Saffron Exegetist

FOR 33-year-old Christophe Jaffrelot, India poses an unprecedented challenge to accepted categories of political theory. Here there's democracy without individualism; ancient categories like 'caste' double as modern 'lobbies'; doctrines of social reform don't mean takeover of state power as they do in the West and popular distrust of formal politics strengthens, rather than weakens, Indian democracy.

 A student of Oriental philosophy at the Sorbonne, Jaffrelot first came to India at the age of 17. "Like so many before me, I became excited by the interaction between India and the West." Now, almost fluent in Hindi, on first-name terms with many politicians, he's written three books on Indian politics and is recognised as an international authority on Hindutva. "The British left behind a system in India, and despite all odds, that system continues to work. But it works in its own way and sets its own rules, like nowhere else in the world."

 His first book—The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India—was published last year by Penguin and has been acclaimed as the most systematic study on Hindu nationalism so far. Historian Tanika Sarkar calls it a "very solid, extremely well-researched" work. David Taylor, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, called it excellent, while Walter Andersen, author of The Brotherhood in Saffron, described Jaffrelot's book as the best work on Hindutva so far. Based on extensive field-work in Madhya Pradesh—"people forget that 'madhya bharat' was the stronghold of the old Jana Sangh"—Jaffrelot explores the BJP's quest for an identity and the delicate balancing act it has to perform between the need to grow in numbers without diluting its core ideology.

K.R. Malkani recently asked him if he was overly critical of the BJP. Indeed, Jaffrelot's is a search for contradictions, for the chinks in the theoretical armour, for the local fact that qualifies national rhetoric. "While travelling in MP and UP, I came across BJP members who had a limited awareness of the RSS; Dalits within the party preferred to display portraits of Gandhi and Ambedkar rather than of Golwalkar. The BJP's 'san-gathanist' identity, according to Jaffrelot, is in constant conflict with its need to 'ver-nacularise' and find local allies, a dilemma which he explores in his second book, BJP: The Compulsions of Politics, to be published by Oxford University Press.

 Jaffrelot's interest in the rise of Hindu nationalism grew out of his studies in Hindu philosophy, but the two are quite separate, he insists. "The BJP has nothing to do with Hindu philosophy but is a political party which uses ethnic nationalism in order to gain power." It's not fascist, but relies on the creation of an 'alien Other' for its survival. It's xenophobic, but probably realises that in India you have to be a Congress-type umbrella coalition in order to expand. Jaffrelot himself belongs firmly to the intellectual tradition of the French Left and says his interest in the BJP stems from his broader interest in 'ethnic' and 'universalist' theories of nationalism.

In his latest book Democracy in India, due to be published next year, Jaffrelot explores two political cultures in India which he feels strengthen Indian pluralism and resist the emergence of authoritarianism. "The popular distrust of formal politics means that absolute power may not ever be possible in India. Also, the constant infighting between the supreme ruler's lieutenants—a central feature in all India's ruling dynasties is "kshatriya strife" or "fitna"—means that whoever is king of India will always be a threatened, rather than an absolute, king. The very volatility of politics is a safeguard against dictatorship," he says.

Jaffrelot has visited India every year since 1980, from his home and in Versailles where he lives with his wife and two sons. He teaches at the Institute of Political Science in Paris and is more hopeful now than ever about the future. "The transformation of caste into an interest group is a very good thing for Indian democracy," he says.