Table Of ContentMAKING SENSE OF
MODI’S INDIA
Meghnad Desai Gyanendra Pandey
Shruti Kapila Radhika Desai R. Jagannathan
Faisal Devji Beena Sarwar
Sudheendra Kulkarni Zoya Hasan
V. Krishna Ananth Andrew Whitehead
Sevanti Ninan Rashmee Roshan Lall
HarperCollins Publishers India
Contents
Introduction
India as a Hindu Nation – and Other Ideas of India
Meghnad Desai
A People’s History of India, 1947–2014:
Inclusive Development Not for All
Gyanendra Pandey
Conservatism and the Cult of the Individual in a Populist Age
Shruti Kapila
The Question of Fascism
Radhika Desai
Who Is the Real Narendra Modi:
A ‘Communal Czar’ or an ‘Inclusive Icon’?
R. Jagannathan
The Rediscovery of India
Faisal Devji
View from Pakistan: ‘Religious’ Politics and the Democratic Political
Process
Beena Sarwar
India under Modi: Will the Turning Point Be Followed by a Point of
Return?
Sudheendra Kulkarni
Collapse of the Congress
Zoya Hasan
The Decline of the Left: A Casualty of Ideological Contradictions
V. Krishna Ananth
Modi’s World: Beyond Selfies and Tweets
Andrew Whitehead
The Media: Moving to the Right?
Sevanti Ninan
An Aam NRI’s View of the ‘New’ India
Rashmee Roshan Lall
Notes
About the Book
About the Authors
Copyright
Introduction
In a few months, Narendra Modi will have completed two years in
office. Vowing to build a ‘new’ India, he came to power with a
massive mandate after a bitterly fought election in May 2014. His
idea of an India ideologically and culturally different from the post-
independent Nehruvian one has been endlessly debated. But it
remains a big conundrum with no clarity as to what his big alternative
vision is.
So, where’s India headed under Modi?
For an answer, it is important, first, to grasp the profound meaning
of the 2014 verdict, which, many believe, has not been fully
understood. It is true that at one level the vote was against a
bumbling, ‘corrupt’ and leaderless Congress, but at a deeper level it
was also a comprehensive repudiation of the concept of a benign,
tolerant and liberal India in favour of a majoritarian and economically
laissez-faire nation unencumbered by ‘soft’ Nehruvian baggage. But
nearly two years later, the country remains precariously poised at a
point where, having voted for a decisive break with the past, it is still
waiting expectantly to be led to the new promised land.
There’s growing scepticism as to whether Modi really has a new
long-term vision; whether the talk of a ‘new’ India is simply a sales
pitch. As a slogan, ‘new’ India has a nice ring, but slogans, however
seductive, are no substitute for a philosophical vision.
This book is an attempt, with the help of Modi’s supporters and
critics alike, to analyse the Modi ‘phenomenon’, the factors behind it,
and what it means for the future of India. Such a debate is important
at a time when there are deep and legitimate concerns about the
future of secularism amid calls for a redefinition of traditional notions
of nationhood.
ISSUES AT STAKE
Here is a flavour of the issues raised in this volume.
Meghnad Desai draws on the history of European nationalism to
analyse the nature of Hindu nationalist resurgence. And though a
supporter of Modi’s ‘development’ pledge, he shares concerns about
his Hindutva baggage. R. Jagannathan, also a Modi supporter, tries
to figure out his vision and what he represents. Is Modi really the
man we see on the tin? ‘What is he like as a person as opposed to
his airbrushed image? What does he really believe in as opposed to
what he has said after becoming prime minister of India? What is his
economics about?’ he asks. His answers to these and a series of
other questions he raises add up to an intriguing portrait of a man
who remains an enigma as much to his critics as to his admirers.
Gyanendra Pandey examines Modi’s development agenda in the
light of the new global fashion that insists on development, ‘sought at
times in spite of the people, often against the interests of the poor
and unprivileged: working people, the underemployed and
unemployed’. And he worries that this development model is now
being sought to be imposed on India’s poor and marginalized
sections, which are presented as ‘backward’ and ‘primitive’ and
which ‘must be drawn into “our” time – the time of development –
however great the cost’.
Making sense of the ‘real’ character of the RSS has been one of
the most hotly debated issues of our time; and it has assumed a new
urgency in view of Modi’s RSS roots and the perception that his
government is being remote-controlled by Mohan Bhagwat. The
RSS’s insistence that it is simply a social and cultural organization
with no political agenda has long been questioned, but there is no
consensus on the real nature of the beast, with the academia and
the commentariat deeply divided over whether it can be
characterized as a fascist organization.
In a trenchant analysis, Radhika Desai declares her impatience
with the ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ that have tended to characterize the debate
and what she calls the ‘tediously earnest discussions of the founding
ideas of the Hindutva ideologues’ that have prevented academics
such as Christophe Jaffrelot from designating the RSS as a fascist
organization. Drawing on the history of European fascism and her
own close study of the RSS doctrine and its pattern of behaviour,
she has no doubt that it is fascist in tooth and claw. The entire Sangh
Parivar, including the BJP, represents well-recognized ‘fascist’
tendencies dressed up in democratic posturing, she argues.
Faisal Devji casts a critical eye on the secularism-versus-
communalism debate in which a ‘secular’ Congress and ‘communal’
BJP are portrayed as representing the opposite ends of Indian
politics. He finds such a discourse ‘too superficial’ and unhelpful in
understanding the nature of Indian polity, which is often marked by
‘greater continuity between parties … than is usually recognized to
be the case’. It is in the light of such ‘continuities’ that he analyses
the implications of the Modi victory and throws up some intriguing
questions.
Zoya Hasan looks at the causes and implications of the Congress
collapse and warns that any attempt by the Congress leadership to
‘reshape itself as pale saffron in a bid to mimic the winner will only
help to legitimize the right-wing political discourse, while failing to
pick up the electoral dividends from this competitive wooing of the
Hindu vote’. Krishna Ananth, in his critique of the decline of the Left,
calls for a root-and-branch overhaul of its blinkered ideological
programme and flawed tactics if it is serious about making itself
relevant again in national politics.
Shruti Kapila warns that the personality cult being sought to be
built around Modi, which, far from making any attempt to discourage,
he is actively promoting, could come to haunt the BJP besides
producing ‘unforeseen consequences’ for Indian democracy.
Sudheendra Kulkarni, a former BJP activist who knows the Sangh
Parivar inside out, warns against its ‘anti-Muslim and anti-minorities
propaganda’ and criticizes Modi for not reining it in. But, ultimately,
he believes that compulsions of power and Modi’s political instincts
for survival would force him to ‘distance’ his government from such
elements and ‘actively curb’ them. ‘Modi is an astute politician and
he knows that alienating a large section of the Indian population
would create problems for his premiership – especially for his desire
to win a second term in 2019,’ he writes.
But will he?
The role of the media, owned by big corporates, in promoting
Modi has come under close scrutiny. There is a perception that, to
use L.K. Advani’s memorable phrase from the Emergency, the media
seems only too eager to ‘crawl’ when ‘asked to simply bend’.
But Sevanti Ninan, one of India’s more sober media
commentators, has a more nuanced take on it. She questions the
‘catch-all’ media label used to describe ‘a technologically diverse
universe of communication’, and the tendency, then, to ascribe to it
‘a common behaviour pattern … as in, the media is turning right, or
turning saffron, or enabling the ascent of Narendra Modi’. ‘But is
there a pattern, and is it consistent?’ she asks in a closely argued
analysis of the rapidly changing complexion of the Indian media. She
finds much of the debate too simplistic which, according to her,
ignores an understanding of the increasingly complex media
environment.
Modi’s forays into foreign policy and his bid to raise India’s profile
in the international arena have impressed many, but he has also
been accused of using foreign policy to project India as a ‘Hindu
power’ with his nationalistic – ‘Hindu pride’ – narrative, especially in
his pitch to Indian expats abroad. Andrew Whitehead, a former BBC
(British Broadcasting Corporation) correspondent in Delhi, offers an
insight into how the West views the new Indian prime minister. Modi,
he says, has ‘got off to a good start’ and is seen in most Western
capitals as a leader who ‘wants to strike a new, more positive note in
his country’s engagement with Western powers’ and ‘needs to be
met halfway’. But this is combined with ‘an anxiety about the BJP’s
at times stridently assertive religion-based nationalism’. ‘If Barack
Obama has delivered the choicest of tributes, he has also voiced
anxieties about communal tension and violence in India,’ he writes,
alluding to the US President’s remarks on his visit to India in January
2015 on the Sangh Parivar’s hate campaigns against Muslims and
Christians.
Finally, what is the view from across the border in Pakistan? And
what do Indian expats other than Modi’s supporters in Manhattan
and Wembley make of the ‘new’ India in the making? Beena Sarwar
and Rashmee Roshan Lall provide refreshingly candid perspectives
that might make interesting reading for many newly nationalist
Indians.
Arguably, independent India has seldom been as politically and
culturally polarized as it is today. Recent months have seen an
alarming rise in hate speech, shrill Hindu nationalistic rhetoric,
attacks on dissenting writers and academics (renowned rationalist
thinker M.M. Kalburgi was shot dead for his views on idol worship
and Hindu rituals, prompting many eminent writers to return their
Sahitya Akademi awards) and controversies around beef eating and
‘Hindu sensitivities’.
Clearly, the emerging face of Modi’s ‘new’ India is not looking
pretty. Maybe it is a passing phase; but at the moment it is hard to be
too optimistic.
Over to the debate.
