On the other hand, the radicalism of Hindu nationalism is related to the exclusive character of its discourse on identity which threatens the secular nationalist idiom of Indian politics and may form a threat to social harmony within Indian society. 48 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Political violence has been a pervasive feature of Indian politics already before independence which, in fact, has not exclusively been restricted to violence that can be traced back to the politicisation of identities, though the latter constitutes its most visible form in violence within and between castes as well as against religious minorities. After the mid-1980s violence against religious minorities has almost exclusively been associated with Hindu nationalism, including two of the most prominent surges in communal violence: the violence surrounding the Ayodhya campaign between 1990 and 1993 as well as the Gujarat pogrom of 2002. Communal violence, however, is not restricted to these surges. In fact, it has never abated completely after independence, though its visibility in the discourse on Indian politics has tended to decline in the periods between these three surges. Both localised incidences of communal violence and the various major disturbances have been traced to a variety of factors. One factor which has been crucial for much of the communal violence in India, however, is its political utility in specific circumstances (Wilkinson 2000) which for a variety of reasons has been greater for the BJP and its sister organisations after the mid- 1980s. Since the political utility depends on contextual factors which may come together again and again in future situations, it cannot be argued that a decline in communal violence after the latest surge is indicative of the establishment of a Hindu nationalist movement sans political violence. In fact, this argument was disproved by the Gujarat pogrom which followed a period of marked decline in incidences of communal violence. Nevertheless, the evolution of Hindu nationalism, especially the BJP, has been marked by a discernible turn towards political moderation after 1993. The Gujarat pogrom formed a setback to the public perception on this point, but it did not cause any major changes in the general line of evolution followed by the BJP. At the same time, the electoral defeats in 2004 and 2009 did not have any significant impact on the continuity of the turn towards political moderation. In recent years the emergence of Hindu nationalist inspired terrorist outfits has gained some prominence (Jaffrelot 2010), though there are very few indications that terrorism would have been accorded any relevant position as a strategy by any of the larger components of the Sangh Parivar. On the contrary, it can be argued that the emergence of terrorism would rather form the outcome of a continued process of marginalisation of radical elements within Hindu nationalism. Acts of terror generally do not constitute preferred political strategies for established and influential political actors, and the main components of the Sangh Parivar when engaged in political violence have tended to prefer very different forms of violence, especially mob violence with different levels of organisation. The engagement of fringe elements within the Hindu nationalist political spectrum in acts of terrorism does not give any indication on the possible future use of violence in forms that can be utilised for a powerful social movement. While the BJP and the Hindu nationalist movement in general have not been engaged in any large-scale political violence after 2002, its political moderation cannot rule out the utilisation of violence in the future. Effectively, the systemic The Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism 49 reasons why violence can be successfully utilised by the Hindu nationalist movement for political mobilisation (Brass 2003, Wilkinson 2000, Varshney 2002) preclude any definition of Indian political movements as radical according to the occasional use of political violence. The involvement of non-Hindu nationalist political parties in violence, after all, does not prevent their classification as moderate political parties. As all mainstream political formations in India officially accept the constitutional framework (even though they might not always adhere to this framework in political practice), radicalism and moderation cannot be measured in terms of resistance to the state. Political moderation in the Indian context, instead, can only be measured by an increasingly banal or trivial character of the respective movement or political party, that is, the incremental subsidence of policies which are perceived to be contentious by the Indian political mainstream. Trivialisation can take place either as a conscious policy of relinquishment or as a process of substitution in which earlier policies gradually lose their importance. The BJP has traditionally found it difficult to relinquish policies and positions, not because of its own ideological stringency but mainly because of its integration into a larger movement which includes the RSS. As the RSS is not accountable to an electorate, it does not face a similar pressure for adaptation. Correspondingly, while the RSS can certainly not be interpreted as an unchanging monolithic institution, its adaptation to the changing context of Indian politics is much slower and shows less fluctuation. The leadership structure of the RSS which emphasises long-term positions of leadership and ‘consensus’ and the general opacity of decision-making processes within the organisation serve to veil changes that take place and, accordingly, reinforce the perception of an unchanging monolith. However, in its impact on the BJP the RSS maintains a regulatory role which inhibits the often observed tendency among Indian political parties for ideological indistinctness. One of the possibilities for the BJP to circumvent this function of the RSS which has been used occasionally is the formation of larger pre-poll alliances which may issue their own programmes and manifestos. The BJP used this avenue for partial relinquishment when it decided not to press for the inclusion into the manifesto of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) of its contentious so-called core issues: the commitment to build a grand temple at the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, the abrogation of § 370 of the Indian constitution which enshrines a special status for the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and the enactment of a uniform civil code. In contrast to the Turkish AKP, however, it was incapable of consummately announcing the relinquishment of cultural identitarian core positions. Instead of the leadership enforcing a clean break with earlier positions, these positions need to be re-interpreted and tempered which leaves room for proponents of hard line positions within the party structure but prevents a straightforward repositioning. Outright relinquishment is replaced as a policy option by gradual changes in the political discourse which leave room for negotiation among the party leadership and between the major components of the Sangh Parivar, mostly between BJP and RSS. The partial character of relinquishment leads to vacillation within the party’s discourse: 50 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
No, we have not given up our commitment for [the abrogation of] Article 370 or the Common Civil Code. And moreover, we are not apologetic. We are not, because these are not the sectarian points of view as they have been made out. Whether it is Article 370 or the Common Civil Code, we feel that ours is the right approach. People who accuse us of being sectarian, I mean, I think it is the other way around. We feel that the citizens should get equal treatment. There should not be any appeasement of any section of society. That is it. In fact, if somebody analyses it properly, if somebody analyses it honestly, if tomorrow the Common Civil Code is imposed, it will be the minorities which will get more benefit from this than the majority section. Because when we talk about the Common Civil Code, the basic emphasis is on gender equality. (Interview with Jagdish Shettygar, 6 March 2007, Delhi)
The interview excerpt cited above illustrates the attempt to re-interpret the party’s commitment to two of the three ‘core issues’ in line with a liberal policy. The interviewee, however, faced greater difficulties in his response to the third ‘core issue’, the temple at Ayodhya:
[T]ill right from the 1950s we had a committed cadre base, we had a top rung leadership. Still, we were not in a position to communicate beyond our traditional support base. It was only in the 1980s, with the Shah Bano Case and how the government behaved after it. Then again, there was this Babri Masjid, the Ayodhya movement. We did not initiate the movement. The case was growing already. But there was a Babri Masjid Action Committee that was set up by the other side. They cashed in on the sentiments of a particular section of society. And to counter that or realising the threat, we started the Ramjanmabhumi movement. Of course, it is actually the RSS and the VHP [Vishwa Hindu Parishad] who started it, the VHP. And if you actually have analysed the history of the VHP, the VHP, let me tell you, until the 1980s, it was a most low profile organisation within the [Sangh Parivar]. It became a high profile organisation only after this movement or, I say, because of this movement. So I think for that [the increasing importance of the VHP] the sectarian Muslims, that is those who set up this Babri Masjid Action Committee, I think, they should be held responsible. So that movement was picked up [by the BJP] and that also helped us in expanding our support base. […] And today, still, it is a bit of a fashion for our political opponents to point out that we are communal and all this. But as far as the general public is concerned, these are not the real issues. (Interview with Jagdish Shettygar, 6 March 2007, Delhi)
Re-interpretation in line with an increasingly liberal stance of the party obviously fails as a discursive tool on this matter. Instead, the commitment is toned down. The Ayodhya campaign emerges as a reaction to political circumstances forced upon the party by Muslim political mobilisation and taken up in a committed way by the VHP rather than by the BJP itself whose role in the campaign is diluted. The Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism 51
Most importantly, however, the relevance of the campaign is contested. The general public, allegedly, is not really concerned with either the responsibility for the campaign or – more importantly – with the political salience of the issue at the time of the interview. This last point is of major importance for the BJP as long as outright relinquishment does not constitute a feasible political option. If positions cannot be relinquished even after they lost their political utility, they can gradually subside in political relevance by being substituted by more important policies. This process of substitution constitutes the core of the turn towards political moderation by the BJP in that policies of cultural identity are increasingly relegated to lower relevance by economic policy. While the gradual subsidence of cultural identitarian policies has evoked opposition from within the party and the Sangh Parivar, the process of substitution (as opposed to relinquishment) cannot successfully be contested by its opponents as long as the substituting policies remain within the framework of Hindu nationalist ideological heritage. Given the general vagueness and imprecision of economic thought within Hindu nationalist ideology and its overall pragmatic character, claims that the BJP economic policy deviates from Hindu nationalist ideology typically lack strength and can easily be countered. Essentially, almost every policy that is articulated as a necessity for India’s advancement as a nation falls within the ambit of the nationalist agenda of the Sangh Parivar. Opposition to these policies can only be formulated in broad moral terms which can be countered by references to the compulsions of governance.
Generally two conflicting views prevail in the society about the role and character of the middle class. One is that the middle class is the backbone of humanity everywhere in the world and is the harbinger, catalyst and agent of change and custodian of morality. The other one is just the opposite. The middle class is only vocal, corrupt and corrupting, exploitative, self-seeking, do-nothing, ever- grievancing and change resistant. While much can be said on both sides […] the former appears less convincing and more aggrandising and the latter more realistic and truthful, especially in the present context. (Surya Narain Saxena: ‘A Role for the Middle Class’, in: Organizer, 24 April 2005)
The articulation of bourgeois interests by the BJP can be opposed on the grounds that the middle class itself is corrupt and greedy and therefore deviating from the nationalist project of the Sangh Parivar. At the same time, Hindu nationalism at its core forms a project of reforming this middle class for which it first and foremost needs the latter’s support. As long as BJP economic policy can be formulated within a discursive framework of moral reform and nationalist ambition, the ‘corrupt and corrupting’ nature of the middle class does not form a major obstacle for seeking their support. The broadly liberal, at times even neo-liberal economic policy of the BJP from the mid-1990s onwards which is deplored by Saxena in the excerpt cited above cannot be opposed within the Hindu nationalist movement by reference to 52 The Transformation of Politicised Religion economic interests. Instead, opposition to it relies on moral reasoning which can only call for the supplementation of these policies by moral economy measures which seek to mitigate the impact of economic policies. Impact mitigation, in turn, can easily be accepted by the proponents of (neo-)liberal economic policy: Hindu nationalism does not form a divisive political project in economic terms. Rather, it aims at the creation of a harmonic social order under the leadership of a unified bourgeoisie. Moral economy measures to mitigate the impact of economic policy are, accordingly, very much in line with the economic policies of the BJP since they provide the means to mobilise support from lower class segments of society. Opposition to (neo-)liberal policy often originates from social strata which remain petty bourgeois and have not succeeded to move towards new middle class status – petty traders for instance still possess influence within the local party units of the BJP – or else from the labour wing of the Sangh Parivar, especially the Hindu nationalist trade union Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh. Both, however, do not necessarily oppose the trivialisation of Hindu nationalism, though they may oppose specific economic policies which form part of the larger phenomenon of trivialisation. The extent to which economic policy is driving the trivialisation of the BJP as a strategy of substitution as well as the patterns of contestation over this policy have been described by me in greater detail elsewhere (Schwecke 2011: 149–75). Crucial for the success of trivialisation is whether policies can be linked to the ideological heritage of Hindu nationalism which is both vague and relatively pragmatic in terms of economic thought and whether these policies address the interests of the BJP core support, the new middle classes while leaving room for the integration of select lower class strata. Opposition to trivialisation from within the party and the larger movement is hampered from the outset by the middle class background of most BJP and RSS leaders but even more by the complexities of governance: As Hindu nationalism forms a nationalist project linked to the by now global aspirations of the Indian bourgeoisie, policies which seek to enhance economic growth – irrespective of possible contradictions with the original aim of Upadhyaya’s ‘integral humanism’ in articulating the interests of social strata which relied on their predominance on local markets – can be articulated within the nationalist discourse. Increasing foreign investment may in some cases hurt small town traders and manufacturers, but it facilitates high growth rates and, therefore, the new nationalist project of the Indian bourgeoisie. Special Economic Zones may lead to rising real estate prices but, similarly, may fit into an urban middle class narrative of growth which is articulated in a nationalist idiom. Correspondingly, wherever it is addressing new middle class interests the BJP is increasingly capable of shifting its nationalist discourse from a pre-occupation with the criteria for membership within the national community towards competition of the Indian nation as defined by the Indian bourgeoisie, the entity called ‘India’, on the ‘global market’. The opposition to the trivialisation of Hindu nationalism within the party and the larger movement has by and large remained impotent to challenge the economic policy drivers of this process as trivialisation corresponds strongly to the interests of the Hindu nationalist core constituency. The political economy The Trivialisation of Hindu Nationalism 53 of trivialisation obstructs the coalescence of an economic counter-narrative. Instead, the opposition to the process of trivialisation has largely been defensive in character in its attempts to cling to issues which at least at present have lost political salience. The only major threat consists of large-scale violence which is likely to attract media attention and may affect the perceptions of Hindu nationalism by the Indian bourgeoisie. Yet, large-scale political violence in India does not constitute a viable and sustainable counter-project as it can be utilised only sporadically and has major political costs even for the perpetrators. In the present context, the trend of increasing trivialisation appears to be stable.
Conclusion
In essence, the trivialisation of Hindu nationalism forms a stable pattern because it is linked to the needs and aspirations of its core constituency. Trivialisation is an on-going process which includes sporadic setbacks but, crucially, does not include severe ruptures as, on the one hand, the major parameters of the Indian political economy have not changed significantly after the advent of liberalisation and, on the other hand, strict policies of relinquishment do not form a viable political option. Once the reconfiguration of the Indian bourgeoisie had taken place and the BJP had emerged as its main benefiter, any attempt to severe the link between the new middle classes and the BJP would have involved major political risks. The link between the Hindu nationalist counter-project to secular nationalism and the reconfigured Indian bourgeoisie remains tentative: There is noa priori reason why the new middle classes support a project of ‘cultural nationalism’. Rather, this support was created by the preclusion of other viable political options at the height of the Nehruvian period. The question of national identity – for the reconfigured Indian bourgeoisie – has lost political salience with regard to the original pre- occupation with the criteria for membership in the national community. In turn, it has increasingly become pre-occupied with the projection of Indian nationalism to the outside world, especially the ‘global market’. Since Hindu nationalism is often perceived as a ‘muscular’ or forceful strand of nationalism, it is very well attuned to this shift, yet its utility in this respect by no means precludes secular nationalist discourses from shifting accordingly. In fact, the overlapping area of secular nationalist and Hindu nationalist discourses in this respect is vast. Instead of being rooted in ‘cultural nationalism’, the support of the reconfigured Indian bourgeoisie for Hindu nationalism is linked to its preference for vaguely liberal economic policy supplemented by occasional references to moral economy measures. The success of Hindu nationalism is founded on the ideological discourse of Upadhyaya, supplemented by neo-liberal policies, not on the discourse of Savarkar. Hindu nationalism forms a bourgeois political project since its core supporters through it seek to attain and safeguard bourgeois status. It emerged as a significant political project because the allocation of state-controlled resources which characterised middle class dominance in the Nehruvian period 54 The Transformation of Politicised Religion proved insufficient to maintain this status for an enlarged bourgeoisie. Inthe process, the Indian bourgeoisie was reconfigured, with a substantially larger and more influential part of it shifting to market-based strategies of ensuring their socio-economic status. In turn, the Indian bourgeoisie has become increasingly capitalist in the Schumpeterian sense, though its entrepreneurial character is strongly related to the ability to gain (expensive) formal education and create networks of information which facilitate the incorporation into an economy in which the most dynamic sectors are dominated by high-value service professions. For the BJP, the major challenge is to maintain the tentative links with the Indian bourgeoisie by emphasising economic liberalisation while simultaneously propagating its distinctiveness based on ‘cultural nationalism’ and toning down their commitment to the radical elements of its ideological heritage. Trivialisation constitutes a political tool which is both highly attuned to the needs of the BJP and exceedingly difficult to handle. The difficulty of managing the contradictory pulls and pressures is lessened the more the party’s opponents concede political space as representatives of the reconfigured Indian bourgeoisie by falling back towards the (Nehruvian) impulse of reliance on the developmental state as the preeminent modernising agency. SECTION II This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 3 Globalisation and Islamic Radicalism in the Arab Gulf Region Mary Ann Tétreault
Research into the upsurge in violent religious activism that has characterised the 1990s and 2000s has blossomed, but there seem to be as many questions as answers coming out of it. Differences among movement leaders, foot soldiers, and those who form the community of believers in which they are embedded – such things as psychological and social positions, goals, and even tactics – complicate analysis (Dobrot 2007; Stern 2003). Cherished assumptions are repeatedly proven false. Religion is supposed to forge strong communal bonds yet, as phenomena from intra-sectarian and even intra-movement conflicts (al-Rasheed 2007; Wright 2006) to the Wikileaks (2010) revelations show, attacks on co-religionists are frequently encouraged and even applauded.1 Another problem is that the emphasis on religion as the primary motivator of activist violence appears to be incompletely and perhaps erroneously articulated (Pape 2005; Roy 2007). Religion is the warp and woof of the cultural milieu in the Gulf. For activists, it has instrumental value as an idealistic frame within which to analyse their own disaffection and organise dissent (Al-Rasheed 2007; Wright 2006). Religious appeals also have instrumental value in attracting financial support from believers and new foot soldiers for the cause (Pape 2005; Richardson 2006; Roy 2007; Stern 2003). In the case of the Syrian uprising, for example, religion draws support from Gulf citizens to aid Sunni rebels; at the same time, that the most extreme religious factions of rebels are becoming ‘relatively strong’ compared to more moderate forces has been suggested as an Assad strategy to divide fighters and supporters who oppose him (for example, al-Mutawa 2014; Gartenstein-Ross 2014). Religion intensifies the impact of violence on audiences. Religious sites like the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Samarra Mosque in Iraq that serve as symbolic
1 Madawi al-Rasheed (2007) sees this as arising from the historical alliance of Wahhabiyya, the radical strand of Islam that dominates in Saudi Arabia, with the absolutist monarchy of the Al Saud. She and Lawrence Wright (2006) focus particularly on the jihadist interpretation of takfir as the religious justification for killing other Muslims, particularly political and religious leaders whom jihadis condemn as ‘not Muslims’ or apostates and therefore fair game for elimination. Wahhabiyya takes a hard line against dissent, especially dissent from within (al-Rasheed 2007: 6), but its partnership with the state makes jihad at home, especially against the Saudi political leadership, unacceptable. 58 The Transformation of Politicised Religion cores of communal identity are often chosen for spectacular attacks. (The World Trade Center has the same iconic value for adherents of ‘market fundamentalism’.) The religious quality of such activist projects is multi-dimensional. They may arise from religious impulses, such as a desire for martyrdom (Hegghammer 2007), yet as performances they are aimed at a range of audiences which are very much of this world (al-Rasheed 2007; al-Sumait et al. 2009; Gupta 2002; Roy 2001). Here I argue that, rather than being an independent variable, a cause of activist violence, religion is an intervening variable that structures political action by mediating and rationalising activist ideas and practices. As such, its meaning is flexible, depending on the nature of the audiences for religious discourse, the context in which it occurs, and the goals of leaders. As Sebastian Schwecke notes in his chapter in this volume, religion can be ‘trivialised’ to appeal simultaneously to multiple audiences with differing interests. An alternative interpretation is that doctrinal ambiguity leaves space for these audiences to put their own interpretations on what they hear, and for leaders to change strategies when situations demand it. The complexity of the relationship between means and ends is usually lost in news coverage of terrorist violence, although it has been portrayed to great effect in films. Two productions from 2005, Syriana (Gaghan) and Paradise Now (Abu Assad), highlight the vulnerability of despairing individuals to communally framed appeals to sacrifice their lives in spectacular attacks, and compare them tothe instrumentalism of those who recruit them. In his study of al-Qaeda, The Looming Tower (2006), Lawrence Wright explores the deadly combination of chance events and damaged personalities that produced the 9/11 attacks, displaying the plasticity of religious doctrine as an instrument justifying behaviour that clearly contravenes basic tenets of Islam. It is this mediating role of religion that calls for a more detailed examination of how it creates and defines communities, divides them into warring sects and interpretations, and mobilises support from them. Successfully countering religious violence depends on reversing the valence of terrorism in the minds of communities and governments as well as in the minds of potential recruits. This is more difficult for an authoritarian regime to accomplish than one featuring political openness, not only because of the violence that underpins its own power and its erasure of venues and institutions where discussion could take the place of violence, but also because of the inherently discursive qualities of ideas and actions (al-Rasheed 2007; al-Sumait et al. 2009; Gupta 2002). Political and media spokespersons in target countries aid the agendas of religious radicals when they respond to pronouncements and attacks by condemning an entire community. Blaming communities has multiple consequences. It sets aside the social and political contexts that give rise to violence (al-Rasheed 2007; Hafez 2003; Pape 2005; Roy 2007). Opponents can then blame alien ‘cultures’ or ambitions and flaws in individuals rather than their own policies and actions for the results. Blame weakens the basis for accommodation between states and opposition movements that frame their dissent in religious terms by eliding the multiplicity of interests and viewpoints that characterise collectivities on both sides: ‘the government’; ‘Islamists’; the Muslim Brotherhood; Shi’a. Demonising Globalisation and Islamic Radicalism in the Arab Gulf Region 59 communities promotes fear on both sides and often serves to boost the legitimacy of those who foment conflict (Ali 2002; al-Sumait et al. 2009; Gupta 2002; Stewart 2010). To provoke hatred in the face of religious activism ratchets up the level of invective and violence, sometimes enough to justify a new round of violence from both sides and at a higher level of intensity.
Religious Opposition in the Gulf
No government is immune to the impact of religiously framed attacks but activities by Muslims and Muslim groups are particularly problematic for the Arab Gulf states whose identities incorporate a Muslim dimension. Some problems are the direct result of globalisation and its effects on the strength and persistence of transnational religious movements and appeals. Ironically, Gulf governments and citizens themselves bear significant responsibility for these outcomes. As the home of most of the men responsible for the 9/11 attacks, Saudi Arabia is perceived as a source of terrorists (Mann 2004; WikiLeaks 2010), many nurtured by the government’s support for overseas jihad (al-Rasheed 2007; Baer 2003; Coll 2004; Gartenstein-Ross 2014; WikiLeaks 2010; Wright 2006). When fighters come home, some bring their motivations, organisations, and tactics back with them. Perhaps having reflected on the activities of returned Saudi ‘Afghans’, the Saudi government has tried to stop nationals from fighting in Syria, ironically after having started out by offering to commute the sentences of death-row prisoners provided that they go to Syria to fight Assad (Winter 2013). Also, despite what may prove to be seismic shifts in global power relations, the Gulf states remain critically dependent on strategic support from the West (Legrenzi 2011), sustaining the ire of religious dissidents who are highly critical of this dependency. Both domestic authoritarianism and dependence on the West evoke religiously framed political activism against these regimes (al-Rasheed 2007; Gerges 2005; Roy 1994). In this chapter I look at the sociology of militant Islam, especially at how states, groups, and individuals tolerate or reject activist violence, provide or deny economic and social support for militant actions, and mount state interventions to shape or halt them. Although I concentrate on the Arab Gulf states, particularly Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as examples of relatively open and tightly closed regimes respectively, and on religious activism by Muslims, I wish to emphasise that contemporary Islamism is not unique either with regard to religious militancy as such, or with respect to the attitudes of bystanders, enablers of, and participants in these activities (Cohen 2001; Pape 2005). Religious dissidence is but one example of a pattern or syndrome whose various elements include charismatic leaders, impunity conferred by the state, deeply held communal identification, revulsion at the scandalous behaviour of rulers, shared feelings of victimisation and perceptions of injustice, and the absence of either security in place or opportunities for personal social and economic mobility (Abu-Assad 2005; Fromm 1941; Gambetta and Herzog 2009; Stern 2003; Wright 2006). 60 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Globalisation and Religious Radicalism
One could argue that globalisation explains more about the spread of radical Islam than Islam does. In addition to motives, globalisation’s unmediated impact provides the substrates and infrastructure for activists of all kinds, along with the Internet – a global technological analogue to the umma – through which jihadis can connect to the larger Muslim community (Roy 2007). The embeddedness of Islamism and Islamist terrorism in the ideology, material organisation, and virtuality of globalisation makes it more than an ideological push-back or one among many movements of religious radicals. Like communist activists and movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (compare, for example, Montefiore 2007 and Wright 2006), Islamist leaders and ideologies are reacting against what are widely seen as repressive states and, in some instances, exploitive economies. They offer romantic, if often thuggish heroes starring in a compelling narrative whose appeal transcends social class and national boundaries (also al-Rasheed 2007;2 Coll 2008). Other religious radicals operate in similar rhetorical fields (e.g. Pape 2005) but Islamism has a great advantage in that Islam is not only the framework within which believers attempt to guide their lives along a correct path, but also the primary challenger of nationalist ideologies and state power in Muslim nations (Longva 2002; Partrick 2009; Roy 1994). Structurally, Sunni Islam’s dearth of centralised institutions offers little in the way of leverage for mediating its political impact (Roy 2007). The privatisation of armed jihad (al-Rasheed 2007) reflects this ‘protestant’ quality of Islam. It is the virtually unquestioned yet profoundly ambiguous status of Islam in the minds of Gulf Muslims that leads to what appears to be an inexplicable combination of beliefs and behaviours that characterises the inconsistent responses of Gulf citizens and governments to Islamism. Even though the ruthless politics of jihadist violence incorporates sinful acts like suicide and the murder of innocents, including other Muslims, elites in the Gulf states finance exiled jihadis as though their violent activities can be shut out of their homelands forever (Coll 2004; 2008; Landman 2010; WikiLeaks 2010; Wright 2006). Rulers’ assumptions that the ‘traditional’ forces they see themselves as directing can be turned on and off, or be ejected from the state and yet remain available as instruments for their political projects (al-Rasheed 2007) has a history of blinding them to the possibility that such human instruments might have sentience and goals of their own (for example, Tétreault and al-Ghanim 2011; Wright 2006). This perception is changing in the face of attacks at home and a growing appreciation by national elites of the dangers that their ambivalence, and their contradictory pronouncements and actions, produce. It is impunity rather than any intrinsic quality of Islam or Islamism that feeds cycles of violence (e.g. Ahmed 2010), and the primary guarantor of impunity to activists is the state. Where the state opposes religious activists and movements,
2 Although al-Rasheed (2007) would disagree with my description of these heroes as thuggish. See especially (139–48, 158–63). Globalisation and Islamic Radicalism in the Arab Gulf Region 61 their ability to operate as successful political actors is damaged, sometimes fatally. The reaction of Kuwait following terrorist attacks in 2005 (see below), and those of most Gulf governments to the Muslim Brotherhood since the fall of Mubarak in Egypt, shows both an unaccustomed appreciation of the threat of religious movements to domestic stability and the ability of the state to eliminate them or force them to change. Even so, states in the Gulf remain vulnerable to the way the appeal of religious opposition is framed in the context of their own repression.
Regimes and Religious Activism
Before the Arab Spring, scholars tended to see monarchy as a uniquely resilient regime type (for example, Kostiner ed. 2000). As compared to the other regimes analysed in this volume, monarchies are immune to the full effects of electoral repudiation, even in Kuwait, which holds elections for a parliament with actual, albeit limited power.3 A monarch who is envisioned as embodying and thereby standing for each person in his kingdom is uniquely positioned to appear to his subjects as an impartial arbitrator among conflicting claims and interests a ‘high centre’ that is both a source of justice and an object of emulation (Anderson 2001). As a just ruler, a monarch can crack down on dissident groups by placing himself in the role of protector. His actions gain support from the hierarchical structure of Gulf societies. Monarchs model and enforce relationships between unequals and peers thorough an elaborate etiquette of deference whose principles are instilled from early childhood. Young persons learn the proper way to treat their elders, especially the heads of their families, the household analogue to the monarch. These rituals are later mirrored in relations between adults of different stations and between the ruler and his subjects/citizens. When a new ruler assumes power in the Gulf, social groups take an oath of allegiance to him. Called bayah, the oath dates back to the time of Mohammed (Quran 48: 18). It attests to the position of the ruler and also the status of the groups represented by their leaders – tribes, residents of cities, clerics, foreign delegations, women, and others (Shadid 2005). That such legitimacy is fragile is endemic throughout the Middle East, including in the Gulf where it is an outgrowth of traditional hierarchy and rituals that states are struggling to adapt to modern demands. Insofar as adaptation requires deflecting the demands of religion, legitimacy suffers. The impunity with which Islamists can challenge national and international law lies in large part with the contending legitimacies of state and religion. Islamism as a transnational
3 Elections in the other Gulf states are for consultative bodies. Even in Bahrain, whose new constitution provides for a two-chamber parliament, the rulers can overrule the elected body through its appointment of a majority of members of the other house (Parolin 2011). Rulers also influence, and some even control, electoral slates, further diminishing the ability of subjects/citizens to empower a religious movement (no Gulf state has political parties) sufficiently to supplant a ruler’s authority. 62 The Transformation of Politicised Religion movement is a greater threat to national legitimacy than the Arab Nationalism that arose in Arab ‘republics’. Arab Nationalism was a secular transnational movement that promised both liberation from imperial powers and an avenue for harmonising the interests and values of diverse groups of citizens/subjects (Antonius 1946; Dawisha 2003). Despite a desire for independence, monarchies did not fancy subsuming their authority to Arab Nationalist leaders with designs on their incomes or their power. Kuwait’s constitution was part of a strategy of co-optation by which forms of republicanism associated with Arab Nationalism were incorporated to preserve and protect the monarchy after its relationship with Britain had ended. Transnational solidarity continued to appeal to many in the Gulf, however, and Pan-Islamism offered a profoundly anti-modern alternative for achieving it by emphasising communal exclusivity and rejection of pluralism, multi-culturalism, and positive law (Roy 1994). Islam’s ‘traditional’ qualities attracted Gulf rulers threatened by Arab Nationalist celebrities like Gamal abd al-Nasir, but its anti- nationalism is also a threat to them because it challenges the legitimacy of the states that give rulers their power. Even so, Islamism has its uses. Emphasising Islam as a source of national legitimacy is one of the two pillars on which the Saudi state rests (al-Rasheed 2007), and one that Kuwaiti rulers resorted to whenever they wanted to discredit the goals of secular reformers (Tétreault 2000). With this, they delegitimised the secularisation4 that might have shifted citizens’ political attachment from religion to the state, and retarded the evolution (bottom-up) or imposition (top-down) of state-centred nationalism as the collective projection of each state’s imagined national community (Anderson 1991). For example, a plurality of Saudis report that Islam is more important to their identity than their country (Telhami 2013: 29-30). Anh Nga Longva’s examination of apostasy law in Kuwait also shows the persistence of the gap between communal identification based on the state as opposed to one based on religion (2002). In her telling, apostasy in Kuwait evokes the same hostile emotions that treason evokes in Western countries, even though the Kuwaiti constitution guarantees freedom of religion and Islam says that choosing a religion is a voluntary act (Longva 2002; also Roy 2007). Longva observes that even staunch liberals in Kuwait were indifferent to the sanctions imposed on a fellow citizen, a businessman who had been convicted of apostasy in court with the result that he lost his property, his children, and his citizenship (Longva 2002: 262). The most charitable among them thought he was mentally unbalanced. Equally telling, some Kuwaitis were irritated by Longva’s attempts to understand the reasons for their lack of concern toward the apostate, interpreting her questions as indicating support for him (267). She compares this reaction to
4 However one might define it, whether as the institutional separation of religion and state (multi-culturalism), the banishment of religion from the public realm (laïcite), or the evolution of diversity in religiosity and praxis in everyday life (Roy 2007) or some combination. Globalisation and Islamic Radicalism in the Arab Gulf Region 63 the outpouring of support for another victim of religious persecution, a professor who had been convicted of blasphemy. This man did not renounce his religion; his case was seen as one in which ‘what was at stake was the correct way of being Muslim’. In contrast, apostasy ‘was [seen as] a betrayal of such a fundamental nature that people found it difficult, indeed impossible, to comprehend’ (270). The closest comparison Longva could find to reactions to the defendant in the Kuwaiti apostasy case was among Norwegians who expressed indifference or hostility to petitions submitted by Norwegian women who had married Germans during World War II to have their citizenship restored. ‘A parallel with the conversion case in Kuwait lies in the way many people interpret my question as a suspect attempt to justify the women’s action’ (272). Longva concludes that it is the ‘sacredness of the significant community’ that explains the similar reactions in these two cases. ‘Acts defined as betrayal against it call for exceptional sanctions’ (273). In Kuwait and elsewhere in the Gulf it is Islam, not the nation-state, that elicits this kind of reflexive protection.
Dawla or Umma?
The status of Islamic thought and practice in the Gulf is a product of state policy. The story of the modern Saudi state as having been built on the eighteenth- century alliance between the warrior leader Mohammed ibn Saud and the radical religious leader Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab is well-known if not well- understood (al-Rasheed 2007). Madawi al-Rasheed sees the current version of the founding story as substituting the legend of a partnership between religion and the state for the post-1973 reality of an authoritarian Saudi regime that has created a world that insists
on complete submission to political authority while preaching total submission to God … Against the background of authoritarianism, vibrant diversity, pluralism and debate has arisen. There is also blind and indiscriminate violence. Violence is committed by a state that demands complete surrender to its will and by a minority that challenges this surrender. Both the state and its subjects are engaged in [a] perpetual cycle of real and symbolic violence. (al-Rasheed 2007: 1)
From this perspective, state limits on the power of religious authorities explain the rootedness of positive and negative religious responses to authoritarian rule in Saudi Arabia. As polling data show, they also ensure the weak legitimacy of the state (Telhami 2013), especially in the eyes of the devout who regard state agents, including the ruler, as hypocrites saying one thing but doing something else. To shore up its religious credentials, Saudi rulers embrace the role of defender of the two Holy Mosques and generally refrain from controlling the extreme impulses of clerics and voluntary enforcers of authoritarian codes of demeanour 64 The Transformation of Politicised Religion and behaviour. In return, the establishment clergy supplies religious support for the authoritarian state. Less well-known is the alliance in Kuwait between Al Sabah and moderate Sunni Islamists. During the 1970s, at a time when Arab Nationalism seemed to be the most potent challenger of regime legitimacy, the Kuwaiti amir, Jaber al-Ahmed, sought support from the tribes and from religious rivals of local Arab nationalists (al-Mughni and Tétreault 1995). Despite legal impediments to claiming citizenship, and the harsh strictures on naturalisation routinely applied to other Arabs, Kuwaiti amirs naturalised members of nomadic tribes allied to their family and gave them ‘first-category’ status, allowing them to vote and run in elections (al-Nakib 2014; Chalcraft 2010; Longva 2002). The burgeoning, heavily urban and middle-class Islamist movement sought direct parliamentary representation, many members having cut their teeth as candidates for elected office by running for positions on the boards of neighbourhood cooperatives (Hicks and al-Najjar 1995). Both groups became more prominent politically following ruler-led re-districting in 1980 that combined the former ten constituencies and gerrymandered them into 25 smaller ones. The ten districts had displayed a pronounced urban, upper-class, and nationalist flavour that reliably returned a vigorous opposition. The 25 districts that became operative in 1981 combined population groups, such that, in some cases, urban opposition factions were swamped by tribal and religious voters who returned a more conservative set of MPs, some affiliated with Islamist organisations (Gavrielides 1987; Tétreault 2000). In addition to reducing the number of urban merchant and middle-class representatives in the parliament, Shi’i MPs also declined under the new electoral system which benefited strong Sunni Islamist groups. The redistricting, along with direct interference in the electoral process through vote-buying, candidate sponsorship, and other means (Tétreault 2000), maximised the value of the new system as a producer of parliamentarians who would support the government against the urban merchant and nationalist opposition (Ghabra 1997).5 From the outset, the ‘nation’ also had to compete with or co-opt other communal identities to attract the allegiance of citizens. Tribalism looks attractive to Gulf rulers seeking to bolster their legitimacy by appealing to ‘tradition’. The relatively small size of tribes coupled with customary inter-tribal hierarchies (Dickson 1956; Gavrielides 1987; Longva 2000) make their incorporation in the nation seem unproblematic to rulers,6 especially if tribes reinforce pro-regime factions and can be prevented from joining with political forces in opposition to the regime
5 Even before redistricting, the larger tribes had devised a so-called tribal primary, a pre-election within the tribe to settle on their candidates. The process allowed them to amass enough votes to ensure that they would have direct representation and the rewards of patronage (Gavrielides 1987; Tétreault 2000). 6 Which explains why contemporary rulers seeking to control the results of elections naturalise immigrant tribe members to bolster their constituency bases (Longva 2002; Parolin 2011). Globalisation and Islamic Radicalism in the Arab Gulf Region 65
(al-Nakib 2014). Islamist MPs cooperated frequently with tribal representatives but less so with nationalists. In consequence, an informal coalition of tribalists and Islamists, whose membership shifted depending on issues and interests, could usually be found in the government’s camp. However, during the conflict between the parliament and the government following the 1985 election, which ended in an extended period of illegal parliamentary closure and suspension of a broad range of civil liberties (1986–2000), members from virtually every political faction combined to demand new elections and the restoration of constitutional life (Tétreault 2000). The post-liberation reconstitution of the parliament and the oppositional character of the 1992 body7 brought the rulers and their tribal and religious allies back together. One topic most could agree upon was the need to return Kuwaitis to ‘traditional’ values which, for the rulers, included dependence on the regime. For Islamists and tribalists, they included reducing the prominence of women in post-liberation Kuwait. Gender is a hugely salient issue in fundamentalist movements globally (Hawley ed. 1994). Along with education, the control of women is the primary way of policing community boundaries, socialising the next generation, and pacifying fundamentalist hard-liners (Hawley ed. 1994; Roy 1994). Male domination is also enshrined among fundamentalist Christians (for example, Balmer 1994) and among Israeli Jews whether they are conventionally religious or political Zionists (for example, Jorgensen 1994). For Islam, which has attracted the prurient interests of Western imperialists for generations, gender and the role of women have long served as markers and counters in power struggles among men (Ahmed 1992; al-Rasheed 2007; Tétreault 2001). In Kuwait, the post-liberation dance between the regime and citizens incorporated a figure in which ‘traditional’ and ‘liberal’ Kuwaitis also stepped and whirled to establish their relative status as autonomous political actors (Tétreault 2000). The 1992 parliament was the primary arena of this complex conflict and defining women’s rights and roles in society constituted one of the most prominent battlegrounds. With some exceptions (such as a new law ‘allowing’ women to retire earlier than men), overt attempts to curb women’s rights were successfully resisted while traditionalists worked to crush women’s claims to full political rights. After liberation, most of these claims rested on women’s performance under occupation (al-Mughni 2001; Tétreault 2006), the usually unspoken (but not unremembered) corollary of which was the allegation that tribalists had been ‘the first to run away’ when Saddam’s troops invaded Kuwait (for example, Tétreault 2000: 95). Reconstructing the historical memory of the invasion and occupation simultaneously attacked women’s claims to equality and boosted tribalist claims to political authority (Tétreault 2006). Near the end of the term of the 1992 parliament, one that was notably more liberal than its two post-redistricting predecessors, female entitlements were so discredited that the traditionalists succeeded during
7 Kuwaiti parliaments are referred to by the year of their election. 66 The Transformation of Politicised Religion its last days in passing a law requiring gender segregation in universities, one of several proposals for limiting women’s access to professional credentials. Undermining women’s claims to full citizenship united tribalists and Islamists in a project both could support. Tribalists were anxious to keep their daughters obedient and eligible to be married; Islamists hoped to limit female competition for jobs available to new graduates during a slow economy (Tétreault 2003). Their shared vision of the threats from globalisation presented by women whose credentials and skills, including foreign language proficiency, generally exceeded those of men, contributed to ad hoc violence in policing the behaviour of women unwilling to submit to conservatives’ demands and expectations. An outspoken female poet reported being spat upon by strangers in the street who learned her identity as a critic of Islamism (Prusher 2000). A teenage gang called the ‘Peninsula Lions’, led by Sulaiman bu Gaith, exiled from Kuwait in 2001 for his role in al-Qaeda’s inner circle, earned the nickname ‘Desert Flogging Group’ from its practice of taking foreign workers into the desert and assaulting them. Gang members kidnapped a young woman they accused of improper dress and behaviour, taking her into the desert where they beat her savagely and broke her arm. What links these and other assaults on Kuwaiti women is the lack of indignation about what had happened. The Peninsula Lions were taken to court for their assault on the female student, but all were acquitted by the judge hearing the case (Tétreault 2003: 234). Similar indifference to the fate of female citizens at the hands of religious zealots is common in Saudi Arabia, where the religious police target women who violate their standards of proper dress and behaviour and whip them at will in the streets. Women are prevented from driving cars regardless of the financial and human cost of their dependence on foreign drivers (Doumato 2011). But the subterranean plates of politics and society move in both countries. As in Kuwait, education and other elements of modernisation produce – in addition to religious Saudi men who chafe at the restrictions imposed by the regime and question the religious propriety of their rulers – competent, educated, and devout Saudi women who challenge the Wahhabiyya vision of proper femininity. As in Kuwait, manipulating the status of women is a method for deflecting political opposition. In the Saudi case this is accomplished through appeals couched in the ‘hegemonic discourse’ of Wahhabiyya, an extremist version of Islam practiced in and exported from Saudi Arabia (al-Rasheed 2007: 129–31; Tétreault 2001). The Saudi regime has mostly acquiesced to Islamist pressures, but globalisation undermines Islamist practice because competitiveness in the international economy demands competence in foreign languages and high levels of performance (Tétreault 2012). Impunity for religiously framed violence against women varies over time and place. In the early 2000s, it was tolerated in Kuwait, as I have described above, as well as in Saudi Arabia, where it escaped scrutiny until 15 female public school students were burned to death in 2002. The girls’ school, the inadequate facilities of which were massively over-crowded, caught fire. The students were unable to escape through the gate because the religious police would not let Globalisation and Islamic Radicalism in the Arab Gulf Region 67 them out without abayas, the full-body cloak that meets Wahhabiyya standards of modesty. In response, ‘parents, journalists and others demanded prosecution of those responsible … No one, however, was prosecuted, and there was no public reprimand of the religious police’ (Doumato 2011: 205). This evidence of disjunction between the regime’s words and deeds added to the political and religious debate that has, since then, diminished the power of Islamist arguments. Religious violence against state interests incurred condemnation by both governments. The turning point occurred in 2003, sparked by jihadi attacks aimed at Americans and other foreigners (Legrenzi 2011: 281). In Kuwait, during the six months’ troop build-up prior to the US-UK invasion of Iraq, there were at least six shooting incidents reported in the local press. In all of them, Americans, mostly service members, were targeted by Kuwaiti nationals. In five cases, the shooters were Kuwaiti ‘Afghans’ (Tétreault 2003: 39), veterans of jihadist training camps in Afghanistan (Wright 2006). During this same period, a Kuwaiti sergeant in the National Guard confessed to passing military information to Iraq, planning bomb attacks against utility installations, and plotting to assassinate Kuwaiti officials (Tétreault 2003: 39). An even more spectacular run of violence has plagued Saudi Arabia. In May 2003, ‘suicide bombers attacked three Riyadh compounds housing foreigners’, killing 35 people (Legrenzi 2011: 281). The response throughout the GCC included a 2005 Saudi-sponsored international conference on fighting terrorism, workshops on tightening rules for international financial transactions to limit private contributions to jihadist groups abroad, and programmes designed to deal with what had, up to then, been the elephant in the room: home-grown terrorists. Even the 1979 attack on the Grand Mosque in Makkah, led by ‘Juhayman al- Oteibi, a fundamentalist preacher and former corporal in the [Saudi] National Guard’ (Wright 2006: 88), did not lead to a crackdown on local jihadis. There was, however, a crackdown on women. The renegotiation of the terms of Wahhabiyya following the Grand Mosque incident included barring women from appearing on most television programmes, requiring women to wear the abayya in public, and forbidding mixed audiences to view cinema productions outdoors (Sakr 2009). Osama bin Laden was arrested and detained for a short time but he was later released, protected by his social status and family connections to the Al Saud (Wright 2006: 89). Al-Rasheed indicts the active encouragement and support of jihadis by both the Saudi and Wahhabiyya establishments during the Soviet- Afghan war (al-Rasheed 2007: 106–7), including detailed theological justifications for their activities as legitimate jihad even though they were not captained by a representative of the Saudi government. It was not until the Saudi Afghans came home, bringing their experiences of a freer intellectual climate, their knowledge of weapons and military strategy, and their conviction that they had defeated a superpower on the battlefield of jihad, that the government began to take seriously the challenge they presented (al-Rasheed 2007: 103–6), although one could argue that the initial response of the Saudi government to the Syrian uprising showed that the challenge had not been taken seriously enough. 68 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Drawing the Line
After 2003, the focus of Gulf governments shifted and domestic surveillance was vastly expanded (Legrenzi 2011). Earlier, all the Gulf states had embarked on tentative (and arguably only skin-deep) strategies of liberalisation (Tétreault et al. ed. 2011), but this did not extend to the treatment of persons detained for crimes against the state. In Kuwait, although there was little immediate reaction to the young Kuwaitis who ‘drove to Falluja’ in 2004 to engage in jihad against the Americans in Iraq, an alarming spate of attacks at home soon brought government and citizens together to stop them (unless otherwise noted, material in this and the two paragraphs that follow is taken from Tétreault 2000; and interviews in Kuwait 2004, 2005). By the end of January 2005, about a dozen persons had died in gun battles fought in Kuwaiti streets and residential areas. Shootings and arrests continued in February, with scores of suspected militants arrested while caches of weapons, diagrams of military installations and shopping malls, and bags of explosives were found on security sweeps by Kuwaiti investigators. In mid-February, the Minister of Justice announced that about 35 people accused of terrorism were in custody, nearly half of whom were Kuwaiti nationals. Officials linked the militants to al-Qaeda, the al-Haramain group in Saudi Arabia, and the Peninsula Lions. Amer Khlaif al-Enezi, the presumed spiritual leader of the Kuwaiti jihadists, was arrested in mid-February and shortly thereafter was reported to have died while in custody. In Kuwait, this round of jihadist violence was quickly curtailed. Despite social and cultural commonalities between Kuwait and its neighbours, the differences remain at least as important. It is difficult for a Kuwaiti to have a secret life in a small, socially open country where, even if the cliché that everybody knows everybody else is not literally true, it’s true enough. A relatively transparent and vibrant civil society with strong family and friendship ties can notice, monitor and check violent behaviour informally and far more easily than institutions in a closed society. Despite severe repression of dissident movements beginning in 2012, Kuwaitis continue to demonstrate and have become proficient in the use of old and new media to try to mobilise popular support. The diwaniyya tradition, where opinions are debated and even ruling family members can occasionally be found engaging with the public on the citizens’ home turf, allows for direct give and take on issues. The relative security of diwaniyyas, because of their location in the protected spaces of individual homes, made them key venues for political mobilisation during both periods of illegal parliamentary closure (1976–1981 and 1986–1992). Indeed, state violation of diwaniyya proprietorship/privacy during the 1989–1990 pro-democracy movement hardened public attitudes against the regime (Tétreault 2000), as did the invasion of a diwaniyya by security forces in December 2010, which strengthened opposition against a corrupt prime minister (Tétreault 2014). Perhaps most importantly, since 1992, Kuwaiti public opinion has been aired during regular parliamentary elections among candidates featuring a broad range of positions toward government policy. Representatives of several Globalisation and Islamic Radicalism in the Arab Gulf Region 69
Kuwaiti Islamist groups, along with Kuwaitis of many other stripes, run in these elections. As a result, multiple religious and other points of view are incorporated into the national dialogue, tested at the polls, and sometimes found wanting. The most telling indicator of the social consensus on jihadi violence at home in Kuwait is that the success of the 2004–2005 investigations rested on information from citizens as well as on forensic techniques and international sources of intelligence. Even non-violent religious activism, such as that attempted by parliamentary Islamists and tribalists when they dominated the parliament elected in February 2012, was rejected by the amir and then by the voters in the elections of December 2012 and July 2013. In the closed society of Saudi Arabia, where elections are cosmetic and civil society is more fragmented compared to Kuwait’s, large portions of the Saudi population are marginalised. Public observance of religious orthodoxy is enforced by state agents, and verbal and written dissent is risky (al-Rasheed 2007). Since the Arab Spring and especially following the rise (and fall) of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the state has taken a hard line against the Brotherhood as an alien group that threatens national security and is making a range of efforts to mobilise the entire GCC in support (Karasik 2014). Saudis who challenge state behaviour, including those whose engagement is entirely religious, come up against the double orthodoxy that demands complete submission to the authoritarian regime and total submission to God as he is portrayed by the establishment clergy. Within the Wahhabiyya, there is no room for dissent. Other Muslims such as Shi`a, Zaidi, and Sunni Muslim Brothers exist outside the Saudi-Wahhabi community by definition. Critics, including clerics of the Sahwi trend8 who decry violence, are cast as Muslim Brothers even though they place themselves squarely within the Salafi tradition of which Wahhabiyya also is a strand. Everyone’s conduct is policed according to the community’s rules. Religious dissent from official doctrine is regarded as misguided or erroneous, and dissenters enjoy only limited access to public space. The orthodox faithful are advised by establishment clergy to restrict their social interactions with such Saudi outsiders and to eliminate friendly interactions with Westerners altogether. Inside the community, religion and politics focus obsessively on ritual rather than doctrine, and licit public space for doctrinal debate is strictly limited.9 The end of the Soviet Afghan war ‘closed the gates of jihad in Afghanistan’ (al-Rasheed 2007: 112). The young jihadis, with Osama bin Laden in the lead, initiated a discourse that sought to ‘dismantle the … monopoly … [of their] early mentors, not only … over religious interpretation but more importantly to
8 The Sahwa are a Sunni movement of young clerics who oppose the Westernisation of Saudi society and expect the government to maintain the centrality of Islam in the political life of the nation (Zdanowski 2011). 9 Sahwi dissent was at first tolerated, then leaders were imprisoned and the movement finally domesticated, such that the Sahwa now contributes to the regime’s response to the far more challenging source of opposition from within the Salafi tradition, that is, the jihadis. 70 The Transformation of Politicised Religion challenge the regime that sponsored them’ (al-Rasheed 2007: 113). The regime’s rejection of the offer by Saudi Afghans to liberate Kuwait after it was invaded by Saddam Hussein, choosing instead the services of Western troops led by the United States, was endorsed by the Wahhabi establishment. Their abandonment of the principle of avoiding relations with the West erased the prestige these clerics had acquired from their earlier support of jihad in Afghanistan, and put both halves of the establishment, religious and political, in the cross-hairs of criticism by the Saudi Afghans. The mainly US troops remaining in Saudi Arabia after Kuwait’s liberation became the focal point of the critics’ words and actions. Saudi religious activists attacked the regime for committing major sins against the faith, while those remaining at home mounted both verbal and violent attacks. That these critiques came from Saudis who speak the language of Wahhabiyya made them even more dangerous to the status quo: the enemy within. Simple repression was not regarded as sufficient to meet direct challenges to the legitimacy of the regime. Sahwi clerics sought to disassociate themselves from the jihadist trend. They joined the establishment in insisting that ‘violence in Saudi Arabia under the slogan “removing infidels from the Arabian Peninsula”, (the motto of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), is illegitimate’ (al-Rasheed 2007: 83), and offered themselves as mediators between the regime and its jihadist critics.10 Clerics turned their attention to blocking social change, focusing on gender relations and women’s rights in pronouncements reminiscent of those that Salafis in the Kuwaiti parliament use for the same purposes. Sahwis also join Wahhabiyya attacks on Muslim minorities. For example, they assailed Shi’i efforts to open the national dialogue to include minority rights (Zdanowski 2011). Perhaps in response to their own experiences as imprisoned dissenters, Sahwi clerics have become prominent in the state’s programme to encourage jihadis to ‘repent’. Sahwi repentance occurs in ritualistic television programmes where former dissenters renounce their own prior critiques, extend their condemnation to the dissent of others, and plead with youth to resist ‘the temptation to “go out” for jihad in Iraq’ (al-Rasheed 2007: 169). Sahwi cooperation with the state sparked an internet war between the Sahwis and the jihadis, ‘contributing further to the rift between the various Islamist trends and enforcing a political and religious fragmentation among ex-comrades’ (al-Rasheed 2007: 171). Some Sahwis have engaged in ritual repentance from prison, perhaps reflecting the lack of confidence of the state in the authenticity of the emotions behind their performances. The centrepiece of Saudi anti-jihadist repentance efforts post-2003 is the prison rehabilitation system which focuses on prisoners who have not actually engaged in violence themselves but are associated with jihadis. The potential pool of converts comes from those held under the stepped-up security programme. The inverse of jihadi dialogues in Afghanistan, where ‘Afghans’ debated the fine points of Salafi interpretations of Islam, the prison programme brings members of its Advisory
10 Having left the jihadists, Sahwis occupy a liminal position, within the Salafi trend but short of Wahhabiyya. Globalisation and Islamic Radicalism in the Arab Gulf Region 71
Committee to evaluate the life situations of and indoctrinate prisoners through its ‘counselling program, which is intended to assist those individuals that (sic) have espoused takfiri beliefs “repent and abandon terrorist ideologies”’ (Boucek 2007). The Afghan religious debate format is reproduced in the prisons where the Advisory Committee’s Religious Subcommittee ‘deconstructs prisoners’ [jihadi- acquired] religious justifications for committing terrorist acts’.Takfir in particular is a focal point of these discussions, along with concepts such as allegiance, loyalty to the community, and the proper understanding of jihad, which includes the necessity of carrying out military jihad only with the approbation of the political leadership (Boucek 2007; Wagner 2010). Prisoners’ progress is assessed by psychologists and when a prisoner is thought to be ready for release, he and his family are investigated by the Psychological and Social subcommittee, which also provides financial assistance to the prisoner’s family (Wagner 2010). The repentance programme has attracted interest and support from outside Saudi Arabia because of its low recidivism rate, variously estimated as 10–20 per cent (Boucek 2007; Kiefer 2010; Wagner 2010).11 It has also attracted domestic and foreign critics. Some doubt the import of the recidivism statistics: are repentant jihadis just tired of the life and want to come home? How many are actually double agents, ‘freed’ to spy on erstwhile colleagues? Others see the programme as coddling terrorists. ‘How can [we] lodge terrorists in comfortable dormitories, with culture and sports programmes, and then marry them off, find them work, and support them financially?! The [very] notion seems strange and even frightening to anyone who has been exposed to terrorism and its deeds’ (Kiefer 2010). Even more to the point is that only volunteers go into the programme. From 2004 to 2008 about 2000 prisoners went into the programme; about 700 renounced jihadism and were released to their families. About 1400 prisoners refused to take part and were sent to ‘regular Saudi jails’ (Riedel and Saab 2008: 38). Some prisoners work actively against the repentance programme, ‘feel[ing] that they can do the most good for the cause by attempting to frustrate the authorities’ attempts to turn prisoners’ (Boucek 2007). The repentance programme also is bedevilled by continuing Saudi support for jihad, much of it linked to the Iraq war. Many more Saudis than Kuwaitis travelled to Iraq to fight, as well as arms and money that went from Saudis to al-Qaeda in Iraq (Hegghammer 2007; Riedel and Saab, 2008; WikiLeaks 2010). Saudis made up the largest portion of foreign jihadis there, and a segment of the Wahhabiyya ‘were openly supportive of Zarqawi12 and al-Qaeda in Iraq’ (Riedel and Saab 2008: 40). The Saudi jihadis in Iraq came from all classes, from all but one district in the kingdom, and from many different tribes (Hegghammer 2007: 12–13).
11 Although even the Saudi government has admitted that some prisoners released from the programme have since rejoined al-Qaeda (Nester 2012). 12 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, was a protégé of Osama bin Laden. He was killed in 2006. 72 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
[S]ympathy for the Iraqi cause cuts across Saudi society. The significance of this point becomes clearer when we compare the Saudis in Iraq to a sample of 240 domestic militants from the group ‘al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula’ (QAP). The Saudis in Iraq represent a more diverse group than the QAP, be it in terms of socio-economic, geographical or tribal origin … This likely reflects the difference in the perceived legitimacy of fighting in Iraq and fighting at home. It was far easier to motivate people to fight the US military in Iraq than to blow up cars in the streets of Riyadh. (Hegghammer 2007: 13)
In 2014, Iraqi president Nuri al-Malaki accused Saudi Arabia of continuing to support ‘terrorists’, that is, violent Sunni dissidents, in Iraq and elsewhere in the world (Perelman 2014). Saudi ‘Iraqis’ presented the same problems to the regime after their return as the Saudi Afghans, while the ease of passage across the long border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq ensured that idealistic Saudi youth – Hegghammer (2007: 11) reports the median age of jihadis fighting in Iraq as 23 years – would continue to go to Iraq for jihad and those who were not killed would return, presenting the same security problems as Saudi Afghans. A similar future is likely for jihadis fighting in Syria, and realisation of this fact is probably the most important impetus for the government’s change in policy in this regard. Saudi Arabia’s extensive and intensive approach to jihadis has enjoyed less success than Kuwaiti policies in reducing the number of jihadist attacks because jihad also is backed by supportive clerics. They join their endorsement of entrepreneurial jihad in Iraq and Syria with denunciations of Shi`a at home, while al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria argue that Iran and its Shi’i protégés are ‘the main long-term enemy’ (Riedel and Saab 2008: 41). Former Guantánamo prisoners are reported as returning to the jihadi life in about 20 per cent of cases; some flee to Yemen, another battleground between the Saudi establishment andits politico-religious critics (Kiefer 2010). Pilgrims constitute another medium for transmitting funds and ideas between the kingdom and al-Qaeda in its various locations. Financial support for jihadis continues to come from Kuwait, but the government is not inclined to intervene ‘against Kuwait-based financiers and facilitators plotting attacks outside of Kuwait’ (WikiLeaks 2010).
Conclusion
Globalisation has led to what Madawi al-Rasheed (2007) calls the premature transnationalisation of Wahhabiyya. Not yet ‘ready for prime time’, Saudi religious radicals are spreading their ideas to the virtual umma through new media, and by their participation in military jihad in countries where Muslims are under attack. Their message falls on ground softened by financial support, much of it from their own government to religious activists in Africa and Asia, and by Western intervention, which mobilises Gulf elites and the public in support of Globalisation and Islamic Radicalism in the Arab Gulf Region 73 violent resistance to it. The problem for the Gulf governments is that the pan- Islamism reflected in externalised Wahhabiyya diminishes loyalty to the state and also fosters religious radicalism that strikes at home as well as abroad. Even so, protected by the ideology and praxis of monarchy, they appear to be better able to control religious dissidence where it does exist and even create the impression, such as in Bahrain, that it exists where it doesn’t (Gengler 2012) in order to shore up their own legitimacy. The prominence and successes of jihadists are both causes and effects of globalisation. Radical Islamist groups have embraced the technology of globalisation to penetrate countries far from the Arabian Peninsula, and to direct and/or support operations in their home countries from the safety of exile. The assistance offered by Gulf governments and populations to jihadist groups includes support services, such as nursing and housekeeping (Wright 2006), and educational materials and services (Starrett and Doumato 2006). Both material assistance and education are key elements in the spread of Salafi/Wahhabiyya versions of Islam from the Gulf states to Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as to Algeria and Indonesia. As religious activists in more countries and regions embrace a heavily Saudi-influenced brand of radical Islam, religious violence increases and identification with the nation-state declines. State crackdowns on jihadis provoke violent responses and religion justifies them. Pan-Islamism has shown itself to be highly compatible with globalisation. Radical trends within Islam are proclaimed and spread by clever leaders and thousands of idealistic young Muslims who have heard the call to jihad and left home to defend other Muslims and die as martyrs (Hegghammer 2007: 8). The appeal of jihad and its re-importation to the homelands of activists have provoked repressive responses at the same time that modernising civil societies are making demands on their states that cannot be accommodated with money alone. What was once a relatively easy distraction from or displacement of religious differences between states and societies – that is, the repression of women – is far less available today given the expansion of women’s civic presence in Saudi Arabia, and their civil and political rights in Kuwait. Thanks to its cosmopolitan outlook, its multicultural toleration of difference, and its relatively strong national identity fired in the crucible of invasion and occupation, Kuwait seems better able to balance competing demands from domestic political trends than Saudi Arabia. Even so, both states, along with their neighbours, have been inspired by the religious fallout from the Arab Spring to use the instruments of monarchy to protect themselves from the wrath of the religious activists they helped to create. This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 4 The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Ivesa Lübben
Introduction
Muhammad Mursi was the first leader of an Islamist movement ever to be elected as head of a state. Only one year later, on 3 July 2013, he was forcibly removed from power by the Egyptian military, supported by large parts of the secular and nationalist elites of the country. From the very beginning his reign was very fragile due to deep divisions in public opinion. Mursi could neither rely on a constitution that defined the rules for the resolution of political conflicts nor on an elected parliament. Although the Muslim Brotherhood has been outlawed by the newly governing military, its media closed and its leading cadres exiled or imprisoned, it will not be completely uprooted from the Egyptian political stage. Muslim Brothers still represent important segments of the Egyptian society.1 The Muslim Brotherhood has deep historical roots and has already survived one mihna (ordeal, ruthless persecution). It was inflicted by the regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and 60s, a trauma that haunts the collective memory of the elder generation of the movement up to the present today. While the reasons for the rise and fall of President Mursi might be mainly, although not exclusively, local, the events in Egypt deeply affect developments within other Arab societies undergoing processes of transformation similar to Egypt’s. Egypt is at the geographic, political and cultural crossroads of the African and Asian part of the Arab World. Political and ideological trends in Egypt have always been reflected in the surrounding countries. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood can be considered the parent organisation of most other moderate Islamist parties discussed in this volume. The experiences of the Muslim Brothers, the form of grassroots organisation and the rasa’il (letters) of its founder Hasan al-Banna are an important source of inspiration for other New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements in the Near and Middle East and North
1 Due to a poll by Zogby the Muslim Brotherhood after the coup d’état had consolidated its mass support from 28 per cent in May 2013 to 34 per cent in September 2013 in spite of the alienation of other parts of Egyptian society. See: http://b.3cdn.net/aai/ fe64c5aaef408b33d1_0lm6bnk0v.pdf. 76 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Africa. This is so even though they have been re-interpreted and re-modelled to fit different social and political contexts, specific interests of their constituencies and by historical momentum. Some of these parties, such as the Algerian MSP, have been members of the International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood or are more reform-oriented offspring of Muslim Brotherhood-related parties as is the case of the Turkish AKP.2 But unlike the MSP or the AKP, which both rose in reaction to the failure of secular nationalist models of development, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood preceded the Nasserist era by more than two decades. Moreover, some of the most outstanding exponents of the Free Officers who came to power in 1952 and would later banish members of the Muslim Brotherhood into detention camps or into exile, had themselves been members of the Brotherhood. Although religious values, symbols and rituals are important elements contributing to the internal coherence of the movement, it is the Brotherhood’s social and economic vision as an expression of the interests of its mainly middle- and lower middle-class members and constituencies that constitutes the primary factor guaranteeing the continuity of the movement. In the following contribution, I examine the main features of the economic ideology of the Muslim Brothers. This ideology has been modified over time due to changes in its own social organisation and in the social structures of the Egyptian society in which it is embedded. The notion of ideology in this context is broader and more general than economic politics or programmes. It implies values, principles and strategies that guide the Muslim Brotherhood, which is itself a highly ideologised movement oriented towards its utopian vision of a just society. Although the Muslim Brotherhood is characterised by highly disciplined core members, due to the different levels of membership, it has more in common with a rather broad, middle-class based pietistic mass movement than with a party cadre. It has never developed sophisticated social models. Questions were left open or referred to academics and experts among members who often followed different, even contradictory schools. The ideologies of social movements tend to simplify issues, not by fault, but as their inherent function: This relative vagueness allows for the necessary coherence of socially heterogeneous movements. Ideologies can become means of exclusion and inclusion. They can be used to forge identities and draw lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’. They can be used to mobilise people, forge class alliances and generate social change.
The Social Roots of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Anti-colonial Struggle
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna as an anti- colonial Islamic reform movement, that was both modernist and conservative at
2 The AKP split from the former Fazilet Party (today Saadet Party) which is considered as the Turkish arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 77 the same time. When al-Banna referred to an earlier era of Islam it was not to turn history back to the seventh century but to revive the enthusiasm and optimism of the early followers of the Prophet Muhammad. Al-Banna wanted to liberate Islam from rural superstition and from the dogmatism of scholarly jurisprudence. He hoped to turn it into a power that would contribute to the development not only of Egypt but of the whole Islamic world until Muslims reached a social and economic level comparable to other industrialised nations. At the same time, native culture – and, at its centre, religious tradition and belief – had to be protected from foreign cultural influences, from European missionaries or from what al-Banna perceived as urban, western-influenced ‘libertinism’ which he suspected would undermine the spirit of resistance against colonialism. Egypt won formal independence in 1922, but only with severe restrictions that undermined national self-determination: Britain oversaw the security of imperial communications (shipping routes to India) and the external defence of Egypt. It demanded special legal status for foreigners and minorities under the authority of mixed courts, and Britain controlled Sudan instead of integrating it into the Kingdom of Egypt (Vatikiotis 1969: 270). Britain maintained a garrison of 10,000 soldiers in the Canal zone. Economically, Egypt continued to depend on cotton-exports to British Lancashire. Despite the attempts of the Egyptian national bourgeoisie to promote industrialisation through Bank Misr, the majority of financial institutions were controlled by foreign capital. The first cell of the Muslim Brotherhood came into being in Ismailia, the seat of the British dominated Suez-Canal society, where Hasan al-Banna served his first appointment as a young school teacher. In the eyes of Egyptians, the city of Ismailia, which had been founded during the excavation of the Suez-Canal, was a symbol of colonial power. It was not intellectual reflection on the effects of colonial dependency onthe Egyptian socio-economic order, but the humiliating realities of colonialism on the ground that motivated al-Banna to become more actively engaged. Colonial discrepancies were deeply engraved into the urban geography that split the town into the quarter of the ‘Franks’ with noble mansions and the Arab quarter with narrow lanes. He describes in his autobiography how six workers and craftsmen asked him to be their leader:
We know not the practical way to reach the glory [`izza] of Islam and to serve the welfare of the Muslim. We are weary of this life of humiliation and restriction …, we see that the Arabs and the Muslims have no status [manzila] and no dignity [karama]. They are no more than mere hirelings belonging to the foreigners. We possess nothing than this blood … and these souls … and these few coins. We are unable to perceive the road to action as you perceive it, or to know the path to the service of the fatherland, the religion, and the nation as you know it. (Mitchell 1993: 8)
The founding members of the group (established in 1928) agreed with al-Banna’s proposal to call themselves ‘the Muslim Brothers’ because they were ‘brothers 78 The Transformation of Politicised Religion in the service of Islam’ (Mitchell 1993: 8). In the oath taken since then by all members, there are the main features typical of their ideology and policy up to the present: Liberation from colonialism in the sense of the rehabilitation of dignity and self-respect; Service to God as understood by al-Banna implying service for the well-being of the Muslim community; strengthening of an autonomous Islamic identity and personality as opposed to colonial heteronomy; and a vision of the recovery of a universal role for Islamic civilization. The organisation quickly spread into the villages on the banks of the Suez Canal zone. Each local group had a mosque with adjacent institutions: evening schools for workers, sewing and literacy courses for women, Quran classes and a medical clinic. When al-Banna moved to Cairo he started to expand this model all over Egypt. In the middle of the 1940s the Muslim Brothers had sections [shu`b] in nearly every village. The movement that al-Banna founded represented a new form of social mobilisation within the Egyptian context: From its very beginning the Muslim Brotherhood was a well- institutionalised grassroots movement. In fact, it was the first modern, middle-class-oriented social movement in Egyptian history. It drew on the intellectual heritage of Islamic reformers like Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida, the editor of the Manar-Journal, the mouthpiece of the Salafiyya-Movement. All three were, however, representatives of an intellectual Islamism that lacked a broad social basis. Al-Banna started to transform this intellectual Islamism into a popular ideology. He drew as well on a tradition of earlier popular movements and rebellions, such as the Urabi uprising (1869–72) and the demonstrations against British hegemony in 1919. But these predecessors had remained spontaneous uprisings lacking continuity. The Muslim Brothers coexisted with political parties in Egypt, which – with the exception of the Wafd – represented the interests of small factions of the aristocratic or new industrial elite and lacked any substantial mass-support. Since the early 1920s, Egypt had witnessed the formation of an Islamic civil society through the spread of Islamic associations. They took the form of intellectual salons, proselytising associations or welfare organisations, but they did not interfere in politics. Hasan al-Banna explicitly rejected the traditional splitting of Islamic jurisprudence into competing law schools and the divide between the spiritualism of Sufi Islam and the text-orientated Salafiyya. Instead, he launched a strategy that started ‘from the Muslim man’ through the ‘Muslim family’ and ‘the Muslim People’ towards a ‘Muslim government’ (Al-Banna, 1992: 171 ff.). During the 5th congress, which was held on 2 February 1939 and at which the Muslim Brothers asserted themselves before the Egyptian public as a new political actor, al-Banna defined the organisation as ‘a Salafiyya message, a Sunni way, a Sufi Truth, a political organisation, an athletic group, a cultural-educational union, an economic company, a social idea’ (ibid.: 122 f.). The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 79
The Rising Effendiyya and a New Understanding of Islam
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded at a time of rapid social change. A modern middle class, the so-called effendiyya,3 emerged. It was composed of government functionaries, white collar employees, engineers, teachers and free professions including lawyers, doctors and journalists. The rise of the effendiyya was the result of modern education and economic modernisation in Egypt, financed by increasing cotton exports and, especially after World War I, by industrialisation with its growth of modern administration and services. From 1919 to 1939 industrial investment tripled, while commercial investment increased tenfold (Vatikiotis: 333). The effendiyya differed from other segments of the middle classes. The urban petty-bourgeoisie, for example, consisted of small traders, artisans and craftsmen who often conceived themselves as workers rather than as part of the effendiyya due to their low income. The traditional rural middle classes, composed of small land owners, village sheikhs [umdas] or teachers at the religious village schools, also remained outside the effendiyya. ‘Whether employed or self employed [the effendis] earned their living by mental rather than by physical labour’ (Beinin 1989: 66). The first generation of effendis originated from the small group of big land- owning families. With the rise of school enrolments4 the social origin of the effendiyya changed. The post-war effendi had their family roots in the traditional, often rural petty-bourgeoisie. Although deeply embedded in traditional Islamic culture they grasped the chance for upward social mobility through education. The effendis perceived themselves as the future leaders of the country. Although they reached the same level of education and skills as the sons of the upper classes, they remained, due to their social background, familiar with the worries and needs, the culture, and the way of thinking of the ordinary, uneducated poor masses in the country.5 Effendi was not only a social category, but also was associated with a specific culture. Misri Effendi (The Egyptian Gentleman) was a common character in films and magazines.
With Western trousers and jacket, half-Western Fez, and Eastern prayer beads, Misri Effendi contrasted visually with the even more portly, more elegantly Western-dressed pashas of the upper class as well as with the peasantry in their traditional galabiyyas. (Gershoni and Jankowsky 1995: 7)
3 The term effendi has been used in Egypt since the reign of Mohammed Ali to address educated men. It originated in Ottoman Turkish where it meant ‘Sir’. It was adapted from the Greek αφεντης. 4 From 1925 to 1945 enrolment in schools and higher education grew more than four times (see Gershoni and Jankowski 1995: 11). 5 This argument was made by Farid Abd al-Khaliq in a conversation with the author in October 2002. Abd al-Khaliq was a close aide to Hasan al-Banna. He was responsible for the students organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1940s. 80 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
One of the consequences of the rise of the effendiyya was a stronger emphasis on Islam in public discourse. Most of the new effendis had been brought up in a traditional environment before starting a modern educational career. But they were neither adherents of superstitious popular Islam nor of the orthodox Islam of al-Azhar. In their eyes both of them had contributed to intellectual backwardness. They wanted to modernise Islam and to Islamise modernity to fit their own cultural and ideological concepts. Hasan al-Banna himself was an archetype of this effendiyya. His father was a watchmaker who dedicated his free time to Islamic jurisprudence and served as an imam in the local village mosque in Mahmudiyya. The family then moved to Cairo to provide an academic education for their eldest son Hasan at the teacher training college, the Dar al-`Ulum. From there Hasan al-Banna went to Ismailia to take up his first teaching position. When he founded the Muslim Brotherhood he was only 23 years of age. Upon al-Banna’s return to Cairo, the Muslim Brotherhood gained followers mainly in the ranks of the student body of the secular Fuad-University – not at al-Azhar or other Islamic institutes. Its members were small tradesmen or young academics: administrative cadres, lawyers, doctors, engineers. The ambitions of the effendiyya were reflected in al-Banna’s belief in progress. He spoke inhis programmatic ‘letters’ [rasa’i’l, sing: risala] of his dream of a new or modern renaissance [nahda jadida or nahda haditha], progress [taqqadum] and the man of the future [rajul al-mustaqbal] (Al-Banna 1992: 47, 49). For educated and politicised young men from lower echelons of society, the Muslim Brotherhood, which had gained a voice within the Egyptian public sphere, became an alternative to political parties that represented segments of the elite or whose leaderships were monopolised by politicians from the upper class, the bashawiyya.6 The programme of the Muslim Brothers was based on ideology not on clientelistic interests. They demanded social justice in a society which was characterised by extreme social polarisation. The Muslim Brotherhood ‘represented a revolt against the politics of notables and patronage networks which dominated the Egyptian political scene. This was a closed world for the expanding and restless urbanised middle classes’ (Lia 1998: 200).7 Another aspect made the Muslim Brothers attractive for the effendiyya youth: The new understanding of Islam for which al-Banna stood and which differed, on the one hand, from the complicated chain of evidence supporting Islamic rulings of traditional fuqaha and, on the other hand, from the sophisticated debates of elitist intellectuals. Although al-Banna avoided confrontation with the religious establishment, he quietly subverted its authority, claiming in his risalat al-ta’alim (letter of instruction) that everybody who knows how to read Arabic
6 ‘Bashawiyya’ derives from the Turkish word ‘Pascha’, an honorary title addressed to the highest echelons of Ottoman administration. It is equivalent to the English title ‘Lord’. 7 It should be mentioned that there were other competing nationalist organisations like Misr al-Fatta (Young Egypt) and leftist circles that had a similar social function for young effendis, although the Muslim Brotherhood was by far the largest. The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 81 can understand the meaning of Islam, thus transferring Islam to the realm of lay religion. Islam had liberated the human mind and supported science and scientists, al-Banna argued, and he encouraged his disciples to seek knowledge and wisdom wherever it might be (Al-Banna 1992: 358). At the 5th congress, al-Banna not only outlined the main features of his movement, but also summarised his perception of the meaning of Islam as a universal religion valid for all times and for all places. It had been revealed to all peoples and nations. ‘Its prescriptions [ihkam] regulate all matters of man in this world and the hereafter … Islam is dogma [`aqida] and ritual [`ibada], homeland [watan] and nationality [jinsiyya], religion [din] and state [daula], spirituality [rauhaniyya] and practice [`amal], Quran [mushaf] and sword [saif]’. A Muslim nation [umma] that restricts Islam to ritual is described by al-Banna as an incomplete umma (ibid.: 108). It is the spirit of Islam [ruh al-Islam] which is emphasised over and over again in his programmatic tracts. Al-Banna preaches a lay Islam that centres on his concept of understanding [fahm] and praxis [`amal] (ibid.: 353 ff.): Every Muslim should strive to study in order to understand the religious references on their own. According to al-Banna, it is this openness to interpretation that makes Islam adaptable to different social settings, times and places. In al-Banna’s understanding, Islam is open to human interpretation and argument. But he also warns that divergent opinions should not lead to splits and animosity within the Islamic umma. ‘These differences do not prevent the connection of the hearts and the cooperation for doing good [khair]’ (ibid.).
The Moral Economy in Islam: Neither Capitalism nor Socialism
Although al-Banna had always evoked the principle of social justice – and much of the activities of the organisation were welfare work – his economic programme remained vague. In ‘Towards the Light’ [nahwa al-nur], a tract written on the occasion of the enthronement of the young king Faruk in 1936, he presented some economic demands that he saw as steps towards more social justice and efficiency. He wanted to reorganise the collection and distribution of obligatory alms [zakat] in a modern social institution. He asked for the prohibition of interest- based loans and the restriction of monopolies. The profits of foreign companies should be re-channelled into the national economy and the state was asked to invest and to encourage investment in projects that could absorb a large number of the unemployed. Investment should be re-directed from the production of luxury products to the production of essential commodities. Al-Banna called for a re-distribution of income by raising low salaries and capping higher ones. He advocated better vocational training as a way to raise productivity and the living standards of workers and farmers (Al-Banna 1992: 284). Only very late, in 1947, in a ‘letter’ titled the ‘Economic Order’ [al-nidham al-islami] al-Banna elaborated on the features of the economic order in Islam, 82 The Transformation of Politicised Religion contrasting them with both socialist and capitalist economic systems. His Islamic system took the concept of social justice from socialism and freedom from the western world (Al-Banna 1992: 195 ff.). This compromise between Socialism and Capitalism reflects the undecided view of the middle class in its search for a class compromise between capital and labour. The ideal Islamic society that the Muslim Brothers intended to build recognises differences between social groups but detests deeply any kind of class antagonism. ‘In opposition to the Communists’ theory, which divided society into contending classes with contradicting interests, the Muslim Bothers counter-posed the ideal of society structured as an organically interdependent unity … in “mutual social responsibility” [takaful ijtima`i]’ (Beinin 1997: 376). The projected Islamic economic order can be understood as the utopia of a ‘moral economy’8 in which ethical values and attitudes dictate labour relations, direct investment, and prioritise the spending of profits on socially useful aims. The same ethical motivation is supposed to guide workers to perform accurately and reliably. Labour [`amal] is a central category in al-Banna’s economic thought: ‘Work is the worthiest form of service to God’, he writes (Al-Banna 1992: 341). According to al-Banna, the best of all types of work is manual work or, in economic terms, productive work. He warns those who passively trust in God for their living, citing the Khalif Omar who told believers: ‘Know that heaven will rain neither silver nor gold’ (ibid.). The second main category in al-Banna’s economic thinking is benevolent money [al-mal al-salih] (ibid.: 340). Man is entitled to a good life but not a luxurious one. Any profit that exceeds the natural needs of an entrepreneur should either be spent on productive investment for the sake of the national economy or on alms [zakat] and other donations to support the needy and jobless. Islam, in a manner similar to protestant pietism, forbids the accumulation of wealth and treasure and ostentatious luxury. Explicitly prohibited is any fortune that is not an equivalent to work or labour, such as usury, gambling, fraud or forgery or income gained through trade in forbidden commodities such as pork or alcohol. The Islamic economic system is supposed to bring antagonistic social classes closer together by reducing extreme wealth on one end and extreme poverty on the other. Where benevolent deeds and self restriction are not enough to reduce social injustice, al-Banna supported state intervention to satisfy the basic needs of the population and increase its level of education and professional training, the administration of the obligatory zakat by the state, and progressive taxes to finance basic services and social security systems. The state should support the build-up of a strong economy by providing necessary infrastructure and capital-intensive investments in the exploitation of natural resources and in primary industries.
8 The term ‘moral economy’ was first introduced by the British historian Edward P. Thomson. Thomson objected to the liberal notion of a ‘homo oeconomicus’ suggesting that economic behaviour cannot be explained by market related factors alone, but has to take into consideration of cultural norms and traditional values (see Thomson 1971). The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 83
He suggested limits on large properties as well as the nationalisation of foreign industries to channel profits generated in Egypt into Egyptian economic circulation. Parallel to large-scale investments, the state should promote small economic ventures like cooperatives and home industries and distribute state land among poor families. This would not only increase production, reduce unemployment and help to integrate women into the labour market, but also strengthen the feeling of national belonging and contribute to new labour ethics (ibid.: 340 ff.). A new labour ethic was promoted through internal educational programmes for the rank and file of the organisation. In his ‘Letter of Instruction’ [risalat al-ta`alim], al-Banna set out rules of conduct for every active member of the movement through which he tried to shape a new personality who not only internalised Islam as a religion but also actively contributed to establish the moral order in the national interest. The letter on the Islamic Economy was not an extended economic programme, but more a manifesto of general guidelines. That does not mean that the Muslim Brothers did not appreciate economic expertise. However, they were of the opinion that the development of concrete economic policies was the task of experts and technocrats who should be inspired by Islamic values. As a social movement they were drawing the framework but leaving space for flexible discussions and solutions. The practical projects the Muslim Brotherhood engaged in were themselves part of the programmatic message to a broader audience for whom the rate of literacy was very low. At the same time they were a laboratory of social and economic experimentation, that was interrupted by the first dissolution in December 1948 when most of the properties of the organisation were sequestered. In the 1940s the Muslim Brotherhood founded several companies that were either organised as cooperatives – much inspired by the German cooperative movement9 – or financed by shares sold to members of the organisation or workers of the company itself. With these companies they aimed at contributing to the development of the country and to break the hegemony of foreigners over the national economy. The first company was opened in 1938: the Company for Islamic Transactions [sharika(t) al-mu`amalat al-islamiyya]. Within 8 years its capitalisation had risen from 4,000 to 30,000 LE. The company promised to provide for financial gains based on Islamic principles. Two and a half per cent of the capital and of profits were automatically transferred to a zakat fund. In 1947 the company merged with another venture founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab Company for Mines and Quarries [al-sharika al-`arabiyya lil-manajim wal-mahajir]. The activities of the new company included trucking, repair of automobiles, production of cement, tiles and gas-cookers and the treatment of marble. The Muslim Brothers also had a printing press which published their
9 At the beginning of the twentieth century the National Party founded several handicraft cooperatives in Egypt inspired by the experience of the German Cooperative movement. 84 The Transformation of Politicised Religion newspapers. Among its offspring was the Arab Advertising Company, with a capital of 100,000 LE, which became the largest and most successful of all the economic enterprises. In order to combat unemployment in 1947 the branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Shubra al-Khaima, an industrial suburb of Cairo, founded the Muslim Brothers Company for Spinning and Weaving [sharika(t) al-ikhwan al-muslimin lil-ghazil wal-tansikh], which claimed to ‘revive Islamic socialism’, ‘liberate the national economy’, and ‘raise the level of the Egyptian worker’ (Mitchell 1993: 276). More than any other venture of the Muslim Brothers, the weaving and spinning factory in Shubra al-Khaima, directed by Muhammad Sharif, the leader of the workers section of the Muslim Brotherhood, exemplifies the economic rationale of the movement.
The Muslim Brothers established the mill as a working demonstration of the viability of Islamic principles in the management of an industrial enterprise. The mill’s objectives were to apply these principles in its operation, encourage popular technical education, distribute profits to the largest number of Egyptians, encourage the habit of saving money so that the workers in the mill could buy shares, promote industrial cooperation among workers, and encourage Egyptians to buy locally manufactures products. All workers in the mill were required to buy at least one share. The brothers reasoned that if workers owned shares in the enterprise the conflict between labour and management would be eliminated, since all parties would have a stake in the success of the enterprise. This was the concrete expression of the Brothers’ view that there was no class conflict in a justly ordered Islamic society. (Beinin 1997: 374)
Other companies included the Company for Commercial and Engineering Works [sharika(t) al-tijara wal-ashghal al-handasiyya] in Alexandria, Company of the Commercial Agencies [sharika(t) al-tawkilat al-tijariyya] in Suez and the Commercial Company [al-sharika al-tijara] in Mahalla, which produced textiles and household goods. None of the companies really recovered from the blow they suffered although their confiscation was revoked at the beginning of the 1950s (Mitchell 1993: 274–7). Although the enterprises of the Muslim Brotherhood were medium-sized and comprised only a small percentage of Egyptian gross industrial investment, they were living examples of collective forms of capital investment which the Muslim Brothers perceived as a concrete alternative to capitalist exploitation of workers and to socialist collectivism. Several members founded new ventures along similar lines. The most ambitious project was an unrealised plan to build a city ‘which was not only virtuous but would also provide economic security in terms of co-operative ownership of the land’ (Mitchell 1993: 293). In 1951 some members of the Brotherhood founded a co-operative society that bought 400 feddan in Old Cairo on which to build homes for 2000 families. Each house was supposed to have a garden. The price was affordable for the average Egyptian middle-class family. Its aim was not only to provide affordable housing but to establish the basis for a community in which members support each other The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 85 through cooperation and by a system of social security to which every member of the cooperative should have access. Through its own schools and kindergartens, a safe environment, mosques and venues for leisure it was to provide an atmosphere suitable for educating a pious and virtuous generation which would form the cornerstone of the future Islamic society (Zaki 1990: 156). The project was never realised due to political developments.
The Muslim Brotherhood and the Working Class
Initially, the leadership and the cadres of the Muslim Brotherhood were mainly from the middle classes. In the 1940s, the Movement succeeded in gaining some influence among workers in the Canal Zone and in the textile industry in Shubra al-Khaima and Mahalla al-Kubra, trades that had traditionally been dominated by the left and the radical wing of the Wafd-Party. These gains were less a result of militant workers’ policies than social activities: support for the unemployed – the Muslim Brotherhood would pay a monthly salary to members who lost their job – and legal aid the Muslim Brothers would give to workers in legal disputes with factory administrations. The Muslim Brothers offered personal social networks in contrast to the anonymous relations in big factories. Also the Islamic world view of the Muslim Brothers was closer to the cultural perceptions of the workers than abstract Marxist theories. These activities among the working class brought the Brotherhood into conflict with the left at a time of growing labour unrest after World War II. Despite its sympathy for workers’ grievances, its labour policy lacked consistency. It often accused the communists of breaking national unity and of being Russian agents. In Shubra al-Khaima, the Brotherhood openly supported the mainly Egyptian owners of the textile mills and government attempts to break the strike movement and to resettle the most active trade-unionists back to their home villages. Only after workers in the Canal Zone Company and in the British-owned Shell refinery joined the wave of strikes demanding higher wages and equal rights with foreign employees did the Muslim Brothers signal sympathy with the strikers. These contradictory policies reflected the attitude of the middle classes that were stuck politically, mentally, and ideologically between labour and capital. They sympathised with the poor but, at the same time, were oriented towards social improvement. After the death of Hasan al-Banna, a wing emerged within the Muslim Brotherhood that moved closer to the working-class position. This change was represented by the early Sayyid Qutb, Muhammad Ghazali and al-Bahi al-Khuli. Qutb openly criticised the exploitation of workers, which he equated to betrayal of the prophet. Under the influence of socialism, which claimed that everybody had to be paid due to his accomplishments and to his needs, Qutb supported restrictions on private property, which he said is owned by God alone. God entrusted it to Man as a caretaker and obliged him to make use of it for the well-being of the community [umma]. Basic industries and infrastructure should stay in the hands of the state 86 The Transformation of Politicised Religion as the representative of the umma (Damir-Geilsdorf 2003: 204 f.). In his book, ‘Islam neither Communism nor Capitalism’, al-Bahi al-Khuli complained that the rich and idle systematically oppressed workers. Exploitative monopoly companies and big landowners were said to be responsible for this situation. Other authors also considered good working conditions as a basic human right and warned about destructive upheaval if the condition was not met. They asked the workers, however, not to strike but rather to join Islam. Only the young Alexandrian labour lawyer Muhammad al-Fuli urged workers to unite and fight against the capitalists rather than restraining themselves. In 1953 – just a few months before the Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed by the Nasser regime – the workers’ column of al-da`wa, the bi-monthly mouthpiece of the movement, finally endorsed the workers’ right to strike (Beinin 1997: 391).
The First Mihna: Social Roots of the Conflict Between the Muslim Brotherhood and Nasserism
The coup d’état by the Free Officers under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser on 23 July 1952 was welcomed by the Muslim Brotherhood. The leaders even had been informed of the plans to overthrow the monarchy in advance, and had taken upon themselves the protection of minorities and foreigners, foreign institutions, strategic centres and communications and assisted in maintaining order and security (Mitchell 1993: 102 f.). As a matter of fact there had been more things in common between the Brothers and the Free Officers than separated them. Some members of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) had been members of the Brotherhood or its secret apparatus in the 1940s.10 During the 1948 war in Palestine Egyptian officers in the field – among them Abdel Nasser – coordinated closely with the volunteers from the Muslim Brothers (Mitchell 1993: 58). After the coup d’état, the Muslim Brotherhood was the only organisation exempted from the prohibition of political parties. The young officers and the first generations of Muslim Brothers shared a similar social background within the conservative, provincial, petty bourgeoisie. But while the majority of Muslim Brothers became part of the rising effendiyya, the army, following its Egyptianisation under the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936, provided a competing career path. Boys who enrolled in the military academy could obtain a secondary school certificate and later enter the study of military science (Mohi El Din 1992: 12).
10 Among them were Abd al-Hakim Amer, Gamal ad-Din Hussain, Anwar al-Sadat, Hussain al-Shafe’i. Colonel Rashad Muhanna – although not member of the RCC – was the contact person between the Free Officers and the Muslim Brotherhood. Even Abdel Nasser himself had joined the Secret Apparatus of the Muslim Brothers in the 1940s before later joining Marxist groups (Abdel-Malik 1968: 265). The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 87
Despite early cooperation, a power struggle soon broke out between the Brotherhood and the group around Abdel Nasser. Lacking any mass organisation the RCC sought to co-opt the Muslim Brotherhood as a conduit into its own power structure,11 while the Muslim Brotherhood strove to be recognised as an equal partner in reward for its supportive role during the first stage of military reign. Although the Muslim Brothers did not object to the prohibition of political parties, which they considered as corrupting political life, they pressed for a quick return to a form of constitutional order. In a draft constitution that was presented in 1953 by its Alexandrian branch the Brothers opted for a non-partisan parliamentary democracy, where the military would be controlled by civilian power (Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun 1953). Hasan al-Hudaybi, who followed al-Banna as murshid,12 asked in a letter to Nasser just five months before the final crack-down on the organisation for the abolition of martial law and the restoration of parliamentary life and public freedom, particularly the freedom of the press (Mitchell 1993: 135). The biggest and ultimately unpardonable mistake the Muslim Brothers made in the eyes of Nasser was their support for Nasser’s adversary President Muhammad Naguib, who was finally forced to resign in November 1954. The ban on the Muslim Brothers and the merciless persecution of its members following an attempt on Nasser’s life on 29 October 1954 by one of the members of the organisation’s secret apparatus,13 was not a clash between a secular versus an Islamic state model (Rubin 1990: 11; Tal 2005: 37). Indeed, Nasser succeeded in co-opting some of the most exposed Azharites of the Brotherhood like Sheikh Sayyid Sabbiq, Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali and Sheikh Hasan al-Baquri who was to become minister of religious affairs. For Nasser, Islam was part of ‘Egyptianness’. The concentric circles of identity that Nasser described in his ‘Philosophy of Revolution’ were nearly identical to those that had been described more than a decade ago by Hasan al-Banna in his tract ‘A new Round of our Call’ [da’watuna fi tur jaded] Al-Banna 1993: 229) – that is, Egyptianness, Arabism, Islam, the Orient – except that Nasser replaced the Oriental circle with an African circle because of the growing significance of liberation struggles in post-war Africa (Nasser 1955: 54 ff.). Although Nasser’s rhetoric later became more influenced by socialist theories, Islam continued to be one of the fundamentals of state discourse.
11 It was only in January 1953 that the RCC created the Liberation Rally as ‘civil protector’ of the new regime. In 1957 it created the National Union as a single party, which was replaced in 1962 by the Arab Socialist Union (ASU). 12 Hasan al-Banna was murdered on 12 February 1949 following the assassination of the Egyptian Prime minister Nuqrashi Pasha by a member of the Muslim Brothers’ secret apparatus. The murder had been condemned by al-Banna who claimed that it was not ordered by the leadership. (For the background of the murder and the struggle within the Muslim Brotherhood see Mitchell 1993: 58.) 13 The assassination attempt was carried out by Mahmud Abd al-Latif, a member of the secret apparatus of the Muslim Brothers without any knowledge of the maktab al-irshad. On the contrary, al-Banna‘s successor Hasan al-Hudaybi tried desperately to dissolve the secret apparatus and even sought Nasser’s support in this (Mitchell 1993: 118 ff.). 88 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Even in 1968, a ‘vice-president of the Republic told a cabinet meeting that the mosque should regain its leadership in the community by helping to provide education, medical services, and social guidance for the populace’ (Berger 1970: 55), but under strict state control. The Nasserist regime nationalised all Islamic institutions – the Azhar, private mosques and endowments – to subordinate them to the ideological and practical needs of the state. The struggle was in reality a conflict between social groups that had chosen different careers of social advancement. In spite of their common roots, they were subject to differing processes of social transformation that finally led to conflict with each other. In order to implement import substitution industrialisation, the RCC undertook several waves of nationalisation of nearly all Egyptian companies and embarked on vast industrialisation, infrastructure and land reclamation schemes. In the 1960s, Egypt produced steel, cement and aluminium, vehicles and pharmaceuticals, household machinery, textile and communication items (Pawelka 1985: 231 ff.). Industrialisation was completely controlled by the military whose higher echelons became a state class controlling production, investment and distribution and had exclusive access to the national surplus product. Within this wider state class and under the umbrella of the Ministry for Military Production arose a closed and elite military-industrial complex, which transformed Egypt into the only Arab country with its own weapons industry (Müller-Mellin 2011: 49 ff.). This military state class regained a decisive role after the coup against Mursi as I shall discuss later. Within the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood the representatives of free professions around the Manial-Group14 – a network made up primarily of lawyers and jurists – were the most outspoken critics of the monopolisation of power by the military. One of first controversies between the group and the RCC arose from setting ceilings for land ownership. Leading Muslim Brothers did not categorically refuse land reform that would limit the power of the landed aristocracy, but they drew the line at a maximum at 500 Feddan15 – contrary to 200 feddan as proposed by the RCC – in favour of the interests of the landed bourgeoisie. Contrary to Nasserist ‘state capitalism’, the Muslim Brotherhood favoured a market economy based on private property.
The Resurgence of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s
The resurgence of the Muslim Brotherhood and more radical strands of Islamism in Egypt at the beginning of the 1970s may have resulted from various developments: frustrated middle classes and marginalised social strata that could no longer be nurtured by ruling state classes due to a relative decrease in rents;16 the shift by
14 Manial is a middle-class quarter of Cairo where the group regularly met. 15 A Feddan equals 0.42 hectare. 16 See the introduction to this volume. The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 89
Egyptians to religion as a reaction to the defeat in the Six-Day War in 1967 that smashed all dreams of a leading role in the region for Nasserist Egypt (for example Vatikiotis 1969: 408); the spread of ‘Petro-Islam’ which was imported to Egypt by migrant workers who had adopted the puritanical Wahabi Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia, where some had made a fortune (for example Zakaria 2005: 47 ff.). All these factors are, however, not the decisive reason. Nasser still enjoyed much popularity as could be witnessed when millions of Egyptians from all social classes poured into the streets in support of the president. The Islamisation that finally led to the adoption of shari`a as inspiration for and later as the main source of legislation in the new Egyptian constitution was part of the reconfiguration of the ruling class alliance that took place after Anwar Sadat took over the presidency following the sudden death of Abdel Nasser on 28 September 1970. Sadat had no power base in the ranks of the military. He had to eliminate pro- Nasser elements from the higher echelons of the state bureaucracy in a soft coup in 15 May 197117 and forge a new alliance between the non-military parts of the state class and the old commercial and landed bourgeoisie able re-establish themselves after the re-privatisation of formerly nationalised land after May 1971. With the opening of the market (infitah) a fourth segment emerged within this new alliance: a comprador or parasitic bourgeoisie, which was economically engaged in import and export as sub-contractors for the public sector. Most of these contractors had occupied leading positions in the public sector before they profited from the new market opportunities. Through bribes, commissions, and the manipulation of prices they accumulated immense wealth during the 1970s at the expense of industrial productivity (Imam 1986: 123 ff.; Zaghlul 1989: 129 ff.). The consequences were growing inequality and increasing dependency on foreign loans. Possible resistance from the army against this new power arrangement was countered by the increased role of the security services that not only took over the guarantee of internal security, but even controlled the army itself.18 In order to facilitate the restructuring of the social order, Sadat drew on Islam for the ideological frame of the new alliance. Islam was the least common denominator. Even under Nasser, Islam was maintained as cultural identity, as I have shown. Now it was used to co-opt farmers, workers and state employees – the main social base of Nasserism – into the new power arrangement.
17 On the 15 May 1971 Sadat ordered the arrest of Vice President Ali Sabri, the head of the Secret Service Sha`rawi Gomma [Juma`], and War Minister Muhammad Fawzi all of whom he considered to be at the centre of the Nasserist network in the state apparatus. All three of them were indicted for high treason and sentenced to long prison terms. One year later, Sadat expelled all Soviet military advisers. 18 Under Sadat and Mubarak the police force swelled from 150,000 in 1974 to more than a million in 2002 while the army remained stable at 460,000 members (Kandil 2014: 194). 90 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
The use of Islam by the Sadat regime had two functions: to mobilize the social actors in support of the regime … and to use this social base in order to dismantle the Nasserist base. Hence, the use of Islam in Sadat’s case was not a legitimation tool of a ruling elite on the defensive. It was in fact the ideological offensive of the new ruling elites, designed to dismantle opposition and redirect the system from the Nasserist policies to reintegration in the international capitalist system. (Farah 1986: 25)
By instilling Islamic sentiments the infitah regime would mobilise its supporters against its critics as ‘Enemies of Islam’. The attempts to apply shari`a law not only served ‘to broaden the base of support, but also to arm the ruling power bloc with legal means to control’ (Farah 1986: 108). This Islamisation from above opened new social space for Islamists whose support Sadat sought to counterbalance Nasserists and Leftists who still had influence among workers in the public sector and among university students. Sadat released the cadres of the Muslim Brotherhood from prison and allowed the exiled to return. But to keep the movement under his control and dependent on his mercy, he never extended legal recognition fearing that their influence could grow and challenge his power. Cautiously, the Muslim Brothers began to re-establish their social support networks following the organisational model of the pre-Nasser era, filling the gaps that the retreat of the infitah state from social services had left behind. They opened kindergartens, schools and clinics, helped the unemployed to find jobs or set up small-scale business and supported poor families from zakat19 funds that they collected among their members and supporters. Over the years they were able to build a solid social base among the lower segments of the middle class and the urban and provincial poor. Through their religious and cultural activities they attracted socially mobile young people who strove to overcome the narrow family bonds and clan structures prevailing in the countryside and among labour migrants in the urban shanty towns. The Movement got a new push when members of the Islamic Students’ Movement that had evolved in the universities during the 1970s joined after they graduated.20 These young cadres pushed the leadership of the Brotherhood to integrate into the political system. In the 1980s they won most elections in professional unions, which would become the most critical platform against the
19 Zakat is the obligatory alms that every Muslim is supposed to pay. 20 In the 1970s there were Islamic Groups (Jama`at islamiyya, pl.) in all Egyptian universities. Most of the cadres in Cairo, the Delta towns and in Alexandria later joined the Muslim Brotherhood and became the most active cadres who dominated the Egyptian professional unions up until recently. In Upper Egypt the Islamic student groups developed into the more radical Islamic Group (al-jama`a al-islamiyya, sing.). In Alexandria some of the former Islamist student activists later founded the Salafist Islamic Call (al-da`wa al-salafiyya). The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 91 subordination of Egypt to the capitalist world market and against normalisation with Israel. Although Sadat had initially encouraged the spread of Islamic grassroot movements, the social polarisation caused by the infitah and the separate peace deal with Israel led to the estrangement of Islamists from their former mentor. If Sadat had hoped that he could co-opt the middle classes and the petty bourgeoisie through his Islamisation politics, he soon discovered that the Islamic movements had turned into a platform for these social classes against the consequences of his politics.21 He was finally killed by radical Islamists from within the army during a military parade on 6 October 1981.
The Muslim Brothers and Economic Liberalism in the Era of Infitah
Initially, the Muslim Brothers supported the ‘open door’ economic policy that swamped the country with imports, privatised foreign trade and allowed private local and foreign investment. During the 1970s and 1980s, the leaders of the Muslim Brothers were more open to free market economies and more supportive of a leading role for private property than those of the 1940s and 50s. This turn to economic liberalism had several reasons. Those Muslim Brothers who emerged from Nasser’s prisons ‘came to emphasise the link they saw between the political despotism of Nasser’s one-party regime and the state’s domination of the economy’, as Utvik argues. ‘This double control was seen as giving the state unprecedented domination over the livelihood of individuals’ (Utvig, 2006: 146). Although the majority of the membership of the Muslim Brotherhood still came from the academic middle classes, some had made a fortune in the oil-rich countries in the Gulf or Libya, where they had served as experts or engaged in infrastructure project. They became businessmen, who wanted to repatriate their capital to Egypt to contribute to its development. Many new members of the Muslim Brothers were from free professions: engineers, doctors, lawyers and pharmacists, while state employees constituted the basis of the National Democratic Party that had been founded by Sadat as the heir of the Nasserist Arab Socialist Union.22 Economists belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, like the late Abd al-Hamid al-Ghazali, regarded the side-effects of the nationalisation of the main industries – characterised by low productivity, corruption, waste of resources, bureaucratic central planning and unclear priorities – as a major contributor to Egypt’s growing
21 While the main social bases of the Muslim Brotherhood were the urban, often provincial middle classes, most adherents to the more radical jama`a al-islamiyya came from the petty bourgeoisie in tribal upper Egypt. 22 In spite of the Infitahpolicies the state apparatus continued to expand under Sadat and Mubarak. In 1974 there were 1 million state employees which by 1986 had increased to 3.6 million (Kandil 2014: 201) and to 5.5 million in the final days of Mubarak (ibid.: 203). 92 The Transformation of Politicised Religion dependence on the outside world, even if Nasser originally had intended the opposite (ibid.: 147). Some economists belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood developed a range of models of what they understood as an Islamic economic order.23 When the Muslim Brotherhood gained political weight through its role in the trade unions and finally entered parliament – in 1984 on a ticket together with the liberalWafd- Party, and in 1987 as the Islamic Alliance with the (formerly Socialist) Islamic Labour Party – it had to develop answers to the growing economic problems of the country, even if these were not integrated into a consistent programme. The economic views of the two allied parties differed too much, however: While the Labour Party was referring to Marxist-inspired dependency theories, economists of the Muslim Brotherhood like Abd al-Hamid al-Ghazali, Hussain Shahata or Yussif Kamal tried to find a compromise between liberal or Keynesian politics, respectively, and Islamic values. The main concerns of the Brotherhood during the 1980s – during the 1990s the Islamist were not represented in Parliament24 – were economic independence and development. These two notions constituted the basis for judging other items. The Muslim Brotherhood proposed a development strategy whose first priority was self-reliance in basic commodities. Although it believed that private property should have a leading role in economic development, the Muslim Brotherhood still supported limited forms of state intervention in order to direct investment, first, into the production of ‘necessities’ [daruriyyat], then into ‘needs’ [hajiyyat] and only at a later stage into ‘improvements’ [tahsiniyyat]. The state should also control currency transfers, regulate the market to ensure just prices and prevent monopolies, speculation and hoarding of goods. The state was generally held responsible for the satisfaction of the basic needs of the population. Welfare was seen as a precondition of economic growth because people under poor conditions would be physically and mentally unable to contribute to development. There was no clear position on privatisation of the public sector, one of the main demands of both the IMF and the World Bank. A programmatic document by one of the leading Muslim Brotherhood economists, Hussain Shahata, advocated the review of the public sector. ‘Projects of strategic importance should be kept and improved in order to safeguard capital invested in them’ (ibid.: 162). Others could be sold to Muslim investors, preferably to the employees. Shahata believed that this would increase their efficiency, because they would feel that they were working for themselves. Other companies could sell up to 49 per cent of the shares to increase capital, but should be kept under state control (ibid.: 163).
23 Yussif Kamal adhered to the liberal economic school while Abd al-Hamid al-Ghazali considered himself as Keynesian. He often referred to Keynes critique of the function of interest within liberal schools as an instrument of balancing between savings and investment. 24 In 1990, along with other opposition parties, the Muslim Brothers boycotted elections; in 1995 they won only one single mandate. The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 93
Some businessmen and economists linked to the Muslim Brotherhood had been active in promoting Islamic banks in Egypt and other countries of the region. In 1977, the Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt was founded, followed by the Islamic Development Bank, whose headquarters is in Dubai, but which has branches in Egypt. Instead of making loans on an interest basis, they contribute to project finance on a participatory basis similar to a holding company. Possible profits and losses are shared between the company and the bank [musharaka]. But these Islamic banks have remained marginal due to government reluctance to deal with them as an economic sector linked to the Islamist movement.25 Islamic Banks had nothing to do with the phenomenon of Islamic Investment Companies (IIC). IICs had spread during the 1980s on the basis of an unsound use of migrant workers’ remittances. Despite attempts of state propaganda to link them to Islamist movements, the Muslim Brotherhood had been very critical towards the IICs from the very beginning (ibid.: 221).
Economic Policies in the Draft Party-Programme of 2007
The Muslim Brotherhood did not present an economic programme until 2007. After the movement was absent from parliament for the entire 1990s it gained 17 seats during the elections held in 2000, and 88 seats in 2005. This was more than four times as many as all the other opposition forces achieved together, although the Brotherhood only entered candidates in one-third of the constituencies. During their absence from parliament the socio-economic structure and the composition of the ruling-class alliance had fundamentally changed. While Sadat had opened up the market under the continuing hegemony of the bureaucratic state class, the deregulation of the Egyptian economy and the vast privatisation of large parts of the state sector that Mubarak undertook under pressure from the IMF promoted the rise of a new phalanx of business-tycoons that took steps to subdue or ‘feudalize’ (Kandil 2014: 201) the ruling party and the state apparatus for their own personal enrichment. They accumulated wealth, not as a result of entrepreneurial activities, but from their parasitic relations with the state (Kandil 2014: 201).26 Bribery at all levels was such a common form of co-opting the state bureaucracy into this new power arrangement that opposition economists spoke of bribing as a mode of reproduction, and of Egypt as ‘Corruptistan’ (Fasadistan in Arabic, Kifayya 2006). During parliamentary debates and within their constituencies, the Brotherhood bloc focused on deteriorating social and economic policies. They uncovered cases
25 The Faisal Islamic Bank offered to reclaim more than 1 million feddan of desert land. The government completely ignored the offer. 26 To cite only few examples: Ahmed al-Maghreby, the owner of the Accor hotel chain, became minister of tourism; Mohamed Mansour, owner of Al-Mansour Motor Group, served as minister of transport; and the steel magnate Ahmed Ezz was head of the Economic Commission of the Egyptian parliament (see Kandil 2014: 210). 94 The Transformation of Politicised Religion of corruption, exposed hidden special funds [al-sanadiq al-khassa] that had been separated from the state budget and hidden from parliamentary supervision and questioned the sale of public-sector and state-owned real estate at prices far below their real value.27 Following the experience of the 2005–2010 legislature, the Muslim Brotherhood became much more critical towards privatisation policies than they had been in the 1980s. Private investment should add new productive capacities to national industrial capacities to support economic development and create new jobs instead of taking over or destroying existing ones, their parliamentarians argued. Actually, privatisation had contributed to a decrease in jobs. Some investors closed factories and destroyed facilities, laying off workers and selling the land to be transformed into shopping malls or housing projects.28 With the wave of labour unrest that started with the big Mahalla strike in December 2006 the Muslim Brothers became more concerned with workers’ issues. In 2009 they took one of the major demands from the workers’ movement into parliament: an officially fixed minimum wage that guarantees a life in dignity. Since the end of the 1990s, the Muslim Brotherhood had succeeded in increasing its influence among workers by providing social services in poor working-class areas. During the elections for the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) in 2006, they fielded more than 3,000 candidates, all of whom were disqualified, without exception – as was the case with all opposition labour activists – by the Minister of Labour.29 Following its success in the elections in 2005, the leadership of the still officially illegal Muslim Brotherhood reconsidered its political strategy. It decided to sublimate its subversive often even clandestine disposition and to behave as if the movement was a legal political party: ‘It is not the regime that gives us legitimacy, but the people’, wrote Issam al-Arian, at that time member of the Guidance Office [maktab al-irshad] and one of its strategic thinkers, in an article about future challenges (Lübben 2008a: 91). Parallel to discussions as to whether the Brotherhood should be complemented by a formally independent party or be transformed into a political party itself, the maktab al-irshad presented in 2007 the draft of a party programme. Despite heated public debates as to whether Copts or women could run for the presidency in an Islamic state, the definition of the meaning of shari`a was rather flexible. The draft claimed that there were only a few binding rules, dealing
27 Interview with MP Ashraf Badr al-Din in April 2010 by the author. 28 Some of the textile factories in Shubra al-Khaima that had been sold were completely removed and the workers laid off to make space for a shopping mall that would compete with local retail traders. 29 From a background discussion with Saber Barakat, the former coordinator of independent workers committees. During trade union elections in 2006 the Muslim Brotherhood filed 2000 candidates for different positions within the official trade unions. Although they were all removed from the list by the labour minister, the number indicates the growing weight of the movement among workers. The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 95 mainly with personal status law. Essential values, however, had to be respected: justice [`adl], freedom [hurriyya] equal rights and chances [musawa] as well as the obligation to protect human life [nafs], religion [din], dignity [`ard], reason [`aql], and property [mal]. Unnoticed by the public were critically important controversies in the internal debate centred on economic issues. In this debate, the logic of Azharites and lay theologians within the ranks of the Brotherhood collided sharply with the expertise of economic technocrats. With respect to the ban on riba, initially the interpretation that any interest is forbidden carried the day. Later, the programme was completely rewritten by economists who served as counsellors of the maktab al-irshad. Although they upheld the principle that usury is forbidden in Islam which clearly prefers risk- sharing credits, they recognised that businessmen might prefer interest-based financing arrangements. The Brotherhood does not want to force society to adopt formally Islamic rules but rather to lead society towards an Islamic economic philosophy, they argued (Lübben, 2008b: 20). The draft programme linked economic policies to Islamic ethics. God has obliged humans to make the earth flourish and thrive to provide a comfortable life for man [tayyib al-hayat]. Moral economics should balance the material and the spiritual, the individual and society and guarantee an even distribution of national wealth. Work as the main productive factor was even compared to the five pillars of Islam.30 The Muslim Brotherhood favours a mixed economy in which the private sector has a leading role in the development process but also should be supported by the state. The economy is steered by an Islamic market through cooperative competition that combines two central Islamic values: personal freedom [hurriyya] and mutual social responsibility [takaful ijtima`i]. This market mechanism is to be supplemented by economic planning and state direction of investment. The state is responsible for infrastructure, strategic capital-intensive projects, an environment welcoming to national and foreign investment, measures against corruption and bureaucracy, and a just distribution of national income (Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun 2007). The Muslim Brotherhood agreed to many provisions of the Washington Consensus, such as the privatisation of public enterprises and the reduction of state subsidies. Indeed its aim was never to overcome either the capitalist mode of production or Egypt’s integration into global economic structures. It breaks, however, with the rent-seeking mentality of the Mubarak period.
30 The five pillars of Islam are the five basic obligations for every Muslim: The Islamic creed (shahada), the five daily prayers (salat), almsgiving (zakat), the fasting during the month of Ramadan (sawm) and the pilgrimage to Makkah (hajj). 96 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
The Muslim Brotherhood and Post-Mubarak Egypt
The slogans of the Egyptian revolutionary youth that toppled the Mubarak regime – aish, hurriyya, karama insaniya [bread, freedom and human dignity] – were opposed to the main features of the socio-economic system: social injustice and police brutality. Like most of the Egyptian public, the eruption of popular anger caught the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood by surprise. For years they had opted for gradual political reform because they feared the destabilising effects of a sudden break-up. The maktab al-irshad was reluctant to endorse its own youth’s call for the demonstration on 25 January 2011, but finally decided to throw all its weight behind demands for a revolutionary break once it became obvious that the movement could not be stopped. However, after the toppling of Mubarak the Muslim Brothers fell back into its reformist strategies, looking for compromise with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces [SCAF] which had filled the power vacuum, and choosing an institutionalist reform approach for the coming transition which would alienate them from other revolutionary forces. These included the legislation of the movement itself and the institutionalisation of the revolution through elections of representative bodies. The Muslim Brotherhood founded the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) as its political arm, opened offices all over the country, founded youth clubs and cooperatives for farmers and institutes for training Islamic preachers. The Brotherhood opted for early parliamentary and presidential elections to replace the new revolutionary legitimacy of the street by a more institutionalised democratic legitimacy (Halawi, 2007). Existing public and semi-public institutions should be restructured parallel to its purging of elements from the old regime. With this institutionalist approach the Muslim Brotherhood hoped to regain the necessary stability which they perceived as sine qua non for the implementation of the Nahda [Renaissance] Project they had initiated immediately after the toppling of the Mubarak regime. The project was initiated by Khairat al-Shatir, the Vice-Instructor [murshid] of the Brotherhood. Al-Shatir is the most important businessman of the Brotherhood and is said to have administered its funds. He had been put in prison in 2007 together with 29 other leading businessmen of the movement and their assets – altogether half a billion Egyptian pounds – had been frozen. While the party programme of the FJP presented concrete proposals on how to solve prevailing problems – how to generate additional income for the state budget or how to link professional training to the requirements of future industries – the Nahda Project presented visions for medium- and long-term development strategies. Both programmes support a combination of import-substituting and export-oriented strategies and an economy based on private property as a motor of development in close cooperation with the state sector that should retain its leading role in strategic industries like energy, basic foodstuffs, electricity, water and energy. State planning should guarantee that investments are channelled into The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 97 labour-intensive and high-tech industries. Another goal was self-sufficiency in strategic commodities such as wheat and cotton. The explicit objectives of the Nahda Project, which became the election platform of the later president Muhammad Mursi, were to overcome existing rent structures, expand the market economy, build up strong state institutions, and implement the rule of law. Exports were to be increased by higher productivity, diversification of production lines and the opening of new free production zones. For the first time the Muslim Brotherhood not only formulated an economic policy on general lines, but also suggested development strategies for each of Egypt’s provinces, taking into account the specific resources and raw materials and existing industries in each. It outlined how to interlink different industrial branches in order to move up the production chain to processing raw materials and agricultural products within Egypt to increase the value added and the national income from exports. The Nahda team had evaluated experiences from other countries and examined their applicability to Egypt such as the development strategies followed in Malaysia and Turkey, German policies promoting small and medium enterprises, administrative efficiency in Singapore, and the compatibility of authentic culture and modernity in Japan. They also looked at social implications of transitional processes like the handling of transitional justice in South Africa and the political transformation from dictatorship to democracy in Spain. Al-Shatir also pursued other objectives with his project. He wanted to train future cadres in the event that the Muslim Brotherhood would take over government responsibilities, and build up an international network of prospective business and even political partners.31 Through al-Shatir and his counterpart Hasan Malik, the influence of business circles within the Muslim Brotherhood grew remarkably after the toppling of the Mubarak regime. In March 2012, Hasan Malik founded the Egyptian Development Business Association whose acronym, EBDA, also means ‘Start it!’ in Arabic. EBDA sought to combine business interests with social responsibility and developmental projects. Even if its focus was the promotion of small and medium business, via EBDA, the Muslim Brothers hoped to establish links with established businessmen. Some, like Safwan Thabet, owner of Juhayna, the leading Egyptian dairy company, Farid Khamis from Oriental Weavers, or Ahmed al-Sewedy, Egypt’s biggest cable-producer, became founding members of EBDA (Roll 2013: 17). In light of growing political polarisation EBDA hoped to contribute to social pacification through an ‘economic peace’ that would unite business circles across competing political factions.32
31 For the lecture in which al-Shatir explains the Nahda project at length, see: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSLVyac5szU. 32 Interview with Usama Farid, responsible for Foreign Relations in EBDA, May 2013. 98 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
The Economic Dilemmas of the Qandil Cabinet
There are many factors that could explain the low degree of realisation of the ambitious projects under the reign of President Mursi and his Prime Minister Hisham Qandil: The dissolution of the parliament just two weeks before Mursi took power deprived him of an important instrument to modify the legal framework. There were certainly subjective factors like leadership weakness, political miscalculations and a lack of transparency. The Muslim Brotherhood failed to negotiate a national consensus between the different political camps for the transitional period. Such a consensus would have increased acceptance by Egyptians of the burden of transition in exchange for medium- and long-term economic growth. Instead, important elements among the opposition neither recognised the legitimacy of the constitution that had been approved by the 30 November 2012 referendum nor the legitimacy of the executive as a whole. Beyond these insufficiencies there are structural socio-economic factors that brought the first experience of Islamist rule in Egypt to an end, which highlight the social boundaries of moderate Islamism and will certainly continue to play a role in the future. The first of these factors is the heterogenisation of the middle classes. The main – although not the only – social basis of the Muslim Brotherhood was the Egyptian middle class, mainly independent professionals. This is illustrated by the fact that since the 1980s the Muslim Brotherhood has controlled most of the professional unions, such as those for doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, veterinarians and engineers. But the ‘middle class’ also comprises different social groups including employees in public and capitalist companies, state administrations, service sectors, and also small independent craftsmen. They differ due to their social background and social mobility, are subject to different dynamics of social change and belong to different sectors and modes of production that overlap within one society – one that itself is in a process of social transformation. As an adjunct to the emerging business elite, which in the last two decades became part of global capitalism through imports and exports, franchise of international labels and joint ventures, a new middle class has also burgeoned. It is either employed directly by the new business tycoons or international companies or works in services linked to the new economic sectors. Their salaries are not lower than those of their peers in Western countries – although in relative purchasing power terms these salaries are effectively higher than those paid in the West. Since the 1990s, Egypt has witnessed what the Latin American sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso called structural heterogeneity (Cardoso 1973). Society is cleaved into two parts, one sector that is part of global capitalism and another sector that has been de-developed, impoverished and stagnates, thereby providing the other with cheap labour, raw materials and basic consumer goods. This is not only true for the production sector itself but also for adjunct services. Five-star hospitals, international schools, luxurious living quarters and private clubs are set beside an increasingly impoverished population of whom more than 40 per The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 99 cent live below the poverty line. These social cleavages run deeply through each single segment of the middle class – doctors, lawyers, and even hairdressers and carpenters – depending on the sector which they supply and from which they draw their incomes. As a result, everyday cultures, habitus, values and political attitudes increasingly diverge within groups that formerly had been the power base of the Muslim Brotherhood. While parts of the better-off middle classes adopted Western ways of life and ways of thinking, others returned to religion either as comfort and self-assurance, or because they felt that Islamic concepts of ‘justice’ [‘adl] and ‘fairness’ [insaf] supported their critique of the growing social divide even among peers that follow different professional careers. The Islamic habitus gave those disadvantaged by social dynamics the feeling of moral superiority over those who ostentatiously demonstrated their social supremacy with the attributes of newly acquired wealth. The departure of candidates from the Muslim Brothers’ lists in the last elections of the doctors’ and the engineers’ unions, might be the result of political repression after the coup of June 2013, but can also be seen as the result of the social reconfiguration of the middle classes. This reconfiguration was one of the underlying reasons for the general political polarisation that paralleled the transition process following the 25 January revolution. The lack of lasting support for the Muslim Brothers from the working class is another factor. The workers’ movement had played a decisive role in the overthrow of the Mubarak regime. Since 2006 the wave of workers’ strikes and sit-ins continued. In February 2011 it was the effect of a general strike that gave the regime its final blow. Even after the overthrow of Mubarak – under the SCAF [Supreme Council of Armed Forces] and under the Mursi presidency – strikes continued because workers feared that the new competing political forces would neglect the social demands of the revolution. The expectations of workers in Mursi’s regime were, at the outset, very high. ‘Social Justice’ was not only a central demand in the elections programmes of Mursi and the FJP but also had been a central, religiously based value in the discourse of the Muslim Brothers for many years. Yet workers got little. The minimum wage of 1,200 LE per month that the independent workers’ movement had been pushing for since 2009 was implemented only after nine months, and without re-evaluation with respect to inflation since that date.33 Also, the ceiling for wages of state employees was not fixed at 15 times the minimum wage as worker activists had demanded, but at 35 times that amount.34 The Muslim Brotherhood, which before the overthrow of Mubarak had supported labour action, now turned against it, claiming that labour unrest would
33 In 2009 the amount of 1,200 LE was equal 220 dollars. In March 2013 this value had sunk to only 180 dollars. With a monthly income of 220 dollars a family of four would still be living under the international poverty line of 2 Dollars per day. http://www. umrechnung24.de/waehrungen/waehrung_1224406411.htm. 34 http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/02/04/draft-law-for-minimum-and- maximum-wages/. 100 The Transformation of Politicised Religion subvert the economic recovery and prevent investors from doing business in Egypt. The loss of sympathy among workers was also a result of the ‘institutionalist logic’ that dominated the Brotherhood’s post-Mubarak strategies. Under the Mubarak regime, the Muslim Brotherhood had supported the independent workers’ committees and trade unions that were formed outside the framework of the state- controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF). During the revolutionary days, these committees had announced in Tahrir Square the formation of the first Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU). On 1 May 2011, workers belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood even demonstrated in front of the Central ETUF office to demand its dissolution. But after Mursi took power, his government launched a law to establish a single united union at the expense of the independent and pro-revolutionary trade union movement. In this way the Muslim Brothers hoped to be able to control the workers’ militancy, relying on a tactic that had been used by all previous regimes. In the end, the Muslim Brotherhood lost the sympathy of independent labour activists without gaining support of the ETUF whose cadres are mostly former NDP members. ETUF supported the military coup of 3 July 2013 and the deposition of President Mursi. All attempts to co-opt the business elite via EBDA or by a presidential liason committee also failed despite serious concessions from the presidency (limiting income tax to only 25 per cent instead of 30 per cent as had been envisioned, or renunciation on prosecuting former businessmen that were charged with corruption). In order to limit capital flight, the Mursi government tried to encourage businessmen who had fled the country together with some part of their capital to return under the condition that they would pay outstanding taxes and compensation for land and assets they had purchased below market value. But the business elite never felt represented by the business circles close to the Muslim Brotherhood, whom they perceived as outsiders and intruders into their established networks, and completely different in their habitus and lifestyles. The business elite distrusted all reconciliation offers by Mursi due to his contradictory comments, and dismissed Muslim Brother entrepreneurs as nothing more than ‘small fry’. By European standards most ventures of Muslim Brothers entrepreneurs were indeed medium-sized companies. None of them is on the Forbes list of the 50 richest men in Africa or the Middle East (Roll 2013: 19 ff.). Crony capitalists from Gamal Mubarak’s entourage became the most important financiers of the media campaigns that systematically dismantled the already crumbling image of Mursi and the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. But it was the clash with the SCAF that gave the Mursi presidency its final blow. The military that had politically been disempowered since Sadat sought to re-establish its power after the fall of the Mubarak regime and to further advance its influence over the Egyptian economy. To appease the military wing of the state class, Sadat had made a ‘socio-economic peace’ deal with his officers. In addition to the 1.3 billion dollars in military aid contributed annually by the United States following the signing of the Camp David accords, the army was given increasing access to national economic resources, and began an economic penetration of The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 101 all sectors of state administration and the public sector like an octopus with his tentacles (Müller-Mellin 2011: 98 f.). The army controls not only the Egyptian armament’s industry, which is under the supervision of the Ministry for Military Production, but, since the 1960s, also practices a wide range of trades to supply military personnel and their families, such businesses as bakeries, supermarkets, housing companies, clubs, and tourist resorts. Additionally, in 1975 Sadat founded the Arab Organization for Industrialization (AOI) to push Egypt’s military production through technological cooperation with arms companies, mainly from Britain and the United States, financed with money from Saudi-Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. In 1979 the National Service Projects Organization (NSPO) came into existence under the direct authority of the Ministry of Defence. The NSPO comprises all kinds of civil industries such as food-processing, vehicles, pharmaceuticals, building materials like steel and cement, helicopters and drinking water and so on. There are no statistics on the economic share of the military in Egypt’s Gross Domestic Product. Estimations range as widely as 5 to 40 per cent (Marshall and Stacher 2012). The army has a parallel administrative structure through which it controls, directly or indirectly, most of the mineral resources of the country. Egypt is subdivided into 5 military zones that coordinate with local authorities in order ‘to guarantee security’ (Sayigh 2012: 13). However, the civil administration also is dominated by officers who are often appointed by presidential decree as governors or heads of local communities. In addition, most heads of special departments in the vast desert zones that deal with quarrying and environmental issues are former military personnel. The reach of the ‘Officer’s Republic’ (Sayigh 2012) goes even further. Former generals and majors sit on the boards of public holding companies for aviation, maritime and land transport, gas and oil, electricity, water, sanitation and telecommunication. Retired military personnel are also heavily represented in state agencies that deal with economic issues The cautious attitude of the Muslim Brotherhood in the post-Mubarak era towards the military’s violation of human rights, the endorsement of the political road-map of the SCAF and of Article 198 in the constitution of 2012 that allowed under certain conditions civilians to be brought before military courts, suggested that the Muslim Brotherhood had forged a tacit alliance with the military. But there was more than one indicator that the cautious approach of the Muslim Brothers towards the army was not going to last forever. The FJP had insisted in its party programme on the civil character of the Islamic state, which should be ruled neither by the military nor by theocrats (FJP 2011a: 12). Even more explicit was the first declaration the Muslim Brotherhood had issued in reaction to the takeover of power by the SCAF on 11 February 2011:
We are convinced that the army, that temporarily secured power, will deliver this power in a peaceful manner to politicians aiming at protecting the civil character of the state and its democratic order with the goal to build legislative institutions that are legitimized by democratic elections. (Lübben 2013: 239) 102 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
As some of his aides claim, President Mursi offered the army a new deal. He would support the modernisation and professionalisation of the armed forces, which had suffered during previous decades, but in return, the army should abstain from interference in politics and development strategies.35 The Muslim Brotherhood and Mursi himself intended to make army-controlled industries subject to commercial law and to integrate the manifold hidden special budgets of state agencies and provincial authorities into the central state budget. When he was deposed, Mursi had already started to replace military governors with civilian administrators – most of them close to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Conclusions
The Muslim Brotherhood emerged as the movement of a socially upwardly mobile middle class of mainly rural or provincial origins that wished to contribute to the modernisation of Egypt while preserving its cultural roots and Islamic identity. The Brotherhood’s social utopia reflected the search for the Golden Mean that they shared with conservative middle classes in many other countries: a balance between modernity and authenticity, between a secularism that denies the relevance of religion to politics and economy and retrograde traditionalists who stand in the way of progress, and between antagonistic social classes, be it between workers and entrepreneurs or farmer and landowners in the countryside. The economic ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood has not been static but has changed along with the socio-economic context and due to social differentiation within the Muslim Brotherhood itself. As the Muslim Brothers became more integrated into the political process, they became more pragmatic. They gave up many orthodox positions in favour of technocratic solutions to social and economic problems based on general Islamic values. This process of pragmatisation or ‘trivialisation’, as Schwecke calls it in this volume, underwent two phases: As the presence of the Muslim Brothers in parliament grew, they were confronted with social realities within their constituencies to which they had to propose solutions – even if they were not in a position to implement them. One of the results of these internal debates was the draft party programme of 2007. After President Mursi formed his first government it was not enough to simply propose theoretical solutions without seeking ways and means for their concrete implementation. In this process of ‘pragmatisation’, the views of technocrats began to prevail over Islamic fundamentals. One outstanding example is the changing attitude to interest which was endorsed – although not as a preferred medium of financing – in the draft party programme. After Muhammad Mursi took over the presidency
35 See the interview that the former minister of investment, Yehya Hamid, gave to Ahmad Mansour in al-Jazeera 11 December 2013. The transcript is available under: http:// www.aljazeera.net/File/Get/a601efb8–1dcf-4bef-8a58–6992db8073e2. The Economic Ideology of Hasan al-Banna 103 his administration did not have reservations against negotiating an IMF-loan over 5 billion Dollars against objections by Azharites and Salafists The Muslim Brotherhood remains a mainly middle-class movement.36 But the Egyptian middle class is itself subject to a dynamic process of social transformation. As it became more heterogeneous, it was drawn into the process of social polarisation with repurcussions on the social set-up of Muslim Brotherhood itself. It was the common Islamic world-view, a shared religious habitus and solidarity among the members, that kept the organisation together in the times of mihna (ordeal), be it under Abdel Nasser or under Mubarak. But with the opening of new public spaces after the overthrow of the Mubarak regime, internal differentiation due to ideology, divergent generational world-views and social backgrounds came to the surface which ultimately led to the re-structuring of the whole ‘Islamic Field’. More liberal, mainly urban groups split from the Muslim Brotherhood, while others joined. Competing Islamic trends like the formerly apolitical Salafi or Sufi groups looked for a place in the public sphere along with former jihadists who saw the chance to integrate into the political process after they had given up armed struggle at the end of the 1990s. The failure of the Mursi reign might also rest on subjective reasons like its arrogant attitude towards other revolutionary forces, its lack of transparency, and promises that could not be fulfilled. The main reason is that in spite of having a detailed economic programme, Mursi and the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood had no strategy for the re-configuration of the power and class structure in a way that would support his economic strategy. It is true that the Muslim Brotherhood does not have an economic project that transcends the capitalist mode of production. In a rentier or semi-rentier economy, however, this marks considerable progress. The successive Muslim Brotherhood programmes since 2007 have promoted a free, competitive, and open social market economy which would have offered chances for new start-ups from the upper echelons of the middle classes. The networks of businessmen that surged under the Mubarak regime did not accumulate wealth and capital by operating within free, competitive markets but because of their close relations to political power through which they attained exceptional access to large state resources. They profited from oligarchic privatisation with market imperfections in their favour. They were joined by the high military. When, in talks behind closed doors with American diplomats, the former head of SCAF, Field Marshal Tantawi, refused liberalisation on the ground that this would undermine the state’s control over the economy, it was actually the rent fiefs of the military that he defended (Abul-Magd 2011). Like the clash between Abdel Nasser and the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s, the new conflict with the military has little to do with an alleged Islamisation of the state by Mursi. The much more conservative Salafist Nur Party and the Islamic orthodoxy represented by al-Azhar supported the military take-over. This
36 See the biographies of the guidance office under: http://www.ikhwanonline.com/ Archive.aspx?Sec_ID=214. 104 The Transformation of Politicised Religion conflict is mainly a power struggle between social groups identified with different economic models. Nobody can predict whether and, if so, in what form, the Muslim Brotherhood will survive this new mihna. But the social reasons behind the on-going conflict will prevail. Chapter 5 The AKP1 or the Success of a Hybrid Gérard Groc
The capacity for conciliation which the AKP has shown since its accession to power in November 20022 is clearly surprising. This capacity has provided the AKP with a guarantee of lasting continuity.3 By rejecting the bipolar opposition between religion and secularism which would divide the Turkish political scene into two irreconcilable camps, the AKP4 durably mitigates this conflict over Turkey’s specific secular character, in light of the US example. This avoids the trap of a militant secularism which would lead to an accentuated political crisis. One might speak of, and I suggest such a formulation, reconciling a religious reference with a secular pattern of action5 which consists of separating in practice, although not without hidden motives, religion from politics in government activity. Even if this conciliation can be considered a success in the mid-term, it is not a linear process. It is therefore of special interest and produces various avenues for investigation and research.6 This reconciliation has a variety of influences and patterns ranging from simple reactions towards external constraints (for example
1 Usual abbreviation of Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, name of the Party of Justice and Development, in power in Turkey since November 2002. 2 Unexpected score of 34.26 per cent of the total votes, coming from all political horizons. Because of the electoral law, this led to a nearly 2/3 majority of the seats close to the level (2/3 plus 1) which allows for a change in the constitution. 3 41.7 per cent of the vote in the local elections of April 2004, 46.6 per cent at the parliamentarian elections of July 2007 and 38.8 per cent at the local elections of March 2009. One has to add a 58 per cent majority at the constitutional referendum on changes in the constitution, September 2010. 4 These are the names of the whole organisations which are part of the team in power under the direction of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Another leader of the party is Abdullah Gül, president of the Turkish Republic since August 2007. 5 In Turkey secularism is a highly loaded term because of its voluntary promotion by the state. The term and some similar ones based on the same root are used here as a process of secularisation, the result of a political strategy which implements secularism. 6 Turunç 2007; Baran 2008. This author gives to one of his chapters the heading: ‘No Shari’a, no coup’. A careful observant as R. Çakir notes still in 2010: ‘There are those who believe that prime minister Erdoğan, future Putin of Turkey, transforms the country with his AKP into an authoritarian one party system, and those who think that the country moves irreversibly to democracy, but also those, who like me consider that both approaches, despite the part of truth in them, are wrong because in 7 years of power neither 106 The Transformation of Politicised Religion the latent threat of the Army and the secular groups) to the determination to add to its legitimacy of being the ‘anti-system’ party that belongs to the centre – this was the principal argument and the cause of success in the electoral campaign of 2002. The latter obviously constitutes a quality still to be acquired which, however, would render the party capable of proclaiming its ability to form the centre of the political system even if this system still needs to be remodelled. In this endeavour, the AKP has proposed new values or, rather, a cocktail of new values.7 These values of compromise and accommodation entail the difficulty of managing a large electoral victory and issues relating to ruptures and break-ups including the reconsideration of ‘political Islam’ by rejecting the mistakes made by predecessors. Lastly, the cocktail of new values encompasses values which are the result of real pragmatism with regard to global political heavyweights (on the internal and institutional level as well as on the external level regarding some newly concluded alliances). The party was bold enough to create exciting events and initiatives, such as the candidacy for European Union membership, the announcement of a possible solution to the question of Cyprus and especially the parliamentary vote against providing assistance to the USA in the invasion of Iraq in April 2003.8 This also includes real developments such as opening to the notion of ‘democracy’ linked to the adoption of the concept of civil society as opposed to ‘political society’, or the new use of religion in a pluralist interpretation and the adoption of the freedom of conscience principle, both introduced as elements of individual liberties. Lastly, the direct and indirect reintroduction of Islamic references into the political arena constitutes, in my eyes, a mollifying and conciliatory manner as an alliance of all the religions and secularism, although not of the individual but of the state, by opportunistically using the rejection of admission to the European Union.
On What Can This Victory Be Based?
A precise enumeration of the social bases of the AKP remains difficult. It is certainly possible to speak of an awakening of the middle classes in global terms but this process started long before the creation of the AKP (Berkan 2007) and refers to economic changes in Turkey since the 1980s with their important consequences: rural emigration, the reversal of the city/countryside relation since 1985, increases in per capita incomes, access for new social strata to education, access to new forms of enterprises in Anatolia and so on. The AKP did not initiate these developments a story of democracy nor of fascism can just be invented’ Vatan Gazetesi, 8 January 2010 (Translations from Turkish by the author). 7 Cf. Groc 2010, of which this chapter takes its general orientation. 8 As well the recent search for an agreement with Armenia or the certainly late attempt to deal with the Kurdish issue and the Kurdish resistance party PKK. Measures of amnesty and conciliation with the returned fighters openly contrast with the authoritarian manner of preceding government. Are these only effects of the moment? The AKP or the Success of a Hybrid 107 but it does collect its fruits (Cevik 2007): The AKP has succeeded in inculcating a new political discourse in a new electoral audience which is constituted by the migration of large sections of the formerly rural population to the urban areas where they have established themselves, especially in the suburbs. In the context of a catch-all electoral victory with the mixture of theoretical and political references, the AKP social bases can be analysed more easily on the basis of quantifiable and observable electoral statistics. This electoral basis is the reason for its victory and its principal source of national and international legitimacy, as well as, among others, for its resistance to the secular forces. The social base of the AKP is both large and conflicting; the party reaches out to a large variety of expectations. Its reach far surpasses the Islamic/Islamist vote of the Refâh party which averaged about 20 per cent. The success of the AKP can also be interpreted in a political way as a critique of the previous governments and the economic and financial crisis of February 2001 as well as an outcome of a more clearly articulated determination to democratisation which results from increasing criticism of military domination in politics.9 In addition, the electorate has become extremely volatile since 1991, with a tendency to abandon the incumbent leader from election to election and to turn to a challenger who may be at the political periphery but at least carries no direct responsibility for the situation which prevails at the moment of the election. In 1991, the traditional parties achieved a victorious return after the military interlude which began in 1980. In 1994 and 1995, the Islamists surprisingly acquired a parliamentary majority. In 1999, the nationalists returned in a rather disparate alliance ranging from the extreme right to the Kemalist left but which had to hand over power in 2002 after what remains an unsurpassed electoral success by a leader who – though he had broken away from ‘Islamism’ – had still forfeited his political rights and could not stand himself as a candidate in the elections. Historically, the success on the AKP is based on the outcome of two events: the soft coup d’état and the measures taken on 28 February 1997, when the secularly oriented elites and the military hierarchy did not hesitate to scorn due legal process and depose a regularly elected party with a real parliamentary majority in the name of respect for secularism simply because this party proclaimed a political line which showed strong references to Islam. These severe breaches of the rule of law by the Kemalist regime escalated into a repression of religious groups in which a variety of state institutions and civil society actors participated. The resulting distrust facilitated the AKP move towards changing the ‘Kemalist’ status quo and created a new basis of legality, characterised by deepened ‘democracy’. An additional factor was constituted by the vanity of the established Islamic party’s leadership in power which still included future leaders of the AKP. This party had been the target of the soft coup d’état. It had ignored
9 Military interventions have often improved the voting performance in the following elections of those parties who suffered from them or at least had challenged the intervention 1973, 1983, 2002, 2007. 108 The Transformation of Politicised Religion the power relations and the weight of the army, underestimated the means at the disposal of the secular establishment and blindly maintained an ideology-driven political line despite comprehensive social change which altered the basic elements of social expectations. As a result, the party hastened its own downfall. This historical background formed the basis for the new orientation of the successful AKP campaign. In the first place, the new political formation dared to design its campaign as a challenge to the system, opted for an ‘anti-system’ position, and no longer limited itself to a simple critique of other parties. It presented itself as an outsider in relation to the political system even though it did not necessarily constitute one in reality. It attacked the political class in its entirety by denouncing the unavoidable perversions which the practice of political power, the proximity to the state, and the utilisation of spheres of influence for political interests had generated. As such there was a necessary move away from the state and the ‘centrist’ parties due to their increasing neglect of the interests of the general population. In 2002, the AKP defined itself as the opposition to a blocked political elite and its disparate coalitions between the left, the right and the Islamic (an argument which was facilitated by the tripartite composition of the governments since 1999) and triggered off a negative swing of votes which indeed decimated the old political formations. By transgressing the usual framework of the political contest, the AKP also got rid of the exclusively state-oriented framework for political action. Subsequently, the new party broke with its predecessor, though not without taking on many aspects from it. It inherited its hierarchy, its staff (including members of parliament and local councillors from the Refâh party) and its electorate, but at the same time it constructed itself in clear opposition to its predecessor’s mode of operation on the ruins of the Refâh party. It opted for a logic of renovation, with the battle between ‘renovators’ and ‘white beards’ starting in May 2000, operated as a reservoir for Refâh members of parliament who in 2001 had to rapidly switch loyalties to a new party as their old party was shut down10 and constantly demonstrated its determination not to commit the mistakes of its predecessor, which implied a fundamental critique of the cultural aspects of Turkish politics (Erdoğan 2003). Its victory marks the collapse of the Refâh and its successor, the Saadet Partisi, which in November 2002 won only 2.5 per cent of the vote. It also marks the political demise of the old Islamist leader N. Erbakan who gradually disappeared from the political arena after being banned. From this shift originated a whole series of changes and innovations which were characterised by a demonstrated moderation and conciliation, even if in the case of the AKP there are several different criteria applied which attempt to
10 The Refâh Partisi was shut down in January 1998; actually, it was the ban against its successor, the Fazilet Partisi in December 2000 which led to this run of the members of parliament to the AKP. The AKP or the Success of a Hybrid 109 gauge this moderation.11 Moderation can be understood as capacity to abandon a requirement or an obligation, but also as the capacity to conclude compromises or to look for consensus without necessarily having abandoned the original goal, or as the capacity to recognise a degree of autonomy for other forces in order to instigate a dialogue. Moderation can range from sincerity to a double game characterised by a policy of pragmatism. Finally, the causes of a moderate attitude can be either endogenous or exogenous; either related to developments within the political party or the political system or to imposed constraints and international commitments.
Degrees of Moderation
Looking for the most obvious signs of moderation, one can point to the party’s caution in dealing with the military, the secularly oriented apparatus, or the dealings with a repressive judiciary. One will remember the repeated military interventions up to the soft coup d’état of February 1997 which directly targeted a government with religious leanings. This also includes the condemnation of Erdoğan’s imprisonment (March 1999) for religious motives, his political ban and the decision on his non-eligibility by a court during a full electoral campaign (September 2002). In such a context, a large electoral victory such as the one of November 2002, giving the majority on the basis of the prevailing electoral system, cannot be exploited without accepting the basic rules of the institutional, ideological and political framework which characterise the regime (the principles of the Republican state as defined under article 2 of the 1982 constitution). Such an acceptance is inevitable and derives from common sense. The winner has to get hold of the means of governing, if only in order to be able to operate, that is, to give a meaning to the victory the voters have allowed and on which these voters are counting. Beyond these constraints, moderation is also imposed by the inherent logic of the actual situation. The party has been twice publicly rejected by the regime, been condemned for religious propaganda and – in the form of its predecessors (Refâh and Fazilet) – has been banned twice so that its legitimacy is defended primarily by its electoral successes. These have been the only mechanisms of overcoming the official disgrace (1994, 1997 and also 2002) and acquire real legitimacy at the local and municipal levels. Electoral successes are the only guarantee of a permanence of its presence. The party has to stay in the race for votes and prepare after any election for the following one. The party has to avoid risking the loss of power without gaining anything in return (Erdoğan 2002). Moderation is also
11 Relevance of the question of the moderation in the eyes of the AKP: this rhetoric is rarely used by the party and its leaders as it would imply a link of politics to religion which is banned in a secular Republic. The reference is only implicit, because they early on denied any link with Islam or the religion. A distinction between ‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ (or propagandist) would imply such a link between politics and the religious domain. 110 The Transformation of Politicised Religion necessary as a large majority is difficult to manage: The party has been extended to other political sensibilities and assembles a heterogeneous electorate which is not necessarily oriented to religion and instead aspires to the satisfaction of its own interests.12 A winner cannot address only one type of voter but has to satisfy a heterogeneous public in order gain enough votes to secure re-election.13 Erdoğan as the principal AKP leader was well acquainted with this type of behaviour beginning from when he was appointed supreme mayor of Istanbul in April 1994. He has benefited greatly from this exercise.14 Here, moderation is not only accepted but actively pursued. The records of the political project of the AKP as proposed in the campaign documents, party programmes and statutes clearly document this idea of moderation. Communicative openness, exchanges, economic liberalism and globalisation, technical achievements and commitment to progress, secularisation, modernity, acceptance of international requirements including constraints set by the IMF and the European Court of Human Rights are trademarks of the moderation of the AKP. The AKP government surprised all observers with its rapid commitment to European Union partnership which implied a break with the timidity of the entire political class at that time, although such behaviour cannot be deduced from an ‘Islamic’ culture that was also often marked by a rejection of the West. The reason for this choice is obvious, however: The newly elected AKP sought a supranational legal basis and a clearly visible democratic reference in order to be protected from distortions of the political contest by the National Security Council as well as protection from an all too often arbitrary judicial interventionism. Yet it was from this position that successive modifications of the constitution of 1982 began: the series of constitutional and legislative packages, the appeal to human rights and the adoption of the Copenhagen criteria and the invocation of the idea of the transformation of the 1963 association treaties into a supranational legal structure which could not have been implemented domestically as the necessary revisions in the legal structure would have incurred the political risk of another military coup d’état. These initial developments were followed by a more pronounced and comfortable opening to social pluralism, the promotion of democratising models of political action with political participation, increased social inclusion, and a
12 One could also say that with the course of time Turkey has become a more and more modernised and secularised country and that the new leadership cannot ignore this new dimension, which partly also explains its victory. 13 The absolute majority is due also to distortions caused by the electoral law. The minimum level of 10 per cent worked this time for the outsider. With 34 per cent of the vote and victory in 63 of 81 vilayets (provinces), a majority of seats of 367 out of 550, nearly 66 per cent, the majority required for changing the Constitution. About 60 per cent of the vote did not lead to seats because of the limit of 10 per cent, abstentions and invalid votes. For example the Kurdish vote, which led in 13 vilayets did not result in seats in parliament between 2002 and 2007. 14 Erdoğan: ‘We will do at the national level, what we have done for Istanbul’. The AKP or the Success of a Hybrid 111 transfer of power to the local level. All of these steps were meant to create synergies outside the established political class, on the periphery of the centrist actors. People and society formed the focus of AKP politics as increasingly valuable sources of legitimacy and political sovereignty. The concept of civil society shifted towards the Ottoman concept of Millet. Moderation was also sometimes an implicit argument for meeting electoral promises such as the move towards allowing veils for female university students15 or the penalisation of adultery. Moderation may also have been used to instigate political control of universities, local governments, and decentralised supra-local administrative units. In this case, the political rhetoric was free from polemics but designed to present pacifying or mediating compromises (barisci, uzlasmaci). Obviously, the government had to declare its moderation at the moment of the Islamist assaults of November 2003 in Istanbul which made Turkey a country of war (dar-ul-harb).
From Conciliation to Ambiguity
The AKP has the privilege of combining paradoxical and even antagonistic references by putting together two normally very distinct elements and linking them in compatible and even complementary ways. One of these elements is characterised by being used in the form of going beyond, becoming unblocked, in a perspective of innovation; the other by the affirmation of values in a perspective of permanence. This is surprising and allows us to see beyond superficial ‘a prioris’ and easy assumptions such as the automatic association of Islamic with Islamist. The first surprise is found in the name of the party which combines a value – justice – and a concrete concept – development.16 It primarily stresses the link between ‘democratic’ and ‘conservative’,17 taken from Christian Democracy but used in a ‘secular’ version. This double denomination derives from the European political tradition, an example of a long-term national success, and implicitly suggests a link between a religious reference and a principle of government. This concept became widely known and was dealt with in several collective and academic publications (Akdoğan 2004). It defined a political approach which adapts tradition to universal and modern standards, a system of local values taken from historical roots which does not block evolution. By calling for pluralism,
15 Between 2002 and 2007, the AKP was remarkably silent on its ‘religious’ policy, especially with respect to the issue of the veil, although this had been one of its favourite issues during the electoral campaign. 16 Far away from the green flag, the star and the crescent. The party chose an incandescent lamp on yellow ground as an emblem. 17 ‘The concept of conservative democracy, as the AKP tries to develop, attributes great importance to the establishment of a healthy basis for a new relation between religion and democracy, tradition and modernity, state and society’, Conclusion Temel Kavramlar I: 95. 112 The Transformation of Politicised Religion dialogue, and consensus the concept designs an authentic organic democracy, beyond merely electoral and hence ‘mechanical’ democracy which penetrates all administrative, social, and political spaces (Akdoğan 2004: 92). In this, the concept thrives on combining often contradictory notions such as tradition and modernity, Islam and modernity, and Islam and democracy. Another successful shift was the introduction of the demand for freedom of conscience which subsequently could be used to emphasise religious freedom as part of fundamental liberties and as a value on which the political discourse can be based without direct reference to Islam. Religion represents a defence against the de- personalisation imposed by the modern world. It is a determining factor of personal liberty, a fundamental element of identity in its historical and cultural dimensions, within the framework of an inalienable link with the past, in our case the Ottoman past. This position is reinforced by the demonstrable improvement in the situation of minorities and new concessions with respect to their religious particularities. It breaks with the previous rigidity of the secularly oriented bureaucracy. This allows a reinterpretation of secularism in a fashion resembling classical notions of neutrality of the state and keeping an equal distance from all religions as well as the state’s guarantee of the freedom of religious practice in which secularism emerges as the guarantee of religious freedom. The reinterpretation legitimises the mobilisation of the state in favour of this type of secularism. Speaking not only of other religions but also of Islam, the majority belief in Turkey (officially 99 per cent), becomes logical as does the state’s recognition of this sociological fact and the popular demands which result from it (Aydin 2005). It can be inferred that the constitution of this secular republic attributes to the state the task of ensuring a generalised religious instruction in the education system (article 24). This line of argument was supported by two developments: The first was the ‘Alliance of Civilizations’ which the Spanish politician Zapatero promoted against Huntington. This alliance had been created by the United Nations in 2005 on Spanish initiative which Turkey strongly supported. The objective was to improve the understanding between peoples of different religion and cultures. It was meant as an attack against Huntington’s paradigm of a clash of civilizations. Here the AKP took the opportunity to present an affirmation of its own religious particularity in a dialogic perspective and peace as a search for conciliation, and this in a situation where its Muslim character was perceived positively at the international level. The second development was constituted by the European rejection of the Turkish entry into the European Union which forced the country to accept its Muslim dimension under the pressure of all negotiators with whom the Turkish government had to interact. This newly formulated articulation of religion and secularism is accompanied by a new relationship between secularism and democracy according to which both democracy and secularism depend on each other for their realisation so that they require the protection of individual freedom from the arbitrary intervention The AKP or the Success of a Hybrid 113 of the state18 Consequently, the AKP argues that the identity of a people in its sociological dimension also needs to have the means of being expressed under the auspices of democracy (Akdoğan 2004: 108). This is supplemented by an appeal against all ideological or political utilisation of religion which in this perception forms an insult to religion itself.19 On this issue, Erdoğan was bold enough to oppose secularism and individual rights in declaring that secularism pertained to the state and not to individuals.20 Another combination of antagonisms which comes close to ambiguity is the emphasis on the right to wear the veil as an expression of individual freedom and affirmation. Some studies21 indeed show new social mechanisms of religious commitment, far away from any dogmatism, which combine individual aspirations in terms of autonomy, social upward mobility, enrichment, consumerism with the retreat of political Islam. In this, one can find elements of the Islamic capitalism of the Tigers of Anatolia. The conciliation between the religious dimension and the public or political space as realised under the influence of the AKP forms a central issue in contemporary Turkish politics, as does the re-valorisation of religious reference on the individual level in terms of a re-appropriation of a sphere which had been banned by official secularism but which, because of this ban, had been a source of frustration. By creating a space for the religious dimension while, at the same time, clearly imposing the separation between the religious and the political, the ruling AKP allows a free interaction between these two dimensions in which close ties with the religious are no longer necessarily in opposition with close ties to the non-religious world so that both no longer exclude each other. This applies to simple believers who want to practice their religion, but also to ‘Islamists’ who are stepping beyond the confines of political Islam.22 It also applies to democratising
18 When accused of being an ‘anti-secular centre’ (April 2008), Erdoğan answers by a ‘combinatory’ version of secularism as it is in the constitution. The Turkish Republic is a democratic, secular and social state of law. ‘Let us preserve this four fundamental principles completing each other. We can’t sacrifice one to another. We should not establish priorities’ (Erdoğan 2009). 19 A. Gül: ‘We are not an Islamic party. Religion is a matter for individuals, not politics. [ … ] I don’t like Islamic political parties … ’ (2007). 20 In an interview with Tercüman, 16 May 2005: ‘We have no problem with secularism. The article of the 1982 constitution on secularism states clearly that there is “equal distance to all religions”. All creeds are under the guarantee of the state. I repeat: As a human being, I am not secular. It is the state which is secular, but I am under the obligation to protect the secular order. If however you treat secularism as a religion itself, than you hurt the people in this country’. 21 Göle/Ammann 2005; Kaya 2010. Cf. also the lecture of Ali Bayramoğlu (‘Islam et Politique’, the 13 October 2009) at the Conference of the ‘Université de Tous les Savoirs’ about ‘Turkey today’, on-line Canal U. 22 ‘In Islam, political order is based on education, and develops on the basis of the criteria of equality between men, the supremacy of the law, the protection of human rights 114 The Transformation of Politicised Religion secularists who are ready to accept the modalities of freedom of religion and to admit the cultural and sociological dimension of Islam in their country. Leaving aside the dimension of cultural politics, the discourse of the AKP attempts to bring together liberalism and populism, although the AKP generally is very close to business circles, especially the association of entrepreneurs TÜSIAD, and financial and economic elites. This does not, however, keep the AKP from demonstrating its commitment to the poor and the destitute by questioning the capitalist mode of production,23 which inevitably gives rise to inequality. One rationale for this policy is the link between its electoral success and the financial crisis which started in 2001 and which could not have been overcome without substantial assistance by the IMF and its conditions. Another element of this rationale is constituted by the public demand for re-distributive programmes in favour of poorer social strata which serve to legitimate both strands of the party’s economic policy, capitalist production and re-distribution: Access to consumption becomes a sign of social justice in the AKP discourse. Parallel to this, another position taken by Turkey has been to incorporate a demand for identity within globalisation in which markers of identity allow a greater differentiation between negotiation partners and therefore may improve the realisation of the distribution of roles within a globalised world, among others when it comes to mediations by geographical, economic, cultural or religious intermediaries in regional contexts. In this, the reference to Islam forms both an alternative to globalisation and a more precise articulation of the local in its integration within the global. In a similar vein, the demand for identity for a Turkey which is totally oriented to look after an access to globalisation, is exclusively focused on integration into the network of international finance and the global market as a means to reinforce access to consumption. As a result, there is a demand for specific, often localised symbols of Turkey’s place in global affairs: the demand of equality with external partners to improve Turkey’s position in negotiations – for example, the often mentioned role of Turkey as an intermediate country due to its geographic, economic, cultural or religious characteristics which lends itself to mediation of regional conflicts – or simply as a safeguard which helps to delay the unavoidable penetration of western values.24 In summary, Islam does not form an alternative to the global world for
also of minorities, responsibility to the law, transparency of political and international processes, unquestionable supremacy of the principle of justice with respect to economics, society, politics and legislation’. (Akdoğan 2004: 101). 23 Cf. the often quoted study, Islamic Calvinists – Change and Conservatism in Central Anatolia, ESI, September 2005. 24 ‘It is difficult for cultures without tradition and which are unable to represent their own identity in an autonomous manner to compete with foreign cultures. The more our country can have impact in cultural and artistic places the more the respect increases which we can inspire at the international level’, Chapter Culture and Arts of the programme of the AKP. The AKP or the Success of a Hybrid 115 the AKP but, rather, Islam constitutes an element of the local to be preserved in the process of global integration. The electoral campaign of the AKP embodies this paradox between Islam and politics. The Islamic dimension is indirectly mobilised by the AKP. The party was able to create a national consensus on the inevitability of diverging from global developments driven by Turkey’s position outside the system which encompasses a broad criticism of national and global affairs from a moral point of view based on the denunciation of corruption, privilege, and selfishness. The latter are alleged to characterise a political class which had established itself earlier under the protection of the state. The AKP therefore calls for the replacement of political representatives by electing new actors who have not benefited from this state and would therefore be able to help in transforming state institutions. On the basis of a comfortable majority, this endeavour to reform would ultimately lead to a transgression of both old ideologies – the earlier version of Turkish Islamism as well as the kind of secularism associated with the soft coup d’état of February 1997. Overall, the AKP thereby gives voice to calls for pragmatic adjustments and the resolution of social conflict.
Limits of the Model
The AKP model has inherent limits beyond the clever management of the daily political agenda. Some are contextual and created by problems of timing, opportunity, prudence, or blockages which are beyond the reach of the AKP. Others appear as renunciations, as shifts in the trajectories which the electoral discourse had forgotten to consider. Finally, there remain taboos which hide, but do not completely cover, fundamental obstacles of conception and incompatibilities between analytical approaches, convictions and applications. The issue of Cyprus forms one of these taboos – and an AKP failure. The South refuses a priori to respond to an opening, embodied by the Greek refusal of the April 2004 Annan proposal. More fundamentally, there is indeed a legal problem of cumulative non-recognition which forms an obstacle to efforts by recognised interlocutors to mediate between the two sides. With respect to the important Kurdish problem, the AKP government has indulged in nearly indifferent passivity, hiding behind its famous refusal to let American troops pass. Only recently has the AKP dared to propose measures for an amnesty and for reconciliation. Similarly, the establishment of relations with civil society forms another example where the AKP appears to have failed to generate a positive echo from prospective national or local partners. By and large, it has failed to inject dynamism into a campaign against authoritarianism which had been widely criticised. Very often, the appeal of the AKP to NGOs is limited to those with an Islamic label. The issue which most clearly has been given up relates to the European Union. After having succeeded in starting the process to join in December 2004, followed by the beginning of the negotiations in October 2005 and an initial assessment 116 The Transformation of Politicised Religion after one year, the government lost interest and began to distance itself. This may be explained in part by the requirements of the electoral campaign of 2007 which included the run-up to the highly symbolic office of President of the Republic. With a Europe globally opposed to a Turkish candidacy highlighting Turkey’s ‘oriental’ heritage, the AKP had difficulties in ignoring the general disappointment and in defying a discontented Turkish public. The issue was reopened after the electoral success of 2007 but henceforth lacked commitment and pace. There are, however, other taboos and remnants of earlier policies which deserve more detailed scrutiny. How could the AKP with its liberal leanings deal with Islamic norms prohibiting the accrual of interest in banking? There have been few comments such that the issue seems to be buried and everything seems to indicate that the question is no longer relevant. The idea that Turkey is 99 per cent Muslim implicitly disregards all citizens who declare themselves secular, but explicitly the Alawi community, estimated at 15 to 20 per cent of the population, which since 2008 has been recognised by the European Court of Human Rights (November 2007) in its resistance to compulsory religious classes based on a Sunni perspective. This is linked to the delusion of the constitution of an official secularism in which the state assumes the role of a legal promoter of religion. Transferring the task of religious promotion to its Direction of Religious Affairs is a practical arrangement for the government as it is itself not able to assume this task, but this leads to distortions in the statute of neutrality of public space as shown by the issues of municipal squares reserved for women or bans on alcohol in certain public spaces. This preserves doubts about the neutrality of the government with respect to religions and mobilises secularly oriented tendencies against the re-Islamisation of public space.25 More generally, it re-starts the debate on the real acceptance of a democratic order by the religious movements26 and ipso facto on the hegemonic temptations of Islam.27 The discourses on the veil28 and the Imam Hâtip Okullari (Colleges for religious teaching) include voices
25 In the interview quoted above, fn. 19, Gül declared: ‘But as Muslim societies democratize, you will see greater religious expression everywhere in society. It is a consequence of democracy. People in Muslim countries are devout, socially conservative … You have to understand it and allow some expressions of this belief’ (Gül 2007). 26 Cf. Ihsan Yilmaz on the notion of legal pluralism and the Muslim goal of having Islamic legal norms together with another legal system: ‘As Muslim legal pluralism is inevitable, even in non-Muslim spheres, regardless of any official non-recognition and as non-recognition does not make Muslim law disappear, discussions regarding ijtihad and tajdid will still be relevant wherever Muslims live’, in: ‘Muslim Alternative Dispute Resolution and Neo-Ijtihad in England’, www.alternativesjournal.net/volume2/number1/ yilmaz.htm, p. 1. 27 One should recall the old formula of Erdoğan that democracy is not a goal but an instrument. 28 Re-flared by the constitutional change which aimed at opening the universities for veiled lady students, it was voted in February but rejected by the Constitutional Court in June 2008. The AKP or the Success of a Hybrid 117 which vary from the officially proclaimed positions on modernity and diversity and demonstrate the partial prevalence of dogmatic affirmations: of note is the autumn 2004 proposal to penalise adultery under the pretext of protecting wives against the faithlessness of their spouses. The dismissal of the complaint by a female student against Turkish secularism (Decision of the European Court Of Human Rights ‘Leila Sahin against Turkish State’, November 2005) under the pretext that the matter could not be competently dealt with by secular judges but, rather, by the Ulama as it addressed certain public slogans which glorified the satisfaction of God about wives with many children and affirmations that God is the creator of everything and that man is his slave (Allah’ in kulu). Such assertions form the basis for persisting doubts which facilitated judicial interventions in April 2008 which accused the AKP of being an ‘anti-secular centre’29 which came close causing its prohibition.30 A similar issue related to this question is the absence of internal democracy in the AKP where any decision comes either from the leader or from a limited council of 12 members which is in charge of most decision-making without the consultation of the party base.31 I have already argued that the theme of opening up to civil society did not work. This necessitates two questions: The first, rather classical one, relates to the political capacity of the AKP to really accept social pluralism and give it a priori the right of expression – without attempting to clamp down on an opinion just because the party considers it either as deviant or hostile. The charismatic Prime Minister Erdoğan has demonstrated his touchiness by reacting to the debate with the newsgroup Dogan with a call in September 2008 to boycott the group’s newspapers. This is accompanied, at the same time, by indirect financing of the Islamic media – as shown by the ‘Deniz Feneri’ affair. More generally, it has been asked whether AKP local governments differentiate between their administrative subjects and discriminate against the secularly oriented with respect to the distribution of services and financial support. This accusation has been substantiated32 and seems to have reduced the AKP vote in the last local elections of March 2009 to 39 per cent. The major difficulty seems to be the following, however: the AKP remains an outsider to the political system, but has to resolve a contradiction. It has to be at the heart of society, and this also means the heart of the political system where political successes are built on the ruptures with the earlier social and political
29 The indictment comprised of 400 charges of violations of secularist legal norms and accused 12 people (the president of the Republic, the prime minister, the speaker of the parliament, several ministers, and so on) against whom the prosecutor asked the repeal of their political rights. 30 The Court admitted only 30 charges; the Constitutional Court (31 July 2008) has effectively condemned the party but its closure was avoided as there was no qualified majority. The text of the decision was published end of October 2008. 31 However this absence of internal democracy is not the monopoly of this party. 32 Toprak 2008. Cf. also Massicard 2009. 118 The Transformation of Politicised Religion establishments. For the AKP, religious attachment implicitly forms a demonstration of the failure of social transformation which the secular republican regime had been trying to implement so desperately. Value-based conservatism, primarily determined by Islam, continues to signify the hidden confrontation between social demand and the existing political order in the eyes of AKP supporters. Here lies the difficulty for the AKP to be at the same time a strong critic of modernism and a party in power with full control of the reins of the political system. The AKP has to tolerate the contradiction of being, at the same time, outside and inside the system: In order to be a ‘real’ challenger and a power of reform and innovation it has to be perceived as an outsider, while at the same time it needs to be capable of giving legitimacy to its changes in the political order without destroying this system. This applies both to strategies with minimal goals oriented to drive political forces out of power or a maximalist strategy oriented to a reorientation of the entire political organisation to forms which fit better to the religious dimension if this should be the party’s objective. Without deciding on the preferences, it should be noted that the party considers it important to remain at the ‘centre’ of the political spectrum (merkez). The party tries to convey this message to its partners and adversaries: without great success, so far. For the time being, this dilemma persists as long as in times of crisis the former establishment stigmatises the external dimension of the AKP, while the party itself stresses the importance of its link with the people and its way of approaching things, aspects which tend to distinguish the party from its rivals, but also to isolate it in the political arena. This is shown by its defence against accusations brought in court in 2008. Here are possible elements of failure. If, as during the decade of the 1950s, which led to the first military coup d’état, the political opposition cannot be overcome, there is a risk of keeping the political actors in the same confrontation and to cement the political antagonisms. The party’s capacity for adapting to the central institutions of the Republic, however, remains real and the take-over of the presidency in summer 2007 is promising because of the right of the President to nominate positions for public office. This implies the capacity to reorganise those people holding political positions, at least in the longer term. Nevertheless, the general situation remains characterised by confrontation such as in the ferocious battle with the military in the Ergenekon affair.33 The current situation is defined by the introduction of a project of constitutional change which is favoured by significant numbers of the population (referendum from September 2010). The constitutional changes strengthen the presidency and show a tendency towards the establishment of a presidential regime. The implied concentration of power around a civilian authority could bring a solution to the confrontation. Such an authority could be characterised by a relaxation of the relationship with the army
33 Name of a judicial affair in which the military hierarchy was accused in January 2008 for a project of destabilising the actual government because of Islamism, which was started in 2003 but which started up again in January 2010 (Balyoz Plan) with the transfer in court of 7 high ranking officers who were linked to the General Staff. The AKP or the Success of a Hybrid 119 and the judiciary, including the higher courts (Constitutional Court and High Court of Appeal, State Council and other higher councils linked to the presidency of the Republic by the 1982 constitution). This could be considered a desirable and important normalisation of the institutional situation but would still be far away from a real democratisation, as the basic pattern would be still characterised by a lack of countervailing powers which prevents a real acceptance of social plurality. Turkish society continues to look for means of expressing itself, as neither parliament nor parties – or even a participative civil society – provide the means of manifesting its desires.34
Conclusion
Is the narrative which has been outlined above typical for the AKP? Is its positioning at least an implicitly adopted policy? Are we facing with the AKP a political exception? Apparently yes: At least in stark contrast to the contexts of 1980 and 1997 because, unlike on these two earlier occasions, the Islamic victory is now seen by the party as compatible with secularism. This accommodation has become part of a clearly articulated policy. This is a stable orientation, even if it serves to prevent the liquidation of the party (in a similar way) which occurred in the two previous episodes. Nevertheless, despite the fact that there is a shift in strategy, there remains a link and implicitly a continuity with the previous experiences such as the Menderes (1950–1960) and Özal (1983–1893) governments which manifested a combination between Islamic values and modern Republican conservatism to win in elections. Accordingly, people refer to the image of Islam as a cocktail that had been arranged once a dynamic electoral victory was realised. Resemblance seems to be even stronger in the coincidence that this third experience has also been lasting for ten years. Still there is a big difference with these two earlier sequences of ‘democratic’ governments: the first two were not explicitly affiliated to the Islamic camp and were not identified as ‘outside the system’ – or even as against the system. The success of the AKP under Erdoğan lies in maintaining the single highest vote shares while still being able to claim an outsider status which constitutes an important element for the party’s political success. The reference to the earlier periods of ‘Islamic’ governments shows the heritage of the AKP but, in contrast, its differences from earlier ‘Islamic’ governments trivialise and help to disable a challenge from the secular system (which in this way rests on the question of a hidden agenda). So if one chooses to see the AKP period in continuity with the relevant experiences of Menderes and Özal, one assumes that the AKP period could end up in alternating periods of power through future elections. Then, the Erdoğan phase, like the Özal and Menderes phases, no longer appears as a rupture but as a new sequence which streamlines and modernises the secular experience and
34 So the Kurds have in vain asked for the removal of the 10 per cent threshold. 120 The Transformation of Politicised Religion leads to an adjustment between political representation and social transformation. It is possible to argue accordingly in analogy with the ‘democratic’ phases of the Turkish political development as outcomes of serious losses of legitimacy of authoritarian regimes which enforced an ‘open’ process of democratisation (multiparty system – 1946; institutional control of the executive branch – 1960; civil democratisation – 1983). This time, with the AKP, the liberal right wing will be allowed a greater Islamic identity in its affiliation, but that it does not fundamentally change the positions on economic development or the positioning towards global developments. On the contrary, if we condemn the AKP as a deviation from the republican regime marked by the reintroduction of a religious reference, though often in its social rather than its ‘political’ dimension (in terms of ‘fethullaci’), then let us consider how far a change in configuration of political power can be affected in an ‘Islamic’ sense? For our part, we would be tempted to answer in light of the AKP evolution that it would not get very far, as the AKP operates in a context of secularisation and globalization. Chapter 6 Similarities and Differences in the Strategies and Programmes of the BJP and the Congress in India Randhir B. Jain
Introduction
The basic argument of this contribution is that the BJP could not avoid being drawn into the logic of Indian democracy and its power games, and gradually moved from a radical posture to the more moderate centre so that it has become less and less distinguishable from the position of its main rival, the Congress party. The Indian party system has long been characterised by the dominance of the Congress party. The latter has not, however, been a unified or programmatically oriented party:
The Congress emerges as a party that represents not national but local interests. It is not a centre party, nor is it a party of consensus. It is a collection of state- based factions linked not by a common constituency but by elites who cooperate in the pursuit of office. The Congress is not a heterogeneous party in the normal sense of that concept. It is a heterogeneous pre-election coalition of substantially homogeneous parties which are rooted in salient local conflicts. (Roy 2005: 196)
When Congress leadership at the central level became less able to hold together a coalition of such diverse interests, two tendencies emerged. On the one hand, there was the rise of regional parties, called in law state parties, which presented candidates only in their states. On the other hand, there was the emergence of nation- wide coalitions which tended to resemble an established two party system. In the 1989 Lok Sabha elections V.P. Singh skilfully united both the BJP and the leftist parties against the Congress’s dictatorial and undemocratic mode of operation. The single binding factor was the resolve to keep the Congress (I) out of power.1 The results of the 1998 elections confirmed the following message: the electorate of India has endorsed a two-party system to dominate the country’s political scene. On the basis of their voting pattern, voters in almost every state hinted that they do
1 The BJP, however, decided not to join the NF government and preferred to support it from outside. 122 The Transformation of Politicised Religion not want their preferences to be divided among diverse parties but only between the two major poles of alliance. They identified the two major contenders and confined their preferences to this either/or option and thus squeezing out multiple alternative parties. But both BJP and Congress could do well only in those states where they had struck alliance with other parties. The defeat of the BJP led alliance government by a single vote in the Lok Sabha in May 1999 when the AIADMK suddenly withdrew support paved the way for the thirteenth General Elections which were held in August/September 1999. The transformation from a ‘single dominant’ to a ‘region-based’ multi-party system was an ongoing process visible in every election since 1989. Despite no single party gaining a majority, two ‘poles’ have become visible, the Congress and the BJP, within the ‘regionalised’ multi-party system. Several regional parties have regrouped around these poles by forming pre-and post-poll alliances, determining to a greater extent the shape and form of the national party system. ‘Seat adjustments’ whereby parties agree not to contest each other directly in any particular constituency and which, therefore, enable parties to avoid dividing the vote had been the main strategy of these alliances. Nonetheless, the emergence of a two party system in which the INC and the BJP compete for power as the two strongest national parties – a possibility widely discussed during the 1998 election campaign – does not seem possible. It would require revival of the organisational structure and support base of the Congress, and the acceptance of the BJP, by all segments of the population, as a moderate and responsible national party.
The Changing Basis of Political Mobilisation
The emergence of this regionalised coalition system went hand in hand with the decline of the ideological posture of all political parties. Obligations of electoral politics and the prospects of sharing power mellowed their strict ideological dispositions, including some of the old national parties. Except for the leftist parties, all other political parties have to some extent compromised and altered their stands on these issues. Thus present day politics is not based on any rigid ideological perspective of the left, right or the centre variety, but is based on the pragmatic consideration of securing power. When programmes lose their mobilising capacities, other elements become important. Indian society is largely structured by caste. Although there is hardly any instance in India of a political party being totally identified with any particular caste group, there are cases of certain castes lending strong support to particular political parties. Thus while political parties struggle among themselves to win support from different caste groups by making offers to them, caste groups try to pressure parties to choose their members for candidature in elections. If the caste group is dominant and the political party is an important one, this interaction is all the more prominent. In many political parties what replaces ideological polarisation is the determination of policies and programmes as well as the Similarities and Differences in the Strategies and Programmes 123 nomination of electoral candidates and the extension of support to them on the basis of caste consideration. Caste exercises its impact in the political field by specific caste groups coming together to vote en bloc for a candidate of their own caste, without considering the merits and demerits of the candidate, by appointing the members of an influential caste or caste group or groups in the party, as well as in the constituency and to offices of profits. The last decade of the twentieth century also saw a sharp rise in political mobilisation on the basis of social cleavages based on ascriptive identities, in particular of religion and caste. Casteism, communalism and personality have been the main planks around which the fragmentation of political parties has taken place, which has resulted in more caste and class-based political violence in society. Political parties have invariably exploited these sentiments to gain electoral support and political mobilisation of the voters. The organisations of Indian political parties resemble each other in one other respect, that is, party affiliations. All the political parties in India have close relationships with the organisations like the All India Trade Union Congress, or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Many crucial functions of political parties are performed with the help of the affiliated bodies or auxiliary agencies. The affiliated organisations function as agencies of political socialisation for various sections of society. They even act as agencies of political recruitment for the party, as the members of these organisations create a kind of indirect membership for the party. These members, and through them their clientele, help the parties in mobilising support of masses for demonstrations, political movements, and participate actively in their election campaign. In some cases, such as with trade unions, the auxiliary organisations extend the financial help to the parties. Therefore, key aspects of the political party – their strength, number of supporter, political successes and, ultimately, weakness in the organisation – depends largely on the efficient functioning and support of the affiliated bodies.
The Erosion of Ethics in the Indian Political Party System
The Indian political system has become an interplay of power games in the pursuit of narrow interests of basically small groups. The outcome is an erosion of ethics in politics. In today’s amoral pursuit of power politics, every major player is playing a practically no holds barred game. Astronomical sums of tainted money (concealed income on which taxes have not been paid) have played an important role both in the pre- and post-election scenario. The entry of criminal elements within the folds of political parties and later their elevation to the portals of people’s representative chambers and the executive positions of ministers have resulted in an environment of declining moral standards of public life and the emergence of a value-less politics for personal gain. Unfortunately this trend has penetrated all walks of public life and no political leader or political party seem to care for value- 124 The Transformation of Politicised Religion based politics or upholding moral standards. The Gandhian value of the spirit of service to the nation has become completely extinct in present day politics. The emergence of regional parties and the ‘withering away of [a] national outlook and spirit’ thus set off another crisis. Candidates come to be selected not in terms of accomplishments, ability and merit but on the appendages of caste, creed and community. Ultimately, caste has become the deciding factor in selection. In the three national coalition governments during the past decade, none of the constituents were even remotely representative of the democratic composition of the region or the area from where they came. A careful scrutiny reveals that they were the proxy for a major caste group of the area with a specific agenda and goals for the political aggrandisement of the caste. When ‘disparate’ political groups with caste-based ideologies compete for space in governance, national goals take a back seat.
BJP and the Congress (INC): Similarities/Differences in their Strategies: Economics and the Attraction of the Rising Middle Class
Given the absence of comprehensive and coherent programmes in the struggle for voter mobilisation, the manifestos and policies of the contending parties converge. There are hardly any sharp ideological differences between political parties, with the possible exception of the left. In economics, the fundamental principles of the INC are humanism and inclusive development. The BJP represents the country’s majority community and is centre-right in nature. It advocates conservative social policies, self-reliance, robust economic growth, foreign policy driven by a nationalist agenda, and strong national defence. A view is generally held that the INC is the party which follows free market principles led by globalisation driven through exports. Incidentally, the BJP follows few market led strategies through self-sustenance. Both want to benefit from globalisation without opening totally up the Indian economy. Divergences can be measured only by degree. The 2009 election manifestos of both the parties discuss the same issues namely security, governance and development. The INC formulated a strategy that is based on domestic development and growth. The difference is seen only through the strategic policy formulation and implementation. The INC formulated a strategy that is based on foreign direct investments and exports, while the BJP formulated a strategy that is based on domestic development and growth. Now the real question is whose policy includes the growth and development of aam admi (common man). Both strategies can lead to success. Differences ultimately concern little more than words. In one of his articles, Pendse (1999) wrote:
both the rivals [BJP and Congress] have said the same good old things that they believe must be said … if one were to take out the economic policy paragraphs Similarities and Differences in the Strategies and Programmes 125
from the NDA (led by BJP) manifesto, and insert them in the Congress manifesto, not many readers will notice the transplants.
Similarly, Vir Sanghvi writing in the 3 September 1999 issue of The Hindustan Times, remarked that the 1999 elections were ‘the most ideologically neutral elections. The two main contenders – the Congress and the BJP – disagree on nothing. Because their views are identical, they cannot attack each other on the ground of ideology’ (Atal 2000: 142–3). The convergence reflects a growing orientation of both parties to the rising Indian middle class. The recent Congress rout in the Assembly Elections in Punjab and Uttarakhand and Municipal Corporation in Delhi has given birth to a strong resurgence for the BJP and its allies. Today, the BJP and its allies rule more states than they did when the NDA was in power. The party independently governs five states. With the success in the Punjab, its strategists are now convinced
that India’s notoriously fickle middle class is tottering on the edge of fatigue and discontent. And political commentators are abuzz how every government has to eventually scratch the three year itch … However, there is a little jigsaw puzzle it has to piece together first – the party has to resolve who it isand what it stands for. Is it still defined and distinguished essentially by Hindutva? Or is it finally ready to embrace a more moderate, mainstream identity? If it reinvents itself for an India driven more by economics and globalization than religious identity, will it lose its loyalists? The tumult and unpredictability of Indian politics will eventually force the BJP to look within itself and make a choice … Today the BJP has a reason to subterranean discontent simmering just below the surface. Some of its campaign on ‘minority appeasement’ and terrorism may even win it some converts in the urban middle class. Several commentators have argued that its future lies in occupying a neo-Right space in India’s polity. But the big question is this: will its cadres allow the party to move backwards from the periphery towards the middle. And if it wears too close to the center, will it lose its individuality and become just another party in a rag-tag coalition? Either way, the BJP is standing at a crossroad; duality is no longer an option. (Dutt 2007: 10: 4–8)
The present controversy over the release of a CD allegedly denigrating the Muslim community before the April 2007 UP Assembly Elections and the use of the word ‘pak’ (for Pakistan) in an election advertisement against certain communities has again brought to the fore allegations of the BJP’s hidden agenda of ‘Hindutva’ as the main strategy to secure the majority community’s votes (After CD, storm over BJP 2007: 9: 1–5). 126 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Competing for the Poor: Populist Policies
Following the tractable ‘catch-all’ character of both major parties their convergence on populist policies comes as no surprise. No political party, despite different social cleavages, can openly oppose populist policies like reservations (of jobs for certain groups) and their agenda for different social groupings. While in their manifesto in 1999 the BJP and their NDA allies were interested in adequately safeguarding the interests of the SCs (Scheduled Castes), STs (Scheduled Tribes) and backward classes by legal, executive and societal efforts and by large scale education and empowerment, the Congress, on the other hand, was in favour of a separate statutory National Commission for STs and urged State governments to pass legislation conferring ownership rights in respect of minor forest produce on Dalits, Adivasis, and OBCs (Other Backward Castes) and to continue with the policy of reservation in public employment with a separate Reservation Act to be enacted in this respect. The BJP would have liked to amend the Constitution to maintain the system of reservations for another 10 years. Reservation percentage above 50 per cent as followed by certain states was to be sanctified by legislative measures and was to present a National Charter for Social Justice based on the principles of social harmony. The Congress was to set up Special Courts to ensure quick justice for victims of atrocities, expedited land reform, the strengthening of finance and development corporations for SC/ST/ OBC (Atal 2000: 136–7). The BJP wants these schemes to be implemented in order to improve the situation for Dalits and the disadvantaged, whether they are Hindus or Muslims. The BJP is opposed to schemes that are aimed only at uplifting Muslims as the central government is currently doing. The government has decided to allot 15 per cent of the plan funds for Muslims. The BJP, however, strongly objects, asking: ‘Why are the schemes not formulated for the uplifting of all the poor sections of the society, irrespective of their caste, community and religion?’ They are critical of the division of society on the basis of religion which the Congress, Communists, SP (Samajwadi Party) and BSP (Bahujan Samajwadi Party) are doing. They believe that aggressive Hindutva and cultural nationalism can fight appeasement policy of the UPA government (The Organizer, 6 January 2007). The other parties are resorting to vote-bank politics (granting favours to a particular community or group in order to win their votes) and appeasing the Muslims. For them, power comes first while country is second. When the BJP talks about Hindutva and nationalism they assert never to distinguish on the basis of faith, culture and religion (ibid.). Similarities and Differences in the Strategies and Programmes 127
Convergence in Areas Where Previously there was Dissent
Convergence is taken place even in areas of previous dissent and even applies to essential demands of the BJP such as the uniform civil code or the promotion of women in public affairs, especially parliament. The BJP believes that all laws, including personal laws, must be in accordance with the guarantees available to all citizens under the Indian Constitution. The Constitution calls for the enactment of a Uniform Civil Code. The Supreme Court has reiterated this need. Therefore, this issue cannot be seen as belonging to any single political party. The BJP views Uniform Civil Code primarily as an instrument to promote gender justice. However, the Congress party and its leaders are not very keen to implement such a law. Furthermore, they have taken stands which are against the promotion of a uniform civil law. Yet the Shah Bano case is a classic example this posture. Even the BJP led NDA when in power did not take any action on this matter. The consensus on a Uniform Civil Code has thus become a casualty on the altar of coalition politics for parties wishing to remain in power, developing soft stances to appease the minorities to perpetuate their power. Political parties cannot remain indifferent towards women who constitute nearly 50 per cent of the electorate. Almost all parties have attempted to build women’s organisations to secure their support and make their organisation more broad-based, but in practice they have fielded a lower proportion of female candidates in the elections giving them proportionately much less representation in the legislative bodies than their actual number in the population. In recent times, this has been a matter of crucial concern in view of the controversy over reserving 30 per cent or so of the seats in these bodies. The BJP was the first party to raise the demand to set aside 33 per cent of seats for women in Parliament and State legislatures. Although the NDA Government did its best to enact the Women’s Reservation Bill, however, the Congress and some other parties sabotaged it. The BJP remains prepared to support any alternative proposal for women’s reservation on which broad consensus can be forged. According to their manifestos, all parties support women’s representation in legislative bodies but when it comes to actual implementation of enacting a law or providing tickets to women in state or central elections, none of them seem to be serious either about enacting a law or allowing 33 per cent of the election tickets for women. Neither the NDA led by the BJP nor the UPA led by the Congress Party has been successful in enacting such legislation. Therefore, conflict continues especially with respect to the uplift of Muslims.
Communalism, Secularism and Minorities
Despite the emergence of India as a ‘secular’ state, the politics of communalism and religious fundamentalism in the post-independence period has led to a number of separate movements in various states and regions of the country. Political 128 The Transformation of Politicised Religion observers have noted that a soft move to minority communalism on the part of leadership in certain political parties has brought about a powerful reactive majority communalism. Communal polarisation has posed a threat to the Indian political ethos of pluralism, parliamentarianism and federalism. Despite the adoption of the principle of ‘secularism’ as a constitutional creed, which ironically allows communal parties to compete, the trend towards communalism and fundamentalism in Indian politics are growing day by day. The spirit of tolerance that is essential for a ‘secular’ society seems to have completely vanished from the body politic of India. All parties take pride in calling themselves secular, although the concept of secularism differs from party to party. While the Congress claims to be the historically true secular party, the BJP also calls itself more secular and brands the secularism of the Congress as pseudo-secularism. The BJP will truly and genuinely uphold and practice the concepts of secularism consistent with the Indian tradition of Sarv Panth Samadara (equal respect to all faiths), and is committed to the economic, social and educational development of the minorities, while the Congress claims secularism as an article of faith. It does not mean being anti- religion or taking a negative or positive attitude to religion. It can only mean equal respect for all religions. However, the BJP unflinchingly holds that differences in faith cannot challenge the idea of India as One Nation or undermine our millennia- old identity as One People. Thus, for the BJP cultural nationalism is the most potent antidote to communalism, divisiveness, and separatism of every kind, and a guarantor of our national unity and national integration. Contrary to the propaganda of the Congress and its other political opponents, the BJP believes that they are not against discrimination of minorities, nor against curtailing their religious freedoms in any manner. In statecraft, it claims to continue to be wedded to their founding ideal of ‘Justice for All, Appeasement of None’. They envision the day when the distinction between ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ disappears in the political field, even while people practice their respective faiths unhindered. The BJP gives a three-point assurance to minorities: education, economic improvement, and empowerment. Yet, the Congress recognises minorities of several kinds because of disadvantages and handicaps they suffer from and the special help they need. They vigorously pursue a seven-point programme for the protection and promotion of the minorities. Measures will be taken to increase the representation of minorities in all public, police, and para-military services (Atal 2000: 137). In the past few years, the Congress party has made serious efforts to win back its traditional vote, namely the Muslims and the Dalits. The BJP is clearly on different grounds in this respect. It has never been in favour of allowing fixed representation to any community on the basis of religion. ‘The Congress talks of Muslims having the “first right” to natural resources and the Prime Minister wants to adopt communal budgeting. All these are pointers to the further division of society along caste lines’ (‘BJP begins its campaign, vows to get back to power’, in: The Asian Age, 26 March 2007). The BJP president Similarities and Differences in the Strategies and Programmes 129
Rajnath Singh, however, urged Muslim leaders and intellectuals to take initiatives for the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya, and requested them to join hands with the BJP to create a new Bharat (The Pioneer, 8 March 2007).
Perspectives
The 2007 BJP win in the elections in the states of Uttarakhand and Punjab and Municipal bodies in Mumbai and Delhi have raised the question whether the urban middle class is retreating from the Congress? Although Congress managed to hold onto support in Delhi’s resettlements colonies and slums, it has been turned out from areas inhabited by middle class and lower middle class. The reasons cited are the anxiety over inflation pushing food and grocery bills, depleting savings due to rising prices, which were also the factors responsible for Congress defeat in Punjab polls, although it managed to hold operations in rural Malwa. The increase in home loan tenures and the perception that Congress led UPA was out to ‘punish’ the urban middle class, seen to be beneficiaries of India’s economic growth, in order to improve the lot of rural poor, has struck a chord in the popular perception. The introduction of OBC quotas in Central educational institutions made the sense of betrayal complete. The election results have also led to an impression that the BJP were able to gain traction on the basis of ‘minorityism’ while it is unclear how far such minority outreach is actually moving Muslims to the Congress. In the Maharashtra Civic Elections there was certain lack of enthusiasm amongst Muslims. The definition of aam admi can vary considerably. In cities, the common man may be seen as one who makes do with a modest surplus. But Congress looks to reach out to both the salaried receptionist and wealthy professional alike. Going by the current political approach of its leadership, this particular swathe of the population appears to feel let down. The two parties differ according to their ideologies, the INC being the product of the Indian National movement – culminating in India gaining Independence, and thus calls itself a truly national and secular party – while the BJP has been influenced by the Hindutva nationalism. Both the parties take pride in calling themselves secular, although the concept of secularism differs from party to party. While the Congress historically claims to be the true secular party, the BJP calls itself more secular and brands the Congress secularism as pseudo-secularism. They increasingly compete for the same electorate and for similar allies. They have to face an increasing role of the middle classes and the increasing influence of localised regional parties in the states, without which they are not able to form majorities in the centre through coalition politics. The emerging civil society with its preferences and fears prevails over the ideals which progressive politicians historically promoted following the struggle for independence. During the past decade or more, the Indian political system, especially its party system, has been greatly influenced by three important factors, which have 130 The Transformation of Politicised Religion consequently led to changes in strategy and constituency of India’s two main political parties. These are:
a. mobilisation of a larger proportion of the population into the political process; b. public awareness has been greatly enhanced, national politics has become increasingly divorced from the common man, on the one hand, and from politics at the state level, on the other hand, which has considerably reduced the capacity of institutions to respond rationally, creatively or even adequately to pressures from society; and, c. the regionalisation of parties has increased the bargaining capacity of state parties which seek a greater share of authority and power in the decision- making process at the national level. The economic reforms of the 1990s have further strengthened this trend by assigning a greater role and enhanced responsibilities to state.
In this process of (imposed) convergence in practical politics and the absence of a coherent project for the transformation of society – due to the increasing dependence of both parties on voting constituencies with narrow parochial interests – the multi-party system in India has compelled each of the parties to preserve their self-identities which has thus become their most important objective in coalition politics. Worldviews matter even if they do not have very direct consequences in day to day policies. The parties fear the loss of their distinctive identity, acquired after a long struggle, in a coalition, either through ‘desertion or accumulation’ and losing all the benefits of which sharing in power brings. The party leaders also have to perform a delicate balancing act ‘between compromises with rivals and maintaining the support of their own followers, both activists and voters’. Moderation is therefore not the result of a democratic process in the orientation of the BJP but has resulted out of necessity, a situation which may be reversible if conditions change once again. Chapter 7 Power Games or Programmatic Evolution in the BJP Klaus Julian Voll
A Party in Turmoil
Although the BJP claims to be a party with a difference it is deeply imbued with the basic structures of Indian politics. If parties with mass support cannot avoid becoming oligarchies in fundamentally capitalist countries elsewhere (Michels 1925), in rent based societies under the dominance of state classes such as in India, this is even more the case. I therefore argue that evolution of the party from a more extremist posture to a more moderate one does not take its origin primarily in the convictions of major components of its social basis, but has to be explained as strategic choices of well-connected leaders at the top level of the party. These leaders use political positions for building alliances in order to increase their power, their resources and their clout within the party and its electoral constituencies. Failure to achieve tangible results – in the case of Indian politics this means electoral victories – invariably entail redistribution of influence within the upper levels of the leadership and may lead to unexpected changes of political positions for particular leaders. The defeat of the BJP in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the second after unexpectedly losing in the 2004 elections, unleashed unimaginable turmoil within the party in the following months. One part of the leadership, via leaked letters and interviews, demanded political responsibility for the defeat, whereas the established leadership tried to avoid this and any in-depth discussion about the underlying reasons. Some of the contenders for power went very far. The senior BJP-leader Jaswant Singh – who between 1998 and 2004 held positions of Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Foreign Minister, Finance Minister and Defence Minister – in a recent book (Singh 2009) depicted Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, as not exclusively responsible for the partition of the subcontinent and maintained, that Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel contributed substantially to its vivisection. This sacrilege in the eyes of the RSS, which considers Sardar Patel, ‘the Indian Bismarck’, as one of its major icons, led to his unceremonious expulsion from the BJP at the beginning of its Chintan Baithak (brainstorming session) in Shimla, the once summer capital of the British Vice-Roys. 132 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Following this the party descended into a public free for all via television and through public statements, including: Open defiance by Vasundhara Raje1 in Rajasthan, interviews by Arun Shourie with sharp and ironical attacks against the then party president Rajnath Singh, a letter and statements by Yashwant Sinha and a series of interviews by Jaswant Singh, in which he described the BJP after his expulsion as ‘an Indian version of the Ku-Klux Klan’ and made a public mockery of the party, which was supposedly lead by an ‘iron man’ like L.K. Advani. This behaviour did not show the classical cleavages typical of an opposition between more extremist and more moderate positions as modelled in the basic approach of this book. It was organised around items considered as capable of enhancing one’s own legitimacy and of reducing the legitimacy of one’s rivals. The opposition between maintaining the pure heritage of the party and moderation was only one dimension of this contest among others. The relative distance from any political programme and the importance of alliance building for the pursuit of power is a neat parallel to the behaviour of state classes. The BJP has become part of the Indian state class in its march to power. The theorem of a so-called State Class, introduced by Hartmut Elsenhans (1981) and slightly modified by me with respect to certain basic realities in Indian politics, makes it possible to locate the major Indian political parties – for example,. those with a limited national reach like Congress and BJP, as well as the regional and communist parties, which only command bastions and zones of influence in different states or pockets of the Indian Union – as parts of a systemic whole, although it allows some changes under certain conditions and limitations through elections. For such classes ideology is instrumental. When confronted with the argument that from a European perspective the BJP would represent a rightist respectively conservative-nationalist party in the ideological spectrum, L.K. Advani, who later became Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, vehemently refuted it, saying that the European notions of right and left have no explanatory value and are not applicable in India. Worldwide, all conservative parties maintain that they are not ‘conservative’ (with the exception of the British Conservative Party), whereas the BJP combines in reality ‘right’ and ‘left’ issues, although not on the basis of programmatic reflections. Such positions, and especially their combination, are more the outcome of compromises and coalitions between clans, dynasties and segments within the state class and within the BJP. The BJP represents a ‘family of organisations’. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded in 1925 and consisting of several million members2 forms the ideological and organisational backbone of politically organised Hindu
1 She had lost the state elections but she commanded the support of the majority of legislators in Rajasthan. The then BJP-President Rajnath Singh demanded her resignation, but she only stepped down after several months following prompting and accompanied by political drama. 2 The figures have oscillated over the past 25 years between 2.8 and 5 million members. Power Games or Programmatic Evolution in the BJP 133 nationalism. The RSS exercises considerable influence on the political and strategic decisions of the BJP3 with regard to, for instance, the composition of its central and state party leaderships and the nomination of candidates during elections. In the 1980s and 90s parts of the BJP-leadership understood themselves as exponents of a so-called liberal wing within, which nowadays does not exist with a clear profile and visible influence. Today, instead of representing clear social bases, the BJP is a catch-all party which assembles a large variety of disoriented groups. During Advani’s presidency, the phenomenal rise of the BJP started with the 1989 elections4 following its erstwhile decade-long political isolation.5 Advani, the shrewd tactician, played simultaneously with the support of the fundamentalist bandwagon of the BJP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad/VHP or World Council of Hindus and its militant youth organisation Bajrang Dal – adoration of the Monkey God – as well as the RSS) through the Rath Yatra with a country-wide procession from the Somnath-Temple in Gujarat to Ayodhya in the mega-state of Uttar Pradesh – at that time with the Babri Mosque still in existence. Effectively, this played the religious card with the specific aim of constructing a temple in honour of the mythological Hindu-God Ram on the very same place as this mosque, although the real aim was to become the leading force in Indian politics. This campaign appealed tremendously to large sections of the rural, semi-urban and urban populace – especially to women in smaller cities – and expanded the Hindu-nationalist bases of electoral support well beyond its traditional clientele. At the same time, it deliberately antagonised the numerically significant and important Muslim minority. In an off the record interview during this Rath Yatra, Uma Bharti stated:6
I must tell you the truth. We are a group of around 30 MP’s in the BJP and we are fed up with Advani’s Rath Yatra, because we want to discuss in our Parliamentary Party and in Parliament the real problems of our voters, the situation of small farmers and landless labourers.
After some ten days, Uma Bharti led the Kar Sevaks from the front, in order to march to Ayodhya. A few days before the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 6 December 1992, Atal Bihari Vajpayee stated: ‘The Ayodhya issue is only a side-show and draws the attention away from the real problems of India’.
3 Ghosh (1999: 379 f.). In chapter VIII (366–400) Ghosh analyses the various inner- party conflicts. 4 The BJP went into various seat-adjustments with anti-Congress parties, especially the newly formed Janata Dal under V.P. Singh, Chandhra Shekhar, Devi Lal, Madhu Dandavate, and George Fernandes. 5 Although it is important to note that the BJP had a solid support basis, although until then it was always less than 10 per cent. 6 If not otherwise stated, the data come from interviews I conducted with the politicians mentioned. 134 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Here, as well as in his other statements, he expressed his explicit unhappiness about Advani’s approach at that time which finally led to the unlawful demolition of the Babri Masjid.
Ideological Positions are Instrumentalised for Improving Power Positions
Because of the weakness of Indian capitalism in mobilising the available labour force there has been no formation of classes with class consciousness and relatively clear-cut distinctions. Those better off draw their privileges from a large variety of gatekeeping opportunities for rent appropriation. The poor are extremely heterogeneous with respect to the forms of their exploitation and/or marginalisation. Society appears as highly fragmented. Naturally, one finds controversy on issues such as the basic economic course to be followed or which group the party should address. However, these conflicts appear as faction fights as observed by the former chief ideologue K.R. Malkani. In 1999 he found that as a result of the socio-political expansion of the BJP bases the once homogeneous party ideology would now be interpreted from a multitude of ideological perspectives and by many spokespersons. These controversies are especially evident at state levels and are often influenced by economic interests and positions.7 A lack of discipline at the local level is endemic. Until now, there have been very few BJP politicians or cadres leaving the party – such as Sankarsinh Vaghela, for instance, who formed the Rashtriya Janata Party together with his faction. This allegedly came about as the result of the interference of RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal during an internal struggle for the party leadership. Vaghela later joined the Congress, became a Union minister, and led the Congress against Narendra Modi in Gujarat. To my knowledge, no BJP dissidents moved to any of the communist parties, who are considered as the true enemies of Hindu nationalist ideology.8 Only a few have joined the Congress or regional parties. In other words, potential dissidents in the BJP command only a narrow political space for manoeuvring. Nonetheless, quite a considerable amount of soft Hindutva Congress politicians, including prominent ones like the late Kumaramangalam,9 crossed over to the BJP at the end of 1997 on the eve of the first durable NDA-government, certainly more because of power than ideological convictions.
7 This has become evident with the leadership challenge to its own BJP government at the end of 2009 by the Reddy brothers with huge mining interests in Karnataka, 8 Interestingly enough, former Leftists like Sudhendra Kulkarni, a key advisor for Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, and Dr. Chandan Mitra, editor of The Pioneer and a member of the Rajya Sabha, are former communists. Kulkarni left the BJP in 2009. 9 The former prominent third generation Congress politician from his family became Minister for Energy and Power in 1998. Power Games or Programmatic Evolution in the BJP 135
The threat of dissidence is used as a tool or bargaining chip at the time of the nomination of candidates and can lead to splits, splinter groups and independent candidates, which minimise the electoral reservoir of the party. There are political dynasties – respectively, political families10 – in more or less all the political parties in India, although to a far lesser degree in the BJP. Prominent examples within the BJP are parts of the Scindia-Clan from the former rulers of Gwalior, represented by the former and since 2013 new Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Vasundara Raje Scindia,11 and also her younger sister Yashodra, a member of the Lok Sabha, whereas other parts of this family are in the Congress. Other examples are Jaswant Singh and his son Manvendra,12 Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun. In most cases, potential dissidence does not, or very rarely, represent an individual behavioural pattern and is, rather, mostly an expression of calculated interests on the part of a group or members of a caste or even a political dynasty; although the space for such strategies might be far narrower in the BJP compared to the Congress.
Conflict on Economic and Social Policies
The BJP led NDA, the most employer friendly government since independence, following its convincing electoral victory in 1999 immediately initiated the second phase of economic reforms such as, for instance, the admission of foreign enterprises into the insurance sector. It seemed as if the economically liberal wing with Vajpayee und Jaswant Singh – in alliance with important regional parties – had successfully repudiated and silenced the resistance within its own ranks. As early as 1999, the RSS and the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM),13 which advocated economic independence and a second economic war of liberation, led fairly big demonstrations in front of the Indian Parliament against the alleged ‘selling out of the Indian economy to the international capital’ (sic!) by the Vajpayee government. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the BJP affiliated central trade union with the highest membership of all the central trade unions in India and a part of the so-called RSS-led Sangh Parivar (the family of the Sangh), criticised ‘the policies of the Vajpayee government, which is directed against economic independence’. The iron discipline of the RSS under the then politically pragmatic leadership of
10 According to an analysis by the journal The Week (abundantly repeated and published in various editions) there are currently about 120 political dynasties or leading political families in the whole of India. 11 Vasundara Raje Scindia is now a general secretary in Nitin Gadkari’s team. 12 Manvendra Singh remained in the BJP after his father’s expulsion. 13 This group within the Sangh Parivar advocates economic independence and austerity. 136 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Rajendra Singh,14 stressing considerations of overall power politics, avoided publicly addressing this criticism as it was an election year in the shadow of the Kargil war.15 K.S. Sudarshan, the supreme leader of the RSS from March 2000 till 2009 (‘Sarsanghachalak’), advocated a wider dialogue between the RSS and the BJP about basic political questions, especially with regard towards the economic politics of the government. As a consequence of overly rapid economic reform, he proposed a Round Table of all the afflicted groups, even those with alternative opinions like the SJM, in order to discuss the results of globalisation and to strengthen India’s economic sovereignty. In a resolution drawn up in March 2000, 1,200 delegates from the RSS Pratinidi Sabha in the RSS city of Nagpur criticised the economic policies of the government: ‘The struggle against hunger and unemployment should be the basic orientation of these policies. The government should develop a mechanism, in order to protect the interests of the vast majority’. Sudarshan insinuated that ‘some economic advisers of the Vajpayee government ignore the new economic realities of the country and carry through pro-Western policies, which are based on exploitation’. (Elsenhans 2006b). Sudarshan, who entertained good relations with the late Swadeshi-chief ideologue and trade unionist, Dattopant Thengdi, then advocated for agitating against the economic reform policies. He had previously intervened personally in 1998 to forestall, against Vajpayee’s explicit desire, the nomination of the allegedly pro-American Jaswant Singh as finance minister. At that time the RSS demanded a tougher line from the government in the World Trade Organization (WTO), in order to fight positions directed against India’s alleged national interests. The promoters of economic liberalisation finally carried the day, as their opponents could only mobilise sectoral interests but not support for a coherent alternative concept. Obviously a section of the BJP wanted to accommodate the economic aspirations of the middle classes by opening to the world market, whereas another, centred around the BMS and other sections of the Sangh Parivar, tried to use its proximity to the RSS in order to raise its demand for power via its policies in favour of the more vulnerable and marginalised sections of society. The new BJP President, Bangaru Laxman,16 installed in August 2000, removed the ideologically influential general secretary K.N. Govindacharya from the inner circle of power, then the highest ranking RRS cadre within the BJP and an open
14 With Rajendra Singh (a Thakur by caste) for the first time a non-Brahmin occupied the highest position in the RSS. I had the opportunity on two occasions to have longer discussions with him as a German diplomat. 15 Pakistan tried to cut the connections and supply lines to Leh. In fiercely fought battles with substantial losses of life on both sides, Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, had to order its troops back under American pressure. 16 Bangaru Laxman became involved in the so-called Tehelka, being filmed while receiving illegal money for the party. Power Games or Programmatic Evolution in the BJP 137 critic of the Prime Minister. Govindacharaya’s theory of social engineering was officially not accepted by the party. Perhaps the economically liberal Hindu nationalist Vajpayee was cognisant of the tendencies towards a ‘silent revolution’, respectively of a ‘second democratic upsurge’ particularly in Northern India, which found its expression in the increasing self-confidence amongstDalits since the middle of the 80 s. But the rise of the BJP as the temporarily strongest political force in India was ironically due to its successes in the majority of constituencies reserved for Dalits and Adivasis as the result of systematic and not always peaceful cadre work by the RSS in these areas. It was not the result of a shift by the party from a more extremist identitarian position to a more economically oriented one, supported by the politically moderate wing of the party. The electoral success was the work of rather extremist tendencies in the BJP. The shift to economics and moderation worked in parallel, although these processes were not necessarily connected with each other.
Is There an Alternative to the BJP? Turning their Back on the Party: On Deserters and Former Members
Given the importance of organisational power the power struggle has to be waged within the BJP. No contender can expect to achieve important results by leaving the BJP. Founding new parties is very easy on paper but the performance of newly formed parties demonstrates how difficult it is for them to enter Parliament, or even attain some degree of power. Apart from parties which appeal to regional and caste identities, such as the Bahujan Samaj Party or the Samajwadi Party, none of the newly formed parties managed a sizeable parliamentary presence at the central level. To date, not a single alternative in the form of a ‘right-conservative’ and/ or (Hindu) fundamentalist-nationalist party has established itself beyond single states, if one disregards the specific phenomena of the regional Shiv Sena of the late Bal Thackeray in Maharasthtra, which, irrespective of erstwhile national ambitions, has been affected by splits for many years. After many conflicts with inner-party and upper-caste opponents, Kalyan Singh, the former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh – known for his capability to gain votes for the BJP, particularly from the Most Backward Castes (MBC) – attempted a short-lived experiment with his new party, the Rashtriya Kranti Dal in Uttar Pradesh. The organisation was only able to gain a few seats in his home region in Western Uttar Pradesh, even entering into a brief alliance with the Samajwadi Party. In the process, the BJP lost considerable support from the Lodhs who belong to the MBCs. Before the Lok Sabha elections in 2004, Kalyan Singh returned to the BJP, particularly since the central leadership was convinced of his importance as a vote-catcher. He was the BJP’s candidate for the position of Chief Minister in the 138 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
2007 elections, although as he himself indicated, opponents from within the party may try to undermine the party’s electoral success (Iyer 2007: 9). Before the 2009 parliamentary (Lok Sabha) elections he joined the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadaw, but left shortly thereafter to found the Jan Kranti Morcha in early 2010. In early 2013, Kalyan Singh again returned to the BJP. Yogi Adityanath,17 the BJP member of the Lok Sabha from Gorakhpur in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, threatened before the 2007 Assembly elections to nominate 70 candidates in this region under the banner of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha (Yogi’s 2007: 15). Yogi, who is also the Mahant (head priest) of the Gorakhnath Peeth and who exercises strong influence amongst the often unemployed youth, declared: ‘For the past six months I was trying my best to field right candidates for state assembly elections, but the party didn’t heed to this advice’ (Yogi 2007: 15). In the end he gave in to party pressure and struck a bargain. On 30 April 2006, Uma Bharti founded the Bharatiya Janashakti Party (BJP) in Ujjain/Madhya Pradesh, declaring it ‘the real BJP’. Bharti had been elected several times to the Lok Sabha and was formerly a cabinet minister in the NDA government and, after a convincing electoral victory, briefly Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. Bharti has previously been dismissed from the BJP in December 2005 because of open differences with the top leadership. In by-elections for the State Assembly in Madhya Pradesh and the Lok Sabha, Bharti’s party was unable even to win a seat in her home-state Madhya Pradesh despite having co-opted some veterans with tendencies to dissidence such as the former Chief Minister of Delhi and former Governor of Rajasthan, Madan Lal Khurana. The party, which originally wanted to substantially challenge the BJP in the 2007 elections in Uttar Pradesh, contradicted itself. Consequently, as a result of informal pressure from the RSS and VHP – even after her dismissal the Sanyasin Bharti continued with her traditionally good relations to the radical VHP leadership – Uma Bharti withdrew all the candidates of her party in favour of her original BJP in order to avoid a split of the Hindu vote. As a result of this turn- around, Madan Lal Khuranna left the new party in disappointment (Gandhi 2007: 16). In the meantime, Uma Bharti herself resigned in March 2010 from the very same party which she founded as an alternative to the BJP (Joshi 2010c: 17). She returned to the BJP and led its campaign in the 2012 election campaign in Uttar Pradesh. These examples demonstrate the limited operational space and policy
17 ‘Adityanath is the intended successor of Avedyanath. the current mahant or head priest of the Gorakhnath Mutt, a Hindu temple in Gorakhpur. He is also the founder of the Hindu Yuva Vahini, a radical group seeking to provide a more rightist Hindu platform compared to the mainstream Bharatiya Janata Party to which he belongs. Adityanath has been viewed as a successor to the Gujarat politician Narendra Modi. For several years, Adityanath has been active in converting other religious groups (particularly the low- caste converts of Christianity) back into the folds of Hinduism. In 2005, a large group of 1800 people were converted in the town of Etah in UP. Adityanath is also active in several Goraksha (cow protection) organizations’. (Wikipedia) Power Games or Programmatic Evolution in the BJP 139 alternatives for dissidence within the BJP, not to mention the chances of electoral success. As such, dissidents are forced to remain in the party and to improve their position in the struggle between age groups.
The Impact of Coalition Politics
The experience of the last four decades shows that the BJP cannot expect to be able to reach majorities large enough to govern the country. 2014 might change this assumption to a certain degree. The state-class type rivalries for power, resources and prestige within the party leadership are therefore increasingly influenced by the capacity of groups inside the BJP to construct alliances with other forces outside the BJP. Narendra Modi, re-elected Chief Minister of Gujarat in late 2012, openly aspired to become the Prime Ministerial candidate for the next general elections. However, there was resistance within parts of the BJP, mainly from the NDA partners Janata Dal United (JD/U) and the Shiv Sena, which feared a Modi-led BJP might erode its support base in the Mumbai-Thane belt. The JD/U, with a view to its Muslim support base, argued that the NDA candidate for the office of Prime Minister should be secular, inclusive and acceptable to minorities. The JD/U left the NDA after Modi’s nomination. Modi, who is re-branding himself, stresses ‘development and good governance’ and banks on his appeal to sections of the middle classes and the urban youth. Ironically, the VHP endorsed his candidature. The RSS allegedly fears Modi’s independent and authoritarian style. Segments within the BJP, such as Yashwant Sinha and Ram Jethmalani, have also come out in full support of his candidature. Rajnath Singh criticised these statements and referred to the institutional procedures for such a nomination. The tactical moves and power politics within the BJP and amongst the NDA, and not forgetting potential new partners, will decide the features of opposition politics before the next elections. The outcome could lead to as yet unexpected alliances. These struggles and tactical moves will decide if the BJP can reinvent itself as a major challenger and player at the central level within what is perhaps the world’s most complicated system of political power. Given the negative track record of the Congress-led government of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the chances for a return of a BJP-led alliance government already looked fairly good in early 2014, although a surprise by the Rahul Gandhi-led Congress or a so-called ‘Third Front’ under a regional leader could not be ruled out in the ups and downs of Indian politics. The possibilities for a coalition are a much more important factor than changes in the composition or the evolution of the ideology postures of the membership. The opinion polls already indicated, the BJP, with Narendra Modi as Prime Minister, will form the next government after the 2014 Lok Sabha election. The former BJP, led by the founders and veterans with L.K. Advani as the most 140 The Transformation of Politicised Religion prominent figure, will experience a major transformation in the years to come, given the economic and social challenges India has to face. SECTION III This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 8 Middle Classes and New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements: Perspectives Hartmut Elsenhans
The Constitution of Social Bases for the New Cultural-Identitarian Movements
The rise of the new cultural-identitarian movements is not the result of a new importance of religion in the social and political life of those countries where these movements become prominent. It is the result of new political coalitions which have become possible since the old state classes have lost their capacity to bind major social forces to their dominant political project through clientalism. It is also not a radical break with the class alliances which supported the state-dominated regimes. The secular state classes had recruited themselves from the same middle classes which now become prominent in the new larger and more powerful cultural-identitarian movements. The rise of these new movements is the result of excluded segments of the middle classes becoming more powerful and vociferous because of the loss of resources, hence clientalist power, as well as the moral standing of the increasingly failed secular state classes. The process of the rise of new cultural-identitarian movements reflects shifts in the composition of the middle classes, as shown by the contribution of Sebastian Schwecke, for example. This process goes with new alliances of these reinforced segments of the middle classes which largely influence the choice of overarching ideologies which can function to establish political majorities. The shift in relations can stabilise alliances where important elements no longer accept empty promises for an easy and immediate improvement of their economic situation. The old secular state classes have been confronted by three new contenders who could potentially join a political alliance: the old private sector (in India called ‘the traders’), the marginalised poor, especially the younger people (in Algeria: the hittistes, those leaning against the wall), and dropouts, especially those who left secondary education and were intellectually equipped to adopt pre-existing ideas about cultural nationalism.1 These groups found no other political tendency capable of challenging the secular statist
1 On the adoption of cultural nationalism by unsettled intellectuals, see Heuzé 2003: 110; Mediene 1997: 39; Kepel 1994: 65. 144 The Transformation of Politicised Religion nationalists apart from the cultural nationalists. These cultural nationalists were present in the national liberation movements but were marginalised because of the preference of the colonial powers to negotiate independence with the more ‘reasonable’ secular nationalists.2 The increasing shortage of resources kept the state classes from continuing to subsidise or even tolerate the private sector where such a private sector had been viable because of demand conditions. Therefore the self-proclaimed development orientation of the state was perceived as an illusion that veiled the reality of an effective self-privileging by the ruling class. The private sector distanced itself from a state perceived increasingly as merely a rapacious rent collector. With their rejection of excessive state interventionism and the insistence on moral values, the cultural nationalists could well represent the longing of small entrepreneurs for orderly competition and the values of thrift, modesty and commitment to work, in other words, a broadly Weberian pattern of behaviour (Chhibber 1996: 133–4; Parsa 1988: 59). The marginal and poor had associated the hope for an improvement of their lot with the state-led industrialisation project of the secular state classes. Because of the limited resources available for investment, the growth of industrial jobs did not keep up with demographic growth. The choice of purchasing the most modern technologies – a strategy to spend the scarce rent efficiently, which promised to quickly raise production – limited the provision of jobs for unskilled labour and created relatively high incomes for a limited number of skilled workers. The extension of market relations to the unregulated labour markets for the many who were not employed by the public sector, and the rationing of the access to the limited number of jobs in ‘government’ by political connections, created a widespread suspicion of government corruption. An increasing number of marginals with previous links to pre-capitalist networks of solidarity in the villages were increasingly shed off in the ‘traditional’ sectors of the economy. The increased surplus production following the weakening of the traditional systems of redistribution transformed them into marginalised, jobless, and resourceless poor in the cities. In a way, they became economically superfluous because of costing more than they were able to produce.3 Governments led by the secular state classes had initially cared for the downtrodden because of their previous egalitarian ideological orientations, but faced with shrinking resources, they were forced to curtail such assistance. To maintain their power base, they spent ‘usefully’, that is, on those whose support seemed to be most essential such as urban people in areas of population concentration with the result of an ‘urban bias’, a bias that often favoured some urban groups over others. Those who were left aside saw this bias as further evidence of injustice and corruption in the ruling class. They accused the ruling class of being in control of a rent-collecting
2 On the relative isolation of the secular nationalists early on, see Mardin 1973: 169–90. 3 Marshall 1988: 10; Zaman 1998: 705; Howell 2001: 717; Keyman and Koyuncu 2005: 118. Middle Classes and New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements 145 agency called the state. These poor increasingly became receptive to the discourse of any rival to the secular state classes who could promise a better future, even an austere one. The importance of moral values and the downplaying of economic achievement in the discourse of the cultural nationalists had the effect of giving this austerity an important degree of dignity. The old private sector and the marginalised poor were then joined by the newly emergent middle classes. These middle classes did not own any means of production but possessed diplomas from the educational system that the state classes had greatly expanded. When the state classes started to launch their strategies of industrialisation and state building, they lacked adequately trained people. The development state undertook vast programmes of education, although often with an early bias for higher education. In the initial phase, jobs were largely available for the young, recent graduates. But the undeniable success in raising school enrolment quickly came into conflict with the low growth of the modern sector so that new generations of graduates soon faced a greatly constricted labour market. An overcrowded small-scale enterprise sector as described in the development theory literature on the informal sector4 could not compensate for this lack of jobs. This sector was overcrowded to such an extent that employment did not imply empowerment but rather dependency on more powerful people. Why not engage in criticism of the selfish employees in the public sector, which was constrained by limited resources and was therefore by necessity arbitrary in providing jobs and advantages? There was an undeniable difference between those from better-off middle classes already established in public sector employment and those newly rising out of more traditional, often rural or provincial families whose ambitions were thwarted and who by definition had a lower exposure to Western culture, as they frequently came from the (rather better-off) rural social milieus.5 In relation to those already in government employment, they were superior only in their command of traditional culture. No argument could have been better in such a critical evaluation than the reproach of cultural betrayal by those in place. Employees were essentially told, ‘You are in government employment, but you do not speak our language or at least you do not work in the national language’. Arabising the administration, as in Algeria, or implementing Hindi as the national language in India formed feasible claims for changing the employment pattern in the modern sector. Often these newer climbers avoided the overcrowded study programmes leading to the traditional liberal professions and instead studied technology or science. The contributions in this book, Groc on Turkey, Schwecke on India, and Ouaissa on Algeria, all illustrate that the rise of these new cultural-identitarian political movements is triggered by newly rising, sometimes even newly
4 For a good overview about the innovativeness of small businesspeople and the constraints they face, see Livingstone 1991; Hart 1973; van Dijk and Sandee 2002. 5 Moore and Hochchild 1968: 41; Karasipathi 2009: 103; Auda 1994: 375; Khouri 1995: 155. 146 The Transformation of Politicised Religion constituted, middle-classes who have become the holders of assets often because of the development policies of the state classes. The adoption of culturalist views is explained by Schwecke as the utilisation of a worldview by newly rising middle classes. Instrumentalisation in this context does not mean the deliberate or even Machiavellian use of such ideas. However, when the world of values and worldviews is partitioned between established forces, a new force cannot arise without a demarcating profile which allows it to rally support around it, even heterogeneous followers. Such worldviews are chosen from among available views or by putting together already existing aspirations in ways which are not contradictory, although contradictions are not uncommon. The relation between the worldviews and reality (for example their presentation of the transcendental world) becomes a problem only when the worldviews are put to test – a rare and uncommon challenge. The fact that similar social bases lead to new cultural-identitarian political movements in some areas and not in others shows that cultural artefacts are used as a quarry for movements. This does not exclude that the members of such movements honestly believe that they have chosen their worldviews solely from conviction: The fact that followers can be convinced does not show that it is the only worldview to which they could adhere, but that it is one which works so that others are, at least temporarily, not pursued. This explains, for example, the similarities between the Algerian secular FLN and the Algerian cultural-identitarian ‘fundamentalist’ and Islamist FIS (Carlier 1992: 210 f.).
The Construction of an Ideological Base for the New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements
Most explanations of the rise of fundamentalism follow Mark Juergensmeyer and identify factors in the economic environment (deceptions about economic development), or a general change in the mode of perception of modernity, or changes in personal worldviews that exist in most underdeveloped countries (Juergensmeyer 1996: esp. 10). Nevertheless, the rise of new cultural-identitarian movements is unevenly distributed in the continents that formerly constituted the political Third World. The regional distribution of these movements does not correspond to the geographical distribution of major world religions in the continents of the South. The rise of religion overlaps but does not coincide with the rise of the new movements. Religion can therefore be excluded as the major cause of their rise, even if it is a major instrument. How then were cultural nationalists able to become challengers to the state classes in the political arena and acquire a large base among the three social strata that have been left out of the development models by the secular state classes? Why can cultural nationalists succeed in mobilising political support only in some societies but not throughout the former Third World? Middle Classes and New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements 147
One explanation follows from an examination of the economic conditions as the demise of the state classes was due to economic inefficiency and the resultant social consequences. This does not imply that new movements draw their strength from directly advocating short-sighted economic interests. Such movements become more powerful as they succeed in making their capacity to create structures credible where these partially diverging, and sometimes even conflicting, interests can be better served than by the actually existing structures. The more the perspectives of economic improvement and social justice can plausibly be brought into the picture, the easier the creation of alliances between groups who in some fundamental ways are partly competing. The importance of the overarching promise of a possible return to a prosperous shining past with its just social order allows the formulation of eclectic economic perspectives within the framework of a consistent but moralising view of society. This, furthermore, makes possible the transcendence of narrow class boundaries. Although the middle classes in their diversity constitute a major element of these new cultural-identitarian movements, the movements do not emerge on the basis of a class-based alternative concept of economic development. All movements emphasise the importance of cultural nationalism in their identity, which implies an important role for worldviews framed by re-imagined conceptions of their own culture; however, their own cultures are perceived as different from other cultures. In the Islamic movements, the establishment of the shari’a as the law of everyday life is an important demand but what pertains to the shari’a is, to a large degree, open to interpretation as Lübben shows. In the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the so-called three core issues (common civil code, building of Ram temple in Ayodhya, free settlement of Hindus in Kashmir) have never been implemented. These larger cultural elements may be important in order to acquire an audience. They are rarely fully implemented, if the movements come into power. The new cultural-identitarian movements have been able to exploit the economic failure of the secular state classes in order to emerge on the basis of the shift from economic issues – which have defined the incumbent parties – to identity, their main priority. They replace economic and social development as overarching goals with identity, even when concern for economic and social goals remains important. The shift away from economic advantages to identity as the basis for support for governments implies a fundamental restructuring of the relation between the ideological sphere and the sphere of daily struggle for material survival among different members of society. Cultural nationalists do not need an elaborate model for managing the economy. In order to conform to their values they can limit themselves to an ad hoc mode of supporting those who fail to survive and those who appear to be treated in blatantly unfair ways. Social services for the many, even preferential access for the poor, are manifestations of this caring in the name of the the core values which structure all religions since the axial times (Jaspers 1948). Such caring does not imply a commitment to equality but rather to respect. On the basis of such moralistic principles the state can become leaner and the role 148 The Transformation of Politicised Religion of the market may increase. However, such developments remain within strict limits: competitiveness has to be maintained in order to protect the jobs of those who are respectable because they contribute to the morally legitimate production and supply of goods which are needed in society. They are thereby morally entitled to expect freedom from state intervention and protection from all kinds of ‘unfair’ competition. There is increasingly a mode of thinking that valorises cultural values, but there is something else that provides organisational strength and cohesion. We normally find these movements characterised by a loss of any belief in holistic explanations of the real economic world on which an improvement in the lot of its various constituencies could be based. Instead, these movements are characterised by pragmatism and a commitment to principles of moral economy, which can comprise a wide variety of policies from Gandhian promotion of the poor to the promotion of information technology and most modern forms of communication. The praise of traditional culture goes with the use of the most modern media. The Internet sites of many of these movements are often far more sophisticated than those of most secular forces. But the rejection of holistic models of interpretation allows the rejection of any overall responsibility of politics, even if the political instances have been occupied by these movements. In that sense they represent in element of post-modernity.
A Moral Worldview Increasingly Mediated and Trivialised by Interest
The shift from interest to identity has implications for the various worldviews linked to the global system. There is still a discourse on imperialism which is defined as unfair treatment by temporarily more powerful and, obviously, much more reckless foreign powers. The defeat of the South thus results from its stronger commitment to its own humanitarianism and fairness. Imperialism can be described as the result of an absence of moral principles which allowed the imperialists to exploit the tendency to humanitarian values among the respective cultures it penetrated in the South (Arslâne 2008: esp. 49). Without a theory of the necessity of imperialism and imperialist exploitation for maintaining capitalism, the concept of proletarian nations, so powerful in the non-aligned movement of the secular nationalists, became meaningless. It was replaced by a vague Third World solidarity which could no longer bridge oppositions due to cultural differences. This can go with an emotional anti-Western stance which does not exclude intensive cooperation with the West, even in a certain degree of admiration, especially for the United States and their civic culture which is seen as based on religion. Even if they have to comply with goals established by cultural identity, in most cases the policy aspects of their worldviews are not particularly aggressive. The new cultural-identitarian movements share with the secular state classes the explanation of the foreign causation of underdevelopment. This foreign violence destroyed the previously existing golden age of the ancient economy and society, Middle Classes and New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements 149 although the new cultural-identitarian movements rarely go beyond this in their anti-foreigner position. Stronger anti-Western positions in the Islamic world can be explained by the special situation of opposition to the forced exodus of the Palestinians through the creation of the state of Israel. There are, however, even Islamic new cultural- identitarian movements that are ready to explicitly recognise the right of existence of Israel within secure boundaries. The map representing Palestine in the headquarters of one of the moderate Algerian Islamist parties was based on the Green Line as a boundary between two states in Palestine, with Jerusalem marked as Jerusalem in Arabic letters. At a lecture I gave in the headquarters of Hamas on 11 May 2005, a member of the Mouvement de la Société pour la Paix confirmed that this was indeed the position of the party. Before the war on terror, many of these movements were ready to entertain relations with the United States, particularly because of the importance of the religious sphere in American social life. The rise to power of the moderate Islamists in Egypt or Tunisia was not associated with a turn to anti-American foreign policy. For many of these movements America was or is extremely prestigious, as America seems to present a type of civil society which religious leaders in the South aspire to, contrary to the largely private character of religion in the European regions of the capitalist world. The more powerful cultural-identitarian movements make no claims to being an avant-garde in a struggle for expanding the territorial reach of a particular culture, either by military means or by missionary proselytism. The attitude of these movements is, if anything, rather defensive and not expansionary. They want to defend their turf, but they also consider their own society as being entirely their turf. With respect to foreign relations they are status quo–oriented and focus on preserving their own ‘inherited’ domain but do not proclaim to reoccupy lost territory (Andalusia, for example, or Pakistan or Bangladesh in case of the BJP). There is also no simple equation between the absorption of Western modernity and a commitment to the Western-style politics of secularist withdrawal on purely individualist adherence to values of identity. There are good reasons to assume that the new technical elites in India in the information business are more committed to Hindu nationalism than the older established intellectual elites in social sciences (which is, by the way, a configuration that also applied to pre- fascist Germany; Sander 2005: 317; cf. also Lipset 1968: 5). The importance of the technical intelligentsia in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has been noted from an early stage (Ibrahim 1982: 11; Longuenesse and Waast 1995: 489; Gambetta and Hertog 2009: 203–5). In relation to the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, Lübben shows that this importance of the professions is one of its handicaps today in their conflict with the army and big business. A reinvigorated, often dynamic private sector and the most modern wing of the new middle classes with an educational background often very similar to the évolués (the educated) in the colonial administrations, constitute the backbone of the extension of cultural nationalism (Fernandes 2000b: 109). 150 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Cultural nationalism can be transformed into a cultural-identitarian movement to the degree it opens itself to these groups. Success is facilitated if the old cadres at local levels accept new orientations. The orientations consist of downplaying the importance of the old cultural nationalist agenda6 and concretising the moral economy issue by the adoption of a market economy with limited welfare measures, and the renunciation of uncontrolled violence, or even the complete renunciation of violence. The worldviews structuring new cultural-identitarian political movements are not totally new but are adapted from those already available and which could be used to gain influence because of their connection with worldviews already occupied by the existing powers in order to justify their privileges. Because of the dynamics that the process of development has already taken, they are interested in market liberalisation and the re-opening of internal and external markets, although with safeguards, because they pretend to observe deficiencies in capitalist regulation. Here lies the leverage of the middle classes when they attempt to weaken the more identitarian commitments of the original founders of these movements. The larger these new movements become and the safer they feel, the more probable it becomes that they will seek political participation, especially where the state has not yet decisively withdrawn from the economic sphere. At the same time, however, it may be strategically useful for such groups to strike a deal with existing state classes if they fear pressure from the underprivileged masses. They may see in Western liberal democratic-style governance a safeguard against these masses. Practically all the third wave democratisation discourse deals with limited democracy, where majorities are not brought into play propelling developments which would disrupt the unequal distribution of assets and incomes. The takeover of the real leadership of cultural nationalism in new cultural- identitarian movements by ‘reasonable’ middle-class representatives constitutes a great reinforcement of democracy as shown by the practice of the BJP in power in India (Kumar 2001: 61), the political praxis of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan (Clark 2006: 539), or the recent resistance of large factions of the Iranian Islamist movement, not only against the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but also, and this much earlier, against too much interference of the clerics into the politics of the Islamist movement (Khosrokhavar 2008: 347; Rahnema and Moghissi 2000: 33). This does not exclude temptations to abuse power as shown by Groc for Turkey and Lübben for Egypt. Cultural-identitarian movements are , however, not the only political movements to do so. In both cases, these abuses were not justified by the claim that religion was more important than democracy, which previous versions of cultural nationalism had adhered to and which were an early issue of conflict in Algeria (Dahman).
6 This is the central argument of Schwecke 2011. Middle Classes and New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements 151
The Construction of New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements
Invariably, social movements have to be constructed. They are more than an emanation of pre-existing attitudes, values, or of so-called objective interests created by the economic process or the political system that have been identified by analysts.7 American modernisation theory has translated Max Weber’s notion of bourgeoisie using the term middle-class (Ghosh 1994: 105). As it has failed to understand the basics of the analyses of Weber (which have to be seen in the wake of Karl Marx and as an attempt to go beyond this author), especially about the construction of this very special middle class, a long discussion about the progressive versus nonprogressive middle class has been launched. This discussion has not led to anything else other than the observation that market-oriented entrepreneurs will be forced to remove nonmarket forms of surplus appropriation (hence rent), provided there are opportunities to grow on the basis of expanding markets (Akeredolu-Ale 1971: 200; Leff 1979: 60). Opportunities and social environments matter.8 Classes are formed by processes of class formation where people respond to opportunities and develop social praxis by exploiting opportunities as they see them (Lukács 1960: 63–72). There are therefore differences, despite similarities in income, between market-oriented entrepreneurs (‘bourgeois’) and nonmarket- oriented members of middle classes who are dependent on the state, even if they may be formally entrepreneurs (Huber and Stephens 1999: 767; Allub 1974: 265; Chandra 1975: 319). The construction of class conscience directly coincides with the construction of social movements. Long before constructivism was proposed as a novelty, the highly debated strategic options of the labour movement in Europe turned around the question of the influence of political activities and forms of organisations on the development and pattern of class consciousness (not only of the working class9 but also of the rising bourgeoisie; Lukács 1960: 260–61; Goldmann 1967; Borkenau 1934). Communist parties’ concerns with the survival of their organisations, even in the case of severe calamities, reflect Vladimir Lenin’s theory of the avant-garde character of the party (Lenin [1917] 1960: 416). As long as the party survives, it can reapply the process of creating class consciousness among its possible bases and maintain its constructivist role. Under the Hegelian assumptions which are also at the foundation of the Frankfurt School, the slogan from the communist youth song in eastern Germany is not totally absurd: the party is always right. Reality has shown, however, that the party was not right and that the survival of society, that is, social stability, did
7 Wiktorowicz 2004: 176; Munson 2001: 497; Bayat 2005: 897–9; Meijer 2005: 280. 8 On variations in entrepreneurs’ behaviour according to economic opportunities, see Harris 1970: 368. 9 See, for example, Moorehouse 1978: 61–82; Diggins 1977: 375; Gallissot 1995: 83–5; Chakrabarty 1988: 30. 152 The Transformation of Politicised Religion not depend on appropriate knowledge especially if the course of history was open. Social systems survive without this specific consciousness. This applies also to the emergence of the new cultural-identitarian political movements. The founders of constructivism started from the Frankfurt School deception about the non-realisation of Marx’s prediction, that is, that the proletariat could be the general class which would free all humankind. The actual behaviour of the proletariat, with its turn to bread and butter issues, had to lead to the search for alternative positions from which ‘truth’ could be perceived. Essentially, this type of reasoning depends on the claim that there is a historical process of the representation of reality as Hegel claimed in his ‘Phenomenology of the spirit’ (Hegel [1807] 1952). Suppose, however, that such a process is basically unnecessary and, furthermore, is anti-democratic because democracy, and hence deliberation, apply only where individual discretionary choices are allowed even if they may well be legitimately irrational and ‘irresponsible’. In that case, the construction of a rational common ground in the process of negotiating a definition of accepted reality is not necessary. In my ‘Rise and Demise of the Capitalist World System’, I argue that the necessary social condition of empowerment of labour for expanding mass-markets and profit may not have been produced by any conscious strategy of labour, but rather by accident (Elsenhans 2011c: 71–84; 2012b: 80.ff.). In a similar way, the construction of social movements may not necessarily follow from the intentions of those who constructed them. New cultural-identitarian movements have to be created, but they are not simply the expression of their founders; they are also the result of social processes carried out by individuals and social bases as described in the theories of new social movements (see Moazami 2009: 47–52). In order to address audiences and social bases beyond the reach of their ideas on national culture, the new cultural- identitarian political movements have to develop service organisations. All new cultural-identitarian movements are engaged in creating institutions which provide the most extensive range of services (Rieger 2002; Clark 2004: 949; Najmabadi 1987: 213). This implies that they have had to broaden their own social contacts and to shift from a position where enlightened leaders taught audiences on how societies should be reformed to a reactive stance on what social bases expected from them. Indeed, in their attempt to increase their influence by moving into the middle of society, the new cultural-identitarian political movements could not avoid adapting to the existing political preferences of society. The degree of adaptation depended on the strength of the positions of the groups to be addressed. Here the economic situation played a critical role. Several contributions (Groc, Ouaissa, Schwecke, and Sharma in this book) show the link between the takeover of the movements by moderate tendencies and the shift to economic issues. Cultural-identitarian movements may emerge in a mild opposition to established ruling classes. They may emerge in this case on the basis of increased marketisation in the economy and greater independence of (mostly) older trading families from the ‘court’ of the sultan whose lavishness they oppose and try to curtail. In that case the opposition to old religious establishments is weak and Middle Classes and New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements 153 the organisational setup of a new class of intellectuals who interpret the cultural inheritance is rather rudimentary. Such political movements can be found in the Gulf countries (Fritzsche 2007: 57–90, esp. 87; Lawson 2004). They present similarities but also differences with the movements on which we have focussed here, but these differences shed light on the social embeddedness of all these movements (Tétreault). Where secular nationalists have not been powerful, but nevertheless capable in creating new economic structures through whatever inefficient import-substituting industrialisation, the networks of the old social structures seem to have been seriously weakened. Access to ‘soup’, or economic favours distributed by the government, depends either on new networks or on a reconfiguration of older ones. Previously existing networks have lost their importance. The challengers to the secular state classes have to create new structures and on which to base their opposition. All the movements that we found in both the Islamic and the Hindu contexts had at some level of decision-making forms of organisation that resembled the Communist parties. Membership alone does not qualify for immediate participation in decision making. Clearly defined periods and steps of training are required for rising in the rank of membership, which yield future graduated participation. Organisations (that for cultural reasons do not declare themselves political parties, such as the Muslim Brothers) have similar structures of keeping ordinary members from imposing by majority decision courses of action on a ‘more enlightened’ minority (Lia 1998: 164; Aly and Wenner 1982: 357). The main Islamist political party in Pakistan, the Jama’at-i-Islami, opted for the formal introduction of a hierarchy among its membership, including a select body of full members, access to which was highly restricted by an elaborate system of requirements (Nasr 1994: 47–9). The basic intra-organisational power structure does not differ strongly between the Muslim Brothers and the organisations of the Indian Sangh Parivar. An elitist cadre party is useful for maintaining the preponderance of an intellectually engaging legitimised vanguard group. But the group’s claim to leadership clashes with the claims of party members who draw the social status they have acquired from their activities in economic life as well as the social connections that result from these activities. There is therefore an opposition between the resourceless intellectuals who owe their rank to climbing the ladder of promotion within the organisation and those who, even from the very beginning of their affiliation to the party, claim high status on the basis of prestige and rank external to the movement.10 The intellectual cadre can normally assert his influence upon the new notables entering the party on the basis of the credit he enjoys with
10 Hansen and Jaffrelot 1998: 1–5. In the Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, Lia notes that there was a rule in the Muslim Brother organisation of ‘avoidance of the hegemony of notables and elders’ (1998: 281). 154 The Transformation of Politicised Religion the marginalised classes in the party who are its stormtroopers,11 although there may be misunderstandings between these two groups (Khosrokhavar 1993: 106–7). But these movements can also arrive at alliances with the powers in place: the remnants of the old secular state classes. Here the notables are at an advantage to the intellectuals: the notables claim sharing of power and resources especially with respect to practical issues also in economic policies whereas the intellectuals need exclusive ideological dominance. They need this dominance in order to avail themselves of the only capital they control, cultural capital. In the case of large amounts of rent, the notables will try to arrive at an arrangement aimed at sharing the spoils (like the moderate Islamist movements in Algeria; Ouaissa 2008b: 156). In the case that the amounts of rent are small and avenues are open for electoral success, the notables will claim a moderately state-interventionist regime based on moral economy similar to the policies of the AKP in Turkey (Gülalp 2001: 435–41; Jang 2006: 101; Groc 2003: 123). But they will not abandon state responsibility in order to promote the most modern industrial sectors as shown by the Indian BJP (Elsenhans 2006c: 70–73). Provided that the regime is at least moderately democratic, the notables have a good chance of prevailing against the intellectuals. They may even adopt democratic values in order to enjoy superiority over the less democratic tendencies by appealing to new moderate constituencies (Harnisch and Mecham 2009: 197; Gumuscu and Sert 2009: 963). Where the political situation is more complicated, the new cultural-identitarian political movements may split into various movements: in Algeria (Yacine 1998: 10) the ex-Hamas (Muslim Brothers) is dominated by notables (and attacked by more mass-oriented Islamist movements); the Islah comprises fewer notables and more intellectuals from lower (and more resourceless) elements of the middle class; and both seem to have lost the political support of the marginalised (some of whom are totally demotivated, according to Lacheraf’s metaphor of the atomisation of society, under colonialism). A minority of the latter are still ready to support violent action (Hafez 2000: 572–91). The BJP in India enjoys the attraction of an electoral strategy and as a result suffers from intra-party conflict (Schwecke 2011: 129–49). A secretary-general (Govindacharya, the main interpreter of ‘integral humanism’, the doctrine developed by the movement’s founder, Deendayal Upadhyaya; Sharma 2000) was asked to resign. Also, several parties have recently split as discussed in Voll’s contribution. Where such avenues for electoral victory are less open, the intellectuals may prevail, as in the case of the early years of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nevertheless, the day-to-day running of the economy is no playing ground for the intellectuals. If the economy grows well, under conditions of underdevelopment, the middle classes (including highly skilled workers) will benefit for long periods. Intellectuals within the movement can maintain their positions against more accommodative members representing thriving middle classes only by imposing
11 Mediene 1997: 39; Bayat 2002: 23; Gadant 1991: 13; Firouzbakh 1988: 93; Delibas 2009: 92. Middle Classes and New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements 155 ideological correctness. The 2009 conflicts within the Iranian Islamist movement are a good example (Khosrokhavar 2008: 347–50). It is not impossible that the alliance, which is at the basis of the new cultural- identitarian movements, will dissolve. An opposition between the middle classes and the marginalised poor may emerge. In the absence of delivering, that is, fulfilling the original promises, to the marginalised poor, the poor may rediscover movements that less openly draw their legitimacy from cultural nationalism. Because of the presence of cultural nationalist rites and thoughts in the interactions between leadership and masses even in the most secularly oriented national liberation movements (Algerian FLN and Indian Congress Party), this shift in support from the new cultural-identitarian political movements to new movements will not fundamentally weaken the worldviews in the countries concerned. New wave Western approaches of establishing modernity as a yardstick for civilisation identify political moderation as a focus on acceptance of majority rule and human rights together with market economy. They interpret political strategies with similar goals as an expression of a modernising and civilising process which is interpreted as a learning process in line with the middle class acquisition of insights through formal education. The emergence of small but socially active groups (especially of non-profit organisations called non-governmental organisations) and the repeated failures of identitarian movements with their identity mania (Meyer 2001) are expected to integrate these new middle classes into a global mainstream of increasingly civilised society. The new generation of Western bridgeheads in these societies built up with resources from development assistance are characterised as participating in ‘Western Enlightenment’. This is regarded as making them a privileged partner in metamorphosis of these societies into properly civilised civilisations with civilised civil societies. The cultural nationalists of the South perceive these bridgeheads as rivals to their own claim to political roles in their own societies and contest the latter’s view of modernity as the more civilised (Western) civilisation. They usually accuse the West – not without justification – of having committed the worst crimes in human history with genocides in the Americas, the Atlantic slavery in sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas, and their attempts at ethnic purification including the Holocaust in Europe. The respect for ethnic and religious diversity in Asia compares favourably with the European record in these matters. The new cultural- identitarian movements have often rejected Western values in the realm of the freedom of the individual, but have rarely been more violent than their European counterparts in the phase of the emergence of the nation states in Europe and the accomplishment of some homogeneity of representable ‘body politics’. There is a relatively stable and on-going commitment by the major elements of new cultural-identitarian political movements to the respect of the human person, as it is established in all religions of the axial period. There may have been many violations of these principles, as was also the case in the West. Currently, a greater degree of adherence to these principles can probably not be explained by a learning process, implying learning from the West, as the 156 The Transformation of Politicised Religion knowledge of religion has not changed in the societies of Asia and Northern Africa: Western ideas in these sensitive areas are still rejected by most of the new cultural-identitarian political movements. The elections following the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt in 2012 have shown that the agencies of Western learning, the NGOs working with pro-Western privileged partners in the Arab world, have been extremely weak – weaker than the communist parties in Eastern Europe at the moment of the fall of the Berlin Wall – so that it appears doubtful that it is due to their ideological clout that the cultural-identitarian political movements have turned towards moderation. Western constructivist thinking clearly overestimates talking also in this case, as it had done when it explained the Soviet turn to reform from the activities of some Western NGOs in Moscow.12
The Probability of the Stability of Moderation
Indeed, the moderation of the new cultural-identitarian political movements which implies the readiness to compromise does not depend on learning about Western worldviews but on the relative strengths and the economic situations of its various components. In economies with at least partial integration into the capitalist world economy, economically independent middle classes can emerge when the state retreats and allows private entrepreneurs to accumulate on the basis of an increase in demand for their products. Such middle classes are, in principle, also politically independent from the state and the state’s appropriation of surplus by political means. Historically, they have been perceived as the major political forces which fought against the ancient regimes of the tributary modes of production and their economic basis, rent. Tributary modes of production in Europe formed an amalgamation of feudalism with states on their way to absolutism, a power configuration not very dissimilar of the ancient empires of Asia. In developing economies with differential lags in productivity vis-à-vis the leading industrialised countries this picture of the European transition to capitalism – rent versus bourgeoisie – has to be enlarged: Where high productivity and comparative advantage are due to the natural conditions of production and simultaneous high cost production of the same type of raw materials in other areas (either for reasons of security or reasons of high demand which cannot be satisfied by the low-cost production sites, for example, oil), then differential rents have to emerge. Where specialisation occurs in price-inelastic goods, simple mechanisms of supply control like marketing boards can provide high incomes to monopolists. For imposing a monopoly, economic actors need the support of the state. Wherever there is sufficient capacity of the state to isolate the local market with its system of relative prices from the world market, a multitude of rents may emerge because local production costs often depend on access to cheap entrants for production
12 Risse-Kappen 2004: 185, to be compared with Bova 1988: 406. Middle Classes and New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements 157 like imported machinery or imported raw materials. Economically, decolonisation meant the transfer of rents from international raw material monopolies to state class-based governments which were able to increase the rents considerably on the basis of increasing state control of their external economic relations. Where there are rents, the growth of middle classes is possible without increasing mass incomes: There is a demand for goods from the rent collecting agencies of the state which entrepreneurs do not have to finance from the proceeds of their sales through taxes. In addition, rent can be used directly for the support of such entrepreneurs. Rent also allows overvalued currencies with exchange rates which remain so favourable that local production is discouraged if it is not supported by the state and its customs authorities or special promotional agencies. High levels of externally appropriated rents like raw material exports are a source used to spoon-feed entrepreneurs and the salaried middle class which, however, gradually lose their desire to become economically independent from the state. They are in favour of limited marketisation in order to benefit from protective measures of all kinds and they are reluctant to extend democratisation in order to maintain their special influence on the decision-making processes in the state as well as avoiding the political implementation of the interests of the masses in the redistribution of income against the middle classes. Rent is a type of income which is limited because, in itself, it is not productive but depends on restrictions on production. As long as it is used for acquiring products from privately organised entrepreneurs instead of being used by the state for state organised production, for example on pre-capitalist estates and slave plantations, it will create entrepreneurs who will strive to make a profit. As long as the proportion of spending remains biased towards rent rather than towards mass incomes, the number of entrepreneurs who are motivated to struggle against the state will remain limited. There will be a permanent struggle between rent- based entrepreneurs and those who are more market-oriented. In his contribution, Ouaissa shows how two of the segments of the middle classes in Algeria, the educated salaried government employees and pious entrepreneurs interact. Some of these, both entrepreneurs and salaried people, are shown to be relatively close to the state and support the established powers. As long as substantial parts of the middle classes are tied in such a way to the mechanisms of rent collection and rent distribution of the state, they will not try to become a powerful middle class. They will remain segmented in clans and bound to the rent collecting agencies, normally the state, via patron-client relations. Each segment will try to achieve the best deal with the state. Such a middle class, politically fragmented and split by rivalry, will not introduce measures to increase mass consumption through the redistribution of rents where the immediate outcome would be to their own detriment. Rent is also a form of income which blocks class formation because it implies relatively small privileged groups with vertical relations established on the basis of comprehensive solidarities which go much further than the common character of economic and social interests which are at the basis of class formation. Where there are low levels of employment, workers need personal relations in order 158 The Transformation of Politicised Religion to gain employment. In capitalism with full employment such special situations tend to disappear. Specialised labour is not particularly sought after since labour in general produces an economic surplus which makes it interesting for any employer. A common position of labour against more privileged strata of labour in the form of labour aristocracies can emerge. Many examples (China, Korea, Bangladesh) show that the level of employment is decisive for pushes in industrialisation that may lead to the formation of workers movements and the emergence of a working class consciousness.13 The constitution of the working class is important for supporting those elements among the property-owning classes which earn their incomes only because of their efficiency in producing for anonymous markets. It is the demand of this working class and the imposition of uniform working conditions which create scarcity of goods and give efficiency of management its importance. The constitution ofa working class is therefore a condition for the existence of a property owning class which does not depend on its support from a government. The shift from a middle class capable of attracting favours from the government to middle classes capable of really challenging the rent-based system of the state classes ultimately depends on the employment situation of the workers. The bourgeois revolution for democracy was not possible without such a powerful position for the working-class.14 The emergence of class as a mode of organisation of larger human groups is an achievement of incipient capitalism. It creates the possibility of social conflict over limited but not parochial goals, especially over the orientation and organisation of the economy and society. The American theory of pluralism has obscured this specific trait by introducing the concept of the group which does not distinguish between class and the pre-capitalist coterie, clique, and set of cronies (Bentley 1908: esp. 330–45). The discourse on moral economy greatly facilitates limited marketisation without the emergence of class through the empowerment of labour and the autonomy of profit-seeking entrepreneurs. It resembles Western pro-business discourses in its focus on the importance of the role of entrepreneurs for the market economy instead of growth inducing income distribution. It therefore favours subsidising middle classes against promoting mass incomes. Despite its support for market relations the discourse on moral economy blocks the emergence of capitalist structures and stabilises rent-dominated systems.
An Arab Predicament
In countries where rents and cultural-identitarian movements are important, especially in the Arab world, the last decades of failed development dominated by state-class efforts have led to the loss of legitimacy of the state classes as shown
13 Zhu 2004: 1021; Lee 1993: 38; Le Monde, 15 June 2010: 15; 7 September 2010: 16. 14 Rueschemeyer, Huber Stephens and Stephens 1992: 58 f.; von Freyhold 1992: 38. Middle Classes and New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements 159 by the Arab Spring. It is not very probable that the state classes with their secular orientations will be able to redress the situation. They would have to be able to channel rent into economic structures which could supply those goods which are necessary if mass incomes should increase in the wake of rapidly expanding employment and wage increases. The newly industrialising countries of Asia have shown an alternative which implies a readiness to engage in exploitation in exchange for importing a mode of regulation which allows the rapid increase of mass incomes by increasing employment. Export-driven growth is not so much due to increased market relations – as even the World Bank had to admit in 1993 (Page et al. 1993: 83 f.) – but to devaluation below purchasing parity. Additional workers are employed at wage levels which in international currency prohibit these additional workers from purchasing most of their additional requirements in subsistence goods from the world market. This is economically viable if the local economy produces a surplus of subsistence goods in case there is additional demand powered by money. The additionally employed workers in the export sector are paid with this money and buy this surplus of subsistence goods, and may even trigger off additional production of such subsistence goods. The bulk of subsistence goods consist of food, with food shares in household expenditure representing as much as 50 per cent and more. The importance of food is still greater. The non-food items of poor household expenditure are also typically locally produced, simple industrial goods. These are often produced in the informal sector by workers who also use about half of their incomes for food. The form in which rent emerges is important, that is, as exportable raw materials or locally consumed subsistence. Here the Arab world finds itself in an unfavourable position – its agriculture is not productive due to climatic conditions. Furthermore, from the perspective of the relation between the agriculturally useful surface and population density, Arab countries are overpopulated. They cannot opt for the East Asian path of overcoming underdevelopment because they cannot devalue their currencies below purchasing parity. Additional employment will lead to additional imports, the prices of which will rise in parallel with changes in prices following a devaluation of the local currency. I have argued elsewhere (Elsenhans 2012a, 2013) that there is a solution to this problem: the Arab world could enter a long-term cooperation with Europe which is able to produce food surpluses on the basis of its Common Agricultural Policy in favour of its agricultural populations. If the Arab world were able to achieve levels of development such as in China, with increases in the consumption of food for their masses to be paid on the basis of exports of at least initially cheap manufactured products, Europe would become the granary of the Arab world, having comparative advantage in food production. From this perspective the Arab world would import fundamentally capitalist structures and not just market relations. Its own local mass markets would develop and function in their own right, expanding mass production for the local market 160 The Transformation of Politicised Religion and exports to the world market on the basis of productivity improvements following industrialisation. As long as the moderate tendencies among the new cultural-identitarian political movements insist on an ideological nationalism as the force for social integration, I do not see great potential for entering a strategy of industrialisation combined with devaluation. Devaluation implies being exploited by cheap prices for one’s own manufactures in exchange for benefiting from an arrangement which facilitates the transformation of the local social structure. This point, however, needs to be taken up in the dialogue between scholars and movements. Unfortunately, the ideological leaders of these movements in their statements on international economics follow a discourse which is relatively close to crude Marxist arguments about the role of exploitation in the underdevelopment of the economies of the South. Under these conditions, the situation described in Ouaissa’s contribution may last for a long period. Some elements of the middle classes will win control of segments of the new cultural-identitarian political movements and become sufficiently influential so that they become interesting for the state class. The state class will, in turn, attempt to co-opt them. The outcome will be that these co- opted elements will follow a classical strategy of divide and rule and keep the new cultural-identitarian political movements from taking overall power. In this way, the moderates allow the state class to maintain stability without removing the causes of popular protest and apathy. Ouaissa describes the political decline which is inevitable in such circumstances. A rational combination between the market, planning and devaluation offers a more pragmatic strategy which these movements could pursue, together with those elements of the existing state classes which still share their old ideals, and through which they came to power. We have deliberately chosen examples from regions with different religious affiliations. The similarity of the mechanisms of constituting new cultural- identitarian political movements and their shift to moderation lend credibility to the assumption that culture per se matters as a factor of behaviour as opposed to other domains of social life, but not the specific contents of the precise teachings in religion of the respective cultural backgrounds (Löhr 2002: 3640). These movements draw uniformly and independently of their religious origin on principles of moral economy. Indeed, in all cultures there is a considerable difference between purist and more adaptive interpretations of the tradition, so that there is rarely a scarcity of authorities who can be quoted for any particular interpretation of religion that could justify political action. The great mass of the people abhor violence and tolerate it only in extreme circumstances. The storming of the Bastille in 1789 and the sacking of the Winter Palace in 1917 were preceded by negotiations between the defenders and the attackers. During the spontaneous mass uprisings in Greater Algiers in October 1988, police stations received prior warning so that massive loss of policemen’s lives could be avoided. In addition, during the violent wars of liberation, the employment of physical violence was always rationed and normally checked on the basis of a permanent Middle Classes and New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements 161 tension between the political and the military, and indeed the mystics of violence which no revolutionary mass movement can avoid. What is new in today’s terrorism is not that it is backed by new cultural- identitarian political movements as claimed by so many in the West despite being practically negligible. Rather, there are new possibilities for relatively small groups of ‘mystics of violence’ to exercise violence with impunity (Elsenhans 2002a: 207). They no longer need the support of a mass base under the leadership of politicians (as during guerrilla wars) and they are no longer easily captured by police forces (as was the case of nineteenth-century terrorism). Terrorism is no longer embedded in popular support as had been the case during the period of decolonisation. One of the possible outcomes of the rise of the new cultural-identitarian movements is a greater openness of state-dominated systems to various market oriented middle classes and the somewhat wider circulation of rent. Thus, the outcome of continued non-performance of the economic and social structures in the direction of employment creation and growth is not terrorism with large-scale popular support. With new technologies governments are able to keep terrorism at levels which are sufficiently low that engaging in terrorist movements is not attractive for larger groups in the population if there are not very specific conditions such as visible foreign domination (for example, Kashmir or Palestine). This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 9 How to Build a Viable Economic Policy on Islamic Foundations: The Case of the MSP Party, Algeria Abdelkrim Dahmen
Introduction
It is not easy to talk about the economic policies of an Algerian political party from an Islamic current. These parties became legal only recently, at the moment when pluralism became an actual experience in Algeria after the events of 5 October 1988. In addition, Islamists infrequently comment or write about their political experience, and even less on economic policy. In order to maintain scientific rigour, I will start this endeavour by situating the Algerian Islamic experience in its historical and ideological context, focusing on the experience of the MSP (the French abbreviation for: Movement for Peaceful Society), previously called the MSI (from the French meaning: Movement for Islamic Society) and more well-known under the name of Hamas which corresponds to the Arabic initials for its name.1 Here I present political events which might have contributed to the development of a political project, and the economic aspects within such a project. I look back on the economic content of electoral programmes making reference to specific paragraphs, and provide a provisional judgement on governmental actions under special consideration of their economic dimension. Events in recent Algerian history are documented and largely available from Algerian and European sources. Therefore I will simply sketch a brief account with the aim of providing a clear background to the analysis and to make understanding easier for some readers.
On the Origins of Algerian Islamist Movement
Islamist movements as we know them emerged during the 1970s. (Perhaps the only one which existed prior to this, in the second half of the 1960s, was the
1 The acronym Hamas runs in Arabic Harakat Al-Mujtama Al-Islami, Hamas. The French abbreviation MSP will be used for the entire document. 164 The Transformation of Politicised Religion party which later came to be called the MSP.) According to the limited literature and certain comments by their leadership, these movements consider themselves as a continuation of actions by the Algerian Ulama Association,2 an association founded in 1930 in Algiers by a group of scholars under the presidency of Sheikh Abd al-Hamid Ibn Badis, who was succeeded by Sheikh Bachir El-Ibrahimi. The Ulama Association was self-dissolved after independence so that another framework had to be created: the Association ‘al-Qyem al-islamiya’.3 During the single party period, the Islamic current already existed in separate organisational units and in more individualistic and localised action groups. There were basically three organised groups: Blida or El-Madânia in Algiers, founded by late Sheikh Mahfoudh Nahnah; the East founded by Sheikh Abdallah Djaballah; and the Algiers-based group commonly called ‘Djaz’ara’.4 The first two refer to the school of the Muslim Brotherhood although with some differences, whereas the third consisted of more eclectic influences and privileged its link with some specific contemporary Algerian experiences – which explains its nickname ‘El-Djaz’ara’, literally the algerianist one. Other groups with different forms and degrees of organisation existed locally in regions such as ‘Djamâat Takfir wal-Hidjra’ or ‘Djamâat ad-Daâwa wa Tabligh’. In general, these groups associated themselves with salafist tendencies or found their direction in reference to a specific literature or on contacts they may have established with external groups or during pilgrimage to Makkah. Some of these groups eventually integrated themselves totally or partially into one of the three larger organisations. More isolated activities were conducted by former members of the Ulama Association who did not join the government.5 Most of these were concentrated in various areas of Algiers. Of particular importance are Sheikh Abdellatif Soltani at Kouba, Sheikh El-Arbaoui at El-Harrach and Sheikh Ahmed Sahnoun at Chevalley and La Concorde.6 We can add younger individuals such as the well-known Dr Abbassi Madani whose activities were focused especially on the universities,
2 In 1930, Algerian religious scholars founded the ‘Association des Ouléma Musulmans Algériens’, at the social siege of ‘Nadi et-Taraqqi’ (Club of Progress) in Algiers, a club founded three years before. 3 In English: The Islamic Values. The association was created on 14 February 1963 by Hachemi Tidjani (president), Abdellatif Soltani, and Ahmed Sahnoun. Its action was essentially cultural and educational with a moderate discourse. It edited a monthly entitled ‘Attahdheeb al-islami’ (The Muslim Education). The association was forbidden to be active in the Algiers region in September 1966 and definitively suspended in 1970. 4 The tendency Al-Djaz’ara refers to the Ulama Association, to Malek Bennabi, an Algerian thinker, some Muslim Brotherhood members and other Islamic thinkers, especially among those who criticise the Muslim Brotherhood. 5 Like all other opposition tendencies these members of the Ulama Association drew their legitimacy from their participation in the liberation war which led to the independence of Algeria. 6 These are names of popular neighbourhoods in Greater Algiers. How to Build a Viable Economic Policy on Islamic Foundations 165 and Ali Benhadj who began under Sheikh Abdellatif Soltani at Kouba and soon afterwards became prominent with his sermons in the Sunna mosque in Bab-el-Oued.7 These loose currents also had their radical dimensions. During the 1980s, a limited number of isolated radical groups were active in some wilayas (regions).8 The most important group was that of Mustapha Bouyali9 who was attempting to attract other Islamist groups as junior partners into an alliance, including elements of the Berberist movement. He started an armed insurrection against the regime under the name of the Armed Islamic Movement. This activity went on for some years and ended with the deaths of Mustapha Bouyali and some of his lieutenants, and the arrest of the remaining members of the group. Two major events were actions devised and coordinated by the non-violent groups: the big meeting of the Central Faculty of Algiers University10 and the creation of the League for Islamic Predication.11 Both were organised under the auspices of Sheikh Sahnoun.12 These rare moments of consensus cannot hide the discord which marked relationships between the Islamist groups. Sometimes these were simple declarations proposed in a measured way, but others were merciless struggles for control of the mosques and, in the Universities, for control of the prayer halls
7 Curiously the last two, both from different origins, featuring individualistic activists who had not collaborated previously, became the most visible founders of the first Algerian Islamist party, the famous Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut, FIS), founded in March 1989. 8 Some of these groups created substantial disorder in some wilayas, such as Sidi Bel Abbes, Laghouat, and El Oued. 9 Mustapha Bouyali was a former Mudjahid of the liberation war and member of the national organisation of the Mudjahidin (war veterans). He was known in the region of the historical wilaya of the Centre, the ancient Wilaya IV. In 1982 he took the maquis and created the Algerian Armed Islamic Movement (Mouvement Islamique Armé, MIA). His activities ended in 1983 after he was arrested with many MIA members. Bouyali fled from prison, becoming active in 1984 after about 100 of his comrades had been released. He re-launched his maquis one year later. 10 On 12 November 1982, a large meeting took place in the students’ mosque at Algiers Central Faculty. The meeting was a reaction to the tragic confrontation in the Students’ Campus of Ben Aknoun between Islamist and leftist students. A 14-point resolution was sent to the government, which reacted by arresting a large number of Islamists and putting many of their leaders under house arrest. 11 Some Islamists heartily welcomed the League as framework for consultation. The most important public action of the League was the large women’s meeting of 21 December 1989 in Algiers. According to the Algerian Television, 700,000 people attended. 12 A Mudjahid during the liberation war, when he served a three-year prison term, he died on 8 December 2003. He was Imam of the Great Mosque of Algiers , a member of the High Islamic Council, and the last member of the Ulama Association who stayed active in this political current without getting linked organically to any of its tendencies. 166 The Transformation of Politicised Religion and the student residence committees.13 In the last case, struggles were waged not only by the Islamists but also by all of the ideological tendencies existing in Algerian universities.
The Creation of the MSP
The MSP is the oldest and best networked organisation of its kind in Algeria. Since the 1960s, some young men were in touch with scholars from the Ulama Association who were active in the Algerian Muslim Scouts. Many of their convictions were confirmed by religious scholars from Al-Azhar in Egypt, within the framework of Algero-Egyptian cooperation. Some of these scholars, such as Sheikh Fethi Al-Rifaei, were close to the Muslim Brotherhood in the mid-1960s. All contributed to the creation of this underground movement. Three long-standing friends became the principal founders of the organisation which later became the MSP: Mahfoudh Nahnah, Muhammad Bouslimani, and Mustapha Belmehdi.14 During the 1960s, militant cells and a very early women’s section were created in the large cities of Algeria. The 1975 debate about the national charter project, which subsequently led to the official institutionalisation of the socialist option in the new constitution, was a welcome opportunity to express the movement’s hostility to the hijacking of the country’s future. The argument was strongly supported by revelations that some paragraphs of the charter project had been published by the Russian media before Algerian citizens were informed.15 A press release entitled ‘Where are you going Boumedienne?’ was signed on behalf of the monotheists (in Arabic: al-muwahhidûn). This show of power led to the imprisonment of most of the leaders of the movement, which was at that time still regarded as illegal. Mahfoudh Nahnah was sentenced to 15 years in prison and the other leaders to various prison terms. Most political prisoners were released after Boumedienne’s death by the new president Chadli Bendjedid. After leaving prison, Sheikh Nahnah and his comrades initiated a period of activity by establishing new organic bases in nearly all regions, including the South. When the October 1988 events broke out, there were thousands of active members and tens of thousands of militants.
13 Student residency committees are a legal form of student representation. Their purpose is to negotiate with the administration on issues related to the organisation and management of student residency. 14 Mahfoudh Nahnah, died on 19 June 2003 after a prolonged illness. Muhammad Bouslimani was kidnapped in the early morning of Thursday 26 November 1993 by the GIA and was killed about two months later. Mustapha Belmehdi was a member of the club of the founders from 1998 to 2003. 15 According to a statement made many years later by Mahfoudh Nahnah. How to Build a Viable Economic Policy on Islamic Foundations 167
The movement did not trust this unexpected opening to pluralism and feared for its survival.16 In contrast to Abbassi Madani, Mahfoudh Nahnah was hesitant to create a political party, a position which many did not understand since most of the other tendencies had rushed to create legal political organisations. Instead, Sheikh Nahnah created a national association, ‘Al-Irshad wal-Islah’ (Orientation and Reform). Shortly afterwards Sheikh Djaballah also created an association named ‘En-Nahda Al-Islamiyya’ (Islamic Renaissance), and Al-Djaz’ara created ‘Al-Bina Al-Hadhari’ Association (Building Civilisation). The main Islamist groups conferred with one another through the Islamic Preaching League when Abbassi Madani, with a small group, decided unilaterally to create the Islamic Salvation Front (ISF). Thereafter, discussions turned into negotiations on conditions for making this new political party representative of all Islamists. The discussions faded, especially after popular acclaim for the ISF during local elections in June of 1990. Definite differences openly emerged on the political scene and Islamist pluralism was born. In this context of misunderstanding and disagreement, Sheikh Nahnah proclaimed the creation of a political party, the ‘Movement for Islamic Society’ or ‘Hamas’, during a meeting of his association in Algiers on 6 December 1990. At about the same time, the Association ‘En-Nahda Al-Islamiyya’ was transformed into a political party, the ‘En-Nahdha’ movement. Since then, Hamas has participated in all events and processes seeking a solution to the Algerian crisis. It participated in the first and second national conferences and joined the transition institutions which flowed from the recommendations of the second conference, especially the CNT17 and the government of Prime Minister M. Ouyahia of January 1996. It was a member of every government until the last general election in May 2012.18
16 In more detail, the organised Islamic forces, under the auspices of Sheikh Sahnoun, were in talks within the League to mobilise a joint political commitment to create a single political party. 17 The Council for National Transition (Conseil National de Transition) was a substitute for the non-existing parliament. It was created in 1994 to prepare for the return to legitimacy via general elections which ultimately took place in June 1997. 18 Because of this long government participation, the MSP faced some concerns. Several leaders left the MSP on two occasions. In April 2009 Abdelmadjid Menasra, former minister of Industry, created with Mustapha Belmehdi an association named the Movement for Predication and Change which became a political party one year later, the National Front for Change. In July 2012 after general elections, Amar Ghoul, former minister of public works, resigned with some leaders and called for creation of a new political party. The first defection was because of too much government participation while its withdrawal caused the second one. In 2013, some leaders from the Front of Change created around Mustapha Belmehdi another political party named ‘Harakat al-Bina’ literally The Edification Movement while the MSP and the Front of Change launched a re-unification process. As a result, on 14 June, they sponsored a single annual international meeting dedicated to Mahfoudh Nahnah’s achievements, which they used to hold separately. 168 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Hamas participated in the presidential elections of 1995 with its own candidate Sheikh Nahnah. The official results gave him 25 per cent of the vote and second place overall. The elected president, Liamine Zeroual, subsequently decided on a constitutional change in November 1996 which aimed at reducing his formidable competitor’s prominence19 and planned to create a second parliamentary chamber in order to block the National Popular Assembly20 in the event the government failed to maintain a majority in the first chamber. The first change required political parties, with the exception of the former single party, to conform to new constitutional rules which interdicted any reference to religion. Hamas initially rejected this move as an overreaction by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but ultimately complied and adjusted its constitution to conform to the new rules. Hamas participated in the parliamentary elections of June 1997 under its new and actual name: Movement of the Society for Peace (MSP).
General References
Ideological references among the Algerian Islamist movement, particularly the MSP, occur on different levels. The first level is Islam as a religion which encompasses both the cultural and social spheres. This is a reference to Islam as defined by generations of Maghrebi religious scholars on the basis of the Sunni school, in some cases even the Malekite rite which is unanimously accepted in Algeria and across the Maghreb. But it is also a reference to a renewal in the Islamic world since the beginning of the twentieth century through the action of Sheikh Abd al-Hamid Ibn Badis and the Algerian Ulama Association as well as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Sheikh Muhammad Abduh, then rector of al-Azhar Mosque in Egypt.21 By uniting the religious scholars (in Arabic: Ulama), the Ulama Association brought together all relevant contemporary figures including those from the Ibadhite rite,22 such as Sheikhs Tfeyech, Beyoudh and Benyoucef. The predominant tendency was Salafism or renewal, which sought to reconcile a return to the sources of Islam with modernity.
19 According to the November 1996 Constitution, all parties, with the exception of the old single party, had to conform to government rules, including the ban on references to religion. Hamas also had to abandon such reference. 20 Until then Algeria had a mono-cameral system. The National Popular Assembly became the first chamber under the November 1996 Constitution. 21 Sheikh Abd al-Hamid Ibn Badis greatly admired Rachid Rida, the most illustrious disciple of Sheikh Muhammad Abduh. 22 The Ibadhite rite in Algeria is followed in the Mzab region in the wilaya of Ghardaia 600 km south of Algiers. How to Build a Viable Economic Policy on Islamic Foundations 169
References therefore are not only to the Qur’an and the Sunna,23 but also to the entire heritage of jurisprudence consensually accepted in the practice of religion throughout Algerian history. After initial training in Algerian zawyas, (traditional schools), the two great Universities – al-Zitûna in Tunis, and al-Qarawiyyûn in Fez – have always been the privileged destination of Algerian religious scholars. A minority went to the University of al-Azhar for special research reasons, and often simply because they were on their way to Makkah. For Algerian Islamists of all these tendencies the reference to the experience of the Ulama Association was characteristic. Another special trait of this reference to Islam is a link to the Fatherland and to patriotism. The Ulama united as an association in reaction to the French celebration of the centenary of colonial occupation. Their action was not limited to religion: it was also cultural and political, with the goal of resuscitating an Algerian personality which had been destroyed during 100 years of colonial occupation. The sermons and writings of Sheikh Ibn Badis and his hostility to the occupying power are an important reference here24 The participation of scholars from the Ulama Association in the effort of liberation, the imprisonment and the murder of many of them, and the call to struggle which took the name of Djihad, ended in building a strong link between Islamic reformism and nationalism, between the reference to Islam and the reference to the Fatherland. During the liberation war, patriotism and revolution against the occupying power was explained to Algerians exclusively through arguments based on Islam. A second level of reference consists of contemporary social-political experiments in Islam. For some, they are just continuations of Ulama Association reformism, but they also refer to the writings of Sheikh Abul-Aâla Al-Mawdudi25 from Pakistan and, on a more theoretical level, to the writings of Malek Bennabi.26 This reference is also linked to the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt which, from its inception, aspired to be transnational and focused on the causes of what it took to be decadence in the Islamic world. Algerian Islamists adopted the diagnosis of Malek Bennabi about the causes of the stagnation of Muslim societies before their being colonised. They also adopted his analysis of topics such as civilisation, culture, relations between democracy
23 It means the Prophet’s tradition established beyond any doubt. 24 The historically most far-reaching reply to Ferhat Abbas’s denial of the existence of an Algerian nation was given by Sheikh Ibn Badis in defending the authentic character of an Algerian identity distinct from France. 25 Muslim theoretician and founder of the Islamic movement Djamâa Islamiya in India, then in Pakistan, died in 1979 26 Illustrious Algerian thinker, died in October 1973, known for his concept of ‘colonisability’ (that is, the ability of a people to be colonised). Among his writings the most known are: ‘Le phénomène coranique’ (1946); ‘L’Afro-Asiatisme’ (1956); ‘Les conditions de la renaissance: problème d’une civilisation’ (1947); ‘Idée du Commonwealth islamique’ (1959); ‘Naissance d’une société’ (1960); ‘Vocation de l’islam’ (1954). 170 The Transformation of Politicised Religion and Islam, and especially the conditions for a civilised renaissance. In summary, one could say that they ask how Islam can inspire global social dynamics which could lead to prosperity and development. The writings of Abul-Aâla Al-Mawdudi in particular supply arguments on how to live through Islam, socially and politically, without ever feeling a loss or a need in relation to the Christian and colonising West. Al-Mawdudi is quoted because of his writings on the notion of ‘hakimiyya’, the absolute sovereignty of God, and his basic writings on Islamic economy. His special profile is due to the fact that he was a religious scholar who was able to bring his ideas into political and social life through a discourse which was intelligible to youth, and provided an alternative to the inferiority complex some Muslims felt with respect to their beliefs, or the fact that Islam embraces the Earth and beyond. Undoubtedly, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement was the most relevant point of reference. It constituted a contemporary experience from an Arab country well-known to a large number of scholars who had at some time lived in Egypt. It was also familiar through numerous members of the Brotherhood who remained in Algeria as professors. The movement linked vision, training and action from a global perspective and across space and time. The Muslim Brotherhood had been known in Algeria since the 1940s, but had little profile at the time because of the effective presence of the Ulama Association which the Muslim Brotherhood did not consider as distinct from itself.27
Founding Myths
To these references one could add certain events which played the role of founding myths in the activities of the Islamist movement. The first is the sense that the revolution of liberation, which began from national and religious bases, had been usurped and taken away by the partisans of a populist socialism which overshadowed the Algerian people and took decisions on its behalf. The second is the fact that the precepts of Islam had been marginalised precisely by those who had so loudly and solemnly proclaimed them in the ‘1st of November’ call for the construction of a social, democratic and sovereign state based on Islamic principles. The association ‘al-Qyam al-Islamiyya’ made a series of demands on the government to prevent these principles from being overshadowed. The third was the belief that the socialist regime, which was imposed by force and consecrated in the 1976 National Charter as irreversible, was contrary to Islamic precepts. Socialism was presented by the government as the best way to achieve social justice and development for all, but it was considered by the Islamists as a reduction of everyone to a lowest common denominator, and a violation of private
27 The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Hasan el-Banna, had published a periodical named Al-Shihab. He said that this was inspired by the journal Al-Shihab of Sheikh Ibn Badis. How to Build a Viable Economic Policy on Islamic Foundations 171 property and entrepreneurial freedom. The ‘all-state’ socialism had kept mouths closed, silenced consciences, blocked initiatives and transformed Algerians into people waiting for assistance. Islamists regarded all of this to be contrary to Islam. In the case of the MSP we can add two other founding myths; the first is the adventurism of the Islamic Salvation Front. The second is the defence of the State against the djihadist thesis legitimising terrorism. Some MSP leaders hesitated to create a political party when other political tendencies did so. They were not fond of the idea of becoming a political party. Some members of its executive office believed it would be better to stay in the social and cultural domain, supporting a political party close to the movement’s positions and ready to defend the essence of its ideas. The creation of the ISF without prior consultation, the excesses of its militants, inappropriate declarations from the ISF direction, its radicalisation vis-a-vis the government, and other tendencies were aspects which put the ISF into a posture of political adventurism which could lead to irremediable crisis from which not only the ISF but the whole Islamist current would suffer. Initiatives were required to demonstrate to the public that the differences between Islamists required each party alone to assume responsibility for its choices. The MSP had to show beyond any ambiguity its total opposition to the religious legitimisation of armed rebellion. Sheikh Nahnah was the first to express this opinion publicly, strongly rejecting armed activity referred to as djihad (holy war). This rejection became even more resonant when the MSP vice-president Muhammad Bouslimani refused to pronounce a fetwa of legitimisation after his abduction by the GIA (French acronym for Islamic Armed Groups) for which he paid with his life.28 Indeed, he was not the only one to meet this fate, although he had been the most illustrious. It is estimated that the movement lost about 500 leaders in total, among them about 50 women, murdered by terrorist groups because of its opposition to the armed rebellion and its defence of the State.
Relationship with the Regime
The economic perspective can be better understood as arising from the relation between the movement and the structure of power in place, another aspect of the activity of the MSP. Since the time of their underground activities many Islamists did not have the same conceptions. Most did not regard the government as ‘kufr’ (unbelieving, heathen).29 There was a wide variety of opinions, ranging from those
28 According to arrested and repentant elements of the GIA, his answer seems to have been: ‘I can dispose of some litres of my blood, but not of the blood of millions of Algerians’. 29 With the exception of the very small takfirist tendency, Algerian Islamists have no preconceived opinion on the Islamic character of those in power. They do not suffer from an antinomic dichotomy between Islam and nationalism but consider both of them to be part of their identity. 172 The Transformation of Politicised Religion who considered it possible to work with the government, to those who thought that such a thing was impossible. Since the underground period, some had considered it possible to achieve some goals together with the single party by joining it as a member, whereas others believed that this was totally impossible. The political opening occurred during a phase of advanced dissolution of the existing structure of power. The major economic crisis in Algeria between 1986 and 1988 had strengthened Islamist convictions about the regime, but this was not very productive. Rather, it led to a tendency to believe that since there could be no worse regime than this sclerotic one, to make Algeria healthy and wealthy all that was needed was for the regime to disappear. Once disillusionment set in, the persisting crisis and the perspicacity of the army supported the conclusion that it was necessary not only to show a credible alternative to the politically discredited single party but also to the unbridled competition between alternative political tendencies which had emerged from underground activities and each of which believed it was the only alternative. Whereas in other countries Islamist currents strove for the right to become one single representative political party, Algerian Islamists benefited from their differences. The only tendency without a political party was the one which originally did not want one. This situation led to a configuration unique in the political history of Arab countries, a legal Islamist pluralism. Public opinion expected the Islamist tendencies to unite but pluralism exacerbated differences and inflamed competition among the various groups. With the birth of the ISF, Abbassi Madani maintained that each tendency could create its own party, almost certainly in order to excuse his unilateral initiative, although one cannot overlook accusations of treason and the hostility shown by the ISF towards the MSP and En-Nahda when they emerged.30 However, beyond these disputes, the political positions were accurate expressions of real differences. The ISF became more and more radical, demonstrating its force as a worthy successor to the disowned regime, whereas the MSP insisted on moderate discourse and openness towards the regime and secular tendencies. The spectacular rise of the ISF and the radicalisation of its ranks ultimately led to the break. In 1991, Dr Abbassi used the departure of President Chadli to launch a general strike at the end of May to paralyse the country and force the dismissal of the President. On 5 June 1991, the president declared a state of siege, dissolved the government, and postponed the parliamentary elections.31 Some days later Dr Abbassi and Ali Benhadj were arrested. The six-month postponement of the elections only delayed an irreversible process. The first round of parliamentary elections on 26 December 1991 was not followed by the normal legal process. President Chadli dissolved the parliament
30 In a private meeting in Oran, Dr Abbassi said that: ‘if one considers the 1990 municipal elections as a plebiscite for the FIS, even as a designation as government, the proverb applies: if a first sovereign is proclaimed, the second one has to be killed’. 31 Planned for 12 June 1991, they were postponed to 26 December 1991. How to Build a Viable Economic Policy on Islamic Foundations 173 on 4 January 1992 and resigned a week later. The High Security Council annulled the election results which in the first round were won by the ISF, and created the High Council of the State which ruled the state for the rest of the Chadli mandate. A chain of events then began which precipitated a political and security crisis that continued for nearly a decade. After the discontinuation of the electoral process and persistent violence, the political parties no longer spoke of economics or projects. The only item on the agenda was the search for a solution to the crisis. Leaders of the MSP bragged that they had not been a party to the crisis but declared that they wanted to become party to the solution. That this would contribute to the efforts to solve the crisis was very instructive for the MSP. Because the conflicting parties did not understand – and, indeed, wanted to annihilate – each other, there was little space for dialogue. Where direct dialogue was blocked, however, lateral dialogues began between tendencies across the ideological spectrum among representatives of the power structure, the army, and even foreign representatives who wanted to understand the Algerian crisis, fearing that it would spill over into neighbouring countries on both sides of the Mediterranean. The MSP undertook the important effort of explaining and listening to different Algerian and foreign parties. The result was a double synergy: on the one hand, more pressure on the contending parties, that is, the ISF and the existing power structure, which eventually led to the start of several direct or indirect dialogues; and on the other hand, pressure on the movement as it became better known by national and international partners to be more precise in its ideas and programmes. The content of the participation shifted from reflection to integration into transitional institutions, some arguing that credible participation could not be maintained simply on the level of reflection if it did not lead to the establishment of an institutional framework and a return to normalcy. The ranks of the movement were absorbed by the debate and, after great difficulty, finally reached a positive position in favour of participation. In order to better maintain its cohesion the movement proposed those among its leaders who had not been in favour of this participation as government and CNT members.32 This was the start of the strategy for participating in power.
The Political Project
Since its creation on 30 May 1991, the MSP has defined itself as a moderate and legalist tendency which linked the return to the sources of Islam with modernity and insisted on a voluntary openness to the whole prism of ideological differences.
32 Bouguerra Soltani, better known as Abou Djerra (the president of the MSP 2003– 2013), and Abdelkader Bengrina were not in favour of this participation. The first became secretary of state for fisheries; the second was a member of the CNT and, after the June 1997 parliamentary elections, minister of tourism and craft industries. 174 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
After becoming a political party, it also insisted that it had no pretension to become hegemonic but rather was inspired by a reformist interpretation of Islam with a modern approach and a collective effort of Ijtihad.33 Influenced by a pragmatic realism, its strategy is based on the rules of gradualism, objectivity, realism and ‘shuracracy’.34 It takes as its motto three values: knowledge, action, and justice. Article 2 of the party statutes presents the Party’s relation to Islam, the heritage of the national movement, the call of ‘the 1st of November 1954’ (that is, the founding text of the Independent Algerian Republic), the heritage of the reformist movements, the experience of the moderate Islamic currents, and the fruit of human thinking in the elaboration of civic values which aim at the prosperity of humanity. The principles of the movement are essentially of Islam as a global vision and concept of life and the universe; national unity; the belonging to the Arab and Muslim nation and its civilisation; Arabic and Amazighity (that is, Berber language and culture); heritage; a republican system based on popular sovereignty, political pluralism, and peaceful means of alternating power; and, ultimately , individual and public liberties. In the actual statutes, goals are summarised essentially as follows:
1. Continue to achieve the objectives written in the call of ‘the 1st of November 1954’; 2. Train and educate citizens as a central element of reform aimed at the creation of good citizens, good family, good society, and good governance; 3. Defend the values of the Algerian people, its fundamentals, and participate in resolving the crisis; 4. Defend the rights of citizens for more freedom and dignity; 5. Adopt an economic and monetary policy capable of allowing Algeria to make the best of its resources.
In article 5, the MSP expresses its entitlement to use all peaceful means in order to realise these goals, especially:
1. Education and training on the basis of Islamic values and principles within the national framework; 2. All means of communication and political mobilisation; 3. Political participation to choose representatives in constitutional institutions and to make peaceful contributions to the process of decision making; 4. Dialogue as a civilised means of resolving disagreements; 5. National solidarity as an instrument for strengthening links in society.
33 Ijtijad is the making of a decision in Islamic law (Sharia) by personal effort as opposed to taqlid, copying or obeying without question. 34 A term intended to bring together the rules of the traditional Islamic Shura with the new instruments of democratic experience, ultimately, a democracy without aspects in opposition to the uncontroversial fundamentals of Islam. How to Build a Viable Economic Policy on Islamic Foundations 175
Furthermore, the MSP has evolved towards less dogmatism and more pragmatism. In the statutes, there are no references to the establishment of an Islamic order, (but it has to be admitted that in conformity with the constitution of 1996, any such direct reference to religion would be illegal). In addition, from the outset the MSP has been in favour of tackling issues which were previously taboo for many Islamist groups. It declared its support for female outdoor labour and female emancipation, neither of which it regards as contrary to the values of Islam. The MSP clearly respects Islamic precepts without imposing them on society. It neither joins those in political power who disparage the veil nor fights to ban it, yet it also does not impose the veil on women. It envisions respect for the principles of Islam as an element of respect for the republican system. A mufti (religious scholar) may be consulted privately to define the answer of Islam to social questions; however, in the public field Islamic general principles should be translated into legal formulations which take into account the interests of citizens and their choices. The collective effort of a reformist reinterpretation of Islam cannot be based solely on theological foundations but – and this cannot be stressed enough – must use scientific instruments of understanding. Beyond all theological interpretations, the judgement of sociologists, medical doctors, economists, lawyers and other professionals are required to understand reality as precisely as possible. Yet although this admittedly elitist effort is necessary, it does not obviate the need to gather people’s opinions and preferences after a process of dialogue and public debate. In summary, it is possible to quote Sheikh Nahnah by saying for him that there is a need to respect Islamic principles as this is the wish of the overwhelming majority of Algerian people, but if the people do not want them, they should not be imposed upon the people. From this perspective, the MSP wants to implement reforms through a gradual and negotiated process. Gradualism aims not only to win public opinion for its arguments, but also to take the opportunity to examine the appropriateness of its choices and to confirm them by a relevant contribution from society itself. On a structural level, the MSP favours a republican parliamentary system35 and enlarged powers for local assemblies, municipalities, and wilayas (regions), in order to broaden the political basis of government.36 The MSP has defended the convergence towards international standards of democracy, good governance, human development and economic opening. Despite reservations on the modalities of their negotiation, the MSP has supported the agreements of association with the
35 At the occasion of the last constitutional amendment of November 2009 which consecrated the presidential system, the president of the MSP explained its change in position on the amendment but reiterated the preference of the party for a parliamentarian system, saying that in time of crisis the presidential system is more efficient. 36 In his introductory speech of the 1998 Congress on the MSP, Sheikh Nahnah supported the creation of regional parliaments in the context of the debate of that time on questions of regionalisation. 176 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
European Union because they constitute an instrument for motivating the country beyond its reluctance to subscribe to international standards. In practice, this vision has had to adapt to the institutional and security crisis from which the country suffered since the last decade of the twentieth century. It was important to act in order to get the country out of the crisis and to participate in all activities contributing to this goal. It was equally important to normalise relations with the existing power structure and to get over the conflict between the powers-that-be and the ISF through a process of national agreement. In this context, some specific demands of the movement had to be temporarily toned down.
Foundations of Economic Policy
The bases of MSP economic policies are to be found in the options and fundamental principles of action of the party from its legal existence through its participation in various governments. Starting from Islam, the party defines principles fundamental for its economic policy. The primary purpose is the satisfaction of the material and spiritual needs of human beings. Man is a citizen with rights and duties to the community and to God. The concept is not exclusively materialistic, but conciliates Earth and Heaven. Because of this, economic policy, just like social, cultural or educational policies, is loaded with moral values such as the distinction between good and bad, honesty, credibility, trust, mutual assistance, love and brotherhood. Both goals and instruments must refer to these moral obligations. After respect is paid to these moral obligations, economic activity is in principle free as long as illicit practices are avoided in production, financing and trade. Activities which cause prejudice to the integrity of the human race, to its physical and spiritual health, as well as to its honour or its goods, are unacceptable. Speculation and usury (interest) or gambling are also unacceptable. The first foundational principle is the idea that the first owner of any wealth or money is God. Who holds goods as property owns them only with the understanding that he disposes of them in the name of the first owner. Any owner is bound to use them in ways that are not opposed to the will of the first owner, God. This concept is largely shared by Muslims all over the world without prejudice to the inviolability of their properties.37 The second foundational principle is freedom. The Muslim is free to undertake any lawful economic activity which takes him out of poverty and confers on him a positive role in the community. A quote of the prophet says ‘Blessed is the property of the pious’; a second calls for undertaking and being strong: ‘A strong Muslim is better and more beloved to God than the weak Muslim, while there is good in both’. When the prophet encountered a beggar, he gave alms to him but admonished him at the same time that it was better to collect wood and sell it than
37 In the Qur’ran, the surah 24–33 attributes goods to God who grants them to mankind, whereas surah 47–37 recognises the inviolability of the private property. How to Build a Viable Economic Policy on Islamic Foundations 177 to lean against a wall waiting for people to give him something. This demonstrates the priority of working to look after one’s own needs. This freedom underpins the inviolability of private property. A famous quote by the prophet says: ‘All things of a Muslim are inviolable for another Muslim: his blood, his wealth and his honour’. This inviolable character of the individual is made still more explicit in another quotation which puts this principle above the inviolability of the Qâba (the holy house in Makkah). ‘Inviolability is general whoever be the owner; whether Muslim or not, man or woman. The husband cannot pretend to dispose of or to enjoy the property of his wife on the basis of being just the husband but has to look after her needs however rich she might be’. This explains the MSP hostility towards socialist choices.38 Private property, insofar as it may be inviolable, does not exclude collective or public property wherever that is necessary. Such property is as inviolable as private property or even more so. Private property is the rule; public property exists where public services cannot be provided privately without a conflict of interest.39 Over the course of their history, Muslims developed a system of public property closely oriented to precise purposes; this is the ‘waqf’ systems, which is known in Algeria as ‘habous’. The MSP wants to revitalise habous, destroyed by the French colonial administration, to mobilise private resources for public activity. The third fundamental principle is the Qur’anic concept of ‘Takreem’.40 It concerns in a general manner the notion of human rights, but especially consecrates the dignity of Mankind absolutely. Any public action has to aim essentially at improving human dignity. The search for prosperity or development would be senseless if it overshadowed this objective. Takreem is strengthened by a feeling of injustice which the citizen suffers from the welfare state which invades everything, thinks in his place, chooses in his place, defines in his place what is convenient for him and finally decides in his place and plans to continue to do so for his children. The fourth fundamental principle is the concept of ‘Badh’l’ or recognition of effort and spending. This principle consecrates more precisely the value of labour. Labour is considered to be the constituent value of the economy. Wealth is produced by an effort which is accepted together with risk. On this basis, the production of money by money is an illicit practice, the origin of the concept of ‘riba’. Combined with the fifth fundamental principle
38 At the beginning of the agrarian revolution (starting in 1971), the Boumedienne government expropriated landowners and gave lands to shareholders who previously had worked with the owners. In the official media it was said that these owners had freely donated their lands to the revolution. Some landowners died. 39 In one of his first interviews Sheikh Nahnah said that a public enterprise producing brooms needs to be swept itself. 40 Surah 17–70 (Isra’) says: ‘And We have certainly honored the children of Adam and carried them on the land and sea and provided them with the good things and preferred them over much of what We have created, with [definite] preference’. 178 The Transformation of Politicised Religion which relates to the value of justice, and which consists of the principle of wealth rotation to prevent hoarding and to ensure that wealth does not remain the prerogative of a minority.41 The sixth fundamental principle is the concept of ‘Taka’ful’ (solidarity and mutual assistance). Along with providing incentives to work, society must ensure that all its members are living at a minimum level of dignity and satisfaction of elementary needs. Charity, ‘zakaat’, which is one of the five duties of a Muslim, is based on this principle. Devoting a minimal share of one’s wealth to the most destitute is considered not only a civil duty, but also a religious duty strongly promoted by sanctions which one’s own conscience dictates. Between ‘badh’l’ and ‘taka’ful’, financial establishments have to follow their vocation. By providing finance, they have to follow both the principle of risk-sharing and the requirements of the real economy. Insurance companies are hence bound to fulfil their first mission of ‘taka’ful’ in mutualising the collected or invested resources for the benefit of their customers. For the MSP, insurance companies cannot act as banks. These elements are the basic foundation on which Islamic finance has developed since the second half of the twentieth century. Now, Islamic finance is spreading throughout the world, including to the West. The recent financial crisis has increased interest in the Islamic understanding of financial institutions in the West, especially in France. The last fundamental principle is the concept of ‘maslaha’ or interest. Constrained by the entire set of principles, the objective of any action is promoting an interest, getting an advantage (maslaha), or avoiding a prejudice (mafsada). In respect to this, ‘maslaha’ can be appreciated in relation to the five ultimate goals of Islam (preserve the religion, the spirit, Mankind, the honour, and the goods). So maslaha is the pursuit of economic advantage through human effort and good conscience.42
Economic Vision
In its overall vision, the MSP believes that the republican system allows the implementation of a system of norms which will gradually correct imperfections. Here the MSP realistically assumes that there are contradictions which constitute challenges to any gradual change but cannot be easily overcome. The MSP stands against the socialist system and also against the rentier system which both lead to the permanent dependency of people, which in Algeria is called ‘assistanat’. The normative system as well as the economic structure has
41 A quotation on the Qur’an, surah 59–7, forbids keeping goods in perpetual distribution only among the rich. 42 A quote of the prophet says: ‘Allah has prescribed some obligations for you, so do not neglect them; He has defined some limits, so do not transgress them; and He has kept silent concerning other things out of mercy for you and not because of forgetfulness, so do not ask questions concerning them’. How to Build a Viable Economic Policy on Islamic Foundations 179 to ensure the greatest incentive to work and the firm punishment of fraudulent practices. This is not possible without democratic institutions which consecrate liberties, the rule of law, and the primacy of the judiciary. Liberty is the instrument which cannot be dispensed with in liberating initiatives but must strengthen the sense of collective responsibility through which the media and civil society come under citizen control. The State function consists primarily in regulating the market: the state guarantees peace, security, and justice. Its role also consists in an equitable satisfaction of the vital needs of all citizens. The State is responsible for strategic economic segments such as armaments, high-tech industries, and investment in scientific research to improve national productivity, self-sufficiency, and food security. For the MSP, State investment of public financial resources in fields which national or foreign private sectors can easily perform is unacceptable. Economic institutions should follow the values of fairness and transparency. With respect to this, the MSP considers that modern innovations are useful globally and can be adopted and even used for personal benefit. Examples are systems of standardisation, certification or control, and rules against fraud or monopoly. The party supports strengthening economic authority at local levels (municipalities) in order to set free local synergies, reform local finance, reduce central state interventionism, and promote local government responsibility. The party is also in favour of the regionalisation of development, believing that regional integration would stimulate complementarity and mutualisation of resources which would result in alleviating the increasingly heavy burden of central administrations. To those who fear that this undermines national unity, the MSP replies that the regionalisation of development will lead to more prosperity and stability. It considers undermining national unity a result of authoritarian central power, especially the frustration which results from a lack of liberty, and from poverty suffered in a country which is so rich because of its natural resources of oil and gas.
Between Vision and Practice
It is clear that the MSP is aware of the gap between its principles and the economic reality of the country. The party considers, however, that its vision must be explained to the citizens, debated with the political partners, promoted in the political process, and concretised as much as possible by democratic means. In practice, the MSP has been forced to tone down some of its demands because of overriding national priorities – such as peace and stability – as well as hostility toward the Islamist current which some want to continue. To affirm one’s presence by economic and political contributions is necessary, but so too is respect for one’s partners. By participating in different governments, the MSP has acquired a better understanding of the reality of the country and of the stakes involved. Its ministers 180 The Transformation of Politicised Religion headed portfolios dealing with the economic affairs of the country.43 Those demands which characterised the MSP, defended publicly until 1991 but toned down subsequently, started to re-emerge in the programmes of the party for the 2007 general elections.44 Previously, the MSP had simply reacted to initiatives from other parties. This was the case in the famous prohibition on the importation of alcoholic beverages which MSP members of parliament supported and was passed twice in two consecutive years. The initiative came from a member of el-Islah who introduced an amendment to the 2006 budget proposal.45 Independently of the ministries managed by the MSP, the party has given priority to agricultural development and food processing industries with incentives given ex ante rather than following the past logic of agricultural incentives given ex post, where targeting was low with indifferent results.46 The MSP encouraged incentives for investment, but nevertheless refused, from the very beginning, to resell agricultural lands from self-administered estates, calling for a system of concessions.47 The MSP defended a policy of courageous privatisation when the government still had difficulties in freeing itself from its old socialist reflexes. TheMSP proposal that environmental issues should be managed by the ministry of land planning was accepted. The MSP strengthened the national commitment to increase production outside the oil sector, but also strengthened investment in petrochemical industries, where added value in this sector is the most economically beneficial. In this sector, the MSP is not totally opposed to opening investment in companies like Sonatrach, the national oil company, or Sonelgaz, the national electricity and gas company, to private capital. However, it opposes outside investment under currently existing circumstances.48 The presence of the MSP in government has contributed to the adoption of measures in favour of the administration of the waqf and the collection of zakaat, now assigned to the Ministry of Religious Affairs.49 The waqf properties are
43 MSP ministers were in charge of ministries of trade, industry, small and medium enterprises, transport, fishery, tourism and craft industries. 44 In the 2007 electoral programme among 61 items, the following are mentioned: deduction of zakaat from the income tax (15), encouragement of financial products based on the rules of Islamic finance (16), encouragement of insurance companies based on mutualisation (24), strengthening of the waqfs and restitution of their alienated properties. 45 During his time as MSP Minister of Tourism (1997–2000) M. Bengrina had not forbidden alcoholic beverages in the hotels, but allowed five-star hotels to choose whether or not to sell alcoholic beverages. That was not possible before. 46 After the government decided to adopt ex ante agricultural assistance some years ago, results improved. 47 This met with the will of president Bouteflika and an estate concession system was adopted. 48 Talk of Sheikh Nahnah with European ambassadors in 2002. 49 In the 1960s, this ministry was called Ministry of Religious Affairs and Habous. It was given this denomination once more three decades later. How to Build a Viable Economic Policy on Islamic Foundations 181 registered at the national level and put to economic use. The money collected as zakaat is used to help finance small projects undertaken by young people. The MSP wants an appropriate framework encompassing all efforts and forms of investment assistance.50 Recently it supported approval of an Arab free-trade zone through its action in the Ministry of Trade, despite serious difficulties.
Conclusion
As one of the movements which have evolved out of the Islamic current, the MSP started its action through a project to create a new consciousness concerning necessary respect for Islam which the MSP considered to have been marginalised and even excluded from public life. By referring to Islam and liberating nationalism, the MSP clearly favours openness to, and cooperation with, other political actors, including the existing power structure. By this choice, the MSP puts dogma to the test of reality. Instead of a conformism which aims at making society correspond to dogma, the MSP has chosen a synergy: learning in government while dealing with the double poles of a return to equilibrium in relation to society and its references, and positive evolution which will allow peace and stability. These economic policies are the product of a dynamic conception which is close to pragmatism. Revisiting the dogma is an instrument for adaptation and rectification. An economic vision which would not be in contradiction to Islam cannot be established in a viable manner without the check of reality and learning experience gained on the ground. When the fear of losing one’s own foundation is overcome, practice will make a vision viable.
50 In the programme for the 2007 parliamentary elections, the MSP wanted in point 9 a large Ministry of Economics which should deal with all aspects directly linked to the economy. This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 10 The Bharatiya Janata Party: Identitarianism and Governance Agenda Rajvir Sharma
Introduction
If it is beyond any contention that political parties play a defining role in a democratic polity, in India the Congress Party’s hegemonic rule over the entire country until 1977 and in the States until 1967 made it the most important political player. However, in 1977 the newly formed Janata Party – formed in that very year – displaced the monolithic Congress from the centre of power. Since then, multi-party coalition and competitive politics has brought many national and regional parties into the position of central players contributing to the formation and fall of governments. This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part traces the origin and growth of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whereas the second part deals with the support base and electoral and governmental performance of the party. The BJP has been deliberately chosen for examination because the party has headed the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) since 1998, a strong competitor to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) for power in Indian politics. The BJP and its predecessor have been known as the party of the right, Hindu nationalism and the representative of the urban middle and trading classes. The focus of the analysis is on the linkage between politics of identity and politics of performance and development. There has been no consensus among the political analysts and research scholars about the factors underlying the rise of the BJP in Indian politics, with some emphasising the identitarian agenda based on the abolition of Article 370, the propagation of a uniform civil code, ‘genuine’ secularism, and cultural nationalism that catapulted the party into power; whereas others have pointed to the Congress’ failure to perform on development. The excesses during the emergency, growing poverty and unemployment as well as the disenchantment of the middle class led to the first ever defeat of the Congress Party as the hegemon at the centre in the late 1970s. Rising corruption inside and outside the government and the birth of Dalit politics during the coalition regime of V.P. Singh in the late 1980s, and the failure to provide stable and good governance in the early 1990s further alienated the electorate from the Congress Party and other smaller political parties that finally led to the formation of a coalition government under the leadership of BJP in 1998. The party agreed to a common agenda of governance which excluded some identitarian issues dear to the BJP. 184 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
The Congress Party and other opponents of the BJP stated that the party had set aside the hindutva agenda to come into and remain in power, while others see it as the beginning of moderation in the BJP. All these dimensions need closer scrutiny to enhance our understanding of the rise and growth of the BJP and furthermore of the party system in India. The discussion below is based on a content analysis of party publications and informal discussions with party ideologues. Nowadays, the BJP is one of the two major poles in Indian politics. It was founded in 1980 on the issue of dual membership (of RSS and the Janata Party). The party was able to win only two seats in the Lok Sabha elections held in 1984 after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Some political observers described this as the political price paid for the party’s criticism of the anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination. The party took immediate steps to revive itself, especially as a proponent of anti-corruption politics amidst the cynicism and chaos created by the Bofors scandal and OBC reservation during the Rajiv Gandhi and V.P. Singh governments respectively. Beginning with the renewal of its demand for a uniform civil code in the light of the judgement in the Shah Bano case, it traversed the whole north Indian territory from Somnath temple in Gujarat to Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. This socio-political journey of the party proved to be a milestone in its political life. It acquired a position as the dominant opposition when it went from two seats in 1984 to 86 seats in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections. From there on it was able to form a coalition government between 1998 and 2004. Today, the party is the main opposition in the Parliament as well as ruling or being part of the ruling coalition in some states. At the same time, the BJP has nonetheless failed to establish a significant position in a number of other Indian states. Strategically, the party had opted for a deliberate open door policy for well- known persons coming from the world of cinema, television, bureaucracy, army, sports, fashion and singing and music. This process has widened its social base and public appeal, especially its appeal as a patriotic and honest party. Thus the party was able to win the confidence of the elites, the opinion makers, and the common man, especially from the middle classes. Even so, there are many debates and questions surrounding the Party and its image. Some of these questions are as follows:
a. Is the BJP a communal (Hindu) party or a secular one? b. Is it a party living in the past or is it a party of the future? c. Is it a party with development vision and social vision or a party living with emotive issues? Or does the party have any worthwhile socio-economic agenda to deal with the problems of poverty, unemployment and other social development issues? d. Does the party have any concrete ideology on the foreign policy of India? e. What, if any, are the internal contradictions within the party? f. How does the party attempt to reconcile them? The Bharatiya Janata Party: Identitarianism and Governance Agenda 185
Another question that is often asked about BJP is about the reasons or factors that are responsible for its rise since the late 1980s. However, it would be prudent to trace the origin and growth of the BJP before seeking answers to the questions above.
The Genesis of the Party
The party’s evolution needs to be divided into two parts: the historical evolution of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) from 1951 until 1980; and the development of the BJP since 1980. Furthermore, the discussion can in both cases focus on the ideological contours, including identity, on the one hand, and pragmatism, on the other. The party’s origins date back to 1951 when a nationalist leader, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, founded the Bharatiya Jan Sangh after resigning from the cabinet of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Mukherjee’s resignation took place in the aftermath of a ban imposed on it following charges of conspiracy in the murder of Mahatma Gandhi and thus at a time when it was felt that the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) needed a political wing. It is true that the RSS, founded in 1925 by Keshav Hedgewar, did not approve of the policy of Muslim appeasement, nor did it approve of the two nation theory, but it is equally true that Gandhi and the RSS had great respect for each other. For example, Gandhi was much appreciated for his views about Hinduism when he remarked that ‘there is in Hinduism room enough for Jesus, as there is for Mohammad and Moses’ and that ‘the majority of the Muslims of India are converts to that faith from Hindustan through force of circumstances. They are still Hindu in many essential ways and, in a free, prosperous, progressive India they would find it the most natural thing in the world to revert to their ancient faith and ways of life’ (Malkani 2011). These views are altogether in line with the RSS view on the character of the Indian nation. Gandhiji went to the RSS camp at Wardha in December 1934 and again at Delhi in September 1947 where he praised the RSS for its noble sentiments and astonishing discipline. Despite this, the RSS was accused of involvement in Gandhi’s murder. It was at this moment that the RSS realised that it needed a political wing if it was not to be at the mercy of the ‘unscrupulous’ politicians. Accordingly, the RSS allowed many of its workers to become the founding members and leaders of the BJS. In the first decade after its founding the BJS concentrated on organisational growth and the development of its programmes and ideology. The BJS raised the following issues as part of its agenda: a ban on cow slaughter under Art. 48 of the constitution; territorial integrity including Kashmir, Kutch and Berubari; opposition to zamindari and jagirdari; opposition to license-permit-raj; nuclearisation to reinforce national defence; and anti-communism. In 1953, while still in its infancy, the BJS suffered a severe loss of leadership following the death of the founding President S.P. Mukerjee. Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya who succeeded him focused initially on developing a stringent line on the language issue. The party was strengthened after it was joined by 186 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Congressmen who were disillusioned with Congress Party policies under the tutelage of Jawaharlal Nehru. The Party also linked up with the rightist Swatantra Party of Rajgopalachari on various issues, while the growth of the BJS was also helped by the mobilisation of other constituents of the Sangh Parivar which were instrumental in expanding the social base of the party. The Bharatiya Jan Sangh entered the first General Elections to the Lok Sabha in 1952 and won three seats from 94 seats contested, with 3.06 per cent of valid votes. In 1957 elections it won four out of 130 seats contested with 5.97 per cent valid votes. The Electoral performance of the BJS in other elections can be presented as follows:
Table 10.1 Electoral performance of the BJS
Elections Seats Contested Seats Won Percentage of Valid Votes 1962 196 14 6.44 1967 249 35 9.31 1971 157 22 7.35
(Source: Election Commission of India)
The figures suggest that the party remained numerically insignificant, although it still had an important role as the main right-wing opposition. However, a simmering electoral discontent could not be ignored in the fourth general elections held in 1967. The poor and the disadvantaged sections of the population were growing more disenchanted and were dissatisfied with the performance of the Congress Party as they continued to suffer from poverty and deprivation. Congress governments successively failed to effectively address the issues of national security, as well as corruption and unemployment. This culminated in the collapse of the monolithic rule of the Congress Party, initially at the state level of Indian politics. The parliamentary majority of the Congress was reduced considerably and in half of the states non-Congress governments were formed. The political situation was fluid and was characterised by political instability and intense political competition. In the late 1960s, an intense struggle for power between Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party ultimately ended in the split of Congress Party in 1969. Indira Gandhi won a two thirds majority in 1971. However, very soon the environment of growing aspirations turned into an atmosphere of rising frustration among the common people as poverty remained unresolved, corruption was rampant and inflation was on a continuous rise. When the historic Allahabad High Court judgement unseated Indira Gandhi in parliament, she responded on 25 June 1975 by imposing a state of national emergency. The emergency resulted in greater alienation of the masses from the Congress Party and a sharp decline in the The Bharatiya Janata Party: Identitarianism and Governance Agenda 187 perceived charisma of Indira Gandhi. Consequently, the Congress Party and Indira Gandhi both lost the election of 1977. The opposition united to form the Janata Party that won these elections with 295 seats and 41.32 per cent of valid votes. The left parties also extended support to the Janata Party. Congress Party dominance of the political centre was thus broken for the first time when the Janata Party formed the federal government. However, the split in the Janata Party caused by Charan Singh led to the downfall of the government.
The Birth of the Bharatiya Janata Party
The Janata Party government failed to complete its full term and elections were held in 1980, returning the Congress Party to power. There were further dissensions within the Janata Party on the question of dual membership and the party was split with the BJS members opting to form a new organisation, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The electoral graph of the party since its foundation suggests that the rise of the BJP was enormous between the late 1980s and 2004. The political obituary of the party was written by its opponents when the BJP won only two seats in the Lok Sabha in 1984. However, the party made a spectacular leap forward when it won 86 seats in 1989, followed by 120 seats in 1991, 161 seats in 1996, and 182 seats in 1998 and 1999, enabling the BJP to form the central government by forging a coalition with foes cum friends and new supporters in the form of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). This rise could be explained by the principled opposition to the policy of Muslim appeasement by the Congress Party, the divisive politics pursued by the Janata Dal-led (and BJP supported) government of V.P. Singh, and the rise of terrorism and extremism in various parts of the country, as well as a growing disenchantment of the middle class with the Congress and the Janata Dal. The issues of abrogation of Art. 370, introduction of a uniform civil code, construction of a Ram Temple at Ayodhya and the Bofors scam were centre stage of the political discourse. Thus, the party pursued a path characterised by a distinct identity and ideology. It presented itself as a party with a difference. It promised the people that the BJP would follow the principle of ‘justice to all and appeasement of none’. The issues based on patriotic and nationalistic appeal also sat well with the growing middle class. The previously clean image of Rajiv Gandhi was considerably eroded by the Bofors scam. Congress Party policies also appeared confused on how to reconcile the competing demands of Hindus and Muslims, especially as Rajiv Gandhi reversed the Shah Bano judgement of the Supreme Court in which the court granted maintenance rights to a 73 year old Muslim woman divorced after 43 years of marriage. Under the pressure of the Muslim orthodoxy, Rajiv Gandhi allowed the law of the shari’a to prevail by amending the constitution. On the other side, he faced vocal opposition from aggressive Muslim groups for opening the doors of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya. Meanwhile, the BJP considered the 188 The Transformation of Politicised Religion implementation of the recommendations of the Mandal Commission, providing for 27 per cent reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in public services as a step that would further divide society and would strengthen casteist politics in the country, though it later reversed its opposition.
The Ayodhya Movement: A Significant Contribution to BJP’s Political Growth
The Ayodhya movement is best described as the most significant social movement joined by the BJP. It played a huge role in making the BJP a really national party. L.K. Advani, at the time party president, directed the shift of ideology, the programmes and religious symbolism. Moreover, specific interpretations of the issues of corruption, security, social justice with social harmony and gender justice became predominant in the party’s public discourse. Advani’s rath yatra was a turning point in the history of the party in terms of both the ideological rejuvenation and expansion of the social base. This movement took the party to the rural hinterland, especially in the northern part of the country. The movement was characterised by the party as an effort to restore the cultural and civilisational identity of India. The choice of the god Rama was interpreted by the party as a cultural instead of a religious symbol; the movement was able to strike a chord with the largely religious people of India. This was also seen as a counter to the efforts to denigrate, distort and erase the basis of the Hindu identity inscribed in India’s nationhood in the name of secularism and reminded the Congress Party of its own resolution of Congress Working Committee (CWC) on 16 January 1999, which said, that Hinduism is the most effective guarantor of secularism.1 The BJP sees its association with the RSS and the Sangh Parivar, even today, as a source of ideological cohesion and inspiration as well as organisational unity. In order to shed its anti-minority image, it has been making efforts to convince Muslims in particular that the Congress and several regional political parties were treating them as vote banks instead of as citizens. The party has, accordingly, been showcasing the presence of many Muslim party leaders, including Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Shahnawaz Hussain, Najma Heptullah and Arif Baig.
The Role and Performance of the Party in Government
In 1996 the BJP became the ruling party after being the major oppositional party. The BJP had emerged as the largest single party, although no single party or alliance had won an absolute majority in parliament, and was invited by the president of India to form the government. However, the BJP failed to win sufficient support from other political parties and the BJP government was forced to resign. Similarly,
1 Congress Working Committee Resolution, 16 January 1999. Also refer to Amulya 1999. The Bharatiya Janata Party: Identitarianism and Governance Agenda 189 the coalition governments led by Deve Gowda and Inder Kumar Gujral could not survive a full term of five years as Congress Party withdrew support. Once again emerging as the single largest party in the ensuing elections in 1998, the BJP was invited to form the government, but with a proviso: Atal Bihari Vajpayee as prime ministerial candidate was asked by the president to produce letters of support from other political parties to satisfy him that the BJP was in a position to form the government. Following this the BJP formed a coalition government. This situation proved that BJP was acceptable as a ruling party, especially after it had agreed to keep the issues of the abrogation of Article 370, introduction of uniform civil code, and construction of Rama Temple at Ayodhya, outside the agenda of governance. This was significant from the viewpoint of the party’s political maturity. The government collapsed in 1999 when the AIADMK (a Tamil Nadu based regional alliance party of NDA) withdrew support. Mid-term elections were inevitably held again in 1999. This time BJP formed a pre-election alliance, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which was able to form a second government under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The government focused on streamlining rural development administration, the implementation of economic reforms and the reduction of bureaucratic expenditure, and attempted to expand its support base among the middle class. In addition, issues of national security and terrorism also occupied an important place in the scheme of governmental priorities. The NDA led by the BJP went to polls in 2004 for the Lok Sabha with the ‘India Shining’ slogan, underscoring an overall environment of growth. In its public meetings the party launched a propaganda drive to increase nationalist sentiment among the electorate by saying that the NDA government led by the BJP was able to provide India with a place of pride among the community of nations. However, the Tehelka episode in 2000 eroded the popularity of the NDA. Despite predictions to the contrary, the NDA lost the 2004 elections. There were vastly different interpretations of the reasons for the defeat of the party. Some analysts attributed it primarily to the non-involvement of the Sangh Parivar or, that is, its lack of support for the party, and many were unhappy with the non- performance of the Sangh Parivar on the construction of Ram Temple at Ayodhya, uniform civil codes and removal of Art. 370 from the constitution. Others highlighted the erosion of middle class support and the misjudgement about the party’s popularity which led to its failure to retain many erstwhile allies. Political mobilisation and consolidation of support on the ground was also weak because of worker’s disenchantment with government leadership. A disconnect between the party, the government and the workers led to apathy among the cadres. Moreover, the slogan ‘India Shining’ was not an indigenous term. The achievements with development and the progress of the nation should have been termed in a popular and folk language to make it easier to grasp for the majority of the people living in the countryside. The impact of economic reforms was presented more in negative terms of zero employment growth, farmers’ suicides, the closing of industries by the opposition, painting the government as pro-rich and anti-poor. Mainly, 190 The Transformation of Politicised Religion however, there was a significant withdrawal of support by the middle class which had been responsible for the victory of the NDA in the mid-1990s. In the aftermath of 2004, questions of the party’s distinct identity were debated. Many persons and functionaries from within the party, as well as outside, started arguing that the decline of the party in elections was due to the abdication of party’s core ideological issues. The adversaries of the party strengthened this interpretation by regularly reminding the electorate that the party had forgotten the issues of Art. 370, uniform civil code and construction of Ram temple at Ayodhya for the sake of power. The impact of coalition on the BJP politics and its move towards a more flexible approach to governance were clearly visible trends. Even now, the party is not motivated by the issues of Rama temple, uniform civil code or Art. 370. Its main focus is on matters such as good governance, development, national security and integrity, terrorism and independent foreign policy, despite occasional reaffirmations of its Ram Temple agenda which calls for a solution to the conflict by persuasive dialogue with Muslims and other peaceful and legal methods. In a way, the party is focusing again on nursing its ideological and organisational constituency modified by modern challenges of governance and democracy. Reorienting its approach towards the relations between the party and the worker, and making amends in its programmatic approaches, the party emphasised action programmes under the slogans of sarva vyapi (increasing its geographic spread), sarva sparshi (attracting all sections of society), and samajik nyaya (social justice). The focus of the party is now on reorientation of reforms to lay attention on gaon (village), gareeb (poor), kisan (farmers) and mazdoor (labour). The party sees the growing activities of the left Naxalism as a great internal threat to the nation, apart from the demographic invasion that is another threat to nation’s security and integrity.
Hindutva/Nationalism and Development as Major Planks of Political Mobilisation
The BJP realises that the rise of Dalit politics and the politics of caste have deep roots in several states and, consequently, an increasingly fractured society and polity has dented the hindutva appeal. Therefore, the political campaign and mobilisation was recast in modern idioms of social reconstruction and a nationalist approach to the problems facing the country. This methodology and strategy enabled the party either to come to power or retain power in several states of the union and also win local elections in rural and urban areas. The party came to power in a southern state for the first time in Karnataka and expanded its share of the vote in Kerala. The party also lost power to the Congress Party in Rajasthan by just a small margin. The party faces a major challenge in the State of Uttar Pradesh (UP) where a shift of power has been observed from the old entrenched upper castes to the newly empowered Dalits. The Bharatiya Janata Party: Identitarianism and Governance Agenda 191
Another development that is taking place in UP is the growing competition between Dalits and OBCs for power. The BJP was once presented as an alternative to the Congress Party which mainly represented the higher castes but which has lost much of its support to the BSP. The party’s coalition of the forward castes and the OBCs has weakened. The BJP in UP is also conscious of tactical voting by the Muslims. The party is deliberately exposing the dangers of radical Islam and the reluctance of the central and state government to be tough on terror. The party attempted to forge new social alliances to enhance its share in votes and seats with OBCs who feel ignored by the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the non-Jatav Dalits who feel left out by the BSP. If one goes back to the 1990s, it is clear that in 1993 the BJP won the largest share of votes with 33.3 per cent, followed by the SP (21.8 per cent) and the BSP (19.64 per cent). However, in 2002 the SP emerged as a single largest party with a share of 25.37 per cent, followed by the BSP (23.06 per cent) and the BJP (20.08 per cent). Thus in 2002, there was a perceptible decline in the share of the vote for the BJP. In the election for the Lok Sabha in 2004, the BJP was deserted by the upper castes Brahmins and Thakurs to the extent of roughly 8 per cent.2 This erosion of forward castes support led to a sharp decrease in the number of seats won by the party (10 out of 80 seats, whereas it had won 57 out of 85 seats in 1998).
The Revival of the Communalism vs. Secularism Debate in Uttar Pradesh
In the 2008 elections to the Uttar Pradesh legislative Assembly, caste, creed and identity were part of the agenda of every major political player: the Congress Party, the SP, the BSP, and the BJP. The BSP attempted to create a new caste arithmetic by talking of the maan (honour), samman (respect) and swabhiman (self-pride) of the Brahmins and maintaining the lower caste solidarity among the Jatavs. The Congress was trying to bring the Muslims back to its fold, competing against the SP. The BJP raised the issues of deteriorating law and order, the plight of the farmers and unbearable inflation, and highlighted the role of the politics of tijori (money), tustikaran (appeasement) and tamancha (gun power) of the Samajwadi Party in UP apart from the failure of the government to bring development and arrest corruption, then politicisation of crime and the police which resulted in an environment of insecurity. A CD was issued, allegedly depicting Muslims involved in anti-Hindu acts like the slaughter of cows, and cheating of Hindu girls by Muslim youths. Similarly, UP’s criminalisation and insecurity was linked to communal issues by parts of the Sangh Parivar: ‘The state is in the grip of a Muslim Mafia; Muslim politicians and dons are terrorizing Hindus under the protection of the SP and we are sensitizing our voters about this’. The Sangh Parivar also linked
2 ‘2004 Election Study’, in: Economic and Political Weekly, 39, 51 (December 2004); pp. 5418–24. 192 The Transformation of Politicised Religion the deprivation of non-Yadav and non-Jatav sections of the OBCs and Dalits to the appeasement of Muslims by its rivals.3 The BJP accused both the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) and the SP of being soft on SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India) and ISI agents (the Inter-Services Intelligence, that is, the Pakistani Military’s Intelligence Agency). The party argues that it is not against the Muslims as such. It is an effort to warn people against those who refuse to be a part of national mainstream, protect the terrorists or those who refuse to sing national song or prayers of the goddess of knowledge Saraswati. According to the BJP, the Congress Party and other political parties were following the politics that strengthen the exclusion of Muslims from the mainstream and project and strengthen separate Muslim (religious) identity, thereby promoting Islamic fundamentalism. Significantly, the party did not raise the Ram Temple issue during the campaign. The BJP is also opposed to the expansion of the madarsa education. The perception is that the madaris push their members deeper into a rigid, more religion- bound and exclusive way of life. Recently established women-only madarsas are an even greater threat because Muslim women will be given education mostly in traditional Islamic teaching. The fear is that they will transmit these narrowly conceived values to their children at home. The BJP believes that madarsa education deprives the students at an impressionable age of alternative viewpoints. The BJP is also critical of the minority appeasement of the Congress reflected in the manifesto for UP in which apart from guaranteeing Muslim education, the Muslims have been promised proportional representation in administration and police on the basis of the Sachar Committee recommendations, as these are perceived as socially divisive and a threat to nation’s unity. It is clear that there are contradictory elements in the arguments of the BJP and other political parties on various issues concerning Muslims. Currently these matters concern primarily the rehabilitation of Muslims in Gujarat, the representation of Muslims in public services through reservations, disagreements on their economic situation, and the operation of parallel shari’a courts under Muslim Personal Law.
The Ideology and Programme of the BJP
The BJP adheres to the philosophy of integral humanism, developed by Deendayal Upadhyaya, and a cultural nationalism which is also called hindutva or Hindu nationalism. One can also state that a major part of the ideological agenda of the BJP was influenced by the partition of India in 1947 and the related large-scale violence. The BJP carries the image of a communal, anti-Muslim party among the political class opposed to it. However, almost all parties in the country have been with the BJP at one time or another. Further, the party counters secularist propaganda by accusing them of following minority communalism and that communalism and
3 The Indian Express, 17 April 2007, p. 2. The Bharatiya Janata Party: Identitarianism and Governance Agenda 193 secularism have been merely opportunistic tools in the hands of anti-BJP political combinations. Instead, one of the major elements of the BJP’s ideology is cultural nationalism and integral humanism which will be discussed below.
Cultural Nationalism
In simple terms, cultural nationalism refers to the commitment of the party to the pride of India’s historical and indigenous culture. Hindutva is another name for cultural nationalism that encompasses the whole complex web of India’s culture, history, faith and worship which has evolved over centuries. According to this philosophy, all Indians are historically Hindus and their culture and heritage is also Hindu, a concept that has been literally defined as people inhabiting the land of the river Sindu (Indus River). There is no mutual exclusivity between hindutva and the construction of a modern, progressive, enlightened and developed India. The BJP believes that India would progress faster and better if we draw inspiration from and feel proud of ancient Hindu culture, and values are the central argument of the proponents of cultural nationalism. A sense of national identity provides the basis of hindutva. In the words of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, the founder president of the BJS, ‘A nation that fails to take pride in its past achievements, takes inspiration there from, can never build up the present or plan for the future. A weak nation can never attain greatness’.4 Hindutva underscores the idea that only a strong Bharat, the indigenous term for India, can be prosperous and free. All the steps towards nuclearisation, infrastructure building, high economic growth by the NDA government were taken in the pursuit of the hindutva agenda to make India prosper and invincible. According to Dina Nath Mishra:
The Hindutva of RSS implies cent per cent literacy, healthcare, total eradication of poverty, zero untouchability and integration of whole society. But unfortunately the politically vitiated divisive vote bank politics nourishes casteism, minoritism and even separatism and terrorism. Also the colonized mindset as well as dogmatic Marxists stubbornly reject the idea of civilizational greatness of India and perpetuate the Hindutva debate in a way to put the whole RSS movement on the mat. (www.indiafirstfoundation.org)
Hindu nationalists are bound to follow the development path instead of following any obscurantist religious campaign, because no one struggling to meet daily needs of food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education and suffering from social discrimination can feel proud of being a part of a great Indian civilisation. Cultural nationalism is a combination of cultural identity and nationalism. The thrust of the argument, as developed by Madhava Sadasiv Golwalkar, was that India is an
4 http//www.indiafirstfoundation.org/archives/articles/arc_dnm/2004/august0804. htm. 194 The Transformation of Politicised Religion ancient nation and civilisation. Thus, one’s loyalty to this nation is not restricted to constitutional provisions only. This concept insists on nationalism against pure individualism, but especially against a notion of nation which considers India as a nation constituted recently by individual consent, as against a nation existing since the ancient times. Golwalkar argued that Indians were one people based on ancestral unity and the inheritance of a common cultural and intellectual legacy.5 According to the noted historian Mushirul Husan, the Muslims of India (according to the 1881 census) spoke the language of the place where they lived. He writes that the enumerators of that census found Muslims whose religious rituals had a very strong tinge of Hinduism and who retained caste and observed Hindu festivals and ceremonies. In Bengal, between fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, many Muslim cultural mediators wrote in Bengali. They exposed Islam in a local cultural medium. The notion of minority and majority is a colonial invention (Hasan 2007). The British government created a Muslim identity in Indian Politics through the Acts of 1909 and 1919. Both the RSS and the BJP have been arguing that Hindu rashtra should not be confused with Hindu religion. The BJP has never mentioned Hindu rashtra in any of her manifestos to avoid any such confusion especially among her critics. According to H.R. Sheshadri, a senior RSS leader:
Hindu Rashtra is not a religious concept, it is also not a political concept. It is generally misinterpreted as a theocratic state or a religious Hindu State. Nation (Rashtra) and State (Rajya) are entirely different and should never be mixed up. State is purely a political concept. The state changes as the political authority shifts from person to person or party to party. But people in the nation remain the same. (Seshadri 1990)
Hindu nationalists commit themselves to the protection and development of the minorities and to the idea that a Hindu rashtra will function as a modern democratic state. According to the proponents of Hindu rashtra, a Hindu is more than an adherent of Hinduism, and even Muslim and Christian Indians are Hindus as their ancestors were Hindus, and despite their religion their culture and heritage is common to that of the Hindus of India. Hindu rashtra is based on the philosophy of sarva dharam sambhav (co- existence of all religions), integral humanism, tolerance and vasudev kutumbakam (the entire world is one family) and thus every person, community and institution is perennially Hindu, a combination of all religions and philosophies of India which includes Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The Indian Hindu nationalists contend that their concept of rashtra is not similar to the western concept of nation denoting one ethnicity, one common history, one language and one religion. It was this all inclusive definition ofhindutva that attracted many a leader of the Congress of the days of freedom struggle like Lala Lajpat Rai, Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel,
5 www.bjp.org/newspaper/feb_2007. The Bharatiya Janata Party: Identitarianism and Governance Agenda 195
Purshottam Das Tandon, Sriniwas Iyengar, or Sarojini Naidu to the philosophy of Hindu nationalism. Naturally, Hindu sentiments firmly rejected the Muslim demands for a separate electorate and reservations, a larger role in national life owing to their rich history in India, and the coalition with Muslim League in 1937. Lok Manya Balgangadhar Tilak founded the Ganesh Chaturthi festival so that millions of Hindus would come together to celebrate their religion and culture. He is credited with instilling Hindu heritage and culture into Indian nationalism and politics during India’s struggle for freedom. It is said that Gandhi could connect with the Indian masses through espousal of Indian cultural values and traditions. Swami Vivekanand re-established the ideas of Hindu religion as acceptance, tolerance, respect, truth and renunciation. According to Veer Savarkar, Hindu rashtra is embedded in the culture and heritage of India and asserts that all of its people had throughout history adhered to Hindu religious values and should be identified as Hindus, not only as a religion, but also as a nationality. He who considers India as both his fatherland and holy land was, for Savarkar, a Hindu. Thus, Hindu nationalism and Hindu politics may be taken as those Political movements that draw inspiration from hindutva. Hindu nationalism espouses the sentiments that India is the world’s oldest cradle of civilisation contributing her material, intellectual, spiritual and cultural energies to save the world from the gathering civilisational crisis. As Toynbee once remarked, ‘the western beginnings must have an Indian ending if the world is to be saved from destruction’ (www. bjp.org). The BJP calls itself a party with a difference because, like other political parties, it does not support a separation from India’s past. It favours the pre- independence values and symbols, like Vivekananda’s spiritual nationalism, Gandhi’s Ram Rajya, Bankim Chandra Chatterji’s Vande Mataram even at the cost of being termed sectarian, non-secular and conservative. Like Vivekananda, it believes that ‘it is out of the past that the future is moulded; it is the past that becomes the future’. In the race for power, the party is cognisant of the limitations of hindutva and a pure politics of identity, unless mixed with socio-economic programmes for the development of the people and the nation.
Integral Humanism
Integral humanism is another component of the basic philosophy of the BJP, though it has not attracted the attention it deserves from the media, academics and political philosophers. There also appears to be some obscurity about the meaning of the term. It was Deendayal Upadhyaya who developed integral humanism in the wake of two fiercely competing ideologies – capitalism and communism. Upadhyaya believed that neither of them was suitable for the progress of humanity.
Both capitalism and communism have failed to account for the integral man, his true and complete personality and his aspirations. One considers him as mere selfish being hankering after money, having only one law, the law of fierce competition, in essence, the law of jungle; whereas the other has viewed him as a 196 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
feeble, lifeless cog in the whole scheme, regulated by rigid rules and incapable of any good unless directed. The centralization of power, economic and political, is implied in both. Both, therefore, result in dehumanization of man. (http;//www. wp.janataparty.org/?p=169)
Ideology and idealism, he said, are interwoven:
Humanistic impulse is the essence of integral humanism. Man, the highest creation of God, is losing his own identity. We must re-establish him in his rightful position, bring him the realization of his greatness, reawaken his abilities and encourage him to exert for attaining divine heights of his latent personality. (bjp.org/about us)
Nationalism, democracy, socialism, world peace and world unity are accepted as good ideals which could be translated into reality for the common good of humanity by following Indian culture. According to this philosophy, bharatiya sanskriti (Indian culture), in contrast to the Marxist theory of class struggle and conflict, believes in a commonality of interests and the inter-dependence of society’s various social segments, serving each other. To clarify this, it can be said that society and the individual are tied in an organic relationship like a flower which is what it is because of its petals, and the worth of the petals lies in remaining with the flower and adding to its beauty. Peace and harmony in society are thought to be achieved through an organic approach to the combined progress of body, mind, intellect and soul. The main theme of integral humanism concentrates on the following ideas:
1. the goal of India’s national resurgence could be achieved by chitti (nation’s soul), and virat, the power that energises the nation; 2. eliminating the ill health and degeneration of our society exhibited through untouchability, caste discrimination, dowry, and neglect of women; 3. India’s objectives of economic reconstruction are still valid, and 4. the establishment of a dharmic state, a state based on rule of law and a citizenry which is duty-oriented. According to this principle, dharma sustains the nation. If dharma is destroyed, the nation perishes. (Source: Sudhindra Kulkarni, www.bjp.org).
It is against this backdrop of integral humanism that the BJP has designed its social, economic and foreign policy. Accordingly, the election manifesto of 1998 emphasized on the five principles for governance: shuchita (probity in public life), suraksha (security), swadeshi (economic nationalism), samajik samarasta (social harmony), hindutva (cultural nationalism). The document which outlines the vision of the BJP from 2004 promises to make the sacred motherland free from the scourge of bhookh (hunger), berojgari (unemployment), bhaya (fear) The Bharatiya Janata Party: Identitarianism and Governance Agenda 197 and bhrashtachar (corruption). In other words, it will establish ram rajya as envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi. The main focus of the BJP’s economic and social policies is in line with integral humanism aiming at fostering economic growth with equity, employment and social justice, the removal of regional and social imbalances, and the bridging of the rural and urban divide. The party attempted to maximise developmental opportunities for all citizens, remove poverty by increasing national wealth, encourage domestic savings and directing these to productive, entrepreneurship- promoting and employment-generating investments, especially in agriculture, and the prevention of monopolies in both public and private sectors, except when dictated by national security. Furthermore, the party also aims to bring vibrancy to the rural economy, and expand and deepen rural markets to create large-scale employment and self-employment opportunities, locally, as well as expanding and strengthening the social security net aimed at below poverty line families and those belonging to unorganised sector, and time-bound distribution of surplus land.
Agricultural Policy and Rural Regeneration
The BJP believes that development will remain meaningless unless it reaches the rural masses to transform their conditions of life for which sound agricultural and rural regeneration policy needs to be in place. In this context the focus of the party is on the scientific management of water, land and bio resources, and on enabling agriculture to meet the growing domestic demand. The party strives to ensure that agriculture emerges as a major global player, to make agriculture a remunerative exercise even to small farmers with shrinking landholdings, and to bring about a second green revolution to address those critical issues in agriculture and food economy that could not be taken care of by the first green revolution, as well as developing a crop insurance scheme and the newly launched farm income insurance scheme. It supports organic farming and strives to ensure year-long employment with minimum wages for the agricultural labourers and marginal farmers, aiming at improvement of their overall quality of life. As part of its agenda, the BJP is trying to evolve a consensus to bring about a central legislation to protect Gau Mata (the holy cow). The party treats it as unfortunate that even after five decades of independence, 1,860,000 villages (nearly one third of all villages) are still without good roads and as many as 60 per cent of rural households have no toilets. Overall, the BJP emphasises a self-reliant society and dynamic economy that makes best use of local human and natural resources and has linkages to the national and global economy with modern infrastructure and basic amenities, including education and healthcare. This includes reforms to guarantee the efficient functioning of panchayat (local) bodies with people’s participation and the involvement of voluntary organisations, and a vibrant cultural life that displays both modernity and pride in Indian tradition. 198 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Dealing with the Challenge of Employment
Unemployment is a major problem faced by a significant section of the Indian youth. Between 1999 and 2002, according to official figures, an average of 84 lakhs employment and self-employment opportunities were created annually. This has been possible by sustaining a high annual GDP growth rate of over 8 per cent and an increased allocation to and better implementation of the government’s employment and self-employment generation schemes (BJP Vision Document 2004). The NDA government tried to evaluate every development policy and programme from the point of view of its potential to create employment and self- employment opportunities. It emphasised the provision of vocational education and training to match the needs of the economy. In rural areas, the BJP’s focus was mainly on upgrading the skills of people engaged in traditional occupations, while in urban areas the focus was mainly on enhancing the employability of students and youth and the creation of an aptitude for self-employment and entrepreneurship.
Social Development
The social development policy entails strategies to fulfil the material needs of the population and satisfy the social, educational and cultural aspirations of the people. This includes measures relating to education and health. The BJP gives priority to education for all people since education aids both economic growth and social development. The major aspects of education policy include:
1. steadily raising the total spending on education to 6 per cent of GDP by 2010, with enlarged public and private partnerships; 2. the complete eradication of illiteracy within a decade; 3. further intensification of measures aimed at the education of female children as well as among SCs, STs, OBCs, and minorities; 4. improving the standards of education at all levels of the educational pyramid from primary to university; 5. making quality education affordable to a common Indian family; 6. rectifying the biases in history education, increasing the moral and cultural content in syllabi and restoring the neglected focus on character building; and 7. de-bureaucratising the administration of our educational institutions, including granting increased autonomy to centres of excellence and community participation.
The party’s agenda on health and health care includes various aspects and strategies: the central and state governments should facilitate together an increase in spending on healthcare, with enlarged public and private partnerships. The priority of public spending should be on primary healthcare, with a focus on preventive The Bharatiya Janata Party: Identitarianism and Governance Agenda 199 rather than curative measures. The BJP is also attempting to increase people’s awareness about health issues and make them take good care of themselves by cultivating healthy habits and lifestyles. Healthcare should be made affordable to the poor and middle classes. The NDA government’s good work in promoting yoga, ayurveda, naturopathy and other systems of indigenous medicine should be vastly intensified. Private and foreign investment in tertiary and super specialised healthcare should be encouraged. However, all private healthcare establishments should be regulated ensuring the obligation to treat poor patients. Public and private partnerships should be institutionalised on the widest possible scale.
Social and Economic Justice
The BJP has always strongly attracted the vote of social Justice for SCs, STs, OBCs and other disadvantaged social groups. Going beyond the traditional advocacy of this important cause, the party has also been consistently emphasising two related imperatives: (a) social justice is incomplete without economic justice and political empowerment; and (b) the means to secure social justice (samajik nyay) must also promote social harmony (samajik samarasata). It wants to strictly implement the provisions of the policy on reservations, including filling up backlogs in jobs and promotions for these sections and incentives for private sector enterprises to create more educational, training, employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for SCs and STs. It wants to strictly enforce laws to check atrocities against SCs, STs and other weaker social strata. The recommendations of the newly established commission for examining reservations for the poor among ‘Forward Classes’ should be seriously considered. The BJP is committed to gender equality and justice. Educational, social, economic and political empowerment of women is one of the preconditions for making India a developed nation. The BJP is committed to eliminating gender disparities in both education and property rights. Widening the opportunities for women in training, employment, self-employment and entrepreneurship is necessary to allow them to participate in national development in a meaningful way. The BJP is convinced that neglect of the imperative of population control is one of the main causes for the shortcoming in India’s all round development. Securing a bright future for India’s children is both a moral obligation and a matter of political urgency, including a drastic reduction in infant and maternal mortality, ending malnutrition among children from poor families, and the elimination of child labour.
Good Governance Issues
The BJP believes that it was the failure of Congress Party governments at the centre to ensure good governance that was responsible for slow and uneven development as well as corruption. It strives to transform India’s hard won swaraj (self-governance) into suraj (good governance). Governmental overload is the root 200 The Transformation of Politicised Religion cause of inefficiency and corruption. Rather than being at the service of the people, the state machinery has reduced them to being supplicants. Its lack of transparency and accountability has alienated the people. Punitive levels of taxation created a national culture of dishonesty. Hence the party underlines the urgency for speedy governance reforms with an emphasis on transparency and responsibility in administration. Moreover, the government’s principal role in the economy is to be that of a facilitator and creator of the necessary environment for the creative energies of the people to find full expression. Reduction of discretionary powers vested with public authorities and base the exercise of such powers on objective criteria is another aim of the party to achieve as well as the removal of all non- financial barriers to economic growth such as delays in clearances and decision making, obsolete laws, unnecessary procedures and habitual litigation. In the economic sphere, the government should progressively withdraw from involvement in non-priority sectors. More avenues for entrepreneurship in a well regulated competitive framework are to be put in place. The essence of governance reforms underlying the vision of BJP says that it is necessary to reduce its role in manufacturing and services business, to enhance systemic capabilities for better policy formulation in the social sector, to improve the schemes and programmes as well as the monitoring of their implementation with community participation and the involvement of voluntary organisations.
Foreign Policy and the BJP
The BJP believes that the foreign policy of India has to become far more active in view of the fact that India is recognised as an emerging power. The party’s look east policy has greatly strengthened the India-ASEAN relationship, reinforcing close cultural links with the region in the past and new links in trade, technology and transport. The BJP also tried to give SAARC a new impetus, creating the promise of free trade in South Asia. Economic cooperation with China has grown enormously. The party has further strengthened its strategic partnership with Russia, expanded relations with the US, intensified dialogue with the European Union, and rejuvenated traditional bonds with countries in West Asia, Central Asia and Africa. The broad contours of the BJP’s vision for India’s external affairs in the coming years include the continuation the dialogue with Pakistan for a lasting solution to all the outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, efforts towards the realisation of the vision for a South Asian economic union with a common currency for the region – on the basis of the joint statement issued in Islamabad in February 2004 – the continuation of the dialogue with China to achieve a mutually satisfactory resolution of the boundary issue, the intensification of efforts to create suitable alliances to secure access to new energy sources, further efforts for the creation of a cooperative multi-polar world order, with India as one of the poles, and the strengthening of India’s efforts to secure permanent membership of the UN Security Council. The Bharatiya Janata Party: Identitarianism and Governance Agenda 201
The BJP rejects the notion of nuclear apartheid and actively opposes hegemony in this field through the regimes of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), FMCR and MTCR. The BJP is opposed to being dictated by anybody in the matters of security arrangements and in the exercise of the nuclear option. The aim of BJP foreign policy is to give India a role and position in world affairs commensurate with its size and capability and to promote sovereign equality among nations. It tries to promote greater regional coordination and strives for Asian solidarity, especially including renewed efforts to improve bilateral relation with all neighbours. It wants to place relations with the USA on a more even keel based on mutual respect, shared values and congruence of interests while expecting the US to be more sensitive to India’s security and economic interests, while at the same time to further develop the traditional relations with Russia. One major aim is to bring Pakistan to abandon its policy of hostile interference in the internal affairs of India by supporting insurgent and terrorist groups and recognise India’s sovereignty over the whole of Jammu and Kashmir. The BJP also wants to improve relations with China by resolving border problems and seeking greater cross-border trade.
Conclusion
The analysis of the organisation, evolution and rise of the BJP in Indian politics suggests that the party has undergone a transformation to become an inclusive party of governance. It is in competition for power with the Congress-led UPA. It is still being painted by the UPA and other opponents as a communal party and one which interprets the present in the context of the past. The process of transformation represents a mix of change and continuity in terms of the policies and programmes of the party. Its efforts to reach out to new constituencies and to retain its traditional support base have given rise to internal conflicts. It is trying to point out that there is no basic contradiction between the new and the old approaches of the party to the national issues and challenges. That is the reason it continues to follow the agenda of hindutva while dealing with the complex issues of poverty, unemployment, corruption, defence, and internal and external threats to the safety, security, unity and integrity of the country. Finally, there is no denying the fact the party has been successful in reaching almost all parts of the country and has created support for itself among all classes and castes including the lower castes. In fact, it was able to win the largest number of seats reserved for the SCs and STs in the 1998 and 1999 elections to the Lok Sabha. However, despite the sincere efforts made by the party to convince Muslims that true secularism is based on the unbiased treatment of all communities, it has not been able to impress Muslim voters except in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections when Muslims appeared to have changed their mind about joining the BJP. Perhaps this was not true. Immediately after the results, there was an exodus of support from the BJP and the relationship continues to be tense. This page has been left blank intentionally SECTION IV This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 11 Rivalry, Failure of the Secular Nationalists, Geography, History: Embedding the Rising New Cultural-Identitarian Movements in Africa and Asia in the Emerging Multipolar System1* Hartmut Elsenhans
We are heading for a new international system. The 1945 system was based on cosmopolitanism and rationalism, which the victorious allies shared despite their fierce opposition on the proper interpretation of these principles, especially with respect to the link between the state and the economy. Both the US world model of organising relations on the basis of private contracts with the state being limited to the maintenance of peace and the Soviet model of administered economic processes and foreign economic relations were cosmopolitan in outlook and were opposed to (ethnic) nationalism, even against the very concept of nation, not as a practical entity but as an existing, living unit for organising security. In this international world, principles of realism and balance of power were still followed, but not on the basis of the nineteenth-century connotation of realism as a recipe for survival in a cutthroat struggle among nations. This new realism looked more like a balancing mechanism meant for constraining the members of international society along the lines conceived in the English school. The rise of the newly independent Third World states and of a coalition of such states on the basis of some specific interests based on their position in a still unequal international division of labour fitted well into this cosmopolitan perspective, so that decolonisation was the logical complement to the 1945 arrangement. Decolonisation was achieved as the inevitable, if not the desired, outcome of the fulfilment of the ‘civilising’ colonial mission to which the Western colonial powers had pretended to be entitled. Nation building was conceived as the emergence of the body politic, which could be represented according to democratic electoral procedures. Decolonisation was realised frequently with only mildly conflictive cooperation among those political forces in the former colonies that behaved as being most intensively imbued with Western values. The leaders of these large multiclass coalitions called themselves
1 *A previous version has been published as Elsenhans 2012c. 206 The Transformation of Politicised Religion secular nationalists, and were also known under other names such as the ‘évolués’, ‘educated’, or the ‘new middle classes’ (Halpern 1969; Perlmutter 1967). They pretended to play, at least temporarily, the role of avant-gardes, a sort of localised and therefore more democratic trusteeship taken over from the colonial powers until the economic processes and the development of (Western) education could lead to a catching up, which would allow the indolent masses of their home societies to be pulled from the world of obscurantism and downtroddenness.2 The West as well as the East idealised these avant-gardes and accepted their claim to at least temporary ‘educational’ dictatorship The secular elites were considered as fulfilling the requirements of democratic legitimacy, less by the forms through which they acceded to power than by the intentions they claimed to realise. Like the victorious powers of World War II, they were opposed to racism and had repudiated the temptations offered by the fascist powers for collaboration against the old colonial powers.3 They were committed to state-led development, especially state-led industrialisation. This was compatible with the Keynesian mood prevalent at least in Western Europe and even for some time in the United States, at least with US foreign policy vis-à-vis Third World countries. They admired the Soviet achievements in industrialisation, as did many Westerners. After some hesitation, they appeared also to the Soviet Union as possible allies in its struggle against the West. West and East agreed that at least some of these forces were legitimate heirs to their own revolutionary traditions. They realised the ideals of bourgeois revolution of the West against the obscurantist traditions, the defeat of which the West had claimed to be the civilising mission that had justified colonialism. For the East, most of the political and military wing of these movements represented so-called national intelligentsias (Nimschowski 1977: 535–9; Wolpin 1971). They were attributed the capacity of performing the role of possible agents of primary accumulation that would allow economic development. They could even bypass the capitalist stage, as this process could be supported by the now already existing future international society, in the form of the Soviet Union (Klinghoffer 1968: 197; Mährdel 1977: 945). For both the West and the East, the national intelligentsia laid the foundations for accumulation, which according to either camp could lead to development in its own direction, provided that these regions were seeking support from the respective camp in order to accelerate this process of primary accumulation. All depended on the day-to-day foreign policy orientation and hence their embeddedness in the worldwide struggle over the best organisation of the global world. However, this preference for activist groups with ‘occidentalised’ outlooks among the two blocks obscured for many Western observers the deeply embedded rejection of important Western worldviews by the mass of the population in the
2 On the avant-garde character of the existing state in relation to the really existing societies, see Kaviraj 1990: 13. 3 Hussein 1999: 596; Lahouel 1995: 75; Michaels 1970; Frémeaux 2004: 215–34; Smyth 1985. Rivalry, Failure of the Secular Nationalists, Geography, History 207
South. The state was in advance of the really existing ‘civil society’ (Kaviraj 1990: 10; Boukhobza 1992: 8). In the worldviews of all anti-colonialist movements not belonging to the communist tendency, the relation between an allochthone oppressing society and the national dimension of the revolution is clear. The Indian National Congress was already comprised of both cultural and secular nationalists. The secular nationalists became dominant when, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, they were able to present economic programmes which addressed the needs of those strata of society which suffered most from the crisis: the partially ‘modernised’ (évolué) workers just as much as those who were ‘uprooted’ in the cities and not ‘embedded’ in an expanding market economy via strong demand for their wage labour; and the market oriented peasantry which suffered from falling raw material prices (initially, in absolute terms, and by the end of the depression, in relative terms). Nothing seems to demonstrate more clearly the importance of these economic factors in mobilising anti-colonial resistance than the timing of mass mobilisations. In 1937, such mobilisations all over Asia, Africa and Latin America intensified when first- world industrial prices rose due to improving business conditions, whereas raw material prices continued to stagnate so that terms of trade further deteriorated (Abdullah 1995: 212; Halliday 1983: 9; Menon 1980). As such, secular nationalists thrived upon promises to deliver economic success and on their achievements on the path to independence. The withdrawing bourgeois democratic colonial powers – especially Britain, but also France – negotiated with them instead of leaders with a more traditional appearance and outlook. But the forces which the westernised secular nationalists were able to master were greatly influenced by their aspirations which combined economic improvement together with their affirmation of a distinct identity which these peoples drew from a distinct cultural heritage or a separate ethical origin. Therefore, the secular nationalists remained at all times in a particularly close alliance with cultural nationalists and separated from them only after the achievement of independence when the cultural nationalists claimed a greater share in power than they had during the process of finding a compromise with the colonial powers. In 1949 the cultural nationalists began to leave the Indian Congress party over the issue of Kashmir (Jhangiani 1967: 7–10; Graham 1990: 54) and the determination of the territories to be handed over to Pakistan as war refugees began flocking into India. A further example comes from the Algerian war of liberation where Islam was an ever present factor. Oaths were taken in the name of Islam in order to assure discipline and secrecy. Daho Djerbal describes how cultural nationalists became more and more important in the most secularly oriented elements of the Algerian liberation movement, the Fédération de France of the FLN (Djerbal 2012: 60 ff.). Rachid Ouaissa (in this volume) describes how from an early stage, and to an increasing degree, the leaders of independent and socialist Algeria had to compromise with cultural nationalists and attempt to strike new power sharing deals. 208 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
However, the issue concerning the conflict between the two patterns of national identity did not emerge with the political rise of the nation in the southern continents. This conflict is very old and well-documented, for example, inthe controversy between the French and German nationalist identities. Renan (1996: 241) insists on the daily plebiscite and a reasoned choice, while Treitschke (1870: 7) noted an ascribed belonging of the individual to its nation, into which this individual is born and from which it cannot escape. German nationalism was on the whole ‘Renanist’ along the entirety of the German-Slavic border and also penetrated into non-German societies in Lithuania (East Prussia), Pomorie (the Kashubs of Western Prussia) and Mazuria (the Mazurs), as well as in the Czech Lands, to a much greater degree than France ever achieved in Algeria. The assimilationist tendencies of Western nationalisms in the colonies with their claim to present a mission for promoting civilisation explains that in the South secular nationalists always took account of the importance of identity. In the configuration which emerged after World War II, where secular nationalists took over power, the stability of their rule against claims to power by cultural nationalists was obviously linked to the great aspirations raised in the Third World by the victorious new superpowers – being decidedly anti-racist and non- nationalist at least in their global positioning – with their multinational populations, or origins. Here, this victory was understood as a major support for the Third World’s struggle for independence and at the same time this victory was linked to hopes of achieving decisive breakthroughs in economic and social development through the state planning carried out by rational and competent local elites. There was a rising anti-imperialist mood following the victory of the Red Army in Europe, the popular front coalitions in Western Europe, and the anti-Nazi resistance (with leftist leanings) which extended even into the United States. For a short time there seemed to exist a worldwide pro-democracy secular anti-racist and pro-equality coalition. As such, secular nationalists in the Third World appeared as part of this coalition, with their nationalist and social discourses appearing as the extension of democracy and human rights, extending also to the economically weak in the South. Never have secular nationalists been more influential in the South (Ahmad 2008: 33) than at this time. It remains to be seen if the globalisation of communications in recent decades has been able to produce a comparable predominance of Western values in the South. The contention of this article is that the secular nationalists have often failed to deliver on their promises, albeit in many countries some significant successes have been achieved. Where these successes led to the mobilisation of society, the secular nationalists suffered from the effects of incumbency. In some countries their success in economic and social transformation has been significant enough to allow self-sustained growth through more liberalised markets so that they maintain their power while undertaking only the mildest political changes, simultaneously carrying out radical economic reforms, a strategy which has succeeded due to the support of socio-economically upwardly mobile sectors of society. This seems to have been the case in East Asian societies. Where success Rivalry, Failure of the Secular Nationalists, Geography, History 209 was more limited, the cultural nationalists have had greater opportunities for political influence, particularly where they have been able to benefit from the economic failure of the secular nationalists. In such cases they have proposed models based on moral economy concepts. Such models combine continued state intervention in favour of rent-seeking socio-economic climbers and old elites together with economic liberalisation in order to break the power base of the secular nationalists in the state apparatus.
The Failure of the State Class–Led Industrialisation
Forty years later, the secular liberation movements of Africa and Asia have failed to succeed in their project of state-led industrialisation. They are either replaced by newly emerging and powerfully organised cultural-identitarian movements or have had to change their identity under the challenge of an increasingly popular cultural nationalism. They have also taken over major elements of the cultural nationalist agenda. The discourse on globalisation with its much hailed homogenisation of the world – based on the claimed intensification of contact and increased institutional competition among systems of regulation – appears just as Hegel’s owl of Minerva, which could not veil the emergence of a new world that was already occurring. The secular elites were able to concentrate and take over the state apparatuses, opting to channel resources into state-led industrialisation, and organise themselves as state classes4 that soon ran into resource constraints. Essentially, they transformed the state into an agency for rent collecting and rent allocation. They failed, however, in their mission to industrialise – despite considerable successes – because they had overestimated their administrative and regulatory competencies, their idealistic commitment to moral values, and the role of investment spending for growth. The point of departure of the economic analysis of the secular elites was the claim that underdevelopment and the trap of colonial dependency were essentially foreign induced. Capitalism in the West was believed to have grown through the exploitation of the periphery. The drain of India had already been criticised in the late nineteenth century. The argument was complemented by additional evidence through the studies about the deterioration of the terms of trade in the early 1940s (Singer 1950: esp. 482; Prebisch 1962). The imposed opening of the markets for industrial exports for the colonial metropolises and their workers together with specialisation in raw materials – under-priced in relation to the costs of substitutes in the industrialised countries – led to deindustrialisation and blocked the Asian economies from the demand side from later industrial diversification so that underemployment was the inevitable consequence.5
4 For more on state classes, see Elsenhans 1996: 195–222. 5 See, for example, Karl Marx’s discussion of the Governor General of India on the bones of the weavers bleaching the plains of India, Marx [1867] 1972: 455. Cf. Habib 210 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Such an analysis of the external causation of underdevelopment implied three requirements: disown the feudals, accumulate by controlling the export sector (raw material cartels, struggle for improving terms of trade), and invest financial resources into industrial diversification and support these investments by protecting the home market. This implied protectionism and subsidising industrial investment either indirectly through supporting national private enterprises or directly through creating state-owned industries, especially in the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy. All these development efforts were based on the assumption that investment, and in particular the volume of investment, was the strategic variable for launching the development of productive forces. This corresponded to the standard economic thinking of all relevant schools of economics of the time. That liberals and Marxists believed in the priority of investment needs no further comment, but Keynesians also emphasised investment, assuming a productive effect rather than the demand created by investment spending. There was no room for the Keynesian argument that investment spending might be primarily intended to restore fundamental macroeconomic equilibria by creating demand via incomes to be spent on industrial products manufactured by local industries. There was no room for modelling the importance of rising mass demand as an instrument to impose economically parsimonious capital utilisation. What was not evident was that rising wages were not only the result of growth but an essential precondition for it in order to prevent financial surpluses, which could result in rent-seeking (Elsenhans 1983). Keynesian policies of expanding mass demand were often considered inapplicable in underdeveloped economies because of the inflexibility of production or the impossibility of rapidly increasing wage goods production (Jreisat 2002: 117; Kurien 1966: 51), as there were no ‘idle capacities of production’ (Robinson 1979: 32). Indeed, Keynesian methods of influencing global demand and promoting growth through investment depend on the flexibility of the economy, itself a result of its diversification. Small increases in demand with small increases in the prices of products with rising demand are expected to raise the profit rate in the respective branches to levels where additional investment comes in and contributes to expanding production. In any capitalist economy growth rates in productivity in physical terms vary greatly between branches and industrial sectors, but productivity measured in monetary terms converges through the movement of relative prices. This mechanism has not worked in those economies which were later called underdeveloped. Early on, underdeveloped economies in the South were described as characterised by relatively productive modern urban sectors and relatively unproductive agriculture and traditional crafts. Later, this construct was extended into the concept of structural heterogeneity (Nohlen and Sturm: esp. 99 f.). In this formulation underdeveloped economies were so highly productive in some
1985: 361–4; Simmons 1985. For recent nuanced positions see Dobado González, Gómez Galvarriato and Williamson 2008: 759–62; Williamson 2008: 375. Rivalry, Failure of the Secular Nationalists, Geography, History 211 sectors of their economies, particularly the highly productive export sector (raw materials), that a decline in prices to levels where productivity came close to the more traditional activities through declining export prices was unacceptable to all those in power in these societies. Here lies the origin of the orientation towards rent appropriation among ‘elites’ as the powerful strata in the South. The relative prices prevailing in developed markets reflected relative productivities in industrial countries. Applying these prices would have meant deferring or destroying the onset of industrial production in underdeveloped countries. The actually existing system of relative prices had to be different from the world market, and this required that the local market be protected from imports. Where the channelling of financial resources into new industries for diversification of the economy could not be achieved through market incentives, the state became the only agent which could use available resources in order to restructure the economy. Furthermore, as the economy had to be restructured, contrary to the circumstances in a developed economy, investment to increase productive capacity – as opposed to merely raising incomes in order to spend them on consumption – became primordial, and so too the necessity of restricting consumption.6 The secular nationalists tended to depend on their capacity to restrain consumption, although admittedly giving priority to the restriction of the consumption of the old ‘feudals’, and they did not care for small-scale industrialisation, which they considered unproductive and technically backward. So it could be stated seriously that there were no entrepreneurs in those societies.7 The pious entrepreneurs who had been important elements in anti-colonialist coalitions simply did not exist in the modern world of newly independent states (Kepel 2000: 265) although they were quite present in all those states, even in sub-Saharan Africa (Hopkins 1988: 7–13). The vitality of the small-scale industrial sector in other countries, especially South and Southeast Asia, does not need further elaboration. The basic flaw of this model of state-led industrialisation consisted in the neglect of the conditions for technical progress. Technical progress may be embodied in imported machinery that at a given equilibrium exchange rate of currency may show a relatively higher performance than a locally produced, simpler one. However, the capacity to produce, improve, and even design technology is not transferred by the purchase of foreign machinery, or at least only to a very limited degree. Already in the early stages, this on-going technical dependency was realised and in some cases counteracted by increased state involvement in technology production such as in India and China (Venkatasubiah 1958: 199). The process of increasing productivity through the use of machinery depends on mass production because machines render repetitive operations easier. The higher the output, the less costly the machine in relation to the volume of output. The higher the output, the higher the rate of the use of single-purpose
6 Berry and Sabot 1978: 1214; Vakil and Brahmananda 1956: 219; Ardant 1975: 239; Raup 1967: 275. 7 For a critical view of the argument, cf. Leff 1979: 60; Akeredolu-Ale 1971: 206. 212 The Transformation of Politicised Religion machinery, which allows cost cutting in relation to output. The higher the output in consumption goods, the larger the input of similar or identical machinery, which in that case can also be produced in larger series often on the basis of flat development costs (Amsden 1977). Any development of industry depends on homogeneity which allows for economies of scale and ultimately on mass consumption, be it on the basis of large-scale production or on the basis of large scale technology production for smaller units. Capitalism is based on the empowerment of labour that the privileged strata in Western Europe and the United States were unable to block in their own countries but were able (in alliance with local powerful strata) to block in Africa and Asia because of mass poverty, labour surplus, low marginal products of labour, and ultimately, the existence of marginality of a large part of population (Elsenhans 1994b: 394–402), the typical characteristics of underdevelopment.8 The national liberation movements that became powerful in the wake of the world economic crisis of the 1930s were able to mobilise (to greater or lesser degrees) the poor, but this did not remove the disempowerment of the poor in the labour markets and in their day-to-day situation confronting the owners of means of production. The typical development path of secular nationalists called for import- substituting industrialisation and needs no further elaboration, but some characteristics should be mentioned: the capital-output ratio rose as a result of diseconomies of scale (narrowness of the internal markets), especially when the manufacturing of modern products for better-off groups was initiated.9 The limitations on the employment of simple standardised machinery used for making simple products for consumption by poorer consumers blocked the entry into local investment goods production. The limits of foreign exchange constrained the rise in the rate of accumulation of physical capital in the technology-dependent modern sector. Finally, the failure of the modern sector to produce the surplus necessary for its own extended reproduction had consequences for the strategies of the state classes and consequences for their legitimacy. This pattern of industrialisation created its own social bases. There emerged a state class which normally expanded in a Parkinsonian manner, sometimes with positive effects for productive capacity. There was considerable expansion of basic education, and also, with more debatable effects, of secondary and higher education. A modern industrial sector emerged with workers who were well paid, but constituted a labour aristocracy in relation to the rest of the workers (Parry 2009) and were very often opposed to massive income redistribution in favour of society as a whole. A service class emerged between the industrial sector and the state administrations which shared westernised values. Workers, service employees and the state classes opposed any discourse about the micro-
8 For more on economic underdevelopment and labour surplus, see Lewis 1954; Fei and Ranis 1964: esp. 13. 9 This was the basis of the theory of the bureaucratico-authoritarian state. See O’Donnell 1973: 114; 1977: 21. Rivalry, Failure of the Secular Nationalists, Geography, History 213 efficiency of the market and its disciplining function. A mechanistic interpretation of Marxism provided arguments about the basic inefficiency of capitalism at the macroeconomic level and its tendencies to increase inequality. Demands for an efficient combination between the state responsibility to generate growth and a maximum of micro-efficiency through the market were easily rejected by the social basis of state planning. Economic growth was slow and with high costs: due to inefficiencies in the realisation of investment projects, side payments, as well as low capacity utilisation due to slowly rising demand. Concerning the patterns of decision- making within state classes, I have described this elsewhere (Elsenhans 1987: 78–86). All this led to a hiatus between the presentation of the economy and its real situation which increasingly became visible to the population. This process in itself increased power games within the state class to the detriment of rational evaluation and even rational procedures for evaluation. This led ultimately to the loss of legitimacy for the state classes. This pattern was not, however, uniform. Where radical agrarian reforms had limited the access of powerful pre-capitalist landlords to surplus they appropriated as rents, even low agricultural incomes could have the effect of minimum wages and minimum social protection which empowered labour on the labour market. Economies freed from intrinsic state intervention could contribute to expanding internal markets, especially if the security provided by small land-holding and the concomitant rises in agricultural production allowed a shift to export oriented industrialisation. This shift required the same basics: increasing production of goods for the poorer section. Export-oriented industrialisation was possible if devaluation of the currency could be achieved, usually if the bulk of subsistence goods for low salary export workers were also locally produced. This was the case independent of political ideology in East Asia: Taiwan and South Korea, but also People’s Republic of China, and now Vietnam. Where such structural reforms were not or only partially undertaken, import-substituting industrialisation had weaker effects on the labour markets and protests became stronger, especially as there had been hopes for improvement which had not eventuated. The limited success in these cases created large groups who were bitterly disappointed and felt that with better social embeddedness of modernisation, especially in the direction of a fairer distribution of its benefits, the process could have been more sustained. They opposed the moral dimension of the better off groups and accused them of corruption. Given the discredit which had fallen on the secular discourse imported from the West, especially socialism in its variety of forms, the norms of moral justice and moral conduct were increasingly taken from the pre-existing religious heritage in each case. The rise of the new cultural-identitarian political movements did not emerge as totally new tendencies hitherto unknown, but, in Asia and Africa, was the rise to prominence and influence of already existing tendencies which could gain in popularity because the promises made by the state classes nearly everywhere became more and more hollow. Where there were no previous foundations of 214 The Transformation of Politicised Religion cultural nationalism, new populist movements emerged (Delcas 2007: 3 ff.; Hakim 2006). Where cultural nationalists had emerged during the freedom struggle they became the natural heirs to the failing state classes. Making reference to a golden past functioned as a low cost ideology for mobilising large and socially diverse coalitions behind an alternative way of improving their economic lot. Ultimately, the geographical distribution of the new cultural-identitarian political movements has been shaped by the specific differences among political heritages and the ways they failed.
The Contradictory Role of Western Support for Rent in the Rise of Cultural Nationalists
The failure of the secular nationalists is not entirely their own doing. It is also a failure of the West. Handing over sovereignty after 1945 was motivated by the attempt to reduce the costs of exploiting resources in the colonies. Starting in the 1930s, it became clear that the colonial powers could maintain their sovereignty only by launching expensive investment programmes for fighting poverty. Such programmes were unnecessary in those backward countries where local elites already exercised political sovereignty. The French late-colonial reform policy in Algeria and sub-Saharan Africa demonstrated that spending on colonial development puts a colonial power at a disadvantage with other industrial powers. Competitors could indeed access the products of the underdeveloped world without committing important resources to their overall economic development (Elsenhans 2000: 344–52). This French late colonial policy constitutes, however, the basis for French exceptionalism in North-South relations. The dominant power of the West, the United States, had developed a form of imperialism compatible with the existence of formally independent states (Panitch and Gindin 2004: 33). United States imperialism was compatible with national independence in the South as, unlike Britain (in the 1880s) it did not need control over regions with weak or failing governments in order to keep capitalist rivals out. It could accept nationalism as a unifying ideology in those countries, provided that a certain degree of economic openness was maintained. National liberation movements which were dominated by the propertied middle classes were suitable partners for the United States in making the South safe against Soviet-inspired (or other types) of social revolution which threatened property rights, both of the local propertied classes as well as of international investors. The secular elites maintained their power on the basis of multi-class alliances, which, as a result of the weight of (relatively poor) propertied classes – even in the remotest villages – were structurally opposed to local social revolutionaries such as Communists and Maoists. In this endeavour, they were supported by the cultural nationalists wherever possible. These political forces had become the defenders of the property interests of small and medium owners when the state classes threatened to become too committed to the promises of social reform through which they might have Rivalry, Failure of the Secular Nationalists, Geography, History 215 established their influence over the underprivileged classes. The general failure of radical agrarian reform is proof of this. Even where the state classes cooperated externally with the Soviet bloc, they locally repressed the Communists (Algeria). These middle-of-the-road state classes were one of the various expressions of the attempt by the middle classes and their intellectual icons to create large class alliances for restoring national identity and pride against the encroachment of imperialism. They captured ideological orientations in the social and economic reform of the masses and strengthened their own influence by participating in the early tendency towards Marxism of the non-religiously oriented resistance movements which had grown up in the Third World on the basis of the late nineteenth century globalisation movement; a situation which is nicely illustrated by the rise of Marxism in early twentieth century Bengal or China. The West felt comfortable with the proclaimed nationalisms and the reforms imposed on the old feudal strata (the old allies of the West) and even accepted improving terms of trade through rising raw material prices if this hit all Western producers equally. The oil price increases of 1973 and 1979 would not have been possible without the US oil companies’ desire to avoid an unacceptably high degree of dependency on cheap Middle East oil (Elsenhans 1974: 21). Turning the inevitable to their own advantage, they, along with the most conservative Gulf monarchies, were the most vocal promoters of the price hike, which undercut the influence of the secular nationalists (like the Algerians). In addition, this provided the oil monarchies of the Gulf with money to promote the prestige and influence of non-revolutionary movements, which invariably opted for Islamic cultural nationalism as opposed to the godless Marxists (Ochsenwald 1981: 285; Ahmad 2008: 25)
The Geography of the New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements
There are four different social and economic settings of the protest against the limits and failures of state-led import-substituting industrialisation. This explains the geographical distribution of the rise of new cultural-identitarian movements.10
• China, and also Vietnam, as well as South Korea and Taiwan had a past of relatively successful import-substituting industrialisation and were or are heading for export-oriented increases in employment. In the case of the previously communist countries, middle classes still perceive enough possibilities for improvement of their situation and therefore avoid confrontation with the secular post-communist powers in place. One can expect that with increasing employment China and Vietnam will experience labour protest which can unite with middle class protests for more freedom and ultimately lead to democratisation, as has been the case in Taiwan and Korea.
10 I have insisted on this geographical limitation in Elsenhans 1994a: 14–16. 216 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
• In Latin America, the cultural closeness to the Christian West makes religion an inappropriate basis for the formation of political protest coalitions. Here varieties of left oriented coalition emerge which seek still their ways between social democratic reform policies, more intervention oriented coalitions with large doses of indigenous political movements and lower class oriented new socialist experiments (Chavismo). • In sub-Saharan Africa, the middle strata are too weak to provide leadership and orientation. • In the Arab world and most of South and South East Asia, success in import-substituting industrialisation was real but limited and does not open up further reliable perspectives of growth for an already numerically important middle class. However, in those Arab oil monarchies where such industrialisation did not occur or occurred only in a limited way, traditional religious leaders and the monarchs are successful in disputing the new cultural-identitarian movements the leadership in political Islam.
The rise of religion in the post-communist countries of East and South East Asia led to the increasing influence of religion at local political levels (Chau 2005). Religious praxis has increased in Chinese villages (Smith 2006: 405) but has not materialised as a political force of a cultural-identitarian type, despite intensive nationalism in China. Arrangements between the representatives of the secular state and new and old local traditional religious leaders have been reported. Claiming the absence of new cultural-identitarian movements is not the same as claiming the absence of the rise of religion in China. It is possible that there is a general rise of religion in the West and also in China. Here one could point to Falun Gong, for example (Frank 2004). However, South Korea also experienced major changes in religion among its population (that is, the rise of Christianity) without this having led to powerful new cultural-identitarian political movements. The issue is not the turn to religion itself, but rather the utilisation of religion for creating large class alliances in order to develop large political movements in order to take political power from the old secular and often Occidentalised state classes. There are also minority religious movements at a supra-local level in China, but they are not connected to large popular bases (Zhao 2005: 213). The marginals continue to strive for employment and do not seem to engage in cultural-identitarian movements. By ‘occupying’ a sufficient share of the space of the middle classes, the secular forces keep the lid on the kettle and normally intensify efforts in order to improve the material lot of the lower strata without really abandoning their political power. Also those countries without communist pasts are characterised by the overall economic success translating in low participation democracies. In Latin America the official Catholic Church has reached out in an important way to social protest movements like the MST11 so that competing religious
11 The MST is the movement of the landless. See Koonings 1999: 226; Almeida and Sánchez 2000: 11–14. Rivalry, Failure of the Secular Nationalists, Geography, History 217 movements like the Pentecostals remain limited in their impact (Berryman 1995: 120). The shift of important parts of the old (in the Latin American case relatively anti-reformist) state classes to economic liberalisation and the adoption of what is called the Washington consensus was increasingly resisted. Although the movements that lead this resistance refer to cultural traditions like indigenism (Bolivia, Madrid 2008: 507) or Bolivarism (Venezuela, Viguera 1993: 64; Weyland 2001: 17), this reference does not imply a rejection of Western civilisation but a populist, social democratic claim for taming the unbridled market in order to give economic and political voice to the poor or to the people (Ellner 2001). Resistance takes the form of a new populism without religious connotations.12 There is an absence of cultural nationalism as a political force in most of sub- Saharan Africa, which is predominately Muslim (Haynes 2005), although there is a religious revival and increasing individual piety even in comparison to the Arab world,13 often also in the form of Christian denominations (Davis 2004: 31; Corten 2005: 172; Mbe 2008: 80). Religiously inspired movements take the form of militant guerrilla groups, as in the Sahel, which privilege armed action without caring for large political bases. In sub-Saharan Africa, the marginals do not find a partner in the old middle classes and distinguished families. The old privileged strata do not perceive a possibility for improving their economic possibilities via political change. The old families who enjoy religious prestige do not need the marginalised as stormtroopers, nor do they fear them as troublemakers. Because of a lack of economic development their power is unchecked, at least in the rural areas. The new property-less middle classes are far too few in number and do not really believe in a large internal market supplied with new goods from an expanded local private sector. They do not command the economic resources on which an alternative project of mass-oriented development could be based. This perception is probably correct as the deprived strata articulate relatively limited demands for a fairer share in the available services. There are no programmes which link social reform to production increases for the destitute such as those which characterised the social movements in Europe at the beginning of the last century (Gibbon 1992; Bernard 2010). The property-less but educated middle classes opt for the support of Western donors. Both segments of the middle class, traditional propertied middle classes and property-less salaried middle classes in the so-called modern sector, have little hope other than better export possibilities for raw materials and greater access to Western ‘development’ assistance – the latter is, in reality, Western political money given for promoting Western-type limited democracy. The new modern middle classes have become proficient in espousing a theory of Western democracy in
12 See the excellent comparison in Dorraj and Dodgson 2009: esp. 149–51. 13 Ellis and Ter Haar 2007: esp. 398. Kate Meagher describes the dominance of religious ‘entrepreneurs’ over small scale entrepreneurs and the tendency to restrict market relations, with the subsequent rise of new movements based on new strata of informal sector entrepreneurs. See Meagher 2009. On the students, cf. Obadare 2007: 520. 218 The Transformation of Politicised Religion order to be deemed worthy of eligibility for development assistance, although their rejection of arbitrary rule and dictatorship may be considered genuine and based on experience (Newbury 1994: 2; Robinson 1994: 62; Adejumobi 1998: 48). Here China is increasingly becoming an accommodating rival to the West as it frees these middle classes from having to parade with ideologies which, intellectually they may approve of, but which they increasingly find difficult to apply in their societies as demonstrated by the disappointing economic performance of the ANC in South Africa, and this despite its ideological heritage (Saul 2001; Friedman 2012: 95). The adherence, if only verbal, to values of the bourgeois revolutions of America in 1776 and France in 1789 has become the immaterial export product that sells well in the Western market of NGOs and state development organisations. In political- economic terms, they create the perception that Western donors are most eager to acquire ‘certificates of good governance’, which they ‘sell’ to the Western public in order to provide them with ‘good conscience’ and themselves with financial resources.14 A review of the type of research realised in social science and economics in some sub-Saharan African countries demonstrates that this collusion between a bled-out Westernised elite (because of budget shortages) and donors committed to the ‘total market’ has deprived these societies of even the necessary data on which to base a mass-oriented development strategy constructed on the dynamisation of the small-scale (so-called informal) sector by rising internal mass demand that is, spending behaviour of poor households according to income classes. The situation seems to be worse than it was in the final period of colonialism. New cultural-identitarian movements do not emerge where nothing is available to build on a political coalition with a social project. The marginalised in sub-Saharan Africa cannot constitute themselves into powerful political movements. They are ‘atomised’, according to Mostepha Lacheraf (1965: 323), and they easily become prone to violence whenever and wherever there are tangible, even short-term, benefits from looting (Sundberg 1999: 13; Rashid 1997: 24; Abdullah 1997: 73). They constitute the empirical object of the ‘rent-guerilla-violence’ literature, which ignores the possible alternatives of a political use of rents such as in the case of more coherent, more integrative political structures (Olarinmoye 2008: 31). In those countries where import-substituting industrialisation and state-led development were reasonably, though insufficiently, successful in creating or promoting ‘old’ property-owning middle classes and ‘new’ non-property-owning middle classes (Arab world, South and South East Asia), cultural nationalism becomes attractive as a platform for organising coalitions that try to replace the incumbent secular state classes (Narli 2003: 130; Hasan 2001: 163). They accuse these state classes of failure, corruption, and hampering private sector economic growth. There is a genuine adherence to democratic rules of government as a vehicle for reducing the arbitrary role of the state class, even if, as in the case of some Islamic tendencies, popular sovereignty is rejected in favour of divine (theological) law.
14 For an early statement cf. Elsenhans 1991b: 211, 225. Rivalry, Failure of the Secular Nationalists, Geography, History 219
Neither the shift of economic policies nor the commitment to democratic rules is the source of these new cultural-identitarian movements. Like in other cases of cultural nationalism, origins can be traced to political entrepreneurs who initially strove for recognition by promoting novel ideas. But these early cultural nationalist entrepreneurs find a following in their societies beyond their early supporters, (often uprooted) intellectuals (Alexander 2000: 477), only if, and only to the extent that, they are able to acquire influence in the middle classes, usually by moderation. The political clout acquired by this strategic conquest of middle classes makes them decisively more credible also to the marginals who, in large numbers, are ready to lend support to them. The dynamics of the mobilisation of the mostafazin (or dispossessed) by the students and the traditional traders and craftsmen in the Iranian revolution (Halliday 1983: 197) is but one example, the relation between the BJP and the scheduled tribes is another (Engineer 1997: 149; Mrug 2004: 18). Dalit politics has increasingly emerged as a competing form of cultural nationalism. It is the dynamics in these societies which constitute the focus of our book.
The Emergence of Cultural-Identiarian Movements in Comparative History
New cultural-identitarian political movements are new in the sense that they have emerged in the last 30 to 40 years in a limited but important area of Asia and Africa. Such movements are, however, not completely new phenomena at a global level. They have often been key actors in processes of complicated dissolution of rent- based societies with their politically determined access to economic surplus, and their transformation into market-based societies where middle classes are exposed to competition. Because of the fundamental instability of capitalist economies, which are always threatened by underconsumption (Elsenhans 1983: 3 ff.), levels of demand leading to full employment, and therefore profitability for investors and security of incomes for the newly salaried classes, are often not achieved. Middle classes depend directly, as propertied entrepreneurs, or indirectly as privileged ‘modern’ sector salaried workers, on the impact of levels of economic activity on economic policy decisions. For them, the tax state (which does not have autonomous sources of income) and the ‘health’ of profit become decisive, as is the situation of the mass of the other salaried workers (who voluntarily or involuntarily have left the world of traditional communities). From a micro-economic perspective these middle classes implicitly feel the vagaries of the market and try to limit their effects: moral economy is one of the first manifestations. Corporatism, neo-corporatism and social market economy are further manifestations. To some extent, today’s Islamic economics can be considered to be this type of limitation of market economics, with its restriction on interest and its guarantee of by the state guaranty of reasonable competition. In all these cases it is clear that the social actors do not understand that profit is ultimately the result of increasing mass demand (Elsenhans 2011d: 10 ff.). 220 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
They are, however, open to alliances with other classes, also and especially labour, because this is the political condition to achieve a wider consensus on the political limitation of the market mechanism. The more prosperous they perceive the economy, the more they are ready to compromise. The opposite relation is also true and hence Lipset’s extremism of the middle (Lipset 1960: 137 ff.). These middle classes are, therefore, simultaneously open for social compromise and extremism based on fear of decadence. The appeal of looking to the past can be explained this way: among the many images which can be used for creating an understanding between contending classes, an idealised past is particularly appropriate for dealing with contemporary anxiety as its builds hope by recalling past achievements in a once secure and therefore golden age. In most cases, however, there is no recollection of decadence or corruption as having occurred in these ‘golden’ periods. Such processes of identification with cultural nationalism where secular nationalists have failed to deliver in the realm of economic and political reform have parallels in continental European history. On the basis of the failure to deliver – by secular revolutionaries and reformers in Germany in the early nineteenth century – an ideological current of cultural nationalism emerged (in the form of romanticism) and initially allowed the legitimation of the most reactionary wing of the existing powers against well-intentioned secular forces.15 The existing powers used cultural nationalism against the secular forces of democratisation as a counter ideology, which in continental Europe was very often associated with anti-Semitism (Fitch 1992: 91). In its extremist forms, cultural nationalists could win over the middle classes only in deep economic crisis but were ultimately challenged by moderates. Later in most of continental Western Europe where fascism had temporarily come to power, this process led to liberalisation under the guidance of Christian democrats, and in Germany to the overthrow of the fascists by the victorious allies and the subsequent undisputed establishment of the Christian democrats as the predominant political force. Where cultural nationalism has succeeded today as a powerful new cultural- identitarian political movement, the precondition of the existence of relevant middle classes makes probable in the underdeveloped world a subsequent shift to moderate cultural-identitarian parties not too different from the continental European Christian democrats. The forces of moderation ultimately depend on economic success and, hence, on the openness of the markets in the leading industrial countries. The relevant issue is whether there is a tendency towards the emergence of a capitalist context and whether such a tendency can be strengthened through the orientation of protest to economic instead of identitarian issues in rent-dominated countries. The emergence of a capitalist context depends on the empowerment of ‘capital’, in this case the empowerment through profit based on investment
15 The best description of a similar process in European history is given by Brunschwig 1947. Rivalry, Failure of the Secular Nationalists, Geography, History 221 spending (Elsenhans 2011d: 7–17). It is understood that this investment will be mainly triggered off by the perspective of expanding markets. This perspective in turn depends on the empowerment of labour through rising incomes because of high levels of employment and a scarcity of labour so that wages follow productivity increases. Hence, the long term empowerment of the middle classes, and therefore also of those forces which play a role in the moderate wings of the new cultural-identitarian movements, lies in the simultaneous empowerment of non-monopolistic capital and labour. Models which account for the involvement of new cultural-identitarian movements in conflicts based on the image of an inevitable clash of civilisations tend to hinder an understanding of the real challenges the world faces with these new political developments. It is not the case that these cultural images push the new cultural-identitarian movements to conflict, but rather the interests of the social groups which instrumentalise those ideologies to deal with anxieties triggered by perceived threat. Those who use them do not attempt to understand the threatening world by thoroughly investigating their own culture, but use them in order to construct comforting perspectives for themselves without great sophistication. As such, the issue is not a discourse on culture – and not of the type such as where violence in Islam is deduced from some old Islamic texts. More sophisticated discussions on culture may be valuable in their own right but the decisive perspective is the easing of the transition between politically appropriated rent, which is relatively easy to access for privileged groups, and profit which depends on macro-economic equilibria. Under the conditions of underdevelopment and the implied inflexibilities vis-a-vis changes in demand, such equilibria are especially difficult to establish. In this process, the middle classes play a central role, via: their own perception of their security in relation to foreign political forces and local rivals, by their choices in using economic surplus, and their policies of alliance formation.16 This book, therefore, places the multiple middle classes with their differences and convergences at the centre of the analysis.
The World System and the New Cultural-Identitarian Political Movements
The contributions in this book tend to perceive a trend towards moderation. This trend is both unstable and reversible. In the case of reversal, however, the whole tendency of new cultural-identitarian movements loses its influence. There is no return to extremism. The movements which are unable to maintain a course within the mainstream political spectrum become isolated, once more. The issue is not extremism or moderation, but encapsulation or a role in the political game.
16 Where all these movements advise high levels of investment in the local economy, cf. Luebben in this book on the Muslim Brothers. 222 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
This perspective has important implications for the structure of the emerging international system. The regions where secular elites were economically successful enough to maintain legitimacy among a thriving middle sector thus engage in slow processes of greater participation, especially after labour has become scarce and combative because of high levels of employment, as has been the case in Taiwan and South Korea. China may be in the incipient stages of such a turn. This will lead to arrangements not too dissimilar from the European neo-corporatist configurations. Nationalism with a slight cultural component will be a significant means of political integration. Cultural heritage of the Communist past will enable labour to promote its demands for better incomes as shown by the shifts in Chinese regional policies. Populism in Latin America will lead to more intensive conflicts between popular masses and the elites but still open up avenues for arrangements in favour of growth with political stability if policies for the expansion of internal mass demand are applied in pragmatic ways. In those areas where cultural nationalism leads to powerful new cultural- identitarian movements directed by middle classes, a similar pattern of growth via an expansion of the internal market can be expected (for example, India). Where cultural nationalism has become institutionalised as a major political force, these organisations will also to a large extent influence the worldviews of opposing forces. Examples are in Algeria the ‘barbeFLN’ (members of the old secular nationalist party having adopted Islamic habits of dress and thought, including the beard, that is, barbe) but also by the Indian Congress Party where secular nationalists took over important parts of the agenda of the cultural nationalists. We head for a world of diverse cultural identities that will not clash, as the powers they serve as a force of cohesion will tend to be self-constrained. The majority of the population of Asia, Africa, and even Latin America live in states that pretend to be nation-states but in reality are ethnically fragmented and often multi-ethnic ‘empires’. The core ethnic groups of these empires live in the central areas. They do not extend to other states where they have to be liberated as ethnic minorities. Cultural identity is less appropriate for claims to expansion than ethnic origin as it always extends beyond boundaries. There will be many homogenising processes – that is, in the domain of law so as to reduce transaction costs – but the greater powers will not abandon their sovereign right to be bound only by their own agreement. This will go with moderately state-interventionist economic regimes where globalisation plays a facilitating but not a dominant role, as no one of these powers will give up their attempt to maintain the most favourable position possible in the technical race, even with the instrument of state intervention. There will be rivalries between states on the basis of the tendency for all participants in the state system to prevent too much power centring on one of them, even if its elite is mostly well intentioned. These rivalries will be inevitable because changes in alliances with weaker states in favour of a single power will be perceived differently. This will lead to diverse reactions. However, the art of Rivalry, Failure of the Secular Nationalists, Geography, History 223 statecraft and careful management of the balance of power, such as avoiding escalation, respecting limited spheres of influence, early warning and flexible alliance formation will allow a relatively smooth operation of the system, especially because all participating powers can be considered to be ‘saturated powers’. This will be a Vienna system. It will be more stable than the Vienna system as no major actor will suffer the danger of disintegration through rising nationalist ethnic groups or attempt to increase its territory on the pretext of having to incorporate populations that belong to its core groups. This applies also to those countries where cultural-identitarian values predominate. Neither will India claim the regions where Hinduism had been influential and Devanagari-inspired scripts are used, nor will China annex independent countries where cultural heritage is influenced by China. The majority of these states will be relatively conservative socially. Cultural nationalism and neoliberal globalism both oppose the view that capitalism and development ultimately depend on the empowerment of labour. They will discipline labour with the argument that wage restraint is necessary in order to maintain international competitiveness and ignore the relevance of the exchange rate for determining the international cost of local labour (instead of the nominal wage rate; Elsenhans 2006a: 138–40). The model of states under the control of an ideologically heterogeneous state class with clientelistic ties to an ideologically and organisationally segmented middle class seems to me to be the most probable outcome throughout the world leading to the end of capitalism as we know it (Elsenhans 1991a). The secular nationalists and the cultural-identitarian nationalists will unite behind a crude concept of national interest. The cultural-identitarian nationalists will be well placed in the competition for filling such a crude concept with meaning, as contrary to the secular nationalists they do not claim to organise a worldwide coalition. They can avail themselves of the distinguished character of their inherited culture which provides them with a distinguishable profile or, in other words, an identity. In order to improve their position in the conflict over influence at home they will tend to use this worldview against their secular nationalist competitors. There is a clear affinity between the concept of regionally constrained cultural nationalisms and a globalised world economy with continuing state intervention as actually imposed by the newly emerging countries and a multipolar state system where some major powers manage the balance of power. Such political structures will dominate the world system as existing structures of power, including those in the First World and will undermine the foundations of capitalism in rising mass incomes, so that they need a political mechanism for distributing rents in order to maintain politically acceptable but insufficient levels of employment. Full employment would empower labour and impose the rise of real incomes via the economy through the scarcity of labour. Acceptable levels of employment need not be so high, but merely sufficient to convince sufficiently large majorities of the population that unemployment is basically the result of a lack of qualifications or discipline. This discourse can already be observed in First 224 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
World countries. They are experiencing limited levels of unemployment, the long- term stagnation of real incomes for the bulk of the population (despite increasing per capita incomes), and increasing income inequality in favour of the super-rich. The rallying of the honourable classes, state classes and middle classes behind national interest will allow cultural and secular nationalists to cooperate with each other and, at the same time, to defend the ideological discourses against all those who would like to use such notions for social revolution. Where a deal between existing elites and rising populist or cultural-identitarian protest movements cannot be developed because of the low degree of economic diversification, the fragmentation of their internal economies, or the impossibility to achieve some sort of peaceful management of internal conflicts, the unruliness of the downtrodden cannot be channelled into increasing mass demand, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Various ideologies, among them also cultural nationalism, will remain an important base of mobilisation for marginalised groups as they emerge through lopsided development. However, new cultural-identitarian movements will not emerge – as there is no opening of the middle class toward an alliance with impoverished poor and as these middle classes survive on raw material rents or Western development assistance. Where the opening of the new cultural-identitarian movements to middle classes does not succeed because of the absence of strong middle class leadership, cultural nationalism will tend to be outlawed by all major powers just as other extremist movements have eventually been isolated. They may be virulent in areas where the state of law cannot be imposed because all powers fear possible rivalries between them (Rufin 1986: esp. 100). Hence a stable, varied, non-homogenised system of allegedly reasonable powers will govern the world. Those powers that are more under the influence of the cultural nationalists like India or the Arab states will easily accommodate such a system where all powers value the sovereign independence of the state. The major powers are interested in operating the balance of power among them and will impose the acceptance of the implied rules to those who are not major powers but use the norm of sovereignty in order to avoid formal dependence. Neither the smaller states, nor the NGOs, nor the multinational corporations will consciously subvert this system, because for these lower-rank actors the alternative of single- power hegemony is far less attractive than the balance of power system with a reasonably large number of saturated players. Bibliography
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Abd al-Khaliq, Farid (1915–2013) 79 Amazighity 174 Abd al-Nasir, Gamal (also Abdel Nasser, Amer, Abd al-Hakim (1919–1967) 86 Gamal) (1918–1970) 62, 75, Andalusia 149 86–92, 103 AOI, see Arab Organization for Abduh, Muhammad (1849–1905) 21, 78, Industrialization (AOI) 168 apostasy 62–3 action 2, 36, 58, 63, 77, 99, 105, 108, 110, Arab Gulf ix, 5, 9, 15, 57, 59–64, 68, 72–3, 127, 153–4, 160, 163–5, 168–70, 91, 153, 215 174, 176–8, 181, 190, 217 Arab Nationalism 19, 62, 64 activism 9, 34, 37, 57, 59–61, 69–73, 90, Arab Organization for Industrialization 94, 99–100, 130, 165 (AOI) 101 mystics of violence 161 Arab Socialist Union 91 religious violence 47–8, 57–9, 61, 67, Arab Spring 5, 8, 16, 29–30, 61, 69, 73, 69–73 156, 159 terrorism 161 Arab world 29, 75, 156, 158–9, 216–18 violent activism, violence 57–9, 66, 68, Arabian Peninsula 70, 72–3 73, 160 Arabic vii, 25, 80, 93, 97, 149, 163, 166, Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) viii, 4, 168, 174 6, 9–10, 26, 49, 76, 105–20, 154 Arbaoui, El-, Omar (1907–1984) 164 and Christian democracy 111 Arian, al-, Issam (*1954) 94 and European Union 110, 115 Armed Islamic Movement 24, 165 commitment to European Union Art. 370: 187, 189–90 partnership 110 Assad, al-, Bashar (*1965) 57, 59 human rights 110, 112 assistanat 178 Advani, Lal Krishna (*1927) 132–4, 139, authoritarianism 9, 24, 57–61, 63–4, 69, 188 105–6, 115, 120, 139, 179, 212 adventurism 171 axial period 155 Afghani, al-, Jamal al-Din (1838–1897) 21, axial time 147 78, 168 Ayodhya 39, 43–5, 48–50, 129, 133, 147, Afghanistan 67, 69–70, 73 184, 187–90 agrarian reform 22, 36, 213, 215 Azhar, al- 80, 103, 168–9 AKP, see Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) Algeria vii, 2, 6, 8, 10, 15–17, 19–31, 73, Babri Masjid 44, 49–50, 133–4 76, 143, 145–6, 149–50, 154–5, Babri Masjid Action Committee 50 157, 163–75, 177–8, 207–8, Babri Mosque 133 214–15, 222 Bahrain ix, 15, 61, 73 Algerian Ulama Association 164, 168 Bahujan Samaj Party 36, 46, 137 Algiers in October 1988 160 Bank Misr 77 Aligarh 37, 42 Banna, al-, Hasan (1906–1949) 75–83, 85, Alliance of the Green Algeria 15 87, 170 254 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
al-nidham al-islami 81 casteism 36, 193 economic thought 81–2 centrism 46 nahwa al-nur 81 certification 179 risalat al-ta’alim 80, 83 Chatterji, Bankim Chandra (1838–1894) understanding of Islam 81 195 Baquri, al-, Hasan (1907–1985) 87 China 158–9, 200–201, 211, 213, 215–16, bashawiyya 80 218, 222–3 Belmehdi, Mustapha (*1943) 166–7 foreign policy 218 Ben Bella, Ahmed (1916–2012) 22 religion 216 Bendjedid, Chadli (1929–2012) 23, 166, 172 Christian democrats 220 Benhadj, Ali (*1956) 165, 172 civic values 174 Bennabi, Malek (1905–1973) 164, 169 civil society 42, 47, 68–9, 78, 106–7, 111, Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) 185–7, 193 115, 117, 119, 129, 149, 179, 207 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ix, 4, 10, 33, civilisation 155, 169, 174, 208 41, 43, 46–9, 51, 53–4, 131, 138, class conscience 151 147, 183, 187 collective 2–3, 16, 62, 75, 84, 111, 165, and shining past 193 174–5, 177, 179 economic policies 134–5 common civil code 147 fundamental demands 187 common man 41, 124, 129–30, 184 internal conflicts 137 communal violence 37, 48 power politics 131–4 community 3, 7, 35–7, 43–6, 48, 50, 52–3, secularism 183 57–60, 62–5, 68–9, 71, 78, 84–5, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) 52, 135–6 88, 101, 116, 124–6, 128, 176, 184, bharatiya sanskriti 196 189, 191–2, 194, 198, 200–201, Bharti, Uma (*1959) 133, 138 219 bin Laden, Osama (1957–2011) 67, 69, 71 competitiveness 45, 66, 148, 223 BJP, see Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) compromise with old state class 150 BJS, see Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) concessions 15, 100, 112, 180 blasphemy 63 constructivism 151–2, 156 BMS, see Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) co-optation of lower classes 41 Bolivarism 217 corporatism 219 Boumedienne, Houari (1965–1978) 22–3, corruption 93, 191 166, 177 counter-insurgency 161 bourgeois revolution 158, 206, 218 cow slaughter 185 export of 160 crisis of governability 45 bourgeoisie 17, 33, 35 cultural and civilisational identity 188 Bouslimani, Muhammad (1941–1993) 166, cultural nationalism 3, 40, 53–4, 126, 128, 171 143, 147, 149–50, 155, 183, 192–3, Bouteflika, Abd al-Aziz (*1937) 29–30, 196, 209, 214–15, 217–20, 222–4 180 and labour 52 Bouyali, Mustapha (1940–1987) 165 and secular nationalism 37, 193 Brahmin-Bania-trader network 34 decolonisation 207 Britain history 207, 209, 214 colonial power in Egypt 77 market 40 cultural nationalist entrepreneurs 219 cadre party 153 Cyprus 115 caste 35–7, 39, 41–5, 122–4, 126, 128, 135–8, 190–91, 194, 196 Dalit 36, 183, 190, 198, 219 Index 255 decentralisation 179, 197 moral economy 25 decolonisation 1–2, 6, 19, 22, 157, 161, privatisation 200 205, 207–8, 214 self-reliance 197 United States 214 economic pragmatism 41 democracy 29, 68, 87, 97, 105–7, 111–13, educated 1, 21, 35, 66, 79–80, 145, 149, 116–17, 121, 150, 152, 158, 169, 157, 206, 217 174–5, 190, 196, 208, 217 education 2, 19–29, 36, 39–40, 46, 54, Indian 36, 41 65–7, 73, 79–80, 82, 84, 88, 106, democratic 15, 27, 36, 41, 96, 101, 110–11, 112–13, 126, 128, 143, 145, 155, 113, 116, 119–20, 124, 130, 137, 192–3, 197–9, 206, 212 150, 152, 154, 170, 174, 179, 183, educational state 41 194, 205–7, 216–19 effendiyya 8–9, 26, 79–80, 86 dependency 59, 77, 89, 92, 145, 178, 209, EFITU, see Egyptian Federation of 211, 215 Independent Trade Unions de-regulation 40–41 (EFITU) devaluation 31, 159–60, 213 Egypt viii, 9, 15, 20, 23, 61, 69, 75, 77–80, development vii, ix, 1–11, 15–23, 27–8, 83, 88–91, 93, 95–102, 149–50, 31, 33, 38–43, 46, 76–7, 83, 91–7, 153, 156, 166, 168–70 102, 111–12, 120, 124, 126, 128, independence 77 139, 144–7, 150–51, 155, 158–9, industrial development 79 163, 170, 175, 177, 179–80, 183–5, Egyptian Development Business 189–99, 206, 208–14, 217–18, Association (EBDA) 97, 100 223–4 Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Keynesian economics 210 Unions (EFITU) 100 mass incomes 211–12 Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) technical progress 211 94, 100 development assistance 218 elections 15–16, 19, 24–7, 29–30, 34, 40, development policy 183, 206 43, 47, 61, 64–5, 68–9, 90, 92–4, developmental state 42, 45–6, 54 96–9, 101, 105, 107, 109–10, dialogue 27, 69–70, 109, 112, 136, 160, 117, 119, 121–5, 127, 129, 131–3, 166, 173, 175, 190, 200 136–9, 150, 156, 167–8, 172–3, direct confrontation 18, 25, 40 180–81, 184, 186–7, 189–91, 196, dissent, dissidents 57–9, 61, 68–70, 72–3, 201 127, 134–5, 138–9 elite revolt 39, 45 diwaniyya 68 elitist 26, 80, 153, 175 Djaballah, Abdallah (*1956) 29, 164, 167 empires 156, 222 doctrine 38, 52, 57–8, 60, 69–71, 76, 146, En-Nahda 29, 167, 172 148, 154, 168, 170, 196 environment 197 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip (*1954) 105, EBDA, see Egyptian Development 108–10, 113, 116–17, 119 Business Association (EBDA) ethnic minorities 115 economic liberalisation 33, 41, 43, 45, 54, ETUF, see Egyptian Trade Union 136, 150, 209 Federation (ETUF) Indian 33 Euro-mediterranean cooperation 159–60 economic policies 41, 51–2, 83, 93, 95, European history 114, 136, 147–8, 150, 154, 163, cultural nationalist 220 176, 181, 189, 219 évolués 22, 35–6, 149, 206 agrarian reform 22 excluded segments 143 256 The Transformation of Politicised Religion export-oriented industrialisation 96, 159 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand and Arab world 159 (Mahatma) (1869–1948) ix, 37, 40, 45, 135, 138–9, 184–7, 195, 197 fairness 99, 148, 179 Gandhian 124, 148 Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt 93 GCC, see Gulf Cooperation Council farming 197 (GCC) fascism 106, 220 gender ix, 50, 61, 63, 65–7, 70, 73, 78, 83, female emancipation 175 94, 116, 127, 133, 165–6, 171, 175, finance vii, 40, 60, 82, 93, 114, 126, 136, 177, 187–8, 192, 196, 199 157, 178–81 genderies 175, 188, 199 financial support (for jihad) 57, 60, 67, gens de robe 45 72–3, 117 Germany vii–ix, 21, 27, 149, 151, 220 FIS, see Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) Ghazali, al-, Abd al-Hamid (†2011) 91–2 FJP, see Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) Ghazali, al-, Muhammad (1917–1996) 87 FLN, see Front de Libération Nationale GIA guerilla 27 (FLN) global 1, 4, 11, 18–19, 21, 33, 45, 52–3, foreign policy ix, 124, 149, 184, 190, 193, 59–60, 95, 98, 106, 114–15, 120, 196, 200–201, 206 148, 155, 170, 174, 197, 206, 208, and China 201 210, 219 and Pakistan 201 global civil society 155 nuclearisation 201 globalisation 59–60, 66, 73, 110, 114, 136, USA 201 208, 215 founding myths 170–71 God Frankfurt School 151–2 the first owner of wealth 176 fraud 82, 179 good governance ix, 139, 174–5, 183, 190, Free Officers 76, 86 196, 199, 200, 218 free professions 90–91, 98 Govindacharya, Kodipakam freedom 30, 62, 82, 87, 95–6, 106, 112–14, Neelameghacharya (*1943) 136 148, 155, 171, 174, 176–7, 194–5, gradualism 33, 174 214–15 Grand Mosque 57, 67 Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) 96, 99, 101 Great Depression of the 1930s 207 Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) 22, growth 24, 146, 155, 207 mass incomes 19, 210 Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) 16, 24–7, guerrilla 161, 217–18 29, 146, 165, 167, 171–2 Gujarat 42, 44, 47–8, 133–4, 138–9, 184, Fuli, al-, Muhammad (Lawyer, specialised 192 on labour law, worked closely Gujarat pogrom 44, 48 with the Muslim Brothers at the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) 67, 69 beginning of the 1950s) 86 fundamentalism 1, 6, 8, 39, 58, 127–8, 146, habous, see waqf and habous 192 Hachani, Abdelkader (1956–1999) 24–5 hakimiyya 170 Gaith, bu, Sulaiman (*1965) 66 Hamas 26, 149, 154, 163, 167–8 gambling 82, 176 Hamid, Yehya (*1978) 102 Gandhi, Indira (1917–1984) 40, 184, 186–7 harmony 47, 126, 188, 196, 199 Gandhi, Maneka (*1956) 135 health 19, 29, 176, 196, 198–9, 219 Index 257
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Indian nation 34–5, 37–8, 40–41, 45, 52–3, (1770–1831) 152, 209 185, 195 High Council of the State 173 composite character of 34 High Security Council 173 Indian National Congress 34, 127, 155, Hindu nationalism 3–4, 8–10, 33–45, 47–8, 183–4, 186–92, 199, 207, 222 51–3, 149, 183, 192, 195 indigenism 217 cultural nationalism indigenous political movements 216 and secular nationalism 34 infitah 28, 89–91 social basis 36 information 10, 46, 54, 67, 69, 148–9, 166 trivialisation of 33 integral humanism 40, 52, 154, 192–7 Hindu rashtra 194–5 integrity of the human race 176 hindutva 42, 47, 184, 190, 192–6, 201 intellectuals 20, 80, 129, 143, 153–4, 219 Hudaybi, al-, Hasan (1891–1973) 87 international system 11, 205, 222 human dignity 96, 177 intra-organisational power structure 153 human rights ix, 101, 110, 113, 155, 177, Iran 4, 72, 150, 154–5, 219 208 Iraq 57, 67–8, 70–72, 106 Asian record in 155 Irshad, al-, wal-Islah 26, 167 human thinking 174 Islam vii–viii, 20–23, 31, 57–63, 65–6, humanity 51, 174, 195–6 69–70, 73, 77–83, 86–90, 95, Hussain, Gamal ad-Din (1921–1999) 86 106–7, 109, 112–16, 118–19, Hussein, Saddam (1937–2006) 65, 70 168–70, 173–6, 178, 181, 191, 194, 207, 221 Ibn Badis, Abd al-Hamid (1889–1940) 21, Islamic (Socialist) Labour Party 92 164, 168–70 Islamic banking 93, 116, 178 Ibrahimi, El-, Bachir (1889–1965) 164 interest 95, 177 identity ix, 1, 3–4, 6–7, 9, 11, 21–2, 41, 43, Islamic companies 83 45, 47–8, 51, 53, 58–9, 62–4, 66, Islamic Development Bank 93 73, 76, 78, 87, 89, 102, 112–14, Islamic Group 90–91 120, 123, 125, 128, 130, 137, Islamic Investment Companies 93 147–9, 155, 169, 171, 183, 185, Islamic Salvation Front, see Front 187–8, 190–96, 207–9, 215, 220, Islamique du Salut (FIS) 222–3 Islamism, Islamists, Islamist movements cultural identity 188 viii, 3–4, 7–10, 15–27, 31, 33–4, identity politics 147–8 58–62, 64–7, 69–70, 73, 75, 78, Ijtihad 116, 174 88, 90–93, 98, 107–8, 111, 113, illicit practices 176 115, 118, 146, 149–50, 153–5, 163, imperialism 148, 214–15 165–6, 168–72, 175, 179 import-substituting industrialisation 19, 38, Islamist party viii, 15–16, 24, 26, 31, 75, 88, 96, 153, 206, 212–13, 215–16, 107, 113, 149, 165 218 failure 210 Jammu and Kashmir 49, 200–201 Indian 33 Janata Dal 47, 133, 139, 187 impunity 59–61, 161 Janata Party ix, 4, 10, 33, 39, 134, 138, inclusive party of governance 201 147, 183–4, 187 India Shining 189 jihad 25, 27, 57, 59–60, 67–73, 171 Indian bourgeoisie 33–6, 38–9, 43–7, 52–4 Jinnah, Muhammad Ali (1876–1948) 131 Indian developmental state 42 judiciary 109, 119, 179 258 The Transformation of Politicised Religion jurisprudence 77–8, 80, 169 Makkah 57, 67, 95, 164, 169, 177 justice ix, 16, 26, 30–31, 39, 43, 61, 80–82, Malaki, al-, Nuri (also al-Maliki) (*1950) 95, 97, 99, 111, 114, 126–7, 147, 72 170, 174, 178–9, 187–8, 190, 197, Malik, Hasan (*1958) 97 199, 213 Manar, al- (Journal) 78 justice to all and appeasement of none 187 Mandal Commission Report 44 Mandal controversy 43–5, 188 Kamal, Yussif (1931–2004) 92 marginalisation, marginals 16–17, 20, 22, Kashmir 49, 147, 161, 185, 200–201, 207 24–7, 29, 31, 35, 48, 69, 88, 93, Khaliq, see Abd al-Khaliq, Farid 134, 136, 143–5, 154–5, 170, 181, Khuli, al-, al-Bahi (1901–1977) 85–6 197, 212, 216–19, 224 kisan 190 Dalit politics 190 knowledge 67, 81, 87, 134, 152, 156, 174, market regulations 179 192 Marx, Karl (1818–1883) 151–2, 209, 213, Kuwait ix, 59, 61–70, 72–3, 101 215 Kuwaiti Afghans 67 maslaha 178 Kuwaiti amir 64, 69 mass incomes Kuwaiti parliament 61, 65, 68–9, 70 and growth 17 and independent bourgeoisie 158 labour Mawdudi, al-, Abul-Aâla (1903–1979) and bourgeois revolution 158 169–70 labour aristocracy 41, 158, 212 mazdoor 190 land reform 177, 180 merit 46, 124 late-colonial reform policy 214 MIA, see Mouvement Islamique Armée Latin America 98, 207, 216–17, 222 (MIA) League for Islamic Predication 165 middle class 8–10, 16–20, 23–30, 33–47, legitimacy 29, 59, 61–4, 70, 72–3, 94, 96, 51–3, 79–80, 82, 85, 88, 90–91, 98, 106–7, 109, 111, 118, 120, 132, 98–9, 102–3, 106, 124–5, 129, 136, 155, 158, 164, 167, 206, 212–13, 139, 143, 145–7, 149–51, 154–8, 222 160–61, 183–4, 187, 189–90, 199, Lenin, Vladimir Ilyitch (1870–1924) 151 206, 214–24 liberties 65, 106, 112, 174, 179 and rent 157–8 license-permit-raj 39 economic policies 220 limited democracy 150, 217 Egypt 79 limited marketisation 157–8 established 33, 36–41, 44–6 local civil society 42, 47 heterogeneity 98, 103 local culture 145 rising 5, 33, 36, 38–9 local finance 40, 179 mihna (ordeal, ruthless persecution) 75 local language 145 minorities 187, 191–2, 194 Longva, Anh Nga (*1949) 60, 62–4 mob violence 48 lower caste assertion 35, 41, 43–5 moderate 4, 6, 15–17, 20, 24–7, 29, 31, 47, lower class 17, 20, 27–9, 36, 40–42, 46–7, 49, 57, 64, 75, 98, 109, 121–2, 125, 52, 216 131–2, 137, 149, 152, 154, 160, lumpen 20, 144 164, 172–4, 220–21 moderate Islamists 15–17, 20, 25–7, 31, Madani, Abbassi (*1931) 24, 164, 167, 172 75, 98, 149, 154 madarsas 192 moderation 6–7, 9–10, 47–9, 51, 108–11, mafsada 178 132, 137, 155–6, 160, 184, 219–21 Index 259 modern media 148 revolution 2011 96 modernisation 38 secret apparatus 86–7 Modi, Narendra (*1950) 134, 138–9 social roots 76 Mokri, Abderrazaq (1844–1957) 30 International Organization 76 monarchy, monarchies 15, 57, 61–2, 73, 86, 215–16 Naguib, Muhammad (1901–1984) 87 monopoly 69, 86, 117, 156, 179 Nahda Project 96–7 Mookherjee, Shyama Prasad (1901–1953) Nahnah, Mahfoudh (1942–2003) 26–7, 37 164, 166–8, 171, 175, 177, 180 moral economy 23, 27, 41, 52–3, 81–2, Nasser, see Abd al-Nasir, Gamal 147–8, 150, 154, 158, 160, 192, nation 209, 213, 219 concept of 194, 205, 208, 223 moral values 144–5, 176, 209 national agreement 176 Mouvement Islamique Armée (MIA) 24, National Charter 126, 170 165 national charter project 166 movement construction 150–52 National Democratic Alliance (NDA) 44, Movement of the Society for Peace (MSP) 47, 49, 125–7, 134–5, 138–9, 183, vii, 8, 10, 15–16, 25–30, 76, 163–4, 187, 189–90, 193, 198–9 166–8, 171–5, 177–81 National Democratic Party 91 MSP, see Movement of the Society for national intelligentsias 206 Peace (MSP) National Service Projects Organization Mubarak, Gamal (*1963) 100 (NSPO) 101 Mubarak, Husni (*1928) 61, 89, 91, 93, national unity 85, 128, 174, 179 95–7, 99–101, 103 nationalism 2–4, 6, 8–10, 22, 33–45, 47–8, Muhanna, Rashad (1909–1996) 86 51–4, 62, 126, 128–9, 133, 143, Mursi, Muhammad (*1951) 75, 88, 147, 149–50, 155, 160, 169, 171, 97–100, 102–3 181, 183, 190, 192–6, 205, 208–9, musharaka 93 214–20, 222–4 Muslim appeasement in India 185, 187 cultural nationalism Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Brothers 4, and secular nationalism 34 9, 15, 18, 26, 58, 61, 69, 75–104, history of 35 149–50, 153–4, 164, 166, 169–70, nation-building 38 221 NCIPM, see New Cultural Identitarian Egypt 4, 9, 75–80, 83–104, 170 Political Movements (NCIPM) 5th congress 78, 81 NDA, see National Democratic Alliance and infitah policies 91 (NDA) and Islamic Investment Companies needs 93 material and spiritual needs 176 Draft party programme of 2007 negotiated process 175 94–5 Nehru, Jawaharlal (1889–1964) 37–8, 41, economic thought 92 131, 185–6 economic ventures 83–4 Nehruvian development policy 33 foundation 77 neo-corporatism 219 in parliament 93–4 neo-populism 216–17 labour policies 85, 99–100 New Cultural Identitarian Political relation to Nasserism 86–7 Movements (NCIPM) ix, 1, 3–11, relation to SCAF 101–2 75, 145–6, 150, 152, 154–6, relation with Sadat 90 160–61, 213–16 260 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
agrarian reform 88 Nuqrashi, al-, Mahmud Fahmi (1888–1948) agriculture, food 180 87 and business 100 Nur Party 103 and labour movement 85, 99 and marginals 190 OBC, see Other Backward Classes (OBC) and modernisation 80 objectivity 174 and moral economy 147 oil price increases 215 and NGOs 155 old middle class 16, 36, 79 and shining past 147 old privileged strata 217 coalition with state class 160 old religious establishment 152 coalitions 143, 150, 186 old ruling class 89, 143, 152, 215 decolonisation 144 openness 58, 81, 110, 161, 172–3, 181, democracy 218 214, 220 economic policies 81, 92, 102, 163, opposition against the poor 150 176, 180 opposition, opposition movements 4–5, 7, class collaboration 82 15, 17, 20, 27, 30, 35, 40–41, 45, liberalism 91 51–3, 58–9, 61, 64, 65–6, 68–9, 82, market and plan 95 90, 92–4, 98, 105, 108, 113, 118, property rights 83 132, 139, 149, 152–3, 155, 164, small-scale industry 83 171, 174, 184–9, 205 welfare 92, 176 political opposition 64, 66, 118 geography 146 religious movements 18, 21, 59, 61, history 77, 144, 164 116, 216–17 international financial support 215 organicism 19, 112, 166, 196–7 liberalisation 176 organisation 5, 19, 22, 29, 35, 46, 48–50, modern industries 180 60, 75–6, 78–9, 81, 83, 86–7, 103, moral economy 145 118, 123, 127, 133, 137, 153, 158, nationalism 169 164–6, 187, 201, 206 opposition to socialism 170 organisational structure 76 privatisation 180 origin profession 88 similarities of cultural and secular social base 76, 107 nationalists 86 effendiyya 79 Other Backward Classes (OBC) 43–6, 126, lumpen 76 129, 184 middle class 76 Ottoman Empire 18 new middle class 8, 17–18, 27–9, 35–6, 39, 43–7, 52–3, 98, 124, 145–6, 149, Pakistan ix, 36, 73, 125, 131, 136, 149, 155, 206 153, 169, 200–201, 207 new technical elites 149 Palestine, Palestinians 86, 149, 161 NGO, see Non-Governmental Organization Paradise Now 58 (NGO) parliamentary system 175 non-aligned movement 148 participation 5–9, 16, 20, 25–6, 28–9, 40, Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) 45, 72, 110, 150, 153, 164, 167, 115, 155–6, 218, 224 169, 173–4, 176, 197–8, 200, 216, norms, instead of rules 178 222 notables 18, 20–21, 25, 80, 153–4 party with a difference 131, 187, 195 NSPO, see National Service Projects Patel, Sardar (1875–1950) 131 Organization (NSPO) peaceful means 174 Index 261
Peninsula Lions 66, 68 Rashtriya Janata Party 134 Pentecostal 217 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) 10, performance 60, 65–6, 107, 137, 161, 183, 33, 37, 40, 49, 50, 52, 123, 131–9, 186, 188–9, 211, 218 184–5, 188, 193–4 petty bourgeoisie 22, 34, 36, 40, 46, 86, 91 raw material 19, 21, 97–8, 156–7, 159, urban 34, 36 207, 209–11, 215, 217, 224 pious entrepreneurs 16, 24–5, 30, 157, 211 raw material prices 207, 211, 215 pluralism 62–3, 110–11, 116–17, 128, 158, raw material rents 156–7 163, 167, 172, 174, 194 RCC, see Revolutionary Command political culture Council (RCC) Indian real economy 178 gradualism 33 realism 174, 205 political violence 39, 47–9, 53, 123 Refâh 108–9 politics of identity 183, 195 reformist 16, 21, 96, 174–5, 217 politics of performance 183 reinterpretation 112, 175 populism 114, 217 relations with the West 77, 148–9 populist socialism 170 religious minorities 42, 48 post-modernity 148 religious reform 77–8, 80 pragmatisation 102 religious revival 143, 146 pragmatism 41, 106, 109, 148, 175, 179, relinquishment 49, 51, 53 181, 185 rent vii, 2–3, 5–6, 8–10, 16–17, 19, 22–3, principles 9, 23, 61, 76, 83–4, 109, 113, 25–31, 88, 95, 97, 103, 131, 134, 124, 126, 147–8, 155, 160, 170, 144, 151, 154, 156–9, 161, 209–11, 174–6, 178, 196, 205 213–14, 218–21, 223–24 privilege and class formation 157 allocation of 46 and development 157 enclaves of 41 rentier 16, 19–20, 23, 27, 103, 178 prohibition of alcohol 180 rentier state 19, 23, 27 proletarian nation 148 rentier system 20, 178 property rights 176–7 -seeking 16, 25, 95, 209–10 prosperity 170, 174, 177, 179 rent-guerilla-violence 218 provincial notables 145 repentance 70–71 public debate 94, 175 repression 3, 24, 60–61, 68, 70, 73, 99, public property 177 107, 109 public sector 179 Republican 109, 119, 174–5 Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) Qaeda, al- 58, 66, 68, 70–72 86–8 Qandil, Hisham (*1962) 98 Rida, Rashid (1865–1935) 21, 78, 168 Qarawiyyûn, al- 169 risk 95, 110, 118, 177–8 Qutb, Sayyid (1906–1966) 85 risk sharing 178 Qyem, al-, al-islamiya 164 RSS, see Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) radicalisation 171–2 rural 18, 20–22, 28, 41–2, 77, 79, 102, radicalism 6, 43–4, 47, 49, 60, 73 106–7, 129, 133, 145, 188–90, Ramjanmabhumi campaign 43 197–8, 217 rank of membership 153 Rasheed, al-, Madawi (*1962) 57, 63, 67, Sabah, al- 64 72 Sabbiq, Sayyid (1915–2000) 87 262 The Transformation of Politicised Religion
Sachar Committee 192 shining past 77, 148 Sadat, al-, Anwar (1918–1981) 86, 89–91, shuracracy 174 93, 100–101 Singh, Jaswant (*1938) 131–2, 135–6 Sahnoun, Ahmed (1907–2003) 164–5, 167 small-scale enterprise 19, 90, 144–5, 211, Sahwa, Sahwi 69–70 217–18 Salafist Islamic Call 90 social and economic justice 16 Salafiyya, Salafists 90 social development policy 198 samajik nyaya 190 social harmony 47, 126, 188, 196, 199 Samarra Mosque 57 social justice 26, 39, 43, 80–82, 114, 147, Sangh Parivar 10, 37, 47–52, 135, 153, 170, 188, 190, 197, 199 186, 188–9, 191 social market economy 103, 219 sarva sparshi 190 social pact 23 sarva vyapi 190 social services 19–20, 78, 90, 94, 152 Saudi Arabia 57, 59, 62–3, 66–73, 89, 101 social welfare programmes 46 Saudi Afghans 59, 67, 70, 72 socio-political journey 184 Saudi Iraqis 72 Soltani, Abdellatif (1904–1983) 164–5, Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar (1883–1966) 173 40, 53, 195 South and South East Asia 216, 218 SCAF, see Supreme Council of Armed South Korea 213, 215–16, 222 Forces (SCAF) sovereignty 111, 136, 170, 174, 201, 214, scientific 26, 163, 175, 179, 197 218, 224 sect, sectarianism 50, 57, 195 spectacle 58, 67, 70, 172, 187 Shi’a, Shi’i 58, 64, 70 spiritual nationalism 195 Sunna, Sunni 57, 60, 64, 69, 72, 78, splitting into rivalling tendencies 154 116, 165, 168–9 state class vii, 16–20, 22, 24–5, 27, 29, secular nationalism 2–3, 5–6, 8, 10, 24, 26, 88–9, 93, 100, 131–2, 143–8, 35, 37–8, 42–4, 47, 53, 76, 144, 150, 153–4, 157–60, 209, 212–18, 148, 153, 206–9, 211–12, 214–15, 223–4 220, 222–4 secular 143–8, 153–4, 218 and cultural nationalism 38, 209 state failure 107, 143–4, 147, 158, 183, 218 competition with 35 state interventionism 144, 179 failure 208–9 state secularism and individual religion history 22, 206 112–13 Indian 37 state-led industrialisation 144, 206, 209, secularism 211 genuine 183 structural heterogeneity 98, 210 security crisis 173, 176 students 20–21, 23, 25, 66, 79, 90, 111, self-governance 199 116, 165, 192, 198, 217, 219 Shafe’i, al-, Hussain (1918–2005) 86 subalterns 35, 46 Shah Bano case 50, 187 sub-Saharan Africa 155, 211, 214, 216–18, Shahata, Hussain (1946–2013) 92 224 Sharif, Muhammad (1920–2004) 84 substitution 19, 49, 51–2, 88 Shatir, al-, Khairat (*1950) 96–7 Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) Sheshadri, H. R. (1926–2005) 194 96, 99, 100–101, 103 shift from identity to interest 148, 150, Supreme Council of the Armed Forces 152, 154, 156, 184, 189–90 (SCAF) 96 shining India 47 syncretism 185 Index 263
Syria viii, ix, 15, 57, 59, 67, 72 UPA, see United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Syriana 58 Upadhyaya, Deendayal (1916–1968) 38, 40, 52–3, 154, 185, 192, 195 Taiwan 213, 215, 222 upper castes 36, 43, 46, 190–91 take over by moderates 150 upward mobility 2, 19–20, 39–40, 46, 113 takfir 57 usury 82, 95, 176 Takreem 177 Uttar Pradesh 37, 42, 46, 133, 137–8, 184, Tanzimat reforms 18 190–91 technical intelligence 149 terms of trade 19, 207, 209–10, 215 veil 49, 111, 113, 116, 175, 209 terrorism, terrorists 25, 48, 58–61, 67–8, VHP, see Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) 71–2, 125, 161, 171, 187, 189–90, Vienna system 223 192–3, 201 Vietnam vii, 213, 215 Tilak, Lok Manya Balgangadhar violence 27, 37, 39, 47–9, 53, 57–60, 63, (1856–1920) 195 66–70, 73, 123, 148, 150, 160–61, Toynbee 195 173, 191–2, 218, 221 transparency 98, 103, 114, 179, 200 Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) 50, 133–4, treason 62–3, 89, 172 138–9 tribe, tribalism, tribalists 9, 42, 61, 64–6, Vivekanand, Swami (1863–1902) 195 69, 71–2, 91, 219 vote banks 188 tributary modes of production 156 trivialisation 9, 33, 47, 52–3, 102 Wafd-Party 78, 85, 92 Tunisia 8, 15, 149, 156 Wahhabiyya 57, 66–7, 69–73 waqf and habous 177, 180 UGEL, see Union Générale des Étudiants wealth 16, 82, 89, 93, 95, 99, 103, 176–8, Libres (UGEL) 197 ulama 21–3 wealth rotation 178 underdevelopment vii, 19, 148, 154, Weber, Max (1864–1920) 28, 151 159–60, 209–10, 212, 221 Western modernity 155 external causation 148, 210 world order 59, 200 underground movement 166 Wright, Lawrence (*1947) 57–60, 67, 73 unemployment 83–4, 136, 183–4, 186, 196, 201, 223–4 Yemen 20, 72 Union Générale des Étudiants Libres Young Egypt-Party 80 (UGEL) 26 United Progressive Alliance (UPA) 126–7, zakaat 180 129, 139, 183, 192, 201 Zarqawi, al-, Abu Musab (1966–2006) 71 United States 70, 100–101, 148–9, 206, Zeroual, Liamine (*1941) 27, 168 208, 212, 214 Zitûna, al- 169