Populism in India - I

India, often referred to as the world’s largest democracy, had its fair share of authoritarian style of leadership. However, the country had experienced not only forms of populism but also had populist leaders such as Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi, who had held office over many years. In India, many political parties claim to be the people’s representatives like they are “from the people, for the people and by the people” (Jaffrelot and Tillin, 2017). This claim is manifested from the names of these parties where you often find words such as Lok, Janta & Jan, which means “people”.

In this section, we characterise some of the popular phases of populism in India’s political past. The first section focuses on the 1960s and the 1970s, during which we saw the rise of Indira Gandhi from the Congress Party, who banked on her individual persona, and Charan Singh, who fostered an agrarian form of populism. In the next section, we will see the rise of Hindu nationalism. Hindu nationalism, in which the majority population in the country identifies themselves as Hindu, are to be defended from minority-appeasing authorities. In the last section, we will focus on some of the regional leaders from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, in the south of India, where language and culture were the dividing factors, and the region needs protection from the language and culture of the north.

The 1960s and 1970s

Indira Gandhi, who happens to be the daughter of the first Prime Minister of India, secured power in New Delhi by appealing to the rural electorate through her persona in a quest to evade the old leaders in the Congress party in the 1960s and 1970s. Mrs Gandhi broke the older Congress party into two factions during this period and created a new political identity. Through this, she distanced herself from senior leaders often referred to as the syndicate in 1966 (Jaffrelot and Tillin, 2017).

After the party split and during the 1971 elections, Mrs Gandhi sought to move away from the vote bank of the old party leaders by pitching her socio-economic idea directly to the people. In an address to the nation, she quoted that (Ram Singh Awana, 1988):

"The challenge posed by the present critical situation can be met only by the proper and effective implementation of our secular and socialist policies and programmes through democratic processes. Time will not wait for us. Millions who demand food, shelter and jobs are pressing for action. Power in a democracy resides in the people. That is why we have decided to go to the people and seek a fresh mandate from them"

The campaign of 1971 demonstrated a new way for politics, moving away from political parties claiming to be socialist at the leadership and exhibiting traditional practices at the ground level where local personalities ensured electoral victory (Jaffrelot and Tillin, 2017). The party’s division and the electoral triumph gave Mrs Gandhi more authority and amplified the tendency of government silencing opposition, leading to an authoritarian rule between 1975 and 1977 (Subramanian, 2007).

In the early 1970s, with the rise of Indira Gandhi authoritarianism, a surge in Gandhian philosophy gave rise to a movement by socialist parties led by Jayaprakash Narayan. The movement was to oppose the destruction of democratic values under the rule of Mrs Gandhi (Subramanian, 2007). This movement gave rise to Charan Singh of the Bharatiya Lok Dal (Indian People’s Party). His rhetoric was that he represented village/rural India against the urban elite (Jaffrelot and Tillin, 2017). 

Charan Singh aim was to shift India’s priorities from urbanisation to agriculture. So as to instrument a rural-focused economic policy, he argued to solve the challenges of the agrarian population, the sons of farmers should run the administration as only they would understand the life of a peasant (Charan Singh, 1986). Charan Singh was a populist leader not only because he defied the system (which was urban focused) for the real people (agrarian rural), but also because he claimed to represent the real people. But, in reality, his actions mostly symbolised the wealthy farmers who possessed lands and abused the landless farmers (Christophe Jaffrelot, 2018). Charan Singh was in power briefly from 1977 to 1979, after which Indira Gandhi again took control back in 1980.

The Hindu nationalism in the 1980s and 1990s

The populist thinking of both Indira Gandhi and Charan Singh focused mainly on the socio-economic line, where both gathered support across caste, class and religion against the existing status quo. However, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, a Hindutva version of populism started to gain prominence on the other end of the political spectrum.

The idea of Hindu nationalism stems from the notion that the Hindu, the religious majority, owns India as a country in principle, and the non-Hindus or the minorities are second-grade citizens of the country and that Hindus enjoy greater privileges socially, politically and legally (Varshney, Ayyangar and Swaminathan, 2021). Hindu nationalism has its roots going back to the 1920s when VD. Savarkar authored Hindutva, who is a Hindu, in which he stated that “the Indian nation is coterminous with the Hindu majority”. He further said people should practice other religious traditions (Christianity and Islam) in private and in public spaces must adhere to Hindu deities and customs (Jaffrelot and Tillin, 2017).

Savarkar’s ideology gave rise to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which translates to National Volunteer Organisation, in 1925, where at their grassroot centres, many thousand locals inculcate Hindutva ideology along with martial training (McDonnell and Cabrera, 2018).

The RSS is the ideological wing of the current government of India by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Mr Narendra Modi. The BJP came into existence in 1980, and around the same time, violence broke between the Hindu and Muslim communities. This unlocked an opportunity for the BJP to pitch the Hindutva ideology and draw voters from the Hindu majority (Calléja, 2020).

BJPs growth accelerated in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the Ayodhya issue. Ayodhya is a holy city and considered the birthplace of Lord Ram, the Hindutva organisations demanded, claiming it was right of the Hindus, a temple at the site of Babri Masjid (mosque). BJPs L K Advani was the prominent leader of the movement. However, in 1992, the Hindu nationals destroyed the Babri Masjid, which led to the polarisation of Hindu and Muslim communities (Jaffrelot and Tillin, 2017). Around the same time, rising corruption among the political privileged and government inefficiency favoured the BJP (Hajdari, 2018).

This populism is unlike the previous as here the Hindus become “the real people”, unlike the poor of the agrarians. The fight is not against the elites or the privileged or the urban rich but other religious establishments and cultural elites who spoke for secularism and against the idea of the Hindu identity of the country (Jaffrelot and Tillin, 2017).

Regional Populism

In the south of India, the third variety of populism was on the rise in which culture and language was the base to influence people within an explicit regional backdrop. In Tamil Nadu, the Dravidian identity of the Tamil speaking people wanted to distinguish themselves from the Sanskrit identity of the north (Jaffrelot and Tillin, 2017).

In 1949, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) formed from the Dravidian movement. The DMK started as a Nationalist party seeking a separate Dravida Nadu (State for Dravidians) and late shaped itself as a populist outfit (Wyatt, 2013). The movement took a giant leap in the 1960s when the National government tried to impose Hindi as a national language, anti-Hindi demonstrations forced the National government to give up the plans (Varshney, Ayyangar and Swaminathan, 2021). The food shortage of 1965 and the language strike of 1966 facilitated DMK coming into power in 1967 (Swamy, 2019).

In 1972, DMK split, and a new political party Anna DMK (ADMK), was formed by a film star politician M G Ramachandran (MGR). ADMK took a stance on paternalistic populism where it enticed the state’s poor and less educated population. Unlike DMK’s empowerment populism which focused more on language, culture and protection against outsiders (Jaffrelot and Tillin, 2017). ADMK first won elections in the year 1977 and continued to be in power till 1989. Since then, both ADMK and DMK have continued to govern the state alternatively.

Similar to MGR, in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh, a new regional party, Telugu Desam Party (TDP), was formed in 1983 by a local film actor, N T Rama Rao (NTR), a famous name across the state. He announced himself as the saviour of the Telugu language and the region from the corrupt and elite politicians of the Congress Party (Jaffrelot and Tillin, 2017). Over the years, several film stars of the south, to name a few, Shivaji Ganesan, Rajinikanth, Sharath Kumar, Vijayakanth, and Chiranjeevi, entered politics. Still, none could match the success of NTR and MGR.

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