Has the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi been drowned in the very wave created by his own spin-doctors?
Ever since Modi’s anointment as the BJP’s principal face for the 2014 general elections last September — side-stepping a host of deserving candidates — India is abuzz with stories of how the nation’s political system has given birth to a wizard who possess the magic remedy for all ills afflicting the masses. Modi, known for his communal stridency, was intelligently packaged as a “man of development.”
Though Gujarat, the state he surprisingly governs by a popular mandate notwithstanding the 2002 mayhem, is just another dusty, congested place in India despite an uninterrupted BJP rule. The frenzy that was whipped up carefully around the delusory Gujarat model of governance has virtually left the rest of India under an illusion that Mahatma Gandhi’s state has become a paradise on earth.
Indeed, a section of the people had started believing that under Modi’s stewardship, Gujarat is now sitting at the high table alongside the developed nations while the rest of India lived in the medieval past. However, a visit to the state, once celebrated, as the fountainhead of tolerance and secularism, will leave even those who clamor for Modi’s ascendancy to the prime ministerial chair on the basis of his governance scorecard, thoroughly disappointed. Anybody taking a stroll through the lanes and by-lanes of a top Gujarati metropolitan city will inevitably remain a witness to the filth and chaos that is too familiar with any other Indian city. From traffic jams to intermittent rough patches on busy thoroughfares, from beggars sleeping on pavements to malfunctioning traffic signals, from hungry frail-bodied destitute sitting outside restaurants in the hope of getting some favor from rich customers to congested slums, Gujarat is no America.
Modi has also successfully concealed the harrowing fact that Gujarat thrives in the business of illegal womb selling and is among the first few in India. Underprivileged women are forced to give their womb for rent to make both ends meet. There are many more embarrassing questions on the 2002 pogrom, stalking of women, on dirt-cheap lands given to select corporate houses, on the pathetic human development index, on ex-minister Haren Pandya and Ishrat Jahan murder case, Surat floods et al. that Modi has parried effectively for long. Unfortunately, the massive and hi-tech public relations exercise aimed at projecting Modi as a “Messiah” has helped divert the people’s mind from his policies based on cronyism, favoritism and religion based outlook. Besides, very few seem to grasp the gravity of the current situation in India. A victory for Modi in this election would be construed as a success in the scary experiment of majority extremism that the BJP initiated in early 1990s with the divisive Ayodhya movement. The campaign spearheaded by Modi’s mentor L.K. Advani was premised on the utterly fallacious idea of restoring the past glory of Hinduism supposedly ruined by the Muslim invaders of medieval era.
Does Advani now realize that razing a Muslim place of worship might have brought BJP to political center-stage, but it has simultaneously injected rabid communalism within the veins of our great country? Even if Modi fade away from the scene, the scars and schisms that are still evident will continue to prickle the conscience of this nation. The likes of Amit Shah, Praveen Togadia, Giriraj Singh, Ramdas Kadam and others — all hardcore right-wing Hindu activists — will remain wedded to an ideology that shamelessly seek Muslim citizens to live an inferior life and adhere to Hindu traditions if they want to buy peace. And Advani and his protégé Modi have done little to rein in those who proudly declared after the Gujarat pogrom that the Muslims would never dare to raise their heads again.
Curiously enough, Modi decided to dump the much-hyped development agenda midway into the election season and revert back to the core Hindutva poll plank. He has somehow realized that it is difficult to hoodwink the public for long and that his contemptible Goebellian tactics of twisting facts and figures has been badly exposed. Undoubtedly, an unmasked Modi’s double-speak and contradictory actions leave the electorate and even his die-hard supporters confused. By secretly sending emissaries to hard-line Kashmiri separatist leaders and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for rapprochement, after creating a hullabaloo over beheading of Indian soldiers, Modi has proved that he can neither be trusted by his loyalists nor adversaries.
The recent spate of hate-speeches delivered by leaders of the BJP and its sister organizations is a pointer to the fact that the big talk of accountability, merit and performance-based governance is nothing but an effort to confuse the masses. A political outfit which breeds on communalism is unlikely to shed its rabid sectarian approach in a hurry. It is the mindset that can never change as evident from the uncouth statements coming from Hindu right-wing leaders and sympathizers like Baba Ramdev that has outraged the modesty of even underprivileged Dalit women.
The citizens at the end of the day seek a government that not only provides economic security but also guarantees social amity. India from time immemorial is a land of talented and peace-loving people. A truly secular administration bereft of the Hindutva baggage and capable of unleashing the strength of India, residing in its composite culture and brotherhood, can help the nation cruise toward peaceful times.
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