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Workers and the Right Wing: the Situation in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2018

Smriti Upadhyay
Smriti Upadhyay*
Affiliation:
Johns Hopkins University
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Abstract

Why and how does a right-wing social movement mobilize workers along class lines? The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the labor wing of the Hindu nationalist movement in India, marshals working-class support by emphasizing workers’ class positions and identities. Following Gramsci, I argue that the BMS represents the Hindu right's recognition of workers’ class power and is thus key to the Hindu Right's efforts to incorporate workers into hegemonic capitalist social relations. The form that right-wing activity takes depends on the histories of working-class mobilization and the class power of workers. Thus, right-wing actors do not exclusively dictate the terms of the engagement with workers, but workers also exercise agency in shaping and contesting this interaction.

Type
Workers and the Radical Right
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 93: Workers and Right-Wing Politics , Spring 2018 , pp. 79 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2018 

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References

NOTES

1. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 193.

2. Corbridge and Harriss, Reinventing India; Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India; Varshney, “Mass Politics or Elite Politics? India's Economic Reforms in Comparative Perspective”; Hansen, The Saffron Wave; Rajagopal, Politics after Television; Jaffrelot, Religion, Caste, and Politics in India.

3. Jaffrelot, “Hindu Nationalism and the Social Welfare Strategy: Seva Bharati as an Education Agency”; Chidambaram, “The ‘Right’ Kind of Welfare: Seva vs. Patronage in South India's Urban Slums”; Thachil, Elite Parties, Poor Voters; Bhattacharjee, “Sevā, Hindutva, and the Politics of Post-Earthquake Relief and Reconstruction in Rural Kutch.”

4. Wright, “Working-Class Power, Capitalist-Class Interests, and Class Compromise”; Silver, Forces of Labor; Heller, The Labor of Development; Agarwala, Informal Labor, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India.

5. Burawoy, The Politics of Production also; Heller, The Labor of Development. Burawoy (126) describes a hegemonic regime as one “in which consent prevails (although never to the exclusion of coercion),” while despotic regimes are characterized in the opposite manner: “coercion prevails over consent.” Burawoy's conceptualization of hegemonic and despotic social relations also accounts for variation in the processes of proletarianization and state characteristics. Heller subsequently develops these concepts in the Indian context and highlights the role of the labor movement in shaping hegemonic class relations in Kerala.

6. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks; see also Femia, Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process.

7. I draw on the theoretical formulation of political articulation in Leon, Desai, and Tuğal, Building Blocs. I borrow from their definition of political articulation as the “process by which parties [or civil society actors like labor unions] ‘suture’ together coherent blocs and cleavages from a disparate set of constituencies and individuals, who even, by virtue of sharing circumstances may not necessarily share the same political identity.”

8. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks; Anderson, “The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci.”

9. Breman, The Making and Unmaking of an Industrial Working Class; Shah, “Middle Class Politics: Case of Anti-Reservation Agitations in Gujarat.”

10. Arrighi and Silver, Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System; Silver and Slater, “The Social Origins of World Hegemonies.”

11. Patel, The Making of Industrial Relations: The Ahmedabad Textile Industry, 1918–1939.

12. Heller, The Labor of Development; Chibber, “From Class Compromise to Class Accomodation: Labor's Incorporation into the Indian Political Economy”; Desai, State Formation and Radical Democracy in India.

13. Nossiter, Communism in Kerala; Franke and Chasin, Kerala: Radical Reform as Development in an Indian State; Chiriyankandath, “Hindu Nationalism and Regional Political Culture in India”; see also Jayaprasad, RSS and Hindu Nationalism: Inroads in a Leftist Stronghold; Engineer, “Communalism and Communal Violence,” 1997 for early indications of a slow growth of Hindu nationalism in Kerala.

14. Patel, The Making of Industrial Relations: The Ahmedabad Textile Industry, 1918–1939.

15. Gandhi, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi XIV (October 1917–July 1918).

16. Sarkar, Beyond Nationalist Frames, 260.

17. Sarkar, Beyond Nationalist Frames.

18. Golwalkar, A Bunch of Thoughts, 172.

19. Andersen and Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism.

20. Curran, Militant Hinduism in Indian Politics: A Study of the RSS.

21. Andersen and Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism.

22. Andersen and Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism.

23. Golwalkar, A Bunch of Thoughts, 519.

24. Interview, RSS district leaders in Alappuzha and Kannur, Kerala, May and June 2016.

25. Andersen and Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism.

26. Andersen and Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism.

27. Andersen and Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism.

28. Thachil, Elite Parties, Poor Voters.

29. See Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics, 170.

30. Andersen and Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism.

31. Thengadi, Why Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, 69.

32. Thengadi, Why Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, 69–73.

33. Interview, BMS district leader, Vadodara, April 2016.

34. Interview, BMS national executive, New Delhi, India, March 2016.

35. Andersen and Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism; Saxena, “The Hindu Trade Union Movement in India: The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh.”

36. BMS, “General Secretary Report 18th Triennial All India Conference,” 17.

37. GOI, “Trade Union Verification.” These 5 are, in addition to the BMS, the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), Hind Mazdoor Sabha (HMS), Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), and All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC).

38. GOI. According to the most recent verification (conducted in 2002), the BMS in Gujarat represented sixty-three percent of the total workforce unionized in the five major central trade union organizations (CTUOs). See above.

39. Membership figures which detail informal versus formal members are very difficult to obtain. Several BMS leaders reported to me that because the Communist-affiliated unions are dominant in the formal sector, there is more room for them to grow in the informal sector. Perhaps most important from the perspective of mobilization strategies, however, is that the BMS in Kerala is certainly placing all of its organizing energies in the informal sector.

40. For further details on the history and functioning of labor boards in India, see Chapter 2 in Agarwala, Informal Labor, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India.

41. Kannan, “The Welfare Fund Model of Social Security for Informal Sector Workers: The Kerala Experience.”

42. Interview, BMS district leader, Kannur district, May 2017.

43. Interview, BMS district leader, Vadodara, Gujarat, August 2013.

44. kamane wala khayega!.

45. ibid.

46. BMS office visit, Vadodara Gujarat 2016.

47. Interview, BMS leader, Kozhikode, Kerala, June 2017.

48. Interview, RSS leader, Alappuzha, Kerala May 2017.