I/II. https://scroll.in/article/838700/shiv-visvanathan-four-ways-i-underestimated-narendra-modi-three-years-ago
OPINION Shiv Visvanathan: Four ways I was wrong about Narendra Modi three years ago The Indian prime minister has contempt for intellectuals because they got him wrong. They did. Yesterday · 08:00 am Shiv Visvanathan A report on the completion of three years of the Narendra Modi regime should lead to a moment of reflectiveness. A report has a sense of being objective, distanced, a list of observations by an observer dispassionately watching a regime. There is a dualism here that we must break because a report, rather than being objective, is a dialogue between storyteller and subject. The storyteller is not the analyst but part of the case study that he is reporting. He has to ask critically whether his own narrative has changed in these three years. Did he make mistakes in assessment or description? Where did he miss out on the total picture? 1) Underestimating Modi First, I think one of the big mistakes I made was in underestimating Modi. The scale and size of his victory, and his impact on India is stupendous. It is not that I was marginally wrong in assessing the power of the majority. I was colossally wrong in sensing that Modi, as a Rorschach of middle class majoritarian Indians, wields unbelievable power. Modi has contempt for intellectuals because they got him wrong. They did. But I think that the power of intellectual life resides in recovery, in rebuilding critique in more creative ways. Intellectuals confronted violence at a different scale, and were also surprised by the silence around Modi. It is as if the Opposition lost its voice, and dissent its tongue. The marginalisation of dissent, and the power of celebration around Modi is worrying. The irony is that we saw a monster being created. We also saw the middle class loving the monster, and realising that the monster was us. Modi, in that sense, was not just a figment of the communal mind, but a representative of middle class resentment, which needed nationalist jingoism to cover up its inferiority. He belonged more to the people than intellectuals did. 2) Misreading middle-class India The second phenomenon we did not understand was the Indian ability to normalise violence and be happy with authoritarianism. Modi, Bollywood style, believed that goodness was weak, socialism was slow and that he needed to create an assertive aggressive Indian for whom the end justified the means. Middle class India is quite happy to be Chinese, Indian style, to argue that democracy beyond a point does not make sense. Majoritarian rule is middle class India’s answer to the success of authoritarianism elsewhere. India is now committed to erasing plurality in the name of development. The normalisation of brutality and violence is not something we anticipated fully. We somehow felt that democracy would curb the majoritarian evil. We did not realise that one of the ironies of a democracy tired of itself is that it adds to violence, and evil. Many social scientists trapped in secular concepts were ambushed by the dangers of Modi. Admittedly, social science did not function as a critique, an early warning system about Modi. The only two domains that did – marketing and management – had already been appropriated by Modi. 3) Over-ideologising Modi Third, in narrating Modi’s rise to power several people over-ideologised him, seeing him as communally obsessed. It took us some time to realise that the only aphrodisiac Modi responds to is power. Modi loves power, and wants more of it. In their love for power, Modi and his right-hand man Amit Shah work in tandem. They are ideological when they need to be, but it is the pragmatism of the BJP that has surprised this commentator. As they chart their invasion of the North East, or their plan for South India, it becomes clear that Modi is quite happy with politicians crossing over from any party. Modi realises that the loss of power corrupts absolutely. Second, his pragmatism of playing to film stars long after their careers are dead or moribund, shows his sense of the fan club being the equivalent of the cadre and shakha. Shah and Modi showed astuteness at a tactical level that we did not expect. There was a realisation that it was not the movements devoted to social justice that they were committed to. Modi and Shah were more interested in movie stars playing out the fiction of social justice. Modi understood that democracy in India needed the myths of justice enacted by these fading stars more than the realism of politics. 4) Propaganda guru Finally, Modi’s understanding of the information society – in which the creation, distribution, and manipulation of information is a significant political, economic and cultural activity – and its logic was more acute than I imagined. He realised that unlike knowledge, information allowed for erasure and amnesia. What he created through development was an erasure of the crimes of the past. Modi sensed that information bowdlerised and simplified India into simple dictums and slogans. Modi mastered the use of these simplistic proverbs to lethal effect. In this he was a match for China’s Mao Zedong or North Korea’s Kim-Il Sung. The cliché as chorus acquired tremendous political force. In that sense, Modi was a shrewder modernist than his critics. Modi realised that electoral democracy, like Bollywood, loved fictions. It gorged on B-grade sentimentality, was carnivorous about populist fables like his chaiwala story, and enacted scripts to cater to this need for everyday myth. In that sense, Modi understood propaganda better than his critics did. It was not ideology that he mastered but the power of communication systems, the uses of performative language, where saying becomes a form of doing, where the articulation of a mere utterance evokes a sense of competence. I must confess that as an analyst and storyteller, I misread Modi here. It is not his goodness but his competence that has come as a surprise. I labeled Modi in a narrow way as a communalist without realising that power and evil cater to a wide world of symbols. I should just hope that in admitting to underestimate him, the pages that will follow will be more astute in tracking the slow disaster he is subjecting India to. Shiv Visvanathan is a social science nomad. II. https://scroll.in/article/838723/three-years-of-narendra-modi-why-many-right-wing-liberals-who-supported-him-are-now-disappointed LOOKING BACK ‘We’re in an even deeper malaise’: Many of Modi’s right-wing liberal supporters are now disappointed It is clear now that the Hindutva right controls the BJP. Yesterday · 06:30 am Shoaib Daniyal As chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi was a highly polarising figure. Due to the 2002 anti-Muslim riots that took place on his watch, Modi was anathema to leftists, liberals and even to a section on the right. After the riots, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Bharatiya Janata Party prime minister at that time, himself wanted Modi sacked as chief minister. Yet, as the general election of 2014 approached, Modi’s base expanded. As the prime ministerial candidate, Modi ran a powerful campaign that focused on economic growth, limited government and liberalisation. The communal polarisation that had kept him in power in Gujarat was rarely addressed. Coming after the moribund United Progressive Alliance-II government, Modi presented an attractive economic pitch to many right-wing liberals. The utilitarian approach The mood of many right-wing liberals was captured by a much-discussed Gurcharan Das piece that was published in April, 2014, a few weeks before the election results were due. In his piece, Das, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, India, and an author and columnist, juxtaposed Modi’s communalism versus his promise of reform thus: “There is a clear risk in voting for Modi — he is polarising, sectarian and authoritarian. There is a greater risk, however, in not voting for him. It is to not create jobs for 8-10 million youth that enter the market each year…There will always be a trade-off in values at the ballot box and those who place secularism above demographic dividend are wrong and elitist.” As a thesis, this was utilitarian in the extreme. Das was not absolving Modi of the communal stain. He was simply saying it was outweighed by the benefits Modi would bring as an economic reformer. Three years down the line, how well has this bargain worked? One end of the bargain Novelist and political commentator Aatish Taseer said that his initial assessment of Modi was off the mark. “In 2014, I expected a mixture of economic vitality and chauvinism with Modi, but I was wrong,” said Taseer. “What India got was only chauvinism – and now we’re in an even deeper malaise”. Taseer’s point is backed by data. In 2014, Das was clear that job creation was a moral imperative that outweighed ideals such as secularism. However, this argument is under severe strain three years later, given that job creation has ground to a halt under the Modi administration. India’s unemployment rate has actually increased since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government took office. The number of jobs added by the Modi government in its three years in office is just 50% of the jobs added by the previous Manmohan Singh government in its final three years. Even as the Modi government is unable to live up to its promise on increasing employment, it has also slipped on its promise of small government. In 2014, Modi ran for prime minister with the slogan “maximum governance, minimum government” – a thrilling prospect for India’s economic liberals, given how rare the concept is in India. Yet, as right-wing commentator Rupa Subramanya pointed out in a piece last month, the Modi-led Union government is “starting to slip back into the old command and control mode and away from the promise of good governance”. Earlier this week, clashes erupted between Dalits and Thakurs in Saharanpur, UP. (Photo credit: PTI). Earlier this week, clashes erupted between Dalits and Thakurs in Saharanpur, UP. (Photo credit: PTI). Religious identity politics Even as the vast majority of India’s population stagnates economically, religious identity has emerged as the main axis of Indian politics. For the past three years, politics around the cow has taken centre stage, with vigilante groups attacking Muslims and Dalits across the country on the suspicion of cattle smuggling and slaughter. Political columnist Tavleen Singh supported Modi in 2014. Yet, on May 7, Singh wrote, “It is hard to understand why a Prime Minister so passionate about making India a modern, digital, prosperous country has seemingly not noticed that hunting and killing Muslims on the pretext of cows and love jihad does not sit well with modernity.” Speaking to Scroll.in, Singh said, “I think I misjudged him. I thought he was a liberaliser.” In Swarajya, a magazine that describes itself as “a big tent for liberal right of centre discourse”, senior journalist Seetha argued that right-wing liberals are “disappointed at his [Modi’s] inability to get the BJP-ruled state governments to rein in the hardline/fringe elements and vigilante groups”. Seetha specifically called out the appointment of the far right Adityanath as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in March to buttress her point. Hobson’s choice Gurcharan Das, though, is still sticking to his 2014 analysis. “Jobs are plummeting all over the world,” argued Das, defending Modi’s poor job-creation record. “This is due to automation. I am not sure what other policies could have been pursued to make it better.” Das is also sanguine about the BJP’s record on law and order. “Yes, there have been stray events such as gau rakshak attacks,” he said. “There has been no sort of state-planned murder or anything.” Das is disappointed with the fact that Modi has been unable to raise India’s ease of doing business ranking but said, overall, he would still support the BJP were he given a chance to turn back the clock to 2014. “There is nobody else,” explained Das. The TINA or “there is no alternative” argument, however, is something that punctuates most critiques of Modi from his right-wing liberal supporters. “Modi and the BJP is still the best option,” said Tavleen Singh. “Compare him with Nitish [Kumar], Lalu [Yadav] or Rahul Gandhi. That is why he wins; because the voter can see he is the best option.” Liberal irrelevance In the end, the fact that Modi can coolly ignore his right-wing liberal supporters and still end up being backed by them might serve to illustrate how increasingly irrelevant India’s tiny liberal elite – both right and left – are becoming to the political discourse. Maybe nothing captures this better than the Union government’s demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes late last year. The move went against every liberal principle of limited government and had few economic benefits. Sadanand Dhume, a Wall Street Journal columnist and a prominent supporter of Modi during the 2014 elections called the move a “debacle”. Yet, Modi simply brushed aside this criticism and converted what was an economic disaster into a political windfall. Months after demonetisation was announced, the BJP won a landslide victory in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. If 2014 saw a provisional alliance between right-wing liberals and Hindutva groups, three years since, it is clear that right-wing liberals are getting increasingly marginalised. For the last two years of the Modi adminstration’s term, it seems the Hindutva right will call the shots within the BJP. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
