The speech Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos has become popular. In social media parlance, it went viral though it was no contagion. On the other hand, it was like announcing vaccine trials for the rapaciousness and provocations of President Donald Trump, who is trying to reshape the US in his own image. Carney’s was the first official announcement of the end of the world order as we knew it.
“Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Carney declared with the ease of a historian. There was a quiet dignity and extraordinary clarity in the language he employed. There was no trace of mourning and complaining, but only an urgency to formulate a pragmatic future. “We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just,” he said.
At the end, Carney said it was time for the world’s “middle powers” to pull down the pretence that we had put up, which conveniently suppressed “the risks of extreme global integration”. He made it sound more like a convenient exhibition of loyalty to a mafioso led by bigger economies and greater powers. There was no need to continue with the pretence because the gloves were off: “In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: compete with each other for favour, or combine to create a third path with impact.”
Since 1991, India too had put up the show Carney referred to. But now that there is a broad agreement that it should be pulled down, the question is how does one do it—loudly or quietly? Should it be done by engaging Trump on every provocative statement, matching him word for word, following every twist and feeding a gathering storm? Or, should one ignore the bullying with a mesh and wisdom of silence while working firmly towards an alternative path of impact, as Carney suggested.
It appears Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen the path of silence to deal with the threats and insults of Trump, which are occasionally punctuated by concessions of absurd love and admiration. In the case of Modi and India, Trump has not been totally dismissive or wholly embracing. However, his middle path is not one of balance, but of extreme fickleness and precariousness.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated in Davos that India and the EU were on the “cusp of a historic trade agreement”, and it was the “mother of all trade deals”. If this is indicative of anything, it is about the beguiling stillness with which India has reoriented and reorganised itself, and begun the search for alternatives in a ruptured world. This is far from the casualness of political verbosities that often take over noisy democracies.
We have witnessed something similar in Modi’s approach when it comes to Russian oil, Iranian affairs, Ukrainian peace and the Palestinian question. Silence has been deployed as a strategic political tool. It is not about avoidance or being bewildered, but the simple wisdom of not adding to the mess that already exists, of not having to negotiate the emotion and emptiness of one’s own words when meaning has become a slippery customer. It is a time of “rupture” as Carney said, and Modi seems to have read it well and early.
This silence of Modi, in this particular phase of global chaos, has to be distinguished from the accusations of his other silences. They have to be looked at independently. But it appears the Congress and its ‘liberal’ fellow travellers have lost the ability to slice, separate and place the silences in different silos.
A certain ideological stubbornness they have displayed has had a strange effect on the common man—they seem to be living up the pervasive allegation that they dance to foreign tunes in their minds. When the whole world is dumbstruck by Trumpian vulgarity and madness, they come across as enjoying the discomfort of Modi without realising that his discomfort is equated with that of India, and that it’s deployed to frame national interest.
Just imagine Rahul Gandhi endorsing Trump’s “dead economy” charge, and holding Modi to account on every unsubstantiated claim Trump has flung. More recently, Congressmen were caught interpreting Trump’s half-sentences of ridicule. One office-bearer wrote in a social media post: “No American President ever dared to say that an Indian Prime Minister wanted to ‘make him happy’. Trump said it about Modi because Washington knows India now has a weak PM, obsessed with optics, applause and propaganda.”
Congress loyalists have forgotten that Manmohan Singh, in a moment of uncharacteristic articulation of unrequited feelings in 2008, told George W Bush that “the people of India deeply love you”. Bush was no saint. And Nixon was downright abusive towards Indira Gandhi, irritated by her “moody silences”. Singh was known for his silences too, but those largely sprang from his need to delicately negotiate political authority above him.
However, the legendary silences of Singh’s mentor, P V Narasimha Rao, came from a certain nonchalance and cynicism, and perhaps also from a karmic belief about things sorting themselves out. H D Deve Gowda has used a Sanskrit phrase to speak of Modi’s silence: “Mounam kalaham naasti” (There will be no quarrel if one is silent). Gowda said that Modi listens, but never reacts. Vajpayee’s was about pauses, not silences.
In a recent book titled Democracy and the Politics of Silence, academic Mónica Brito Vieira argues about the underestimated place of silence in democratic life. In the mainstream Western tradition, there is a celebration of speech and its capacity to make things happen. The eastern traditions, however, have accommodated silence far more and perhaps to greater effect. While silencing is about repression, silence has a deeper and positive play.
Mohandas Gandhi was the greatest practitioner of the ritual of silence. For all the eloquent political communication Modi does with words, he does as much with his undercurrents of silence. If he has remained in power continuously, it means he has found his personal balance of words and silence.
Sugata Srinivasaraju | Senior journalist and author of The Conscience Network: A Chronicle of Resistance to a Dictatorship
(Views are personal)
(sugatasriraju@gmail.com)