Recasting the Nation

Some 13 years or so ago a dynamic publisher based in Delhi approached with a suggestion to write a book on contemporary Indian politics. I thought it over and reverted to the publisher with a proposal: a political study of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. To me, the subject seemed very relevant. Modi was one of the most important figures on the Indian political landscape, having won three consecutive state Assembly elections. What added to the appeal of the book proposal was the unending series of controversies that dogged the footsteps of Modi ever since he was parachuted to the hot seat in Gandhinagar by an anxious Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national leadership. Surely, this was a subject that would arouse the interest of readers, not least because I was known in political circles as a resolute defender of the Gujarat chief minister. 

My assumptions proved to be wide off the mark. The publisher told me in no uncertain terms that any sympathetic study of Modi would be unacceptable to the office staff. There could only be one perspective on Modi: that which cast him as a fanatical fascist who had blood on his hands. As far as the publisher was concerned, there was no room for any further discussion. 

In the years to come when historians are called upon to write weighty academic studies on the man who is likely to remain India’s longest-serving prime minister for the foreseeable future, they may not quite grasp the political environment that prevailed in the decades before the landmark General Election of 2014. To say that the political temperature was overheated and that opinions were sharply polarised on the Modi question is akin to describing the mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as big explosions. 

The sheer venom poured on Modi by those who failed to get rid of him after the post-Godhra riots of 2002 has never been quite matched in India. Almost the entire media, the Establishment of Lutyens’ Delhi and the so-called international community, was insistent that this man had no place in a civilised democracy. Unsurprisingly, many of these views were held by those in the top echelons of BJP—those who egged Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to demand that Modi fulfil his raj dharma in Gujarat. Modi was the receiving end of an all-out war against him by those who combined political warfare with lawfare—the first occasion in recent memory that political scores were sought to be settled through the courts. 

What the beautiful people who ganged up against Modi didn’t sufficiently grasp was that their targeted offensive would produce an equally powerful countervailing force. There was no reason why this should have come as a surprise. Beginning from the grassroots revolt to prevent his removal as chief minister at the Goa session of the BJP national executive in April 2002, it should have been apparent to the Modi baiters that public opinion was not on the side of the ‘liberals’. The frenzied adulation that greeted Modi during the election campaign of 2002 and his decisive victory in the polls clearly demonstrated that the more the vitriol poured on Modi for being the ‘butcher’ of Muslims, the greater was the propensity of ordinary Gujaratis to rally behind the man who doggedly upheld Gujarati honour and pride. 

The extent to which heady emotionalism and Hindu assertion played a role in building up the image of a leader who could be a worthy successor of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel has, of course, been acknowledged in hindsight. Compared to the time publishers wouldn’t even let the aroma of Modi violate their delicate cosmopolitan sensibilities, the past 12 years have seen a mounting collection of publications of varying quality clutter the shelves of bookshops and libraries. In the absence of punditry’s imperfect awareness of the saffron ecosystem that bred Modi, a dissection of pre-War Europe and the writings of VD Savarkar and MS Golwalkar have been used to shine a torch into the Modi regime. India studies departments of Western universities have outdone themselves producing tracts designed to demonstrate how and why India since 2014 has jettisoned what has come to be celebrated as ‘the idea of India’.

It is not necessary to idolise the legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru to appreciate that profound changes have overtaken India in the past dozen years. Some of these changes were inevitable and would have occurred regardless of who the prime minister was, and which party or coalition was at the helm of government. There are, however, specific shifts that stem from either the personality of Modi or the nature of the mandate received by BJP and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). 

The most important shift that marks Modi from the idea-of-India consensus that previously defined India is the modified sense of nationhood. The leadership of Congress that inherited the reins of a divided country from the British were rarely hamstrung by existential doubts. In line with their experience of the freedom struggle, they felt India was one composite nation, albeit one where there were many loose ends that needed addressing. In line with the dominance of Congress throughout the country, they celebrated the centralising impulses of the polity. What united Nehru and Sardar Patel was their common faith in a centralised India, although Patel didn’t share Nehru’s fascination with a centralised, state-regulated economy. However, thanks to the gradual breakdown of the Congress system after 1967 and Indira Gandhi’s ill-considered centralisation, there was a federal backlash which disturbed the equilibrium. In different ways after 1989 Indian nationhood was fractured and there were conflicting pulls of religion, language, and caste. The importance acquired by regional parties in the age of coalitions imposed additional strains on nationhood. By the time of Manmohan Singh’s second term, it almost seemed that the idea of national coherence couldn’t be taken for granted any longer. 

Among the many impulses that shaped Modi’s 2014 and 2019 victories was the yearning for stability and predictability. However, unlike what the Nehruvian leadership managed in its heyday, the quest this time was not for another constitutional settlement. The 2014 election was centred on the projection of Modi. But what did the Modi that voters endorsed (or, in some cases, rejected) stand for? 

It would be fair to say that there was no single, defining image of Modi that was either presented to voters or which the electorate threw up spontaneously. To some, Modi was the archetypal strong leader whose need was pressing in the aftermath of the apparent weakness of Manmohan Singh. To still others, he was the epitome of efficient administration, as was evident from his 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat. To yet others, Modi was the first authentic leader of the economic rightwing that BJP had produced. His clear-headed commitment to a state that would lessen regulation and facilitate enterprise proved appealing to India’s aspirational classes whose ambitions had been thwarted by a decade of meandering governance. And finally, there were those—possibly the largest section of those who gave BJP a surprising but emphatic victory in 2014—for whom Modi was a contemporary version of Chhatrapati Shivaji, a man who would restore the primacy of Hindutva in an otherwise secular republic. 

If his detractors are to be believed, Modi has not only lived up to the expectations of those who have pushed him to three consecutive electoral victories but has taken India in the direction of a Hindu republic. Some of this is woefully exaggerated since there has been no fundamental constitutional changes—apart from the repeal of Article 370—that has made one class of citizens more equal than others. Yes, the incorporation of Jammu & Kashmir as a full-fledged and ordinary member of the Union of States is certainly a landmark event that most ardent BJP supporters never expected would happen in their lifetime. Apart from getting rid of a constitutional anomaly—the very notion of a province having a special status—the Article 370 initiative also clearly signalled that a Muslim-majority state cannot expect special privileges. This was the Modi attack on minorityism, a move that subsequently saw the criminalisation of Triple Talaq. Apart from anything else, this bid to secure gender justice was the first time since 1940 that any government had amended the personal laws of the Muslim community. Whether this and the waqf reforms presages a larger move for a uniform civil code—as is being attempted in Uttarakhand—will be watched with interest.  

The shifts are not confined to the Muslim community that, by convention, has sought to be insulated from pressures to modernise, in line with many other Muslim countries. What the Modi government has sought to achieve over the past decade is to give Hindus a conscious sense of empowerment. The sense of being taken for granted, compared to the special privileges given to the religious minorities in the Constitution, has been addressed quite spectacularly by the Modi government. There was, first, the judicial resolution of the Ayodhya dispute which many feel was facilitated by the Modi government. This was followed immediately by the Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Trust embarking on construction of a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya. That the consecration of the temple was done by Modi, with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief playing a supportive role, was a clear sign that this historic triumph of Hindu aspirations owed its final victory to the Modi government. In the 1990s, when BJP existed in ‘majestic isolation’ as an alternative pole of national politics, the distinctiveness of the party was defined by the following demand: the building of a nuclear deterrence, the abolition of Article 370, the building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, and the enactment of a common civil code for all citizens. It was the first NDA government of Vajpayee that fulfilled the first promise and made India a N-weapons power. Modi has undertaken the most difficult challenges—Article 370 and Ayodhya—and turned them into reality, and relatively effortlessly. The enactment of a common civil code is work in progress. 

Read in unison, these important steps taken by the Modi
government have sent clear signals to the electorate. The first is that this is one government that is committed to the ideological facets of its programme. Legislation may well take time and may often be constrained by the compulsions of parliamentary politics, but the overall commitment is undeniable. Second, the Modi government has empowered Hindus to an extent that seemed unimaginable during the 25-year coalition darkness that engulfed India. Predictably, there are über-radicals within the ranks of the political community that view Modi as insufficiently Hindu for their tastes. Apart from being singularly detached from a need to secure electoral endorsement, the likes of the cow vigilantes view India as a self-sufficient island disconnected from the rest of the world. 

Yet, it is important to appreciate the radical dimensions of some of the Modi government’s measures. I would certainly list the citizenship amendment laws of 2019—and their significant fine-tuning this month—as the boldest initiative to establish the civilisational underpinnings of Indian nationhood. This is to be distinguished from the purely universalist orientation of Nehruvian thought that had moulded the shape and direction of post-Independence nationhood.

As Modi celebrates his landmark 75th birthday, he will be doing so with the satisfaction of knowing that the ship of state that had been drifting aimlessly in the ocean has now got a clear route map. This wouldn’t have happened unless the electorate decided that it was time for real change and the leader entrusted with the responsibility internalised the message. Karl Marx was right when he said that leadership is moulded by the circumstances of the age. However, he clearly underestimated the paramount importance of a leader who is aware that his/her intervention can change the direction of history. 

It is still too early to know exactly how posterity will judge Modi. My hunch is that he is likely to assume a significant place among the pantheon of the greats. His was a leadership that India waited for to herald its resurgence after a thousand years of servitude. So far, it hasn’t been disappointed. 

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