Four years have passed since Narendra Modi was elected to the office of the Prime Minister of India; four summers have gone by since he took oath of office. It seemed just the other day that he emerged from the Kashi Vishwanath Mandir in Varanasi, his forehead smeared with the sandalwood paste of worship. The memory of Ganga aarti is still vivid in the minds of millions who watched him pray to our life giving River Mother that evening. The inspiring symbolism of it all heralded the advent of a new era; it was a watershed moment in the history of post-Independent India.
For those who have been inspired by and have traditionally identified with the spirit of Bharat, civilisational India, India of the inner realm, the India that was being asphyxiated by the stranglehold of liberal fundamentalism, for them the rise of Modi, his victory and his imprint are of phenomenal significance and impact. Modi’s rise signified the rise of one among their own.
In the last four years, as I have often written, Modi’s commitment to his vision of India, his actualising his vision of “New India” has been unflagging and unfailing. The articulation and actualisation are so energetic, convincing and pragmatic that it continues to attract adherents in India and attention across the world. The mainstreaming of the marginalised has been Modi’s priority. It is a promise he made to us and to himself on the day he crossed the threshold of Parliament. He has not deviated from that.
On a visit to Shenzhen last week to attend the Shanghai Corporation Organisation (SCO) Political Parties Forum Meet, representing the BJP, I heard a young scholar speak of Modi’s vision of “New India”. Modi’s vision, this young scholar told me, is similar to President Xi’s “The great Chinese Dream”; both aspire to propel their countries to greatness and prosperity. The young Chinese had caught the essence of “New India”; Modi had articulated it on the foundations of collective progression, a progression, a march forward in which no one would be ultimately left behind.
Some liberal fundamentalists sneered at Modi, while some wrote reams trying to prove that the electorate was unwise in electing a leader like him. Just because their predictions and impositions had been rejected or refused, and simply because it was Modi who was elected, they questioned the mandate itself. It would not have been questioned had it been a Gandhi dynast; they are entitled to rule India.
Others got down to a futile exercise of trying to analyse the May 2014 electoral verdict and peddled the theory that Modi had just won 31 percent of the vote and therefore can never be the leader of whole of India. The prerogative of ruling India, for these liberal fundamentalists, is reserved for an Oxbridge educated dummy leader or a dynast with no qualification or talent except that he was born into a family, whose members have always felt that they were born to rule India. However, Modi has always made it clear; he works for those who have voted for him and unreservedly, for those who have not voted for him.
When was it last that such a position was articulated in India’s public life?
No other leader in the past thirty years has been so scrutinised, so pilloried, so admired, so worshiped and so inspiring, as has been Modi. While his mass acceptability, the mass percolation of his vision and conviction is increasing by the day, his presence continues to unnerve liberal fundamentalists who feel a tremendous sense of opposition now to their false narratives of India and to their false submissions engineered by those narratives.
Modi has repeatedly challenged the liberal fundamentalists in these last four years, which is why they see in him their nemesis. In his triumph they see their doom.
Anirban Ganguly
Director, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation
Follow him on Twitter @anirbanganguly