Introduction
In India, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) has been engaged in the mobilization of workers under the banner of Hindu nationalism for decades. This is an important, but hitherto understudied form of extra-parliamentary marshaling of working-class support which takes place prior to, and independent of, what Gramsci famously called the “final ceremony” of counting votes.Footnote 1
A study of the BMS allows us to examine the historical dynamics that shaped right-wing ascendancy because we direct our attention to the political work the Hindu Right undertakes before workers (and other constituents) cast their ballots. By doing so, a set of slow and sometimes subtle right-wing strategies and tactics to garner working-class support becomes visible, even when this mobilization does not translate immediately to electoral victories. While there is a growing recognition—both in scholarship and in right-wing strategy—that material conditions and economic injustices matter, there are few studies that have focused on the labor movement as a site of right-wing political activity.
To the extent that it seeks legitimacy among its base, the BMS must emphasize rather than solely deflect attention from class interests. The BMS, in other words, must straddle two contradictory political forces. As a union, it is part of the Indian labor movement, which claims to represent working-class interests and struggles to fulfill them. It is also, however, an organization affiliated with the Hindu nationalist movement, and thus it must represent the interests of its working-class base within the larger cross-class project of Hindu nationalism.
An extensive body of research details the spread of Hindu nationalism in India since the early twentieth century. Early scholarship focused on the elite character of the movement and highlighted the important role of ethno-religious mobilization as a way to garner popular electoral support.Footnote 2 With the growing prominence of Hindu nationalism in regions and among groups outside of its narrow, Northern Indian, upper-caste base, scholars turned to the question of how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) amassed widespread support among the poor when it aggressively pursued an economic agenda that benefits an increasingly smaller section of Indian society. This research has shed light on the provision of welfare, disaster relief, and other forms of social service by the extra-parliamentary wings of the Hindu nationalist movement as a central component of the BJP electoral strategy.Footnote 3
These studies give some insight on the right wing's engagement with workers given that they are certainly a segment of the large and ambiguous category of “the poor,” “disadvantaged,” or “the subaltern.” Yet, without a focus on class as an analytical category, we lose sight of important dynamics that may shape the nature and consequences of a right-wing presence among workers. It is indeed puzzling that given the elite nature of the broader Hindu nationalist movement, the Hindu Right also organizes workers within the auspices of a labor union when it can, and does reach these individuals in other ways.
Based on fieldwork conducted in India between 2014 and 2017, I argue that the BMS reflects the Hindu Right's recognition of the class power of workers. As a labor union, it provides a vehicle for the Hindu Right to rein in both the economic and political power of workersFootnote 4 for the projects of capitalist development and Hindu nationalism. I argue that it does this in two ways. First, the BMS organizes the consent and cooperation of workers, and thus plays an important role in the production of “hegemonic capitalist social relations.”Footnote 5 In this way, the BMS, like other unions, acts as an agent of class compromise.Footnote 6 Second, as the labor wing of the Hindu nationalist movement, the BMS also seeks to universalize the elite caste and class interests embodied within this ethno-religious cross-class project.
The BMS pursues this strategy by attempting to oversee material redistribution, but also by recognizing, albeit only partially, the autonomy of workers’ class interests. In doing so, it seeks to “articulate”Footnote 7 the class and Hindu nationalist identity of the worker as both an input in economic production and an agent of (Hindu) national development. The form that this recognition of workers’ class power takes depends on the political economic context and local histories of working class mobilization. Thus, it is not only the right wing that dictates the terms of the engagement with the working class; workers also have a role to play in shaping this interaction.
In arguing that the Hindu Right tries to establish hegemonic social relations with regards to workers, I seek to illuminate an important, but partial, set of dynamics that can help us understand why and how the rightwing can claim to represent the class interests of workers, as well as the limits and tensions in these efforts. Hegemony does not only consist of the “soft” dimension of producing workers’ consent to their exploitation. Coercion can also become closely intertwined with hegemonic strategies.Footnote 8 As late twentieth-century Indian history reminds us, deploying tactics of violence and antagonizing ethno-religious minorities and marginalized caste groups also form an important part of the Hindu Right's engagement with workers.Footnote 9 Because hegemonic strategies are temporally and spatially limited in their stability,Footnote 10 it is also important to examine the potential tensions that may give way to more coercive and violent mobilization strategies by right wing actors.
In what follows, I illustrate the various methods by which the Hindu Right wing attempts to consolidate hegemony through the BMS in two Indian states: Gujarat and Kerala. Gujarat has since the early 1920s earned a reputation for being a “conspicuous model of peace … distinguished by the rarity of strikes and lockouts,”Footnote 11 whereas Kerala has a well-documented history of militant worker struggles.Footnote 12 Gujarat is a fertile ground for the Hindu right wing, while Kerala appears to be a nearly impenetrable site for political Right.Footnote 13
Yet, workers in both sites derive power from the fact that their states have become the namesakes for two different “models” of development in India. Gujarat is the poster-child for high-profit, manufacturing-led development with abundant state incentives for capitalist investment. Kerala is the model for impressive human development under the auspices of a redistributive state, but with relatively stagnant growth.
The different historical traditions of worker mobilization in Gujarat and Kerala play an important role in shaping the strategies of the BMS. While grassroots peasant and workers’ movements in the twentieth century forged a tradition of militancy and radicalism in Kerala, Gujarat was the home of Mohandas Gandhi's “Ahmedabad Experiment,” which served as the early prototype for India's post-independence industrial relations regime. In Ahmedabad's booming textile industry, Gandhi institutionalized industrial dispute resolution within a framework of class conciliation. Rejecting worker militancy and direct action, Gandhi pursued cooperation between labor and capital.Footnote 14 This was accompanied by a Gandhian code of conduct, which stressed worker industriousness and discipline as key components of national development.Footnote 15 When class conflicts did occur, they were to be addressed not through confrontation that might disrupt production, but rather through legal arbitration.
In Gujarat, the BMS's strategy is part of the Hindu Right's attempt to reproduce the fairly stable class relations that have undergirded both projects of rapid capitalist development and nationalism (both ostensibly secular and religious variants) since the early twentieth century. In Kerala, by contrast, where neither Hindu nationalism nor neoliberal capitalist development are as entrenched as they are in Gujarat, the BMS's interactions with workers reflects attempts by the Hindu right to produce—rather than merely reproduce—the hegemonic class relations that bolster both capitalist development and Hindu nationalism. In this sense, in Gujarat and Kerala, we can observe how the BMS can take on different roles—“caretaker” or “midwife”—within the closely imbricated projects of capitalist development and Hindu nationalism.
The article begins with an overview of the Hindu Right's engagement with workers in the twentieth century. It then details aspects of the BMS's ideology, growth trajectory, and position within the Indian labor movement, before turning to the union's presence in Gujarat and Kerala. Drawing on fieldwork collected in both states between 2013 and 2017, I illustrate how in Gujarat, where the Hindu nationalist movement is the dominant social and political actor, the BMS spends less effort trying to broaden its membership base and instead nurtures stable class relations between industrial workers and capitalists. The BMS tries to reproduce the conditions for stable and hegemonic capitalist development and Hindu nationalism by trying to dissuade its members from disrupting production, but also by acknowledging workers’ power by emphasizing their role as agents of national development. In Kerala, where the BMS is still a marginal social and political force and where the labor movement has a tradition of encouraging workers’ direct action, the Hindu right seeks less to discipline its base, but rather acknowledges that militancy represents an important and well-established means for workers to demonstrate their class power. The BMS in Kerala further acknowledges the salience of working-class organizations by actively trying to mobilize workers to join the BMS and overseeing the provision of benefits through existing labor welfare schemes.
Workers and the Right Wing in India
Elite Ethos of Early Twentieth-Century Hindu Nationalism
Men from a small group of elites from high caste Brahmin communities in Maharashtra were the first to articulate the ideology and organizational form that Hindu nationalism would take in the early twentieth century. These developments were a response to intensified Hindu-Muslim conflicts and the heightened political assertion of Indian Muslims, who were brought into the mainstream of the nationalist movement when Gandhi endorsed their protest against the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.
Historian Sumit Sarkar suggests that the Hindu nationalist movement also reflected an uneasiness among elite Hindus that their power and status was being eroded by lower castes, Dalits and workers. In the Maharashtrian city of Nagpur, a center of early Hindu nationalist activity, Sarkar writes that “the Muslims there were a small, and … very nervous and terror-stricken community. But Mahars—the community of [Dalit leader] Ambedkar—constituted one-sixth of the population of Nagpur and 40% of the city's textile workers.”Footnote 16 Sarkar argues that Hindu nationalism, specifically the idea of Hindutva (Hinduness), offered these early leaders a platform for displacing the heightened lower caste and class militancy of the 1920s by unifying Hindus against perceived Muslim threats.Footnote 17
In 1925, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, also a Maharashtrian Brahmin, founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, or National Volunteer Corps) to instill in Hindus a “burning devotion for Bharat and its national ethos.”Footnote 18 This was to be carried out throughout India in local shakhas, or branches of the movement, which would serve as the basic building block of Hindu nationalism and a fundamental site of solidarity building.
Officially, shakhas set no bar to entry based on caste or class. Rather, as part of the effort to construct and fortify a community of Hindus across class, caste, and linguistic divides, the organization and activities of each shakha were to be uniform regardless of where it was established. To build and strengthen Hindu national identity, shakhas would offer young men physical training (including military-style combat), immersion in Hindu nationalist ideology, and exposure to a culture of patriotism. These activities are based on the Hindu concept of samskar, which loosely translates as techniques for character building and self-improvement traditionally upheld in Brahmin communities.Footnote 19
By the 1950s, the geographical reach of the RSS had spread from its Maharashtrian cradle in western India, but was still confined to the Hindi-speaking regions of North India.Footnote 20 In both places, small business owners made up the core of the RSS's base. University students, white-collar employees, and to a lesser extent, professionals and prominent industrialists attracted by the movement's rejection of Communism were also represented among the ranks of RSS volunteers (Swayamsevak) and leaders.Footnote 21 However, in the North, the RSS had more success in drawing in youths from lower castes than they did in Maharashtra.Footnote 22
The leadership of the RSS was well aware that the bulk of its membership came from the upper strata of Indian society. In response to claims that the RSS's work was confined to the elite, RSS head M.S. Golwalkar conceded that “all work begins with the educated class,” but argued that it eventually will embrace “every section, howsoever unfortunate or weak it may be.”Footnote 23
Regional histories of the RSS suggest that this was in fact a strategy, and not only a rhetorical defense of Hindu nationalist leaders. In Kerala, for instance, in many of the state's districts, the RSS first took root among elite caste and class communities, attracting mostly members of professional families, factory owners, and businessmen, as well as Hindu religious leaders. Once it was firmly planted in these circles, RSS leaders tried to establish a presence in lower caste and working-class communities.Footnote 24
Towards the Toiling Masses
The RSS's relief work and involvement in basic welfare provision has historically been an important arena of contact with subaltern groups. In its early years, the RSS targeted Hindus in their welfare efforts, which were not necessarily confined only to the poor. For instance, after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, the RSS actively worked in refugee settlements in Delhi to assist those who had fled Pakistan with shelter, clothing, and livelihood opportunities.Footnote 25
In 1977, the RSS amped up its welfare and relief activities among lower caste groups and the poor in both urban and rural areas. The RSS's work in a cyclone-hit region of southeastern India became a model for development and reconstruction work elsewhere. In 1978, a village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh was selected as the site for a large-scale development project, which included irrigation facilities, small-scale industries, producer cooperatives, schools, and clinics.Footnote 26 The stated objectives of this project were to achieve full-employment and a guaranteed minimum income.Footnote 27
Scholars have argued that the Hindu Right's contemporary embrace of welfare has been facilitated by retrenched state spending under neoliberalism and motivated by the compulsion to win poor votes. Moreover, they find that while lower caste groups in urban slums or tribal groups in rural areas may vote for the BJP in exchange for the welfare provided by RSS outfits, this is not necessarily indicative of an ideological commitment to Hindu nationalism.Footnote 28 This brief history reveals, however, an understanding on the part of the RSS and its affiliates that welfare provision plays an important role in building legitimacy and ideological inculcation, even if it does not immediately translate into electoral victories.
The BMS Enters the Scene
In 1955, Dattopant Thengadi, also a Brahmin from Maharashtra, was tasked with the formation of a labor union that would maintain “national integrity and keep [workers] aloof from the un-Indian tendencies of Capitalism and Communism.”Footnote 29 Thus the BMS was formed.
Thengadi had made a life-long commitment to the RSS, but was well acquainted with both Left politics and the labor movement. In the early 1950s, he had served a yearlong stint as the organizing secretary of the Congress-affiliated Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) in Madhya Pradesh. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that Thengadi had experienced firsthand India's most widespread, entrenched, and militant Left politics as a young pracharak (full-time RSS activist or “preacher”) when he traveled to Kerala in 1942 to begin the RSS's activities there.
A small group of BMS leaders, nearly all of them from the RSS, worked to establish the union across the country. Between 1963 and 1969, according to the BMS, its membership grew from 30,000 to over 450,000, mostly among white-collar workers, and like its sister Hindu nationalist organizations, mostly in the Hindi-speaking region of North India.Footnote 30
The BMS's Hindu nationalism is reflected in its symbols and slogans. The union's flag is saffron in color, and like the robes donned by Hindu ascetics, is meant to represent sacrifice and selflessness, according to its leaders. The flag also contains an industrial wheel and a human fist holding crops, the Hindu nationalist analog to the worker-peasant unity symbolized by the hammer and the sickle.
The divine figurehead of the BMS is Vishwakarma, a character in Vedic mythology taken to be the “origin of all laboring and industrial classes … the builder of the earth as well as of Heaven.”Footnote 31 For Thengadi, Vishwakarma was more than a mere laborer. He was a devoted Hindu patriot who was asked by Lord Indra to manufacture a weapon to kill his own son, Vritra, who posed a threat to the kingdom of the gods. In this predicament, Viswhakarma offered “sincere cooperation … for the sake of the nation” and willingly sacrificed his son's life by producing the weapon.Footnote 32
Inspired by this story, the BMS rallying cry, “tyag, tapasya aur balidan!,” asks workers to place the sacred commitment to the progress and preservation of the nation before their mundane and “narrow” class interests. Indeed, in this doctrine of sacrifice it is possible to see how the BMS tries to articulate the class identities of their members (who like Vishwakarma produce for the nation) with their identities as committed Hindu nationals (who like Vishwakarma should sacrifice their individual interests for the nation). BMS leaders proudly proclaim that during the Indo-China war of 1962, when many Communist Party–affiliated unions decided to go on strike, BMS workers not only refrained from disrupting the economy in a time of need, “but [they] gave more production!”Footnote 33
Many in the labor movement and on the Left in India chide the BMS for not participating in national strikes to protest the dismantling of protective labor legislation by the current BJP government. After it refrained from participating in the 2016 All-India General Strike, the BMS was criticized for being subservient to the ruling BJP. Union leaders, however, assert that they did not participate in the strike because “the government answered most of our demands.”Footnote 34 Yet, the BMS was indeed more active in general strikes before the BJP came to power in 2014. Much before the meteoric rise of the BJP in the early 1990s, BMS activism was perhaps at its peak in the 1970s, when it participated in the 1974 general strike, and later as part of the opposition to Indira Gandhi's declaration of National Emergency from 1975 to 1977.Footnote 35
According to government data, in 2002, BMS membership stood at over 6.2 million. The latest membership verification (for 2011) is ongoing, but the BMS claims to have a membership of over seventeen million spread across thirty-seven states and fifty-five industries all over India.Footnote 36 At the national level, the BMS surpassed INTUC in terms of members in the late 1980s. In 1980, it represented close to twenty-nine percent of the membership base of the five major central trade union organizations (CTUOs) in India. By 2002, this share had increased to thirty-two percent.Footnote 37
From Caretaker to Midwife: the BMS in Gujarat and Kerala
The BMS is the largest of the major central trade union organizations in the state of Gujarat.Footnote 38 Yet, relative to the efforts of their counterparts in Kerala, union leaders in Gujarat spend very little effort to mobilize workers to join the union. Rather, it is workers who typically approach the BMS based on their evaluation of its performance in neighboring factories. Once a local unit registers with the BMS, union leaders rarely come into contact with the rank-and-file. Union leaders interact mostly with the small group of factory-level leaders known as pratinidhi, and much of this interaction happens during collective bargaining.
Under the BMS's guidance, typically new wage contracts are negotiated without any major disruptions to production. During this “settlement period,” there is slightly higher footfall at BMS offices as frustrated pratinidhi come to seek advice or other support from union leaders. Once the settlements are negotiated, however, the BMS office tends to return to its usual sleepy self.
In Kerala, on the other hand, the BMS is very actively trying to expand its base and maintains close contact with the rank-and-file. In June 2017, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the BMS in Kerala, the union undertook an ambitious campaign (samparkayajnam) that aimed to increase membership by one hundred thousand over a fifteen-day period. BMS leaders, assisted by its workers, as well as volunteers from other Hindu nationalist outfits, would visit working class neighborhoods where the RSS was already well established, or gather workers at the district level union offices to explain the benefits of affiliating with the BMS.
While not stated explicitly, the campaign was directed toward informal workers. The BMS leadership in Kerala claims that informal workers including contract and self-employed workers make up a large share of the BMS membership in the state.Footnote 39 Kerala is home to an extensive network of labor welfare boards that provide benefits to workers in the informal sector.Footnote 40 In order to receive these benefits, workers must be affiliated with a recognized union.Footnote 41 Thus, during the welfare campaign, BMS leaders explained how the boards functioned and the benefits to which workers were entitled.
Through the samparkayajnam, the BMS sought to produce hegemonic social relations in two important ways. By signing up workers to the welfare boards, it tapped into an institution that emerged from the grassroots struggles of workers and the redistributive commitments of the state government. The BMS is well aware of the role of the Left in the establishment of these welfare boards, as well as in achieving high wages and high levels of literacy among workers. The BMS is also participating in another important dimension of hegemonic production: material redistribution of profits to workers. Even outside of the samparkayajnam, the welfare boards are one of the main avenues through which workers join the BMS.Footnote 42
In Gujarat, which does not have the same history of radical workers’ struggle, the Hindu Right, through the BMS, recognizes the power of workers in a different way. Despite the low rates of strike activity in Gujarat, BMS leaders acknowledge the potential for worker militancy. One of the senior-most BMS union leaders and RSS activists working in one of Gujarat's largest industrial hubs explains the BMS’ approach:
We do not want to organize labor just as a reaction. We want to organize them as an action! Labor, wherever he is, is a person who produces capital. Unless these people are organized, and organized in such a way that they realize that they are the source from which the country is strengthened, all efforts [to organize workers] will be futile. Most other labor organizers just recruit people. They don't bother about national development.Footnote 43
The worker is “a person who produces capital,” but this identity is articulated with the identity of the worker as a Hindu national. In other words, as “the source from which the country is strengthened” the worker is also an agent of Hindu national development. Many BMS slogans reflect an attempt to “empower” workers by elevating them from their subordinate positions within capitalist social relations. For instance, to the leftist cry of “he who earns a wage shall eat,”Footnote 44 the BMS leader retorts, “he who earns a wage shall feed others.”Footnote 45
If this articulated identity of the Hindu national-worker reflects the BMS attempt to empower workers, it also highlights the coexistence of coercion in the form of worker discipline in hegemonic strategies. When workers in Gujarat express a desire to go on strike, they are discouraged by leaders. “We are humans, NOT animals! We are the BMS! We know better than to go on strike for no reason. We work for the nation, not just to fill our bellies!” roared a senior BMS leader when a group of workers from a large cable factory from Vadodara district insisted on striking.Footnote 46
In line with the longstanding dominance of class conciliation within the Gujarati labor movement, BMS leaders try to uphold the union's rejection of class struggle. BMS officials in Kerala, however, consider the position that strikes are a “measure of last resort” untenable. A BMS worker-leader and long-time RSS activist argues that in Kerala the union must recognize the power of the working class:
We are different from the BMS in other parts. We are more stringent trade unionists. That is because we can't survive any other way. The situation requires it because it is like that at the grassroots level. The communist seed in this land was cultivated in such a huge way that it has [spread] to every “hook and crook” of the state. The BMS’ ideology was also joining with [the ideology of the early Communist movement in Kerala], because, as we say in our songs and in our work, we are also working for the poorest of the poor. That is what we have in common… . Even if we are reluctant to call for a hartal [strike] or bandh [blockade/closure], because that's exactly the practice [the Left unions] follow, we cannot say otherwise.Footnote 47
Even if the Kerala unit departs from the union position on strikes, the union is still an important vehicle for the Hindu Right's larger goal of constructing hegemonic social relations within a capitalist order in a Hindu nation. This is evident in places like Alappuzha district in Kerala, famed as one of the “breeding” grounds for Communism. In the words of a local RSS leader: “because Alappuzha is a place of trade unions, it is important for us to have a union organization in place to reach working class communities.”Footnote 48
In both Kerala and Gujarat, the history of worker politics has shaped the strategy and tactics of the BMS. In Gujarat, the BMS, as a “caretaker” of hegemonic class relations, seeks to nurture a class compromise between workers and capitalists by emphasizing the workers’ role as an agent of national development, as well as overseeing material gains in routinized collective bargaining. In Kerala, the BMS acts more as a “midwife,” as it attempts to produce a new articulation of hegemonic class relations. In Kerala, where neither Hindu nationalism nor neoliberal capitalist development are as entrenched as they are in Gujarat, the BMS's interactions with workers reflects attempts by the Hindu Right to give birth to a new articulation of capitalist social relations on the basis of Hindu nationalism.
Conclusion
This brief account of BMS activities reveals that even right-wing movements may seek to organize the cooperation and consent of the working class through the pursuit of hegemonic strategies. The union attempts to simultaneously pursue the material betterment of its members and affirm their class power. Because of the importance of local labor movement histories and how workers draw on their political and economic class power, the approach of the BMS varies between states. As a consequence, the agency of workers plays an important role in shaping how the right wing engages with workers.
There is, however, a crucial dimension of workers’ agency that has not been addressed here: the contestation by workers of right-wing hegemonic strategies. My fieldwork reveals that interactions between the rank-and-file and the union leadership are an important arena of struggle over the ideological underpinnings and policy stances of the BMS, as well as the politics of other branches of the Hindu nationalist movement and their rhetoric of inclusive development. For instance, in Gujarat, despite its long history of class conciliation and the longstanding electoral dominance of the BJP, the BMS is emerging as a site of struggle between rank-and-file workers and their leaders, and to a more muted extent, between the BMS and other factions of the Hindu nationalist movement.
In Kerala, while the BMS is dwarfed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)–affiliated labor union, it appears to be more unified, both internally, between the union rank-and-file and leadership, and externally, with other organizations in the Hindu nationalist movement, than in Gujarat. The reasons for this difference are beyond the scope of this article, but they are important to highlight as they underline the importance of further study of the class-based strategies of the right wing in India.
The workers’ contestation of right-wing mobilization raises a larger question regarding the temporal and spatial limits of hegemonic strategies. When and where is the right wing “successful” in incorporating workers within hegemonic, capitalist social relations, and when and where does it fail? The BMS rank and file is an excellent starting point for such an investigation. While the BMS gives us insight into the class dynamics that shape the Hindu Right's working-class activities, this must be analyzed in conjunction with the non-union forms of right-wing engagement with workers. After all, the vast majority of the Indian working class falls outside of the organized labor movement.
Finally, this article has emphasized the importance of the hegemonic strategies of the right wing, which seek to produce the consent of workers while maintaining their subordinate positions within capitalist social relations. This is not to suggest that the Hindu Right refrains from more explicitly coercive tactics to both incorporate and exclude workers within their political projects. Indeed, while this article has focused on incorporation and inclusion, much of the activities of the Hindu right, both within the BMS and more broadly, involves exclusion and violence against religious minorities, namely Muslims, and subordinate caste groups. A study of the BMS's practices of religious and caste exclusion and how these complicate its claims and attempts to further the interests of the Indian working class would shed much light on the relationship between coercion and consent in their strategy and tactics.
