Much of the time not at a loss for words, this once I am.
Alas that my prime minister, touted to be the world’s most popular, strong, and influential leader, should think nothing of becoming a screaming, frightened fear-monger, mutilating facts with brazen disingenuity.
Modi is rattled no end by the surprising fact that the Indian National Congress, a political force which he correctly fears to be still his likely nemesis at the national level, has, after long years of ideological dithering, boldly and clearly conceived and formulated a manifesto of intent set to draw wide support among the masses whom his own dissembling has put to misery over a long, abrasive decade.
Unable to contest that manifesto on facts and substance, Modi has chosen the path of scurrilous distortion and sectarian hate.
In promising a socio-economic survey of all sections of Indians, the Congress is only drawing upon directive principles enshrined in Articles 38 and 39 of the Constitution, which counsel the State to “secure a social order for the promotion of welfare of the people” and in particular that inequalities of income be kept to a minimum; that monopolies must not be allowed to grow and prosper; and, “that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good.”
Imagine that the provisions of these two directive principles of state policy are hardly ever mentioned, except, predictably, by the Left, while another directive principle further down in the list, namely Article 44 (on the desirability in time of formulating a Uniform Civil Code for all Indian citizens), is thrown at us by a majoritarian dispensation with atomic force and urgency, the BJP government in Uttarakhand having already passed a law in this regard.
Contrary to Modi’s claims, nowhere on any of its pages does the Congress manifesto make a mention of the word “Muslim”, or refer to any other minority by name.
Nor, emphatically, does the manifesto anywhere say that the Congress will take assets and endowments away from the propertied and redistribute the same to the dispossessed, as if in a clumsy bulldozer grab familiar in Uttar Pradesh, or in the manner in which common citizens across the length and breadth of the country were precipitately ordered to dump their notes within hours from a lordly declaration, or lose their money altogether.
What it does say is that the future Congress government will seek to frame policies that may bring inequalities of income down, prevent monopolisation and crony capitalism, and reaffirm the right of the people to the assets of the land.
Thinking democratically, what could be more laudable as a programme? Is it not the case that hackles have gone up precisely because thinking democratically seems now a long-lost habit of governmental mind?
That said, our prime minister has chosen to take recourse to embarrassing disinformation and scare-mongering, going even as far to propagate, in theatrical demagoguery, that the Congress means to take away all the gold and silver that people may have and give these away to “infiltrators” and those who produce the most children – by which he meant Muslims.
Indeed, he has thought nothing of carrying his theatrics to warn (Hindu) women that the evil Congress, were it to come to power, will take away their mangalsutras (a gold chain usually worn by married women as a prized mark of being wedded) and give those also away to you know who.
Alas that a prime minister could have fallen so low.
There is of course the speculation sounded by many commentators that the first round of voting to 102 parliamentary seats may have gone heavily against the ruling party, causing the screechy panic of his oratory.
Were he as superbly confident of garnering those 400+ seats which he has been broadcasting day in and day out, all issuing from his personal guarantee, surely he might have dismissed speculations about the first round of voting as opposition hogwash.
But no, the state of Modi’s no-holds-barred resolve to play the most unbecoming card among Hindu women suggests that there may be substance to the speculation after all.
Unhappily for him, the combined opposition seems this once not to be cowed down, even as it lacks the means to meet ruling party media and other propagation.
Nor is desperation among ruling scions mitigated by ground reports that Hindutva temple politics may have had its day among the masse, leaving only a cultist base voter to hold the sack.
Not in any position to meet the opposition on his economic performance vis à vis the disenfranchised millions – some 80% of the populace –what recourse has Modi but to go after the one minority population whom the right-wing happily exploits for its political survival, without being thankful in return.
Imagine, had there been no Muslims in India, the BJP may never have attained state power.
The favourite English word of the right-wing is “appeasement”, and its favourite ploy is to accuse the secular opposition, the Congress especially, of ‘appeasing’ the Muslim ‘vote bank’.
The assumption, dating all the way from the days of the Hindu Mahasabha led by Savarkar, is that Muslims live here on sufferance as people whose claim to being nationals on an equal footing with the Hindus must remain in question until they learn to become Hindus in cultural and religious doctrines and practices.
Who may bring the news to the right-wing that the word “appeasement” was used first in the 1930s by Europeans who thought Hitler and the Nazis were being propitiated by weak British and French regimes through conciliatory treaties, so that the storm-trooping expansion of Nazism could be held in check.
Thus, the epistemology of the word clearly suggests that it is the strong who are sought to be appeased, not the weak – in our case, the majority Hindu population.
The word, thus, has quite the opposite connotation of what the BJP/RSS seek to propagate, although the appeasement of the Hindu majority here is not directed at keeping their suzerainty in check but, indeed, to elevate it to the definition of nationhood.
India must be the only republic where an 80% majority is constantly persuaded that it has everything to fear from a beleaguered 14% minority.
And how well this nonsensical stratagem has been pressed into service by an economic and social minority to keep in place its stranglehold over the resources of the land connotes the history of India, from the colonial period onwards.
Is it possible that this inverted jinx may find its comeuppance in the election results? Draw your breath in pain till we know.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.
