Why Modi still remains hard to beat
The results of the bypolls in UP and Bihar are exciting, but I wouldn’t read too much into them. Bypolls results should not be treated like acute pains in limbs that make you forget the body as a whole. There is a great deal more to the permutations and combinations of Indian politics than that these results augur. For better, for worse, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose to stay off centre stage in these elections. That leaves a margin yet for uncertainty as to emerging trends.
The bypoll results do not, in any way, undermine Modi’s centrality to the political dynamics of this country. The question that the opposition parties, unnerved by his apparent invincibility, needs to cope with is this: what is the secret of the Modi magic?
Let us start with the obvious. Modi derived all his electoral purchase in 2014 from the romanticism of rebellion spiced up with the rhetoric of righteous indignation. He positioned himself as the rebel par excellence against the betrayal of people’s mandate by UPA. The electoral heat he generated, which warmed millions of hearts, was through rhetorical friction. In times of disenchantment and bewilderment, it is quite easy to romanticise rebellion and set fire to the smouldering feeling of popular anger. So, Arun Shourie was right when he said a few months before the general elections in 2014, that Manmohan Singh and Sonia alone would install Modi in the seat of power.
But Shourie was telling only the partial truth. What he did not say is that the essence of corruption is widespread, which Modi read aright. What is the essence of corruption? The wellspring of corruption is not that the exchequer is plundered. It is that human beings are equated with their possessions. Or, human personality—its sanctity, its greatness, its originality—is deemed as nothing compared to how much a person grabs and hoards. You are what you can afford to show off. It does not matter who, or how rotten, you are. In such a national climate all that a clever demagogue has to do is to appeal to collective greed. That is precisely where the promise of `15 lakh going to be credited into our bank accounts comes into the equation. I am inclined to believe that Modi made this promise not in earnest, but as a satirical jest; like in the following instance.
When I was a young lad, an itinerant preacher from the US visited my village. At his last meeting, he distributed pieces of paper to the members of the congregation and asked them to write down the amounts each one of them would like him to remit from the US. All paper bits returned to him with dizzy amounts. He filed all of them carefully and went home. A few weeks later came a letter from the preacher addressed to the priest in charge of the church. It read something like, “Pastor, why haven’t you taught your people to give up their covetousness? Ask them to repent!”
Whether it be politics or spirituality, the only question that matters is whether or not the people are growing in stature and self-respect. The problem with greed, which globalisation has sanctified as the raging universal religion, is that it keeps peoples and societies hollow and puerile. They lack discernment in the present and vision for the future. It takes no great ability to lead them by the nose. All one has to do is to keep them hooked to ever-changing allurements. If, besides this, you can convince them that they have no alternative, the battle is well and truly won. Because of their existential vacuum, they will stay hooked to the theatre of rebellion. Rebels, as Albert Camus wrote in The Rebel, are not required to deliver. Their mandate is to rebel, or give vent to personal and popular anger. In a democracy, the romanticism of rebellion is ascribed usually to opposition parties. We must give credit to Modi’s political versatility that he combines the roles of the ruling party and of the Opposition in himself! He rules mainly by opposing the opposition parties. This dilutes and deflects the liability of ‘anti-incumbency’. There are times we are enabled to feel that the UPA is still in power when something is found out to have gone wrong.
This puts the spotlight on the need to find a counterbalancing point of coherence for the Opposition, which is going to be thorniest issue in the run up to the 2019 elections. I have a soft corner for Rahul Gandhi, but I doubt if he has it in him to play that role. He is not cast in the role of a rebel—and beside Modi, he needs to be a super rebel—and his efforts to don that mask now and then lack the punch people expect. The opposition parties sharing a fellowship meal is good nutrition; but they need to plug this gaping loophole in their façade of prospective unity. Unity, without a point of energetic cohesion, could well be an exercise in futility.
What the people of India are looking for is not just a rag-tag coalition of anaemic aspirants, who are merely thrashing about for mere survival. What is needed is a genuine alternative to the boisterous hollowness that currently afflicts the nation. The greatness of India, which is potentially exciting, needs to be affirmed and realised. National character and human dignity need to be nurtured, rather than human weaknesses exploited. The widening gulf between public opinion and our national motto—Satyameva Jayate—must be bridged. Our beleaguered pride in being Indians, rather than in belonging to various ghettos, needs to be revived and the dark clouds of anxiety about the commonweal gathering over our horizon dispersed. The opposition parties must convince the rest of us that their unity is hitched to this goal and not to the petty goal of political survival to which we are, frankly, indifferent.
Valson Thampu
Former principal of St Stephen’s College, New Delhi
Email: vthampu@gmail.com