Modi: Trapped By His Hindutva Sea Legs

Modi :Trapped By His Hindutva Sea-Legs

Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas  is  the campaign slogan that has nailed Modi’s  credibility to the mast. Every passing day as prime minister, it seems to take a knock. One has to ask why, when it got him elected? Mufti Sayeed just reminded him of it, even as the cow, beef, and murder controversy raged.

Modi’s relentless projection of Vikas as his leit motif, claims to be inclusive. It is certainly ambitious, and showing some results 16 months on. But this economic inclusiveness cannot substitute for the all -encompassing bias in their favour that the minorities are used to.

Yet, the voting public, many of them young people, fervently want real progress. The superb popularity ratings that the prime minister still enjoys suggest that the people have not lost patience with him.

Modi elicits ecstatic responses from the diaspora too, and warm goodwill from other heads of government. But at home, the domestic intellectual,  and sections of the media, mistrust Modi’s Hindutva antecedents.

But the very foundations of the BJP are built  on it.  It is Hindutva that provides Modi his sea legs.  So, how can he pull off a submersion of its obscurantist and communal notions in a sarovar of Vikas?

This even as Modi’s economic intentions are believed. Perhaps to the extent that voters, most of them Hindu, are willing to see tears in the Nehruvian  fabric, as long as it delivers Gujarat’s 10% growth rates, jobs, and prosperity everywhere.  

As if to illustrate this, the latest Bihar Legislative Assembly pre-election poll gives the NDA an overwhelming majority. This soars above all the caste, class and religious calculations! But why?  Where is the Opposition  traction, despite citing Modi’s allegedly dark communal agenda?

But is Modi really intent on nudging the country towards a majoritarian future? And if so, is the voting public complicit in this, the sounding of warnings notwithstanding?

Certainly, the Sangh’s grassroots organisation, the best in the business today, will have its say. The Parivar, including, most significantly, the RSS, provides the lakhs of pracharaks  toiling away in Bihar. They are the ones doing the infantry work in the political trenches, working with zeal and dedication from the booth and block level upwards.  

What do they want in return? Can they be blamed for thinking this is their time, particularly now that the BJP is in power at the centre, and with an unprecedented majority?  

Besides, not only did the BJP/NDA win and form the government in May 2014, but, thanks, in good measure to  the pracharaks, it has won and/or formed all the state governments in coalition, since; with the sole exception of Delhi.

Modi consequently, voluble as he is, is trapped into deafening silence.  Speaking out against communal remarks and actions could destroy him politically, and be dangerous.  How can he deny his own political DNA?

The facile question however, is why not? Is he not meant to represent the entire nation?

  

If not this, then what? Can he, splice something on, and change the DNA of the Sangh Parivar itself? Will continued electoral success and the benefits of power help the endeavour beyond the maunvrat?

There are religious convictions underpinning Hindutva, of course, but can  they be diluted and taken out of policy making? After all, the ‘truly secular’ ideological and cultural shifts were also promised.

The Labour Party of Britain was once arch-leftist/ trade unionist/anti monarchical/anti EU, but quite godless. In between however, it went centrist, right through the Tony Blair years, before going far left once again lately!

Modi’s BJP and its Sangh affiliates are already on the economic and cultural right. Modi’s own head-and-shoulders-taller -than-the-rest style and veiled authoritarianism echoes, in fact, the ‘not for turning’ Margaret Thatcher.  

So, isn’t there an opportunity here? If anyone can remake the Sangh to make it fit India’s future destiny, it is Modi. Because, he alone has risen much beyond the expected, and probable bandwidth, of a life-long pracharak - to become, not only PM, but a budding  sabka statesman.

For: The Quint

(666  words)

October 11^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee