#RightSideUp: Modi's Political Appeal; Letter to 'Brown Sahib' Hasan Minhaj

New Delhi: Even as manifestos, candidate lists and broken alliances dominated the political spectrum, and Jet Airways was given access to deep pockets after it hit a deep air pocket itself, India finally got a Lokpal after years of fighting for the anti-corruption watchdog last week.

Even so, voices from the right largely kept their focus on lambasting the Congress and trumpeting the Narendra Modi government's 'achievements'.

Understanding Narendra Modi's political appeal

For his Sunday column 'Right & Wrong' this week for the Times of India, Swapan Dasgupta tackled the "explosion of passions" that India undergoes come each general elections in an article titled 'Why Modi appeals to both techies and the 131 CAs who took on 108 economists'.

Describing the two "echo chambers that are watertight and self-contained", made up by "so-called liberals" and "the chowkidar army and fraternity of bhakts", he blames the shrill electronic media for giving an "impression that India is polarised as never before.

Among the so-called liberals – where lifestyles tend to be more cosmopolitan – there is virtual unanimity that India must vote resoundingly to defeat Narendra Modi. Although this enthusiasm to end Modi rule isn’t always matched by a corresponding enthusiasm for any ramshackle alternative that could come in its place, the feeling in these echo chambers is that even a bout of instability isn’t too high a price to pay for ridding India of this monster.

Dasgupta, interestingly, separates himself from the narrative with his use of "they" for both those who stand against the BJP and the saffron party's supporters. For example:

On the other side is the chowkidar army and fraternity of bhakts that genuinely believes that India under Modi is on the cusp of achieving greatness and if the project that began in 2014 is somehow stalled, India will regress, and the purposefulness and energy of the past five years will disappear. For them, the re-election of Modi is a nationalist project and the fulfilment of India’s manifest destiny.

Citing a Nirad Chaudhuri essay written in 1967, Dasgupta attempts to explain the rise of the Modi voter:

With rapid economic growth and prosperity... A neo-Hindu middle class that combines livelihood in the ‘modern’ professions and a commitment to technology with an adherence to traditional values and robust nationalism, has emerged and grown in self-confidence. Modi is an expression of this phenomenon and appeals to both the aspirational techies of Bengaluru and the 131 chartered accountants who decried 108 economists for their 'politically motivated attempts to discredit India and dent its credibility'.

A mere general election will not settle a war that has been waging since 1947. However, a second term for Modi may ensure that the intellectual discourse will not be as one-sided as the past five years.

Also read: #RightSideUp: Making ‘Chowkidar Cool Again'; India's 'Pseudo-Intellectual Worms'

'Open letter to Brown Sahib, Hasan Minhaj'

In an open letter written to Hasan Minhaj for his recent Patriot Act episode where the Indian elections were in focus, rightlog.in's Animesh Pandey, as an "inquisitive Indian, a Hindu and a Brahmin" calls out the Netflix host for his "ignorance" about India and Modi's achievements.

Taking affront to Minhaj's joke on the efficacy of the Balakot airstrikes, he first lashes out at him for mocking the Indian Air Force.

To quote an excerpt from your episode, ‘We would’ve hit something, if our maps weren’t so blurred…..Just to tell you, those trees were terrorists.’ How did you find that amusing? Do you even realize how much pains our men in uniform had taken to make sure that the air strikes hit nothing apart from the terrorists?

Bringing outspoken comedian Kunal Kamra into the picture, Pandey moves on to how Minhaj spoke about violence against minorities ever since the Modi government came to power in 2014.

Did you have a Skype chat with the likes of Kunal Kamra or what? There’s no other reason for such dumb ‘wisecracks.’ Your ignorance was quite prominent since PM Modi is the same guy who has managed to reduce poverty and malnutrition by drastic levels in the past 2-3 years. I hope you aren’t allergic to facts. Oh wait, you have your ‘minority victim card’ to hide behind.

Also read: Hasan Minhaj’s Take on ‘Indian Elections' Is Simple yet Subversive

For Pandey, the Shashi Tharoor interview sealed Minhaj's hypocrisy. Even the host's excuse that no BJP leader responded didn't cut it.

The moment your hypocrisy was exposed was when you talked with Shashi Tharoor about the elections episode. The way you interacted with him was enough to signify that something was fishy. You even cracked a joke on him in a positive light. What was so bad about BJP politicians? Do they have horns on their head?

Calling Minhaj "as Hinduphobic as the kind of left-liberal comedians we have to suffer back home" (Minhaj is married to Beena Patel, a Hindu), Pandey even chides him for talking badly of Yogi Adityanath.

I don’t expect you to clarify your stance, forget an apology. But in my own humble words, I wish to send a simple message : India welcomes every guest warmly, but not those who either want to destroy our nation, or propagate absurd, baseless lies like you.

Tough questions for the Congress

Directing his ire at the Congress for "questioning the veracity of the air strikes and demanding proof of the quantum of damage inflicted in the cross border operation", Vikas Saraswat for Swarajya says it is the opposition that need to answer a few questions and not the BJP government.

A robust democracy demands that an alert opposition keeps questioning the treasury benches. But it is expected that questions are sensible and not sensational or meant to mislead the nation. In the case of repeated questioning of the 2016 surgical strikes and the recent Balakot air strikes, Congress has demonstrated such irresponsibility and recklessness, that now the party itself needs to answer a few questions.

Saraswat then goes into detailing just how the Congress has worked to destabilise the BJP government – one, with Mani Shankar Aiyar's alleged 'bid to dethrone Modi' ahead of the Gujarat assembly polls with the aid of the Pakistan and second, with Rahul Gandhi's meeting with a Chinese envoy.

Also read: When Patriotism Becomes Treason

A few of Saraswat's questions include:

The nation, which has been kept in the dark by the Congress party till date, would want to know what actually transpired in these meetings?

Why were these meetings initially concealed and denied?

Why was Congress party running parallel foreign affairs discussions?

What explains [Navjot Singh] Siddhu's rush to attend Imran Khan's oath-taking ceremony and the warmth with which he hugged Qamar Javed Bajwa, chief of Pakistani army which shelters and nurtures terrorist outfits targeting India?

Did Siddhu takeover from where Aiyar had left?

Accusing the Congress of "shamelessly flirting with Pakistan", Saraswat's main question for it is whether the grand old party seeks to serve the national interests of Pakistan.

He says that the party "is getting regular praise in [the] Pakistani media", something he believes the Congress has never objected to. He then changes tack to asking whether the Congress has been hijacked by Islamists.

By questioning the air strikes, it is now risking its political capital and electoral prospects. It is natural to ask therefore that has the Congress been hijacked by Islamists? Are Gandhis being blackmailed by them?

The apprehensions are further strengthened because an entire lobby in the Congress party has been working to give a free pass to Pakistani jihad in India. Digvijay Singh's shenanigans after 26/11, reversing the direction of Samjhauta blasts probe and Chidambaram's desperate foisting of Hindu terror narrative show that Congress is playing into the hands of Islamists not just within India, but probably across the border also.

Why vilifying demonetisation is futile

For Organiser this week, Amarendra Pratap Singh has written a full-fledged defence of demonetisation. Even though the Reserve Bank of India had said in 2017 itself that nearly 99% of scrapped notes came back into the system, Singh says that while "demonetisation definitely hurt economic growth in the short run", its "medium and long-run effects on the economy shouldn’t be ignored".

Using hoarded currency notes for illegal transactions by free riders artificially inflates prices and hurts poor and middle class. Demonetisation, therefore, helped RBI to sustain a low inflation regime... While pointing fingers towards low growth, intellectuals conveniently ignore the inflation effects of demonetisation. GDP growth (quarterly to quarterly) data shows that demonetisation had minimal effects on primary sector activities and its effects on secondary sector activities lasted for two quarters only.

Claiming that another way to analyse demonetisation would be to look at it from a historical perspective of analysing it alongside similar policy decisions, for which he offers up land reforms in post-independence India.

Singh then praises Jawaharlal Nehru for land reform ("despite its limited implementation success"), but then adds:

Another perspective to explain land redistribution is that it was a political stunt by Congress Party to grab vote of poor. In the same fashion, cash was hoarded by a handful of individuals who gained from crony capitalism during UPA I&II. Like land reform, short-run effects of demonetisation are definitely more at the negative side but not amounting to human lives. Millions died due to partition within months which was the short run cost which people paid. In terms of short-run cost, demonetisation, therefore, has been a better resource redistribution exercise than land reforms. If demonetisation was money laundering exercise, land reform was land abduction by Nehruvian Congress to win elections.

Singh then tackles the issue of public sector banks under the NDA regime, and lays the blame at the UPA's feet for its "corrupt" ways.

It must be remembered that UPA II under Manmohan Singh used public sector banks to “bail out” “private entrepreneurs” after the financial crisis in 2008... Demonetisation was an effort to bail out people’s institution (public sector banks) instead of bailing out crony capitalists e.g. Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi.

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