Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
You have Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s word for it : India, a land inhabited by 1.25 billion, is also home to the largest number of the young, those aged between 35 and 37 years. Too good to be true, some would say. A country so vast and varied, blessed with such a large and youthful population. Makes for a vibrant society. Good times (achhe din) are here again.
And no wonder Mr. Modi loses not a day keeping us reminded of what the motherland expects of us and hence his urge to give us an inspiring slogan for each day of the week, covering every facet of the nation’s life – from swachh bharat to vikaas, to cow protection. The art of leadership, y’see, requires you not to miss out on anything that looks promising. If it were possible, or if Modi had his way, he would even tell us – not that he doesn’t do it – even the kind of dreams we should dream.
And, God forbid, if he misses out on anything, you have so many Modi bhakts around you to continue to fall in line with the Modi dream. For as they will most likely tell you that’s about the best dream we Indians can have. You see, Modiji unlike any other Indian leaders, past or present, knows what is best for us, as a people and as a proud nation as well.
After all we are the world’s oldest civilization and if you don’t believe it ask our most revered historian, just anointed by Modiji’s government, as the ultimate historian, who will confirm that our history predates the history of man. After all we were the first humans to inhabit the earth.
Sounds weird? Yes, it does. But then you have the Modi bhakts, the like of whom you have never seen, at least not during the years since we regained our freedom. Again, I tend to err. Because for several centuries before we won our freedom, we had been enslaved by foreign invaders, some of whom even chose to stay back to assert their claim to being Indians.
Anyway, to be correct, we did pass through a period in our post independence history when a different set of bhakts (devotees) kept hammering in the untruth that India is Indira and vice versa; some more sensible people too were swayed by the euphoria seeing Goddess Durga in Indira. In any other society that would have bordered on the blasphemous but how un-Indian would it have been had anyone dared to challenge the validity of the view. And, Indira had fortified her position by using (unethically) the constitutional brahamastra, the declaration of emergency.
Indira had actually had to wait for a few years to use the weapon and a few years more before accepting the folly of her action. Mr. Modi need not suffer from any such inhibition. As his drum-beaters tell us day in and night out Modiji has had demonstrated unprecedented determination in last year’s general elections, winning for the first time an absolute majority for his party in the Lok Sabha. Others may have done it, even better perhaps, in the past but Modiji’s was a unique win. Never mind if only 33 percent of the electorate had voted for him, the victory nevertheless was unlike any other.
And, imagine the gall of this man, a Cabinet Minister in Vajpayee’s government, Mr. Arun Shourie, once considered to be a saffronite ideologue, trying to berate the Modi government on the eve of its completing its first year in office. Shourie’s concern that the Modi Government focused on managing headlines will find much resonance. So too his point about the Government and the party being needlessly confrontationist, not seeking to embrace.
Magnanimity in victory obviously is no part of the Indian political lexicon. The abject failure to honour assurances on the communal front has sinister dimensions; it is more than the fringe elements exploiting the polarized political climate. Again, like during the emergency, the “committed” theory has found expression in regressive saffronization of social, cultural and educational institutions, accusations about five star activists, cracking down on dissenting NGOs etc.
True thus far no extra-constitutional authority has bulldozed, a la Sanjay Gandhi of the emergency ill-fame, but the manner in which some Ministers make a point of lauding the leadership of the Prime Minister ( not only sounds like the AIADMK MPs slavishly prefacing every sentence uttered with obsequious references to the great Amma Jayalalitha every time they open their mouth in the two houses of Parliament, rings alarm bells of another kind.
How far are we from a modified version of Indira is India. To go by the tone set up by the Ministers, party spokesmen, men and women like a Piyush Goyal, a Venkaiah Naidu, a Nirmala Sethuraman or a Sambit Patra, to name few, the day is not very far. There are many more sycophants waiting in the BJP wings who would probably outdo the Siddhartha Shankar Rays, the D.K. Barooahs and the Indar Gujrals of the immediate pre-emergency era.
Gujral and H.K.L. Bhagat, had specialized in working up the streets in the days preceding the declaration of emergency. Who knows when the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh, with the vast, trained work force at its disposal, will choose to hit the streets should they deem it worth the effort.
After all how can you forget the familiar ring one notices in the current spate of sloganeering and the other one, almost every other hoarding in Delhi proclaiming in the emergency era – The Leader is Right, The Future is Bright. Mr. Modi doesn’t need to fall back on the emergency era and the sloganeering of the time; he is a past master in coining slogans at the drop of a coin. Besides, Mrs. Gandhi didn’t have the advantage of having the social media to play with. No Twitters, no Blogs, no Facebooks; only the leader is right.
Meanwhile, off and away will Narendra Modi will be in the next few days, swinging through China, South Korea and Mongolia (remember Ghenghis Khan?). Not bad. That will make it almost a country and a half for each of the 12 months he would have been in office by the time he walks into the adulatory arms of his faithful in the saffron parivar on his return to home.
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