Hindutva cannot produce economic growth

It’s now fashionable to say that there are “two Indias”, but in Hindutva electoral politics, there really are two Indias: There is an India that votes for Hindu nationalists because they seek muscular Hindu supremacy, and there is an India that votes for them because they seek economic growth under a muscular government.

The former India has cause to feel justifiably happy. The latter India will continue to pay for its naivete. India’s economic growth rate was already plumbing a low even before the pandemic. In January 2020, India’s GDP had recorded the lowest nominal growth rate in 42 years. Demonetisation had ruined the informal sector and a messy GST had flayed the formal sector. Sneakily passed reforms had to be inevitably rolled back.

For years, analysts have been lashing out at incompetent policymaking. But even if Hindutva perfected the art of economic policy, it simply can’t deliver. Using inherently divisive religious nationalism to produce economic growth is like using the timber industry to increase the population of trees.

Sample the narratives spawned by Hindutva politics: Among other things, Muslims stand accused of contriving to overhaul the Hindu majority by “breeding like rabbits”, converting unsuspecting Hindu girls through “love jihad”, and populating the government through “UPSC jihad”.

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When you begin suspecting someone of treason for their identity, it impacts that person’s ability to be a productive part of your economy. Just this month, villagers came together in Chhattisgarh to take an oath to boycott Muslims. The villagers pledged not to buy goods from Muslim shopkeepers, sell or rent land to Muslims, or work for a Muslim employer.

Anybody who reads this newspaper will know that this was no hollow oath. Last year, a popular Muslim-owned dosa joint in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura was vandalised by a mob. A Muslim-owned chicken shop in Karnataka’s Belagavi was also vandalised. A Muslim meat-seller in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad was mercilessly thrashed.

Economic exclusion is not confined only to street-vendors. An affluent journalist friend recently related to me that her sister could not procure a loan of Rs 45 lakh to pursue graduate studies at a leading British university, despite offering property worth Rs 2 crore as collateral and furnishing all necessary documents. Her uncle – a bank officer – suggested that her Muslim name had played a role in the loan rejection.

Also read: Has BJP's Hindutva citadel cracked in Uttar Pradesh?

A couple of years ago, an uncle narrated that he was struggling to rent an apartment in a “Brahmin-dominated” neighbourhood in Chennai, despite being able to afford it comfortably. The controversial case of Ankhi Das at Facebook and the detention of young engineers behind the Bulli Bai app show how prevalent Islamophobia already is in the tech world.

These aren’t mere anecdotes. A study by the Economic Times some years ago found that Muslims make up less than 3% of executives in India’s top 500 corporate firms. According to the Labour Force Survey of 2017-18, only 21% of Muslim workers enjoyed salaried jobs (that for Hindu high-caste workers, it was 33%). In 2019, a study by Delhi-based think-tank Common Cause found that half of the police personnel surveyed showed anti-Muslim bias, making them less likely to intervene to stop crimes against Muslims (or their businesses).

Hindutva is betting that it can somehow make India the first country in human history to become an economic powerhouse while actively excluding close to a fifth of its population – or 200 million people – from productive economic activity.

Politicians tend to promise the sky. But you’d think that the well-read and educated middle-class would know better.