He was there at the wedding, photographed standing between bride, bridegroom and beaming parents. It was an invitation the prime minister could not refuse, whatever the optics. Too many IOUs. It requires a special chutzpah to turn down a summons from the richest tycoon in India. Arguably, the political economy of a truncated prime minister has its own compulsions.
Those compulsions have already had a harmful effect on the nation’s well-being and have curdled our zeitgeist. Ten years of intense crony capitalism have not just produced unprecedented inequalities and unemployment but also an indifference to piety and probity in public life. The BJP had to recently pay a heavy electoral price for the Modi Project’s cultivated pro-billionaire biases. The trickle-down theory has once again worked for the billionaires and against the poor. Nonetheless, it is too late for the prime minister to extricate himself from that deadly embrace.
That is the primary task of progressive politics in the next few years: stall the fatal lurch towards a full-fledged billionaire-directed kleptocracy of the common wealth and resources. Democratic politics’ obligation has become particularly critical because the money-bags who have bankrolled the failed Chankayas these last 10 years are, unfortunately, even more crucial to keep the finicky allies in line lest they rock the rickety Modi coalition. Modi 2.1 remains locked in that deadly embrace.
As if this embrace is not debilitating enough, our truncated prime minister is now having to save his regime from the equally deadly embrace of those very sentiments and animosities he so rhetorically articulated during the 2024 campaign: the raw and not to so pretty bigoted propensities among the majoritarian community. He has lent the respectability of his office and his persona to these communal impulses and arguments. Even though voters in Uttar Pradesh – the site of the Ayodhya pran pratishta – contemptuously turned their back on the prime minister, his managers are trying to find a scapegoat for the voters’ rejection of Prime Minister Modi’s hate-pitch.
And, now the fun begins. Under subtle attack from the Modi camp in Lutyens’ Delhi, the UP chief minister has cranked up the very same anti-Muslim prejudices that the PM recently stoked. This whole business of asking eateries on the Kanwaaris’ route to display the names of their owners and employees is a regressive development that is bound to bring us international shame. It is a throwback to the first decade of the 20th century when India’s colonial rulers had designated separate Hindu and Muslim water pots in public places. But, there is very little the danda-wallahs on Raisina Hill can do to control the Hindu fringe.
A taste of what could possibly be cooking came last week from Ahmedabad. A headline in Ahmedabad Mirror reads: “VHP to stage protests to save temples on roads.” The civic body’s directive is to demolish religious structures that encroach on roads. The VHP does not agree; it has plans to “stage a series of agitations, including demonstrations and the chanting of Hanuman Chalisa at religious sites that are to be demolished.” The built-in conundrum is spelled out by Modi’s now estranged but former comrade-in-arms, Pravin Togadiya: “Our people have formed the government and they will not hurt religious sentiments.”
Gujarat is not an isolated case. On Modi’s watch, BJP state governments have opted for the deadly embrace of elaborate religiosity in public spaces. Madhya Pradesh is a prime example. Though for now the party has reaped a hefty electoral harvest, there will be simmering clashes between the religious shop-wallahs and the civic authorities.
As prime minister, Modi is hardly in a position to untangle himself from this embrace of religiosity. He himself has accelerated that impulse in Varanasi for highly personalised electoral calculations. That ancient city, with its own civilisational flavour and fervour, has been transformed into a shabby tourist hotspot—all in the name of bringing about some kind of Hindu renaissance. Yet he barely managed to win his own seat in Varanasi.
This trickle-down religiosity is not just a case of diminishing electoral returns, it has also diminished our collective spiritual capital. A massive haze of national emptiness has permanently positioned itself over the pepublic.
Prime Minister Modi’s third deadly embrace is one of utter mediocrity. It has a name: it is called the Manoj Soni Syndrome, after the Union Public Service Commission chairman who quit last week – five years before his tenure ends – in the wake of a sordid recruitment scandal. Every ruler has a choice. He can surround himself with brilliant advisers, consultants and counsellors or he can opt for a gaggle of third-rate CEOs, mediocre ministers and no-good time-servers. Both as chief minister and now as prime minister, Modi has been comfortable in the company of the second category. That, of course, is his prime ministerial prerogative.
But this trickle-down mediocrity has already eaten into the vitality of our institutions and national imagination. Failure is dressed up as success; the PLA’s occupation of Indian territory is sold as a triumph. Disaster is painted as historic accomplishment; the whimsical demonetization, which wrecked the national economy, is marketed as decisiveness. The mediocre applaud the mediocre, and the self-serving elites sing hosanas to the great helmsman who does not have the inclination nor the interest nor the foggiest of imagination to bring peace in Manipur but is deemed to have brought peace between Moscow and Kiev. A veritable absurdity. Only a backward-looking nation can entertain such fancies.
These three deadly embraces have the Modi regime in a tight grip. A perfect storm is in the making. Unless all other democratic institutions and forces – particularly the judiciary – are willing to pool their energies to prevent a national breakdown, a truncated but un-chastened prime minister can only hurl the nation towards crisis and chaos.
