Abstract
How do right-wing nationalist movements secure support from workers in class-specific ways, even as they make claims to represent collective entities defined along cross-class lines? To answer this question, this chapter studies how the right-wing Hindu nationalist movement in India has attempted to secure support from workers and incorporate them into the cross-class collectivity of the “Hindu nation” over time. It focuses on the role of the labor union wing of the Hindu nationalist movement, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), as a junior partner in the larger Hindu nationalist hegemonic project. I argue that the BMS reveals important class-based fissures and points of instability in the foundation of Hindu nationalist hegemony. The chapter ends by contemplating how a sociological inquiry that is theoretically and empirically rooted in South Asia provides a fertile ground for understanding how labor and class are central in the constitution and potential disintegration of right-wing power.
For their generous feedback and for organizing the Contemporary South Asia Miniconference as well as this volume, I would like to thank Gowri Vijayakumar and Smitha Radhakrishnan. I would also like to thank Michael Levien for his thoughtful commentary on the chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
The five major labor union federations, known in India as Central Trade Union Organizations (CTUOs), included in this calculation are the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the Hind Mazdoor Sabha (HMS), and the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS).
- 2.
Pracharaks represent a high level of commitment as they are expected to denounce their personal commitments to their families and careers and maintain celibacy. They are sometimes described within the RSS as “missionaries” for Hindu nationalism. They are typically thought to be charismatic and upstanding examples of the ideal Hindu nationalist citizen in addition to the work of expanding and reproducing Hindu nationalism across its different civil society arms. Pracharaks are an invaluable resource for Hindu nationalist organizing because they are well-connected members of the RSS cadre. As such, they are often deployed to work as organizing secretaries in the different organizations of the Sangh Parivar.
- 3.
Interview, 14 August 2013, Vadodara, Gujarat.
- 4.
Interview, 14 August 2013, Vadodara, Gujarat.
- 5.
BMS leaders from Gujarat who were active in organizing workers in the state in the 1960s and 1970s told me about several struggles waged in the early 1970s on behalf of sub-contracted employees in large public-sector undertakings, such as the Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited (IPCL) and the Oil and National Gas Corporation (ONGC). Interview 13 April 2016, Vadodara, Gujarat.
- 6.
Of course, the BMS also benefited from the splintering off of AITUC when the Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPM formed its trade union federation, the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU) in 1970.
- 7.
A few years before his death in 2004, Thengadi established a BMS affiliate for tribal workers, the Vanvasi Mazdoor Sangh. The initiative was inspired in part by the BMS’s longstanding desire to expand among informal workers. In part, however, the Vanvasi Mazdoor Sangh also represents an attempt to prevent Maoist encroachments among tribal workers, as one veteran BMS leader told me (Interview, 8 January 2017, Ratlam Madhya Pradesh).
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Upadhyay, S. (2022). “(Hindu) Workers of India, Unite!”: How Class Politics Shape the Consolidation of Right-Wing Hegemony in India. In: Radhakrishnan, S., Vijayakumar, G. (eds) Sociology of South Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97030-7_4
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