Professor and historian Christophe Jaffrelot spoke recently to one of The Wire’s founding editors, Sidharth Bhatia, on the polarisation of society, control of the police and judiciary and the building up of a larger than life persona of Narendra Modi. The discussion is a tour de force through Indian politics and its evolution.
A transcription of it is below.
Sidharth Bhatia: Hello and welcome to the Wire Talks. I’m Sidharth Bhatia. Professor Christophe Jaffrelot is one of the foremost international scholars in India and South Asia. The eminent political scientist has written several books including two recent ones on Narendra Modi. The Indian edition of his latest book, Gujarat Under Modi: The Blueprint for Today’s India was released earlier this week. This book was originally written in 2013 but legal teams of his publishers had a lot of questions about it and it remained unpublished. It arrives now and it is very interesting to see how prescient it was. Professor Jaffrelot, who is the director of the Centre for International Relations at CSO, Paris and professor of Indian Politics at King’s College London, has been a regular visitor to India for several decades but he stopped coming after 2020. He joins me to talk about his book, the elections, and where he sees India today and in the future.
Professor Jaffrelot, the Indian edition of your book has just been released with the elections just about to be over. You write in your preface that you wrote this book in 2013 but couldn’t publish it then, I find it interesting that you say that you have hardly made any changes in the 2024 elections. What does it tell us?
Christophe Jaffrelot: Well, it tells us that we knew before. By 2013 we knew what were the pillars of what has been called ‘Moditva’, the Hindu nationalist version invented by Narendra Modi in Gujarat. This is exactly the take of this book. This book is really on what are the pillars of this politics and how they could be translated and transposed at a national level as a political scientist, the most important lesson that I’ve learnt is that never ever before, a politician who had made his career at a provincial level be in a position to replicate at a national level what he had invented at the state level. So, we knew what were the four pillars of Narendra Modi’s politics in 2013 and we’ve seen after 10 years since 2014, that they could be replicated, transposed and scaled up to the national level. That is what the book is about.
Sidharth Bhatia: So, could you tell us about those four pillars?
Christophe Jaffrelot: Yes, of course, number one is the politics of polarisation and Gujarat was the laboratory of communal polarisation. When you look at the largest hindu-muslim riots, in post-independence India that took place in Gujarat more often than not ( 1969, 1985, 1992, 2002). Always the largest and the most bloody riot Ahmedabad could beat Bombay if you look at the number of casualties in these different riots. This is something that predated Narendra Modi’s Gujarat for sure. But it is something that if you want to be cultivated, made more sophisticated as early as the mid-1980s when he was the organizing secretary for Gujarat, of course, 2002 was the culminating point for this kind of polarisation, to win the elections after the communal violence and the book uses a lot of very detailed analysis showing that in 2002, the no. of seats BJP won was much larger in the places where the riots had been at its worst. So, there is a correlation between electoral success and communal polarization. So, this is the number one pillar that has been replicated at a national level and the election campaign that he is finishing these days shows that it remains the main plank of Narendra Modi’s identity politics.
The second pillar is the capture of institutions, including the police and the judiciary. The two key institutions that had to be taken care of of course after the program, especially the policemen who played the BJP game had to be rewarded and those who did their job properly had to be sidelined and those who had been rewarded could still be used for other purposes. Again polarisation, by the way. The series of fake encounters we saw in Gujarat after 2003 helped the government to polarise by other means. I don’t know if you remember about the fake encounters including the Sohrabuddin case. There were many and every time policemen said they had to eliminate jihadists supported by Pakistan, by ISI, coming from the other side, belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad and who were there to kill Narendra Modi himself. The press conferences of [former IPS officer D.G.] Vanzara for instance, tells us these kinds of things which meant that the police had been instrumentalised and criminalised, something that was there before in Gujarat. It was not as if the Gujarat police had not been very much involved in all kinds of trafficking. We have to go back to Abdul Latif and the 1980s to see that these police were vulnerable already, to say the least, but that’s a different story. With Amit Shah as Minister of State for Home, you have the use of the police for political purposes.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Union home minster Amit Shah. Photo: Flickr/CC BY 2.0
Sidharth Bhatia: We had seen at the national level in a different way.
Christophe Jaffrelot: Again, you can see how the same recipe has been indeed transferred at the national level with sometimes the same people by the way. So many IPS and IAS officers have travelled from Gandhinagar to Delhi after 2014. So, you have this continuity that is very much there.
The third pillar has to do with the political economy of Gujarat and I would make two points there. One, you have a practice of crony capitalism. That is very specific. Gujarat is of course well known for big entrepreneurs, and business families, but it was a state of small and medium enterprises also. It was a very vibrant state in terms of entrepreneurship. With Narendra Modi at the helm, you see an emphasis on mega projects, huge projects. In the form of special economic zones in many cases, you have a record number of ACZS. You know, 60 ACZs in Gujarat, while there was one in Uttar Pradesh at that time for instance, and these mega projects were given to the friends of the government. Of course the case we know about is Mundra, the ACZ, that was given to Gautam Adani in 2003 after Adani supported the Modi government at the Confederation of the Indian Industry where there were dissenting voices telling the government of Gujarat what happened in 2002 was not good for the economy. So Modi was supported by a group of entrepreneurs, including Gautam Adani in 2003 itself, and was rewarded with something like Mundra and many other things.
So, the idea is you give land at a throwaway price, you also give almost 0% interest rate loans and tax deductions and you speed up the process. When the Nano factory was started near Ahmedabad, it was a very quick process and Ratan Tata himself says that I was amazed by the way the chief minister of Gujarat himself responded and anticipated his expectations. That is a new form of crony capitalism. You know, we knew there was a special relationship between Dhirubhai Ambani and Mrs. [Indira] Gandhi but nothing of that magnitude or nothing of that closeness or nothing of that promiscuity. A nexus of a different kind has taken shape in Gujarat and again, has been pursued afterwards, you know. The same people who were there in Gujarat are now here at the pan-India level. The other point I would like to make on the political economy side is that this is a policy that invests a lot in infrastructure. This mega project especially is good for road making, and railway lines, like the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train. It is an infrastructure-oriented political economy at the expense of social expenditures. Very little investment in educational health. You know, when you compare Gujarat with other states of India with a similar level of development. You compare Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, compare Gujarat and Karnataka because they are almost of the same level of development in terms of per capita revenue and you see the big difference is hardly any money for education and health, and also very low wages, very few good jobs, no unionisations, and very week public sector since most of it has been privatised. What is very surprising is also the gap between rural and urban Gujarat. It is all for the urban dwellers at the expense of farmers and the peasantry at large. So, this is what we have seen after 2014 as well. Inequalities have increased, joblessness has increased and there is a similarity that shows a continuity between the national and regional frameworks.
The fourth pillar is of course, the most obvious one, the style of politics that Narendra Modi invented in Gujarat and replicated at the national level. I call it national populist because the institutions are also invented and in the first place, the party itself. Narendra Modi was not supported by the BJP in Gujarat, at least in the beginning. Keshubhai Patel tries to become president of the Gujarat BJP and is sidelined and marginalised. RSS cadres, including Mohan Bhagwat as Prant Pracharak, tried to retain some control over the BJP and in the 2007 elections they were shown the door and Mohan Bhagwat ended up in Chennai.
Narendra Modi is not an RSS creature. He was a product of the RSS of course but he tried to emancipate himself as chief minister from the RSS and from all the other organisations. Look at the Vishwa Hindu Parishad he broke with [Praveen] Togadia for instance. Look at the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, they were at loggerheads because of the policy of Narendra Modi. So what he did was he tried to build his parallel power structure. He had his relays in society, and you do that by using technology. So he is the first one to use mobile phones, social media, and holograms. That’s one very important dimension of populism. You relate directly to the people by circumventing and short-circuiting the institutions which we suppose to be your instruments of power but there is more than that. It’s a style that will rely on a very clear personality cult. You know you look at the 2007 election campaign for instance, and it’s all about the superhuman powers of Narendra Modi, who as a child could swim with the crocodiles, who could swallow poison, who could do extraordinary things.
Narendra Modi. In the background is a flag hoisting ceremony of the RSS. Photo: Reuters/Jayanta Shaw
So the idea that this man is above human nature is already there. Today, he says I’m not biological. In 2007 he was already showing that his quality was superior to the human essence. Now that’s a very important dimension of his charisma and this style has been propagated by all the media, all the media I have listed, also because he could rely on PR companies, even before [Prashant] Kishor took care of his 2012 election campaign. But before that, you could see him relying on UPCO Worldwide, a Washington-based PR company that did most of the publicity work for Vibrant Gujarat, and then for him only. So this is something we know very well now – how you build an image, how you make someone a hero. But that was invented in Gujarat in the first decade of the 21st century. And I don’t think we had ever seen something like that before in India. Of course, Indira Gandhi was very good at promoting her image and personality but not to that extent.
Sidharth Bhatia: No no, also there was no social media in those days, if you remember. PR companies at best used slogans on the side of a bus or All India radio or Doordarshan or something like that but these were instruments and nowhere on this scale.
Christophe Jaffrelot: Exactly .
Sidharth Bhatia: Also, no foreign company was being paid to build up this cult. Now you’ve raised so many interesting points Professor, that I don’t know where to go but there’s one thing that jumps out at me and that is de-institutionalisation. You mentioned the party organisations, but more than that the national organisations. At the Gujarat level, it was the police and you could control the Judiciary up to a point, but here you have the ED, the Income Tax, the Central Bureau of Investigation, and parts of the judiciary which you may try to control because the judiciary sometimes shows a different kind of independent approach, and now you have the Election Commission. We are in the last stages of the election. The results will be announced and the Election Commission has in the last two months shown that it has no spine when it comes to tackling things about Mr Modi. Let’s be blunt about it. That’s a somewhat risky situation, isn’t it?
Christophe Jaffrelot: Of course, of course. Well, you have different scenarios according to the institution you turn to. I would begin with the case of the Judiciary and then I’ll say a few words about the Election Commission and other bureaucrats. In the case of the judiciary, I think they could play on three different factors. One, judges retire at 60. They are still very young. To get a post-retirement job is something many of them value a lot and some of them are prepared to indulge in self-censorship for preparing their future after retirement and there is no there is no cool off period anymore. You jump from one position to another. When Mr Ranjan Gogoi became a Rajya Sabha member, he was freshly retired from the Supreme Court for instance.
Number two, there are cases on many judges. It’s not as if they were all completely clean and this government has a file on everybody and can blackmail people in the name of potential.
Sidharth Bhatia: That’s a strong statement, but go ahead.
Christophe Jaffrelot: Yes, number three. Well, we know the collegium system. Judges are supposed to designate judges at the Supreme Court, justices of the Supreme Court. But they select names, they don’t appoint people. So what we’ve seen in the past is an attempt at promoting to the Supreme Court, judges of high courts who were not of the liking of the government they were selected but they were not appointed. The government could sit on these recommendations for months, for years and finally you could not replace the judges who had retired, and as a result, the size of the Supreme Court shrank. There were attempts at repeating the applications…you know well. So, finally, you have a temptation to select the judges who are likely to be confirmed by the government instead of taking the risk of appointing someone who will not be confirmed.
Finally, there is a fourth explanation.
Well, there has been a clear attempt at infiltrating the judiciary by the RSS for a long time and we have some indications that some of the high court judges at least, Supreme Court judges, possibly, have affinities if not relationship with the organisation itself, and that’s another additional factor.
Now, on the bureaucrats and the Election Commission in particular, well this is a clear example of the capture of institutions.
I remember in 2014, many of my colleagues were saying there was no harm trying Narendra Modi as prime minister. We have robust institutions. India is a robust democratic institution. If there is any attempt at deviating from the democratic path, the institutions will take care of that. Well, what we see is that it’s not so complicated to twist the arms of bureaucrats, it’s not so complicated to appoint bureaucrats who are prepared to implement your policy and not the policy of the state or the policy of the Republic and the Election Commission’s trajectory is a great illustration of this.
You change people the day before, you appoint your man in the right place, done. How can you counter that? There is no place for countering that except the Supreme Court, but we are back to square one and the Supreme Court will certainly try to show that it has retained some independence but it will not fight the way Pervez Musharraf was fought in Pakistan. That’s not the style.
Sidharth Bhatia: Thus far and no further
Christophe Jaffrelot: Exactly.
Sidharth Bhatia: So, there are no Krishna Iyers in the Supreme Court during the Emergency or even later
Christophe Jaffrelot: Yeah, Sidharth remember, there was only one man, Justice Khanna.
Sidharth Bhatia: But later Krishna Iyer was a man who took on the government in various places.
Christophe Jaffrelot: I’m glad you mentioned the Emergency because as you may remember I did a book with Pratinav Anil and it helped me to understand Modi’s India because you see the replication, the repeat of some of the behaviours we saw during the emergency, especially within the Judiciary
Sidharth Bhatia: Yeah and the media.
Christophe Jaffrelot: Well, in the case of the media of course crony capitalism plays a big role because the moment you sell TV channels to friends of the government you can’t expect free and fair information. You have a recipe for disinformation, a bias, so it goes with crony capitalism, something by the way we saw elsewhere in the world you know, Orban has done the same in Hungary. You privatise some of the public media and universities or whatever, you help your friends to capture TV channels or even the print media, and then everybody withdraws from it. Except in India what is fascinating is the resilience of what we can call, independent media and the success of YouTube channels or the success of The Wire, The Scroll, you know, make it still easier to get access to some information compared to a country like Hungary for instance which is interesting.
Sidharth Bhatia: Yeah well you know discussing the media would require another two hours. I can say that while this is true, if the cronies control the media, they own the media, and their views of the government’s views will become predominant. I’m also convinced that a lot of the journalists and a lot of the editors are themselves ready to do the government’s bidding.
So, it’s not only the owners, but I think the journalist class is also very happily shifted.
Christophe Jaffrelot: Well, this is a question that goes beyond the journalist. So many people have fallen in line not only among the journalists, among the academics, among the bureaucrats, among so many groups. Then the question is saying something people were thinking secretly without daring to say it publicly and now they are intimately persuaded, convinced that this is the right politics.
This is a question that only non-directive interviews could help us to figure out. Is communalism Hindu nationalism the real reason why people have forgotten the rules of Indian democracy and happily supported the Modi government? I’m not sure and I can’t say really. But it’s one of the hypotheses for responding to your questions. Why have so many people not resisted?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi takes selfies journalists at a Diwali event in November 2015. Photo: File
Sidharth Bhatia: So, actually that is what brings me to the next question. We don’t want to focus too much on the results because that will be known. But Mr Modi, since you mentioned why so many people were convinced or not resisted, he has managed to also do something politically, over and above all these things that you mentioned and then you can link it with what happened in Gujarat and explain it to us. He has managed to sew up a coalition that cuts across not just caste but also class. For example, the upper class, OBCs, and Dalits all support him. Urban rich, rural poor, businessmen, and professionals all support him. So, my question is divided into two parts. Is this something that you had seen earlier in Gujarat and therefore this was inevitable on a national scale? Secondly, is such a self-contradictory coalition likely to hold in the future or has it already shown signs of wearing and tearing?
Christophe Jaffrelot: These are key questions I look at in the last part of the book, the fifth part of the book. The fourth part is on the four pillars, the fifth part is on who has supported this politics and who has suffered from that same politics. Well, you have a support base that goes beyond The Usual Suspects, yes. As early as the 2000s, Modi was supported by non-upper caste voters, people he would call in 2012 ‘the middle class’. This middle class is made up of all the people who come from the village but who migrate to the city and we expect that they will benefit from an almost double-digit growth rate.
These are the aspiring categories, and at that time it worked well because you added sufficient growth for cultivating this hope, that you will benefit if you remember well when Arun Jaitely was finance minister he continued with this idea of the neo-middle class. You know the first budget of the Narendra Modi government in 2015 is replete with references to this middle class. The other reason why you could build a cross-caste and -class coalition, was of course Hindu identity and this is my theory for now 20 years.
For me, the rise of Hindutva is the response to Mandal in the first place and the Rath Yatra of 1990 – that is such an important turning point – is a response to V.P. Singh’s announcement of the implementation of the Mandal report. The idea is that the antidote to the rise of the lower caste is Hindu nationalism, the Hindu identity.
So, they continued with that and they played on what we call Sanskritisation in social sciences. You know, make the lower class people feel like they are part of the mainstream society of the upper caste-dominated ethos. The Ayodhya movement is all about that. You bring Dalits, you bring as many lower caste people as you can in this movement.
So, these are the two reasons why you can have plebeians supporting Narendra Modi. There is a third reason of course, he is one of them, and he will play on that not so much in Gujarat by the way. It’s mostly after 2014 when he has to win over Bihar, when he has to win over UP, that he will promote his image of chaiwala, an OBC, but that is also an important factor.
The fourth and last one is what I call ‘politics of dignity’, a new kind of welfarism. The welfare programs of Narendra Modi are very well publicised.
The Swachh Bharat, Ujwala Yojna, Yogi Vikas Yojna. So you give a gas cylinder to the poor with the photograph of Narendra Modi on it and you do something that shows that he cares for you. This is again populism, a direct relationship, something you find also in Mann Ki Baat. You know every month Narendra Modi speaks to the poor claiming that he is their spokesperson, that he is their guide, but recognition, acknowledgement that gives a sense of dignity, of self-esteem. So, it’s a kind of welfarism that is almost immaterial. Of course, there is some materiality.
You receive a gas cylinder but it’s one shot and it’s much less than what the previous government had done…the way they have reduced NREGA to a kind of minuscule programme is a reflection of this shift from material support to immaterial support, psychological recognition, but that works and it explains largely why you have so many plebeians behind Narendra Modi. Now is that sustainable?
Well, it’s a very important question and I think these elections will tell us whether you can indeed use what Marx would call the “opium of the people” forever or whether there is a limit to that. Joblessness has reached such an amazing level that sometimes you wonder whether instead of building temples, people would prefer to get proper jobs and that’s one of the questions this election will respond to.
But there is one last point I wanted to make and it has to do with caste politics. One of the reasons why you see so many Dalits or OBCs voting for the BJP in 2014, and 2019 has to do with what I call the paradox of reservations. Reservations have been cornered by dominant Dalits. Jatavs in Uttar Pradesh, Mahars in Maharashtra or by dominant OBCs. Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, and some Dalits resent this and will resent the way the BSP on the one end, the SP or the other end have not given their due to smaller Dalit jatis, to smaller OBC jatis, and you know the Gonds or Valmikis, or so many others on the OBC sides, and BJP has been very good.
Amit Shah has been very good at nominating candidates from these smaller Dalit jatis, or OBC jatis. They are the ones who support BJP and shift from BSP or SP to BJP. Have they realised that it has not made any difference to their condition after five or 10 years? This is also a key question for the current election.
The very last point, do we also need to somewhat relativise the popularity of BJP? After all, it never crossed the 37% mark. So yeah, it has achieved something very few parties had achieved before to get almost as many votes from all categories of the society.
You have to go back to Mrs Gandhi in the 70s for having this kind of populist equal attractivity of appeal, but none of these categories go beyond 40%. So yes, it’s a dominant party, but not a hegemonic party and there are so many states where it is number 2, 3, or 4, that we need to also retain this kind of sense of proportion.
A mix of upper caste and Mallah voters in Kermadih village in Kurhani assembly seat, Muzaffarpur. Photo: Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta
Sidharth Bhatia: I think all the ambient noise, the media, the posters, the billboards, the constant speeches, etc. build up this image. But that’s we’ll keep that aside now the interesting part is that one of you mentioned the Dalit support though I can’t understand why OBC support should come if they were reacting against Mandal, but it has come. But one of the players or one of the issues I would say this, but it almost became a character in this campaign for the last two or three months, especially, is that the constitution suddenly became an issue and that’s because of reservation and because Rahul Gandhi constantly moved around with the constitution and that became a talking point. Do you find that interesting?
Christophe Jaffrelot: It is, but to return to your question, why do OBC support Hindutva? If it is a response to Mandal…because Mandal has not benefited all the OBC. And you know my conclusion is we need to revisit the quota policies. You should have quotas within quotas, otherwise, you will leave out people who will always be more than happy to support the BJP against the parties claiming to represent the OBCs or the Dalits. That’s a very important policy reform that has to be made especially because privatisation makes quotas less and less relevant.
Yes, this interest in the constitution is very interesting. By the way, you may remember that it was during the anti-CAA protests that we saw the constitution in the hands of the people in Shaheen Bagh or elsewhere.
So, it’s a sequel of that but of course from a different perspective, because when they claim that they would like to get 400 seats for reforming the constitution. They attacked a monument, especially for the Dalits. Not only because it is in the constitution that you have the framework for reservations, but this is Dr Ambedkar’s work. How can you attack something that has this kind of pedigree? Now, the constitution should be implemented fully and not only regarding the reservations and that’s something we don’t refer to sufficiently.
Now, for instance, the Articles which are supposed to promote multiculturalism. There are articles in the list of fundamental rights, the most important rights, that should make multiculturalism sacred in the sense that minorities are entitled to have their schools. For instance, look at all the attacks on madrasas and others. So, the constitution needs to be certainly revalorised more and promoted not only for sectional interests like reservation.
Sidharth Bhatia: I like the word revalorised, certainly. I think what it has done and that I think is a very positive sign is that it has brought itself to the notice of a younger cohort which may not be thinking in terms of reservation necessarily but does think in terms of secularism or human rights. Also, they’re saying let’s find out more about the constitution and that’s an opening I think many parties could exploit perhaps if they are less cynical about these things being election ploys.
Coming to the opposition parties – I know we are taking up a lot of time, but this is fascinating. Professor, you saw the opposition parties more or less adjusting bearing their differences and coming together more or less seat arrangements have been pretty good you know. You have amazing scenarios of Congress people supporting AAP, you know Congress supporters supporting Uddhav Thackeray and Shiv Sena supporting the Congress. These are quite interesting developments. Do you think there is any scope for or hope for opposition parties to continue some kind of momentum? Of course, it’ll depend on the results, I understand, but a kind of momentum has been established. Do you think it’ll continue?
‘Political and constitutional interpreters of the basic structure doctrine would likely debate upon the competing conceptions of Indian nationalism.’ Illustration: The Wire.
Christophe Jaffrelot: Well, it’s interesting to compare again because you’ve seen this kind of development everywhere, in every country where a strong man has won one, two, three elections in a row. There is a moment when all the opposition parties decide to close ranks because this is the only way they can survive and dislodge the man. So, you’ve seen this in Turkey, you’ve seen this in Israel, you’ve seen this in Hungary and Poland, and sometimes it works.
In Poland, it did work. Sometimes it fails everywhere. Well, Turkey is an interesting case because Erdogan has lost the local elections because of the unity of the opposition, and the voters going from the extreme right to the extreme left. In this kind of context, everybody closes ranks irrespective of your ideology irrespective of your support base. You have only one objective, to get rid of the man at the top.
We are seeing the same thing in India. It took quite some time, it took 10 years for opposition parties to realise that it was him or them and the more authoritarian. They were freezing the bank accounts of the largest party, and putting chief ministers behind bars, so these parties were of course convinced that they have to close ranks to save their skin, to exist. This for me is the key element, this unity. Is this only a reaction to a threat that is posed to all of them or is there a positive agenda behind it? If there is a positive agenda, I would respond to your question. They have a bright future because there is a programme that has to be developed in India.
More jobs, more equality, more redistribution, more federalism. Well, the list is very long, everybody can find it useful for the country and in a way, this is what UPA did for 10 years, Manmohan Singh’s coalition was exactly this kind of very large coalition of parties having differences but a common agenda in terms of development. I would use development as the keyword there. This is the main point: Are they efficiently aware of the need for a positive agenda or are they there only to save their skin in their state or at the national level?
In the case of Congress, only the future will tell us if some parties are on the fence. I mean Mamata has not played such a positive role in West Bengal. Will they also join hands if they realize that? Now this election will give us a lot of indications for the future of this coalition, but in any case, it’s an important development because you can’t have a proper democracy without a balance of power and they have created the conditions for some balance of power.
Sidharth Bhatia: Professor, you probably be able to explain this far better than many of us here. Modi and his government have done things that would normally offend Western governments which constantly talk of human rights, minority rights, etc. Plus, the allegation made by the Canadian and American governments about Indian agents trying to kill their citizens and yet no government has taken any serious action of the kind they would have with other countries. Why is that? Why does he get such a free pass?
Christophe Jaffrelot: Well, I think there are two reasons, well maybe three. The third reason could be, that we speak a lot about human rights, it’s not a priority in the West and what we see today in Gaza is more or less a reconfirmation of this hypocrisy. But let’s focus on the two other reasons.
One there is this idea that India will help the West to resist China. We all know in the West that India is not in a position to contain China, either because of its resources or because of its fear of alienating China, but to have India on the fence, not taking sides is already good enough. So that’s the number one reason. A lesser evil compared to the threat that China is posing to the liberal Global Order. But the other reason is, I would say purely economic. This is the largest country in the world, you can’t ignore this market.
Everybody hopes that one day there’ll be money made and there are already arms deals in the first place. When you look at who is selling arms to India, India is the largest market with Saudi Arabia and a few others. Well, you see the French, Israeli, and American companies playing a big role. Now, it’s not something that can remain necessarily forever because there is number one, a suspicion that this market may not be that easy and that great.
Number two, I think what will be very important will be the Russia factor. The kind of friendliness that continues to be there in the India-Russia relations, the fact that India is bailing out Russia on the oil front may create a complicated situation if Russia wins that war because then there’ll be a soul-searching exercise in the West and they will reconsider what are their allies are and then we are not talking about Partnerships, no allies, you know you have to have something that resembles the Cold War period two camp.
Sidharth Bhatia: So then time India has to take sides?
Christophe Jaffrelot: I’m afraid it will be difficult not to take a side in a context when there will be trauma. You know a Russian victory in Ukraine will be a trauma for the West and it will take us back to the Cold War atmosphere with us or against us. So let’s see whether this kind of bilateralism that India is implementing is sustainable in a context that may become more tragic, more dramatic, and more polarised at the end.
A photo of the Bharat Jodo Yatra. Photo: X/@srinivasiyc
Sidharth Bhatia: Okay, one last question. I think you write in your book that you haven’t visited since 2020. I can understand the first two years were COVID-related, but it’s been two years since then. Is there any special reason?
Christophe Jaffrelot: Well, there are many different reasons. One, I have amassed so much material in these 40 years of doing fieldwork in India that I need now to write. I’ve just completed with a colleague, a history of Bombay, so that kept me busy for quite some time. Another reason is that my fieldwork today is in Kartarpur where I am working on Guru Nanak’s legacy and the attractiveness of this place to people from all kinds of religions and origins, and I find it fascinating. The third reason is, that I prefer to wait a little bit and see whether I can find again the atmosphere that was there before, that I missed so much because you end up with a nostalgia for what was India till recently, and I prefer to live with this memory of what was the country, what were the people. People have changed also, and it’s not so easy to reconcile yourself with this transformation.
So, once I have overcome that I’ll try to come and we’ll see whether I can.
Sidharth Bhatia: However, you don’t want to come to an India which does not fit in with what you remember sweetly about the country, the best of India that you remember. That’s very well put and I’m sure you’ll be able to come sooner than later. So, thank you very much, Professor, for this magnificent tour de politics if that is the correct French phrase. You’ve given us a very well-rounded understanding of where you see Indian politics today, where it has reached, and how it has reached here. That’s very important because your book on Modi’s Gujarat tells us, I have read quite a bit of it recently, that anybody who understood those years that Mr Modi was in Gujarat, should have seen this coming.
Maybe some people were waiting for this to come, maybe some people were dreading this, but the signs were there. So, thank you very much for writing this book and bringing it to us. And for this magnificent conversation. Thanks a lot. That’s Professor Christophe Jaffrelot, an eminent political scientist, who was talking to us about his latest book about Modi in Gujarat. which took 10 years in the making. I suggest you pick up the book and find out why, and we’ll be back soon enough with another guest on The Wire talks. Till then, goodbye.
Transcribed by Sneha Bhattacharyya.
