Book review: Ruchi Chaturvedi,Violence of Democracy: Interparty Conflict in South India

Political violence is a ‘joint communique’ between the assassin and the victim, wrote Ashish Nandy, in 1980, describing it as a profound interplay between the perpetrator and the victim intertwined with deep-seated historical and psychological forces. Ruchi Chaturvedi echoes similar observations in her book, albeit with a distinct focus and approach. Chaturvedi examines political violence from a collective action viewpoint and highlights how two antagonistic political entities—‘Hindu right’ and ‘political left’—pool resources from society and institutional structures to endure hostile relationships, further illustrating the complexities of political violence. Bearing in mind Kerala against the historical backdrop of partition and the post-independence changes, she argues how representative democracy retains the tendency to produce majority dominance and societal polarization, perpetuating conditions for political violence.

Chaturvedi belongs to a pioneering group of ethnographers who have spearheaded ethnographic research on local-level electoral politics. Akhil Gupta, Thomas Blom Hansen, A M Shah, Mukulika Banerjee, and Satendra Kumar are among these scholars whose studies explore the micro-level dynamics of democracy in India, emphasizing the daily lives and political struggles of marginalized communities. The book’s key contribution to the existing ethnographic literature lies in its seamless integration of micro-level ethnographic research with national and international perspectives on democratic practices and ethnic violence.

Chaturvedi’s ethnographic research on the Kannur district of Kerala explicates layered texts of violence imbricated into competitive democratic politics spanning the continuum of Left and Right. One of the harsh outcomes of electoral democracy in India, she contends, is the ‘divisive substance codes’ rooted in the vectors of ethnicity, caste, and religion. The Kannur district is the focal point for exploring the complex relationship between violence and democracy. On this canvas, she outlines several issues related to democracy’s ‘ambivalent bequest’ of peace, conflict, and violence.

Chaturvedi’s views are influenced by Steven Wilkinson’s and Paul Brass’s explanations of political violence in South Asia; however, she diverges from their viewpoint that deliberate creation of ethnic solidarity and animosity is central to intergroup conflicts. She argues against the notion that electoral processes inevitably lead to the ‘self-conscious production of ethnic solidarities’, leading to political violence. Her core thesis revolves around the explanation that the ‘spectacular’ violence in the Kannur district, involving Left and Hindu-Right parties, stems from a gradual evolution of a ‘political field’ at the local level. This field shapes community subjectivities and ‘draws in’ individuals from the same caste and class background into an intense realm of political violence.

According to Chaturvedi, politics underwrites the ascendance of power, competition, and containment of minorities or minoritizing opponents. While minoritizing a group can be one facet of democracy, perpetrating violence against minorities and opponents represents a distinct phenomenon, she seeks to elucidate violence in Kannur, illustrating ‘how particular modalities accentuated differences and hostilities, and conditioned violence in Kannur’. In her elucidation of violence, she avoids the pitfalls of ‘particularising and pathologizing’ explanations. ‘Agonism’ and ‘antagonism’ are central concepts she uses to comprehend the complex relationship between the compossibility of political diversity and its intersection with the empirical realities of using violence in pursuing and perpetuating political authority.

Since the 1960s, Kannur has witnessed ‘routine and spectacular violence’ with the entry of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). However, the central participants of the spectacular violence are not members of separate castes, classes, or ethno-religious groups; instead, they have been the members of the Thiyya community, who find themselves both as the victims and perpetrators. They are from a historically marginalized caste many of whom have achieved significant economic advancement. However, the majority face a constant threat of unemployment or underemployment. They vie for community support to control trade unions and village-level affairs.

Chaturvedi’s explanation of CPI (M) and RSS antagonism is analyzed by considering the political dynamics of both regional and national history and the functioning of a democratic state. She contests the much-accepted theorization of violence in the region as stemming from a deeply rooted cultural, racial, and historical situatedness of the Thiyya community. With the help of biographies and personal interviews, she interweaves the local trade union politics, national political dynamics, and a regional intra-party internecine struggle to retain power. She relates how the ‘project of becoming a major force’ opens the door for keeping political volatility high in the region.

Chaturvedi specifically underscores this case as an exception and normal. It is exceptional because, unlike the 2002 Gujarat pogrom aimed at establishing majoritarian dominance, the Kannur violence is characterized by its ‘long-standing, intergenerational character spread over several decades’ and marked by a vengeful undertone. The phenomenon of violence in Kannur is normal, due to entrenched rivalry between party workers, a common expression of cohesiveness, and the adversarial nature of electoral practices.

In Kerala, since the mid-twentieth century, political parties have been using ‘pastoral power’ and the ‘hegemonic forms of masculinity’ to mobilize members into their party fold. While the Communist Party exercises power through the vocabulary of commonality, parity, and fairness, the RSS uses the pastoral ethno-nationalist discourse with a tinge of ‘sewa’ (service) to build a kin-like structure among the community members. These strategies created conditions conducive to the mobilization for antagonistic politics and party workers vengefully killing even their caste members.

The legal system is not spared from majority and minority contradictions. The legal processes produce a ‘double subterfuge’ where ‘responsibility is collectivized’, subverting justice pre-eminently to support the majority. It impugns individuals and allows the law to repress and minoritize ‘designated groups’. The lives of the grassroots-level workers affiliated with the CPI (M) and RSS-BJP in Kannur have been impacted over an extended period.

By challenging the association of violence with the prevailing ‘martial race’ syndrome, the book offers a nuanced understanding of manifestation and perpetuation of violence. Further, its contribution lies in exposing the RSS-BJP’s strategy of exceptionalizing Kerala’s political violence to strengthen its position and subsequently establish its ideological and political hegemony.

A significant weakness of the book is that the author does not address the relationship between the CPM and the United Democratic Front (UDF) in relation to the democratic process and spectacular violence.

The book has achieved a commendable feat by addressing a significant gap in the existing body of literature on Indian politics, particularly in studying the RSS’s functioning at the micro-level. Given the rising influence of the RSS as a political force, this book proffers a detailed exploration of the functioning of right-wing politics at the micro-level. By focusing on the complex intersectionality of caste, class, gender, and power struggle, the book elucidates the deeper societal manipulations. It unravels the modus operandi of the RSS-BJP at the local, sub-regional, and national scales. Its clear language and theoretical insights would be valuable to students and academics seeking to understand nuanced dynamics of Kerala and broader Indian politics.