The Hindu Quotient

INDIA HAS BECOME unrecognisable over the last decade. So unrecognisable that it feels unreal. We now take for granted things that just 15 years ago seemed unattainable. Everything seems to have changed so fast without us even noticing. And so, at times, a strange nostalgia envelops us. Let us take a passenger train journey from Chennai to the Northeast. It was habitual to expect a week-long delay in those days. Today, the first Google search result yields ‘Chennai-Dimapur flight’.

 Then there are the hunter-gatherers of political news who were once ubiquitous. They now yearn for scandalous headlines only to discover that a new normal has replaced those glory days. The scam fountain seems to have dried up. 

Just last month, we were treated to quite a public spectacle in which furious IAS officers wrote a letter of protest to the prime minister against the open office plan in the new Kartavya Bhavan building. The source of their fury was the deprivation of the old order which included sprawling air-conditioned private offices equipped with lounges to take naps during working hours. Even a section officer in the ancien régime had his personal fiefdom—a largish private cabin which facilitated “our critical thinking and confidentiality.” 

What’s worse is this: by itself, the very nomenclature—Kartavya Bhavan—shatters the vestiges of what these buildings had symbolised. They were monuments of heartless imperialism. Rajpath has now become Kartavya Path and Central Secretariat, Kartavya Bhavan. In other words, from high-handedness to duty to the people of India. Indeed, the bedrock of Indian civilisation and the Indian work ethic is Dharma which is also defined as “kartavya” or duty.  

India has become unrecognisable over the last decade. The aforementioned examples are just hints of the comprehensive national transformation that has occurred under Narendra Modi. 

Atal Bihari Vajpayee seeded this process with his farsighted New Telecom Policy, the Golden Quadrilateral, reforms in banking and investment, and charting an innovative foreign policy. That he succeeded in the endeavour is more remarkable given that Vajpayee operated in an era of predatory coalitions. Despite this, all that Vajpayee could manage was to change the paint of the inherited British imperialistic apparatus, leaving its structure untouched. 

Modi not only altered the structure but excavated its foundations and showed India the rot underneath. Two definitive pointers to this rot include a recalcitrant bureaucracy and an unaccountable judiciary, both of which had been supported by the entrenched Congress ecosystem. Every political regime which has a long innings spawns a loyal elite, which is as noble or as corrupt as its political masters. Bhoja Raja and Krishnadevaraya’s elite included philosophers, saints and poets. The character of the Congress elite is best left unexplored.      

Modi learned invaluable lessons from the Vajpayee prime ministership, foremost of which was the inevitability of an absolute majority. The transformation that he has wrought in just a single decade is the direct outcome of this learning. 

The decade prior to Modi not only undid the good that Vajpayee had done but also opened our country up to every secessionist and nation-wrecker who wanted India to remain squalid or to break it up. If the post-Rajiv Gandhi period was defined by chaos, the Modi era exemplifies stability.  

Transformation is first lived and then analysed in hindsight. The infinite canvas of history also shows us that transformation is cyclical. 

We never realised when or how the UPI revolution occurred.  We didn’t notice how the Modi government weeded out the brokers who had held India’s defence hostage at the altar of profiteering, thereby sacrificing national security.    We rarely pause to appreciate the enormity of the fact that since 2014, there has been no jihadist attack on Indian soil once every six weeks.  We do occasionally celebrate a momentous headline that informs us that Maoist terror has almost been exterminated. Nor do we marvel at how fully functional schools are running in Gadchiroli, once a Maoist hub.   We learned that Article 370 was abolished only when the matter was introduced in Parliament.  We witnessed the cleansing of the public discourse after it was freed from the clutches of legacy journalists.   

We don’t fully fathom the manner in which Pakistan was transformed into a pariah even within the community of Muslim nations; we were caught by surprise at how India stared down China at Galwan and, finally, we are yet to grasp the secret of how the US has been forced to take India seriously to the point of frustration, best voiced by Peter Navarro’s recent utterances. 

These are not ordinary transformations and Modi is still in the infancy of his third term and if anything, he seems to have grown stronger despite a reduced Lok Sabha majority. 

Audacity, ambition and scale underscore these transformations. Direct bank transfers, demonetisation, the Goods and Services Tax (GST), and an unapologetic ‘India First’ foreign policy are some of the most pronounced manifestations. All of these are irreversible. No Opposition party will risk condemning direct cash transfer without incurring serious political damage. The discussion about GST is not that it should be reversed but only about its nuances. Congress’ sustained abandonment of India’s national interest is at the root of the abyss it finds itself in.

A relentless pursuit of a national vision and a larger-than-life element are visible in all of these. In his first term, Modi focused on the basics and continues to do so—scaling the economy through wealth creation at the level of the individual citizen and creating national assets at the macro level. It reaffirms a truth: every door automatically opens for a rich man without his asking. 

Indeed, a refusal to fix the basics for about seven decades is the source of most of India’s problems: infrastructure, education, and health. From this perspective, Modi is simply engaged in the work of national reconstruction, which had to begin in 1947 but was derailed by a new elite whose only qualification was “trading in patriotism”, to borrow DF Karaka’s phrase. One is reminded of an old cartoon in Shankar’s Weekly. It shows a husband and wife hailing from Delhi’s perfumed elite cringing before Jawaharlal Nehru. In the caption, the husband tells the prime minister: ‘Well, Panditji, if you can’t spare an ambassadorship, maybe you can give us some extra petrol coupons.’ 

India had to wait for Vajpayee to get a four-lane national highway for the first time. There are a couple of generations still alive that remember the notorious Octroi gates on our highways; it was an antiquated economic menace that prompted a stalwart like Nani Palkhivala to write an essay calling for their summary removal. And now, we have two generations that assume our highways were always like this. 

The same truth applies to prolonged power-cuts. The sweeping reforms that Modi ushered in have almost obliterated this torment. 

As for healthcare, there is enough historical data to show that our government-run hospitals had worked immensely better under British rule. And as for education, the less said the better. But, again, it all boils down to the basics. 

The point to note is that these areas are classified as state subjects. Modi’s efforts at national reconstruction has been and continues to be hampered by non-BJP state governments which seem to regard him as an enemy than as a partner working for the interest of the same country that they are citizens of. 

This enmity clearly showed itself during the two-term United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime. The unfinished stretches of the Golden Quadrilateral were deliberately halted for a decade lest Vajpayee’s fame fly higher than that of the Nehru dynasty. While this was the tangible manifestation of the enmity, every reform and policy that NDA 1 had planned or implemented was either reversed or scrapped. 

Rahul Gandhi’s activism over the last decade has not only reeked of personal vengeance against Modi but threatens to undo India itself. His global far-left friends and other political allies pose no ordinary threat to India’s sovereignty.  

The same divisive script is being played out in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Ever since the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) returned to office, it has revived the old Dravidian separatist narrative and elevated it to sinister levels. A powerful group of its ideologues has normalised an imaginary “invasion of the Vadakkans” in the public discourse in Tamil Nadu. The term Vadakkan is a derogatory reference to north Indians, all of whom, in the Dravidian mythology, are Aryas, or Brahmins. Kerala showcases an entirely different and more dangerous story. 

This is a shameful commentary on the legacy Indian political class. Juxtapose this with Donald Trump’s praise for Modi’s obsession with making India great again and we get the question: Why are Modi’s Indian opponents unable to see what an American president sees?

This brings us to another contrast. PV Narasimha Rao is justly regarded as a transformational prime minister; he was indeed better than all the prime ministers of the Nehru dynasty combined, and his renown rests on the game-changing economic reforms he unleashed. In other words, in his undoing of Nehru’s socialist legacy. Yet history proves that his reforms were the outcome of foreign pressure. Without that, it is doubtful whether Rao’s own party would have allowed him to pursue this course. 

Modi’s transformation has been consistent in both promise and delivery. It was entirely his own vision unlike that of Narasimha Rao; it was also a declaration of the end of the old ways—schismatic vote-hunting, secularism, corruption, cowardice, and communism. Modi’s new charter was premised on civilisational strength, which was left to lie dormant and allowed to decay for seven decades. This plus his demonstrated success as the three-term chief minister of Gujarat.   

To date, Modi’s biggest detractors have denounced him for precisely this reason: his candid projection of strength and his willingness to deploy it at home and abroad. The Nehru clan and its political durbar had created four generations of a specimen endowed with two defining traits. The first was cowardice and an inferiority complex vis-à-vis white skin. Nothing else explains the only objection from Nehru to C Rajagopalachari’s elevation as independent India’s first governor general: he wore a dhoti and followed Hindu social etiquette. The second included opportunism and a lack of character. This lot naturally finds strength unnerving and regards ‘Aman ki Asha’ as the most courageous response to a Pakistani terror attack. 

Both these traits still guide every opposition to genuine reform and drags down every effort which ensures that India gets the respect it deserves on the global stage. When he was telecom minister in 2003, Arun Shourie had summed up this mindset quite well: 

“We have become what an American author calls ‘Negaholics’—addicted to the negative as an alcoholic is to drink…  We look for, we latch on to the negative… our instinct is not to believe evidence of [an] accomplishment… Because of my work, I have had occasion to travel abroad several times in the past two-three years. Each time I have been struck by the contrast between the way India is looked upon abroad, and the way we look upon it here. 

“There is an equally telling symptom here at home—there is much greater confidence in the Indian industrial class than there is in the rhetoric of politicians who ostensibly are shouting on behalf of and to save that industry! 

“The result is our discourse continues to be mired in fear, so many of
us just keep repeating slogans of 30 years ago. We should listen to the
new India.”

Narendra Modi has infused a greater level of confidence, and India is a much bigger economy than it was when Vajpayee demitted office in 2004. Back then, Congress and its friends, through a series of backroom deals, succeeded in keeping BJP out of power and reversed the economic gains NDA had made for the country. 

Few people realise the kind of global clout India wields under Modi’s leadership thanks to the engineered chaos on social media and on the ground. The chaos is a calculated attempt to bury the reality of India’s ascent and it is simply the latest avatar of the old Congress-communist screenplay—a shrill and relentless dissemination of poverty porn, women’s safety, ‘Hindu terror’, tribal oppression, injustice to farmers, and so on. But this time, a new dimension has been added: random but regular eruptions of street violence leading to a situation of quasi anarchy. Most of these disruptions are orchestrated abroad and implemented by Indian agents with the ultimate goal of regime change. This, among others, is the surest proof of the global clout India has acquired.  

But more definitive proof came in the form of Peter Navarro’s slur: “I would simply say to the Indian people, please understand what is going on here. You’ve got Brahmins profiteering at the expense of the Indian people. We need that to stop.” Navarro’s statement is the most recent reaffirmation of an infallible truth of the colonial history of the West: all anti-India rhetoric begins with a veneer of sophistication and ends in Brahmin-bashing. Navarro is merely parroting the spurious thesis first concocted by colonial European missionaries, which was further embellished by a wide spectrum of deracinated Hindus. But the fact that he felt compelled to utter those words shows the unease of the Trump administration with regard to Modi. 

India’s reassertion of self-confidence is rooted in its Hindu civilisational mettle. Navarro’s statement specifically targeting Brahmins betrays the fact that the rest of the world views India as a Hindu country, notwithstanding ideological or political sophistry.   

It wasn’t a coincidence that Modi got the world community to declare June 21 as International Day of Yoga. It was a springboard of sorts to steadily recover and reclaim Bharatavarsha’s spiritual and cultural footprint spread across the world. 

Modi’s 2018 visit to the 125-year-old Shiva temple in Muscat reminds us of three centuries of Hindu mercantile dominance in the Persian Gulf helmed primarily by the Sindhi and the Kutchi Bhatiyas, and Marwaris; it also reminds us of the now-forgotten Govindaraja temple built by the Pushtimargis. The same holds true for the cordial bond India has now forged with all countries in Brihad Bharata (now known as Southeast Asia), Suriname, Fiji, and the Maldives (a corruption of the original term, Mala Dvipa). 

I recall a meeting with Narendra Modi years ago in which he gave a memorable answer to a question about a core character of Sanatana culture. He likened it to the mat on which traditional sadhus sit for meditation. Both its ends rise upwards due to the weight of the person sitting on it. If you try to forcibly hold down one end, the other springs up with redoubled force. And vice versa. The timeless history of Hindu Dharma shows precisely this—every vandal or world conqueror who tried to destroy Sanatana Dharma eventually ended up destroying himself. True wisdom thus lies in cultivating a sense of balance and equanimity by sitting in the centre of the mat, preferably in penance. We detect this keen philosophical understanding in most of Modi’s cultural and spiritual initiatives, including but not limited to the rebuilding of the Ram Mandir, the Mahakal corridor, the Kashi corridor, etc. 

This does not include the manner in which he has facilitated hundreds of visible and invisible endeavours at bringing the Hindu narrative back where it belongs: in the hands of the community. 

Unfortunately, sections of Hindus castigate him as “Maulana” Modi and hurl similar invectives at him. The origins of this become understandable when placed in the backdrop of history. But in general, it is wise to take a long view to implement lasting changes. The reality of the last seven decades shows that Hindu politicians who espoused secularism have proven to be the greatest betrayers of their own spiritual and cultural inheritance; they have also been vilifiers of their own devatas. Thus, the real combat should be directed at such Hindu politicians instead of Modi. 

For all the admirable achievements notched up in the previous decade, areas of improvement exist, and nothing is more urgent than education, more specifically the humanities. 

Marxists were able to create three generations of traitors by capturing the educational establishment and it is still giving them solid returns. This is also the domain the Modi government has paid the least attention to. It is my view that the government should exit the business of micro-managing education; its role must be that of a regulatory and oversight body than that of an official policymaker. 

Since time immemorial, education in India has been community-driven, a fact which even the British realised quite early in their rule. Here is Grant Duff’s confession: “[The English] will see that no good can be effected for [Indians] but only much harm, by introducing English methods [of education], foreign to the characters and conditions of Indians…”

Apart from Macaulay’s ill-fated Minute, the British did not formulate or enforce things like language and culture policy. This was introduced after India achieved a questionable freedom. 

Decolonisation is another element woven into education and culture. While Modi emphasised this aspect a couple of years ago in his Red Fort speech, the task is generational and requires citizen participation at all levels. It should ideally begin at home. 

The Kartavya Path and the Central Vista are the most concrete expression of decolonisation but its full success will eventually be realised when our minds are decolonised. Dharampal memorably wrote that the Rashtrapati Bhavan must be converted into a museum showcasing the horrors of British rule. If that is done, it will be akin to an economic and cultural holocaust museum of human history. 

One decade of Narendra Modi’s prime ministership has been a force for national good. He has wheeled in an era in which airports and seaports vie with one another in proclaiming their credentials as to which one is more efficient and profitable. He has infused a spirit of daring in Indian youth—a whole new ecosystem of startup founders and gig workers whose dreams are cemented by personal and financial freedom and we see them walking around with an air of confidence. Above all, Modi has been a catalyst for recovering our cultural heft and a unifier that an India, splintered under secularism, had been awaiting.  

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