Commissioned Book Review: Mujibur Rehman (ed.), The Rise of Saffron Power
| Author | Sana Shah |
| Published date | 01 August 2021 |
| Date | 01 August 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920963831 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Reviews |
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(3) NP17 –NP18
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
963831PSW0010.1177/1478929920963831Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2020
Commissioned Book Review
The Rise of Saffron Power by Mujibur
Rehman (ed.). Routledge, Abingdon and
NY, 2018. 398 pp., $19.80, ISBN 0429013973,
9781138363731.
The book comprises of a series of semi
academic essays written by 16 expert
academicians, journalists and scholars.
The book traces the rise of the Bhartiya Janata
Party (BJP) and its dramatic expansion of its
electoral base in the last few years. The main
hypothesis is that the victory show put by the
BJP in the national as well as the state elections
marks the rise and emergence of a ‘Saffron sys-
tem’ (Rehman, 2018, p. 6). By referring to the
‘Saffron system’ to characterise BJP’s domina-
tion of the Indian political landscape, one is
reminded of Rajni Kothari’s proposition of the
‘Congress System’ as the reference point against
which the Saffron system is being posited here.
Against this parallel reminder of the idea of the
‘Congress System’ (domination of Congress
party in the past), the book becomes an impor-
tant work because it attempts to explore the
state–citizen relationship through the lens of
disequilibrium in the state–community relation-
ship as it negotiates this configuration across
various identities. It is within this framework
that BJP’s election strategies have to be under-
stood, the categories being identity and devel-
opment, as and when employed selectively. The
larger normative question raised by the book
therefore: What does these kinds of ideological
shifts in Secular democracies like India hint at?
One possible proposition that wrestles with
this question throughout the text being, that
despite the anticipated setbacks in the evolution
of the saffron system, which could also lapse
into a cycle of unstable coalition governments
post 2019 national elections, the ideological
shift India has witnessed on account of this is
understood to be irreversible. The logic for this
assertion being that if secular parties that
emerged in India’s historical trajectory did so
from the womb of the Congress party, similarly
the splintered fragments, if so, emerge as chal-
lenge to the BJP electorally could plausibly be
from the womb of the BJP. These splintered
fragments in form of other political parties will,
however, retain the parent ideology of Hindutva
(a form of Hindu Nationalism). Thus, effecting
a swing in the matrix of India’s party politics
from populist secular kind to Hindutva variety.
The major debates covered by various schol-
ars through their essays offer different perspec-
tives that dwell in the state processes vis-a-vis
electoral arena. Some essays expand upon the
idea of the saffron system and provide a logical
follow-up on that. Special focus has been given
to understanding the socio-cultural support pro-
vided by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s
(RSS) organisational strength to complement
the political campaign of the BJP, which is lack-
ing for other political parties. The complement-
ing force of RSS also flows from the fact that
they have worked extensively on the ground for
education, health care and development as well.
The essays in the book are well informed,
prodding in empirical evidence and idiographic
sources at places along with secondary sources.
However, three concerns come up mainly which
the text does not respond to adequately.
First, the very title of the book can be con-
tested, given the limitations of the discipline
itself, wherein the possibility of a ‘saffron system’
evolving in the future would require a certain
time frame for verification as against the famous
‘Congress system’ put forth by Kothari, theorised
only after a substantive time period into the
Congress rule. How well can the saffron system
hold the matrix of India’s politics or is there a
fully formed saffron system in place, these are the
kinds of questions only time can answer.
Second, the text does not talk much about
the dynamics of processes behind the qualita-
tive shifts in the inter-community relationships,
in particular potent of bringing in harmony or
disaffection between the majority and the
minority communities.
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