India After Modi

by Ajay Gudavarthy

  It is, therefore, more than a coincidence that Narendra Modi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Mamata Banerjee, Jayalalithaa, Naveen Patnaik, and Mayawati are considered popular leaders. They pursue power single-mindedly all the time and never display private emotions. Even leaders who work outside the institutions of state are often gauged by these very standards.

  There is deep discomfort among Indians with the idea of the private and with being ordinary. The leader has to be larger than life and, perhaps, masculine to gain the ‘respect’ of fellow party men and the cadre. In this mode of imagining, the leader should not ever have to face dissent or difference of opinion, which are considered signs of weakness and disrespect.

  There is a serious problem for those who lead an active public life to retreat into the anonymity of the private. This seems to be something specific to the culture of our nation. Nelson Mandela, who led a tireless public life as part of the anti-apartheid struggle, very seamlessly slipped into a quiet private life.21 Even George Bush preferred to pursue painting, after rather ‘eventful’ two terms as president of US.22 However, mass leaders and politicians in India rarely ever announce retirement from public life.

  Given the dominant public morality in India, it only looks logical that leaders and their lifestyles assume a greater importance over parties and procedures that are seen as necessary to keep them democratic and open. Personality cult is not, therefore, that which emerges merely from certain ideological proclivities; its source may well lie in the way public morality is structured. What we are witnessing in Indian politics today has a long history and deep socio-moral base. What it has done under the current populist regime is to grow into a full-fledged personality cult that is presumably crafted by the media and its associated campaign. It began with Modi as the larger-than-life leader who is a ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ and moving into placing Yogi as the next-generation Hindutva idol.23

  From Modi to Yogi

  There are now definitive signs of the next major shift in the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (BJP-RSS) combine in times to come. While Modi broke the ranks by shifting the tag of the BJP as a ‘Brahmin-Baniya’ party by invoking his backward class/caste status, the induction of Yogi Adityanath will lend the next major shift to creating a ‘Hindu Rashtra’. The BJP-RSS also perhaps believes that this carefully crafted image of a yogi becoming the head of state will revive the age-old Hindu tradition of a sannyasi taking up political power to cleanse the system of its inertia and revitalize it with valour. Yogi himself believes that sannyasis are necessary for politics to cleanse it.24

  There are parallels and subtle shifts in the symbolism of the imageries of Modi and Yogi. Both have sacrificed their family lives to adopt the nation as their family. Both have led ascetic lives detaching themselves from worldly temptations. While Modi as ‘Bal Narendra’ fought crocodiles and was a fearless child,25 Yogi took the tough decision of taking up a life of a sannyasi without informing even his parents, even though he was close to his sisters.26 While Modi joined as a pracharak and emerged as a Hindu Hriday Samrat, Yogi joined the Gorakhpur math. Both are considered good orators with the ability to issue open threats against Islamic jihadi forces.27 Both seemingly understand human suffering, Modi on account of his poverty and eking a life by selling tea, Yogi by taking up voluntary poverty.28

  The shift is obviously from Modi as a social and political symbol of Hindutva to Yogi as perhaps the decisive religious symbol of Hindutva. There has been a very carefully designed and planned move from a centrist-humanist sounding Vajpayee to the more robust Advani to the militant Modi to the explicit religious symbolism in the rise of Yogi.

  From Hindu Hriday Samrat to Hindu Samrat

  Yogi is taking the discourse and politics of Hindutva many steps ahead. Modi cleanses politics through demonetization and Yogi purifies politics as a sannyasi.

  Modi had already introduced an everyday language in popular mobilization. He crafted simple symbols, coined acronyms, and articulated everyday concerns of the citizenry through his Mann ki Baat. Yogi takes it a step further in talking about even personal habits of cleanliness, bathing and brushing regularly, and keeping surroundings clean, among others. It gives a sense of a return to an ancient Hindu way of life.

  Gandhi had a similar mode of articulating and linking the every day to the political. He had similar interests in personal ethics, personal habits of cleanliness, and symbolism of an ashram, among others. Gandhi had already occupied the space that the figureheads of Hindutva are experimenting with today in bridging the gap between the private and the public. The symbolism of a yogi allows for politicizing everyday emotions of fear, anxiety, alienation, anger, and hatred.

  Added to this shift in the model of leadership is the near-absolute clarity of the BJP-RSS combine in how a Hindu Rashtra should be ushered in. Yogi is the first step under whose tutelage the remaining agenda can be carried out, including the building of a Bhavya Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, repealing Article 370, implementing the Uniform Civil Code, amendment of the Constitution, reconfirming reservation from caste to economic criteria, and finally perhaps disenfranchising religious minorities.29 Right is the only political force today that has near-absolute clarity of agenda and purpose in comparison to the rest of political groups in India.

  ‘Fascism in Us All’30

  It has now become commonplace to compare Hindutva with the rise of the Nazis in Germany, though in spite of all the comparisons, we do not have a clarity as to where does this kind of a mass consent to militant Right-wing politics comes from, except from a perceived construct of a hurt pride, of being victims of histories of invasions, a sense of inferiority, and humiliation. Both the Germans then and the Hindus now continue to suffer the sense of being ‘taken for granted’ for being polite, accommodative, and peace-loving. Further, the economic crisis of the Second World War and the current global crisis marked by a massive rise in inequalities are also comparable to why Hindutva has become a viable project, including the blatant use of fear, street violence, physical attacks, and elimination of those opposed to their politics, but this again too has some degree of social consent, if one is to believe the social media. Beyond this, we need a more in-depth understanding of how a social psyche is being created that replicates itself from political and institutional heads to the common man on the streets. The social has a deep psychological root and an ability to reproduce itself, what Michel Foucault refers to as ‘Fascism in us all’.31

  Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, was forced by the British to write his autobiography in the interim period between his capture and execution. Hoess was in charge of a concentration camp in Poland that murdered over three million Jews. Some of his early reflections include self-observations such as, ‘My two sisters were attached to me… But I never wished to have much to do with them… I was never able to have any warmer feelings for them. They have always been strangers to me.’ He further adds, ‘I had the greatest respect for both my parents… but love... I was never able to give them. Why this should have been, I have never understood. Even today I can find no explanation.’ He narrates his memory of being repeatedly deceived and double-crossed; as a result ‘my only desire then was to run away… and be alone, and never see anyone again’.32

  Finally, his chilling account of mass killings where he admits ‘the killing of this Russian prisoners-of-war did not cause me much concern at the time. The order had been given, and I had to carry it out’.33

  What other lessons need to be learnt from histories of secrecy, conspiracy, violence, masculinity, and misogyny, hatred and genocide, suffering and humiliation continues to remain open to scrutiny, as long as we have possibilities of politics of hatred gaining mass consent, out of fear or admiration. In understanding the phenomenon of the strongman, be it Modi or Yogi, the interface between fear and admiration is difficult to track. Right-wing populism has attempted, as we discussed, a complex maze of symbolism in producing its leaders, drawing connections among
ascetism, vulnerability, and selflessness. The popular support they draw is connected to the way these aspects are perceived to become connected to an individual, which are otherwise disparate and work at cross-purposes in our everyday life.

  Award Wapsi: Reasoning with Intolerance

  Award Wapsi was the first major controversy and protest by artists and film-makers, after a year of the Modi government in power, against what they perceived as growing religious intolerance represented by the killing of a Muslim man in Uttar Pradesh over cow killing and the deaths of rationalist thinkers who were murdered in cold blood. Over 50 film-makers, writers, and others returned their national awards as a mark of protest.34 As a response to this protest, the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Amit Shah, released a booklet titled Know the Truth: Why the So-called Intellectuals Are Silent Then and Violent Now on 5 November 2015. It is a collection of columns published in various Indian dailies defending the BJP against the accusation of rising intolerance under its watch. The document was presented as a response to the criticism it faced from various artists and writers, who returned awards given to them by the state under what came to be known as the Award Wapsi punning on the Ghar Wapsi campaign by the RSS. Accompanying these columns were statements made by senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley and two write-ups by Venkaiah Naidu and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. The writings assert that the claim about India being more intolerant today than it was in the past are devoid of substance.

  While the booklet itself received scant attention, and now that the dust has settled on the rage against intolerance, it is important to interrogate the arguments it presents. Is there any truth, for instance, in the defense that attacks against the BJP are ‘manufactured’ and biased? Were these public intellectuals simplifying political complexities? And why does the rationale presented by the BJP-RSS apologists hold the propensity to become ‘common sense’ for the majority of Indians in times to come?

  Know the Truth: Why the So-called Intellectuals Are Silent Then and Violent Now presents a number of arguments to defend the BJP. First, those similar events have happened in the past under the aegis of the Congress regime. Some examples given are the anti-Sikh massacre of 1984, the imposition of the Emergency in 1975, and the expulsion of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits from their homes. Second, they present what happened in Dadri—where, on 28 September, a mob killed a Muslim man for allegedly eating beef—as a ‘stray incident’.35 How does one respond to these?

  Lynching and Mob Violence

  While there is no defense for either the Emergency or the riots against the Sikhs, both spearheaded by Congress leaders, there is a difference. The BJP, with its close organizational link with the RSS, has an organized vision of building a Hindu Rashtra in India, which besides censoring religious minorities and their cultural worlds, also privileges a monolithic Hindu way of life over plural imaginations within Hinduism. Notwithstanding the riots that broke out in many of the states governed by the Congress in the past and some intemperate statements by some of its leaders, the Congress does not share this narrow worldview.

  Are lynching and mob violence, such as those in Dadri, stray incidents? In Dadri, six of those involved had links with the BJP. What may connect the Dadri incident with the killing of rationalists such as Malleshappa Madivalappa Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar, and Govind Pansare, is the persistent attempt to attack public reason and replace it with a Hindutva interpretation of history and culture in India. Dabholkar, though murdered in 2013, when BJP was not in power in New Delhi, was killed by those committed to silencing ‘threats’ to Hinduism.36

  It is always the variously named ‘senas’, which have sprouted across Karnataka, Maharashtra, and other states that carry out these reprehensible acts. How fringe are these groups when violent assaults against those questioning Hindutva politics appear to be given tacit support by the ruling BJP should be questioned. Statements made by BJP’s Giriraj Singh—who in the run-up to the 2015 Bihar polls, declared that those who do not support Prime Minister Modi should go and settle in Pakistan—have not been officially condemned.37

  Political scientist Paul Brass in his book Forms of Collective Violence: Riots, Pogroms, and Genocide in Modern India observes in his studies that unlike riots, usually race related in the US and UK, mob violence and riots in India are not spontaneous. Given the persistent organizational support to fuel distrust among communities, one cannot brush aside these incidents, as Jaitley wishes to do, as ‘stray’ or blamed on fringe groups.38 Another major contention in the booklet is the supposed ‘intellectual opportunism’ among progressive public intellectuals. The document argues that they are selective in their condemnations and are more interested in appeasing minorities. It accuses these intellectuals of not voicing their dissent when a fatwa is issued against A.R. Rahman, or when Taslima Nasreen and Salman Rushdie are threatened by Islamic groups. The booklet asks, aren’t these actions brushed aside because these threats are issued by Muslims and other religious groups, who are a minority?

  Nehruvian secularism indeed expected a certain ‘generosity’ from the majority community towards the minorities, owing to their vulnerability in the aftermath of Partition. But the demand today is for ‘equal respect’ for all religions, which includes equal accountability when it comes to excesses of all religious groups. However, secular intellectuals have been hesitant about protesting against the bigotry of minority communities in the belief that it cannot assume the proportions of majority intolerance, and is never backed by the state. This line of reasoning – where more leeway is given to the intolerance by Muslims, because of its minority status – has helped Right-wing mobilization in India and smacks of a politics that depends on majority patronage.

  BJP’s document repeatedly mentions Kashmiri Pandits and asks why progressive intellectuals have remained silent about their displacement. Except for the BJP’s more sectarian understanding of the issue, which has culminated in the idea of resettling Hindu Pandits in separate settlements in Kashmir – there has been very little public deliberation on this subject. This has been further complicated by the fact that a majority of the Pandits are moving closer to the BJP since they see it as the only political outfit articulating their concerns. While the displacement of the Pandits is a tragedy, they are seen to represent Indian security forces and the Hindu nation state in the valley. In popular perception, progressive intelligentsia and their views come across as being sectarian, because of their support for the Muslims and their reluctance to articulate a clearer and fair position on the Pandits—a perception the BJP cites as a glaring example of ‘selective’ outrage.

  Saffronization of the Public Institutions

  Finally, the document addresses the question of whether the ‘saffronization’ of institutions and the rewriting of history ought to be seen as a mark of growing intolerance. It emphasizes a government’s legitimate right to make appointments of their choice. The BJP alleges that, up until now, only one point of view has found space in Indian academia, that alternative (non-secular) viewpoints were suppressed and provided little opportunity.

  Undoubtedly, India does need further public deliberation regarding appointments to public institutions. It is well within an elected government’s ambit to appoint academics of their choice. Previous non-BJP regimes, especially the Left in West Bengal, made appointments based on their proximity to the party. And even the accusation that many progressive public intellectuals did not make any noise about such appointments or complain about the institution being ‘taken over’ is not without merit.

  But the complaint against the BJP now is not on ideological grounds; it is on the issue of protocol and qualification. Curriculum and history are now being altered and rewritten without emphasis on evidence or research. For instance, the BJP-appointed chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, Sudarshan Rao (who resigned in November 2015), claimed that the Ramayana and Mahabharata were historical events and not mythology.39

  Much of the BJP’s mobilization on these issues t
ouch upon what is perceived to be ‘popular’ opinion and ‘common sense’ beliefs. These should not be brushed aside as mere constructs by a Right-wing party. It is important that secular-progressive politics take note of where and how these grievances are finding a groundswell of approval as common sense and becoming a tool for political mobilization. This, in turn, would also be a necessary approach to avoid the ghettoization of minority politics in a democracy. There is a need to foreground debates that demonstrate not merely tolerance but ‘mutual respect’ among communities. It is this lack of clarity and preparedness that offers the breeding ground for Right-wing and ultra-nationalist politics. It is only through the further articulation of secular-progressive positions on contentious issues that the intolerance of Right-wing politics becomes more explicit and clear.

  Why the RSS Projects JNU as Anti-National?

  The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat announced that JNU is a hub of anti-national activities. The RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya had alleged that JNU is home to ‘a huge anti-national block which has the aim of disintegrating India’. Another article in it alleged ‘JNU is one such institute where nationalism is considered an offense. Presenting Indian culture in a distorted way is common. The removal of Army from Kashmir is supported here. They advocate various other anti-national activities here.’40 These statements were followed up by a crackdown on JNU on 9 February 2016, with an alleged claim that students of JNU shouted anti-India slogans that supported the separation of Kashmir from India, and some of them were arrested for sedition.

  From openly debating why the Kashmiris demand for a plebiscite may be legitimate, today, even uttering a doubt about the possible human rights violations committed by security forces could count as anti-national activity. Demanding rule of law and accountability from the police and armed and paramilitary forces has become sedition. Raising slogans—however objectionable some of them might have been—is now being seen as an act of terror. Universities have been, perhaps, the last public spaces to assert a right to express and debate, which are utterly indispensable for holding a nation together. The RSS, in its mouthpiece as stated above, argued that JNU is a bastion of anti-national activities and a hub of terror. What we witnessed in JNU is an outcome of that kind of an understanding of a place that is willing to penetrate the political nature of various problems, including the nationality struggles in the Northeast, socio-economic roots of the Maoist insurgency, everyday humiliation suffered by Dalits, marginalization of Muslims, sexual harassment of women, and stigmatization of sexual minorities. Not long ago, demanding reservations for the OBCs and implementing the Mandal Commission report were described as anti-national, and today, the BJP-RSS that had vehemently opposed such demands proudly projects an OBC person as its leader.41