LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
By Inderjit Badhwar
Even though Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, a courtly, conscientious and erudite spokesman for his beliefs and his party, may have used the phrase “tyranny of the unelected” to characterize the Supreme Court decision on the NJAC, I doubt very much whether he would repeat this line to portray the judgment of the electorate of Bihar which gave the BJP the drubbing of its life during the recent polls.
Personally, I was saddened that the BJP had come to this sorry pass because it had millions of well-wishers who were urging mid-course corrections to prevent Prime Minister Modi and his team from biting the dust barely two years after having made a resplendent start. No right-thinking Indian would want his prime minister to fail. Sure, Modi carried heaps of negative baggage with him and reams of material have been written on his role or lack of it in the 2002 Gujarat massacres and pogroms. Yet, the Modi that emerged from the political posters of the last general election exuded an aura of dynamic change.
Here, they all said, was a man who brought a message of hope and positivity so sorely lacking in the tired and tiring vicissitudes of India’s politics-as-usual. Acchey din had a nice Obama-esque yes-we-can lilt and ring to it. The refrain had a refreshing quality compared to Garibi Hatao, Jai Jawan Jai Kisan, Panchayati Raj Chalao and India Shining. And coming from a man whose vibrant Gujarat slogan had a feel of verisimilitude as tale after tale was told about booming Surat, bustling Ahmedabad, soaring Vadodara and highways to match an autobahn, the “Modi Magic” did not seem like a mirage but an opportunity of a miraculous transformation.
He represented change. His spin doctors projected him as a miracle man. Throughout the general elections, it appeared that the Rath Yatra party had been truly transformed into a Vikas Yatra party. The fight within Modi’s own heart between being a Hindu Hriday Purush (his natural inclination as a former diehard RSS pracharak) or a Sab Ka Saath Sabka Vikas Purush had been won by the latter personality.
State after state fell under his sway as he became the BJP’s sole campaigner, master of ceremonies and maximum leader. Not Deendayal Upadhyaya, nor even the revered Atal Bihari Vajpayee had either commanded or demanded the allegiance, fealty and perform-on-command obeisance from colleagues and officials, as did Modi.
His national campaign had struck a positive chord among people who abhorred the RSS ideology, among youth, investors and young entrepreneurs, because they perceived him as different. He seemed to effervesce with the aura of a new, young, aspirational India. His speeches, during those days, could have been
written by any secular guru. His campaign in Banaras was focused on development, the battle against filth and garbage, an end to babudom and corruption, clea-ning up the Ganga, empowering the girl child. Who could argue against that when his opponents were talking about caste combinations and vote banks?
India voted then for Modi and not the BJP as a party. He had somehow given the impression that he had sidelined the RSS and relegated it back to its role as a cultural organization, silenced Ashok Singhal, Togadia and the VHP.
In the national election, Modi triumphed against caste and sectarian politics. In the Bihar election, caste triumphed over Modi. Why?
Precisely because India had changed. The Modi who had seemed to recognize this during the national campaign appeared to have forgotten this in the events leading up to Bihar. Advani’s Rath Yatra I’m-a-proud-Hindu was no longer a relevant political doctrine. The new doctrine, uttered so vociferously by Indians settled abroad where Modi traveled frequently to contact the diaspora was I-am-a-proud techie-I-am-a-proud-doctor-proud-economist. The new India which Modi was heading echoes these sentiments. Did Modi forget them or simply choose to ignore them back on Indian soil because his Hindu-Hriday-Purush face triumphed over the other Modi?
The “change” that actually began occurring in India was what appeared to be an attack on the eating, sleeping, religious, sartorial, reading, thinking, educational artistic habits and inclination of this resplendent, diverse nation. It was unrelenting to the point of the murder of cultural dissidents.
Some wags exaggerated—but may not have been far from the truth—that India may be heading towards a “cultural revolution” as in Mao’s China. But India, thank god, answers to many gods, even to the gods of atheists, and not even Manu or the Shankaracharayas, has managed to regiment the nation or make it goose step to the drumsticks of a single drummer.
Take away Modi’s national agenda of change and economic progress from his program and what do you have? Just another regional leader with a “vibrant” Gujarat slogan coming under increasing questioning about the veracity of its claims. We all know Rome wasn’t built in a day. And nobody expected Modi to wield a magic wand and transform India’s economy.
But the gap between the government’s rosy economic statistics and the ground reality of inflation and slide in rural consumption, as Ajith Pillai’s accompanying story, NaMo’s Freakanomics, points out, was so huge that it put a question mark on Modi’s credibility. Had he abandoned that vision of hope and modernity? Was he a captive of the RSS? God forbid, were we heading for communal conflicts which leave all trade and commerce paralyzed—a fear deeply ingrained in the hearts of India’s small shopkeepers and businessmen who are the BJP’s core urban supporters?
Modi’s silence indicated either total confusion or the ascendancy of those forces within his party who had ridden the Modi development plank in order to gain prominence and then push their own divisive and pernicious agendas. Or did Modi believe that having achieved a majority at the center through his modernist development agenda, he could switch tactics in midstream and gain control over the rest of India by playing the intolerant card?
That Modi was not being prime-ministerial was also evident in the way his government refused to let the elected government of Delhi function. Hundreds of thousands of Biharis work in the capital and their slum dwellings are the worst affected by lack of basic amenities. They campaigned furiously themselves as well as with their relatives in Bihar, painting Modi as a vindictive regional politician misusing the central government to punish a popular Delhi chief minister who had handed Modi his first defeat. The paralyzing of the Delhi government was a big argument in the hands of opponents who proclaimed that Modi was more interested in power rather than the good governance he had promised.
I do not believe Modi expected the opposition from intellectuals as well as his supporters and allies abroad to be so fierce, so effective. As a writer pointed out, Modi’s image had been transformed from Prime Minister to Pracharak Minister. And in Bihar, the pracharak met his Waterloo.
India had changed. Many of the same forces who had ignored caste and united behind Modi who represented change and modernity, now used caste as a battering ram to defeat the man and the party who seemed to have forgotten the dreams and aspirations of the new Indians. And for the third time, they voted in Nitish Kumar, a man with a clean image, proving that good governance does matter and anti-incumbency does not outweigh good governance.
In this case—I agree the honeymoon was short – the anti-incumbency worked against Modi. This is by no means Modi’s political epitaph. This is the end of Part I. He is a tough fighter. What matters is whether in Part II he will learn from the previous chapter. And will the real Modi please stand up?