Since Indian independence, the country’s politics have been marked by a struggle between a politics of self-interest and a politics driven by a disinterested vision of the good society. For Faisal Devji the 2024 election results mark a return to the latter, after the dominance of the former under BJP rule.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt described any politics dedicated only to securing access to food, shelter, employment or other bodily needs as an animal politics. If it was not to degenerate into a quest to maximise material interests, she argued, politics had to offer a disinterested vision of the good society. Such a political vision is not just a luxury for wealthy societies but crucial for poor ones as well, since it is the only way in which citizens can imagine sharing a community with one another that is based on something more than necessity. Anything else, such as the rule of self-interest resulting in a beggar thy neighbour politics, produces social discord and democratic backsliding. This is arguably the situation that today faces countries like the US and Britain, in whose neoliberal economies private interests trump public goods.

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As with many other poor countries emerging from colonial rule, India established a political tradition that was based both on meeting the basic necessities of bodily existence as well as on a set of disinterested ideals. For the first few decades of her independence, these latter ideals were said to comprise secularism and socialism. The fact that these terms were only inserted into India’s constitution in the 1970s, at a moment of democratic backsliding under Indira Gandhi, shows up both the cynicism of their use as well as the necessity of such ideals in legitimizing political authority. But by the 1990s the Congress government had lost credibility, its liberalization of the economy creating an aspirational new middle class with self-interest as its motto and Hindu nationalism as its vision of a good society.

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Like many of his peers in other parts of the world, the prime minister came to embody the promise of a good society in his own person.

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Taking stock of the new social hierarchies created by liberalization, the BJP quickly gained power and popularity by proposing Hindutva as a new collective identity at least for the majority of Indians. Apart from excluding religious minorities seen to have been historically responsible for the downfall of Hindu civilization and acting as drag on its renaissance into the present, this collective identity also promised to include the poor, low castes and tribal peoples who had hitherto been marginal to Indian politics. They were now to be integrated as Hindu society’s first line of defence against Muslims and Christians. From the 1990s, however, until Mr. Modi swept to power as the prime minister of a BJP government in 2014, Indian politics was dominated by large coalitions led by one or the other of the country’s two national parties.

While they saw some significant achievements, especially in welfare provision, these three decades of coalition governments were of necessity dominated by deal-making between various kinds of interests. Crucial in particular were the demands of the regional parties whose support was required for any government to hold power at the centre. And these were often dominated by the mutual rivalries of low castes in the north, with southern India still run by long-established ethno-national parties. This was the great period of animal politics in which self-interest defined all government initiatives and fragmented Indian society. When the BJP came to power on its own strength in 2014, it was with the promise to unite India behind a national idea again, even if this was the sectarian one of Hindu nationalism.

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Hindu nationalism’s vision of collective identity turned out to be about self-interest.

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 But while it continued to maintain large welfarist programs and even improved upon some of them technologically, the BJP also presided over an increasingly unequal society where extraordinary new wealth was funnelled into very few hands while the rest of the country was meant to benefit from improvements in infrastructure rather than income. Like many of his peers in other parts of the world, the prime minister came to embody the promise of a good society in his own person. Mr. Modi’s rise from a humble and low-caste background was proffered as a model and precedent for ordinary Indians in contrast to the nepotistic, English-speaking elite associated with Congress. His undeniable popularity was meant to paper over the contradiction between a collective social vision and the increasing inequality of Indian society.

And so, elections came to be about the prime minister, with the BJP’s slogan for 2014 being ‘a Modi government this time’ (ab ki baar Modi sarkaar). In 2019, when there was some question about his return to power, this changed to the more inclusive ‘helping everyone, development for all’ (sab ka saath, sab ka vikaas). But for 2024 the BJP returned to personality with ‘crossing four-hundred’ (chaar-so paar), referring to the absolute majority Modi hoped to gain. This proved hubristic, reminding commentators of the slogan, ‘India shining,’ which presaged the BJP losing power in 2004. With close to 300 seats between the BJP and its allies in this year’s elections, the party can form a minority government, but now faces a much larger opposition having lost its aura of invincibility. We shall no doubt see its internal contradictions surface as Mr. Modi faces rivals from within the fold.

But is the Congress-led coalition simply an updated version of the animal politics that had defined the 1990’s and early 2000s? We shall see whether this coalition holds together, but already different is the fact that it is no longer a coming together of parties with diminishing numbers but represents a massive gain by Congress and its allies. And this means that its politics may also no longer be defined by self-interest alone. Indeed, Congress, led by Rahul Gandhi, has brought back the politics of disinterest that had characterised the independence movement especially in the figure of Mahatma Gandhi. He has laid aside secularism and socialism, the tired mottos of a dead past associated with his grandmother, to focus instead on unity, justice, and love in large, country-wide rallies that hark back to the Mahatma’s still living political tradition.

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Yet these voices speak not only for the interests of specific groups, as has been true of protests in the past, but perhaps for a new idea of India.

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Hindu nationalism’s vision of collective identity turned out to be about self-interest. The liberties it promoted were those of impunity in attacking minorities or amassing wealth. And having achieved most of what he had promised in the endeavour to recover Hindu pride, Mr. Modi had nothing left to offer apart from an animal politics. It was the very thing that had brought down the Congress-led government in 2014. The BJP’s last term in office was marked by two great social mobilizations. The first, in 2019-20, were unprecedented and countrywide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, which excluded the claims of Muslim refugees to naturalization. They brought together demonstrators from all social and religious backgrounds in a display of disinterested politics that sought to defend the constitution rather than any body of victims.

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The second were the farmer’s protests of 2021-22 in the country’s north, apparently a classic display of political self-interest in the face of moves to marketize the price paid cultivators for their crops. These, too, however, attracted support from many sections of Indian society. In both cases, therefore, we saw a politics of disinterest emerge at the very moment when the BJP seemed most powerful. Both movements were brutally attacked by the government, with the first shuttered in the pandemic and the second eventually if grudgingly accommodated. The elections of 2024 seem to demonstrate that those involved in both sets of protests have made their voices heard at the ballot box. Yet these voices speak not only for the interests of specific groups, as has been true of protests in the past, but perhaps for a new idea of India. They mark the end of animal politics.