THE OTHER ZIONISM:

Sitapati has hit a sweet spot with this book. He draws deeply from the well of scholarship, but is careful not to drown his reader in arcane academic debates. This is a riveting read for anyone with a deep interest in Indian politics, but it's equally a useful primer for those curious about Hindu nationalism and the challenges that liberal democracy faces outside the West from illiberal ideologies. It is also a bit of a rarity--a work on Hindu nationalism that neither lionizes nor demonizes its protagonists. This will make Sitapati few friends among Hindu nationalists, whose house intellectuals and fellow travelers confuse hagiography for scholarship. Nor will it endear the author to colleagues in Western academia, where many experts on Hindu nationalism tend to adopt a tone of high moral dudgeon.

For contemporary observers of Indian politics, the story of Vajpayee and Advani is most important for what it tells us about Modi's BJP. On the surface, Modi and his right-hand man, Home Minister Amit Shah, share some similarities with the duo they replaced atop the party. Like Vajpayee, Modi is an acclaimed orator; like Advani, Shah is more of an organization man. But in a deeper way, Modi has changed the party and its culture. Vajpayee and Advani were co-equals; Modi is clearly Shah's boss. Advani recruited rabble rousers; Modi has empowered them. Under Modi, the party no longer feels the need to dog whistle on religion: it explicitly attacks India's 200-million Muslims and Pakistan in order to win elections. In the Vajpayee-Advani era, the BJP tried to project itself as above the pettiness of caste politics. Now it champions caste quotas in employment and education while still preaching pan-Hindu unity. In the Vajpayee-Advani era, Brahmins and other so-called upper castes dominated the party. Modi has substantially remade the party in his image as a vehicle for formerly subordinate Hindu castes.

For all his insights, Sitapati comes across as overly sanguine about the prospects for Indian democracy. He argues, for instance, that Indira Gandhi's arrest of thousands of RSS and Jana Sangh workers during her suspension of democracy (1975-77) "made real [for them] the rights that only democracies guarantee; they learnt the value of civil liberties and freedoms." But it's not clear how well this lesson has been learned. On Modi's watch, India introduced its first religious test of citizenship in 2019. Mobs have lynched Muslims over flimsy accusations of eating beef or stealing cattle. The government has pressured Facebook and Twitter to delete unflattering content and jailed activists under draconian sedition laws that date back to colonial rule. BJP state governments have passed legislation to restrict freedom of conscience and curb marriages between Muslim men and Hindu women.

This year, Freedom House downgraded India from "free" to "partly free." Sweden's V-Dem Institute now classifies India as an electoral autocracy, two notches below liberal democracies like the U.S., Japan, and Australia. In the end, Vajpayee and Advani may go down in history for managing to reconcile an illiberal ideology with a liberal constitution authored by Western-educated Indians eager to emulate Britain and America. Modi's BJP--more populist, chauvinist, and authoritarian in its instincts than before--could end up burying that achievement. Americans looking for a liberal democratic bulwark against China in Asia may need to look elsewhere.

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