To no one's surprise, the BJP's top leadership at the state and central level has hailed the party's victory in Gujarat as a vindication of 'Hindutva'. Members of both organisations have convinced themselves that the way to victory in five state elections in 2003, and in the parliamentary elections in 2004, lies through ramming the Togadia-Modi version of Hindu dominance down the throats of the rest of the country. All of them have noticed the polarisation that occurred in Gujarat, in which half of the non-Congress and non-BJP voters forsook their normal moorings and opted in about equal numbers for secularism versus Hindutva. The 5 per cent this added to the BJP vote gave it its landslide win in Gujarat. They are, therefore, convinced that all they have to do to win in Delhi, Rajasthan, MP, Chhattisgarh and elsewhere is repeat the Gujarat formula. When forced to choose between 'Hinduism' and that wishy-washy intellectual notion, 'secularism', the 'Hindu' voter can only go one way.
So great is the euphoria in the party that most of its members have stopped asking themselves that crucial question: if they go gung-ho on Hindutva, will the NDA coalition hold? The mood today is that the BJP can make it on its own, and it is up to the other NDA members to decide if they wish to tag along. Most, party strategists reason, face the Congress in their home states and will thus have no option but to do so. They may well prove right. But is anyone thinking of the price India will have to pay if the VHP's version of Hindutva were to become the dominant philosophy of the ruling coalition at the Centre?
What India will forsake are all the benefits, domestic and international, of being a secular democracy. Let us tally these. The first and most obvious is its moral right to hold on to Kashmir. Ninety-nine per cent of the present population of the Valley are Muslims. If the mori poll carried out in April is any measure, at most 12 per cent of them said they wanted to belong to Pakistan. The reason was that no matter what reservations they had about India, they felt a bedrock security in a secular state that left religion well and truly out of the public sphere. They knew that Pakistan had made not only Islam, but an Islam that was very different from that of Kashmir, the central prop of its polity. Their distaste for this was reflected in the vote, either for India or implicitly for independence (in effect, within the Indian sphere of influence), that they cast in the poll. Their entire reason for making either of these choices will disappear once Hindu religious dominance becomes a part of public policy in India as Muslim religious dominance is in Pakistan. India and Pakistan will then be on exactly the same footing for Kashmiris and they will be far closer to Pakistan than India. In short, from the moment VHP Hindutva triumphs in Delhi, the only way to retain Kashmir will be through unending war.
A closely associated loss of the moral high ground will be in relation to the Islamic fundamentalists. At present, they are attacking a secular society. Their crusade will be vindicated the moment the VHP's raths start criss-crossing northern India. India may then find it a good deal harder to rally international support on terrorism. For, notwithstanding resolution 1372 of the UN Security Council, every government continues to distinguish in practice between terrorism and violence in search of freedom from persecution.
A second area Delhi will lose its moral hegemony is the tribal, predominantly Christian, Northeast. Much of this area is already in the grip of insurrection.If minority-bashing becomes an accepted mode of political mobilisation, then why should they want to remain a part of India? Wouldn't they be far better off with their ethnically-related kinfolk in China? Would it not be better to belong to the well-governed, second largest industrial power in the world than to be a neglected part of a ramshackle third world religious autocracy? Here too, the only way to guard India's territorial integrity will be through unending war.
The most important loss will be one that is least immediately tangible. This is that India will be catapulted from among the ranks of the modern states into those of the atavistic and ultimately rogue states. This distinction is not simply one manufactured by the US to suit its convenience. Behind it lies a global consensus on the direction in which the world is evolving and the willingness of states to be a part of, or to resist, this evolution. It does not need to be stressed that the world is evolving towards greater and greater economic, political and cultural interdependence. This needs, indeed is forcing, a greater political conformity between all nations that are a part of the process. That conformity centres around secularism and democracy. The lone standouts from this process are the Islamic fundamentalists. It is, then, hardly surprising that with one exception—North Korea—the only rogue states in the world are Islamic states.
Does the BJP want India to join them? For, that is what it will do if it continues to use religious confrontation for short-sighted political ends. India will slowly become a pariah. Some early flyers have appeared. Non-nri tourists, especially the high-end ones, have almost completely stopped coming in. Foreign investors are showing no interest whatever in the non-IT services sector. The next step will be when IT-related investment also forsakes India for China.
To sum up, Hindutva offers a future of economic stagnation with no jobs for its youth, global isolation and unending internal war. Since all these problems will arise from the unresolved contradictions of the north, one day in the not too distant future, the south will secede from the country. That will mean still more war. In the end, Bharatvarsha will be re-established in the north and Hindutva will, like the Sikhs in Punjab, at last find its truncated homeland.