Mathew John 
This is one comparison that must be made! Ever since Donald Trump burst on the political scene in 2015 as disrupter of an effete system, who promised to “drain the swamp” and “make America great again (MAGA)”, there was always the irresistible temptation to identify the striking similarities between him and our “vishwaguru” – another master of vapid sloganeering – who also captured power on an anti-establishment plank.
His rhetoric pledged the desi version of the Trumpery slogans such as “atma nirbhar Bharat”, “minimum government, maximum governance” and “India first” as essential postulates for government. But that’s the innocuous superficial affinity between the two!
Much more frightening is the eerie likeness at the ideological level between these two showboat demagogues, undoubtedly the most influential figures in their countries over the last decade. They exemplify the worst of their multi-ethnic societies, both on the same side of the political and cultural divide in their countries – sectarian leaders out to shred the shared, inclusive identity that is the hallmark of secular democracy.
Trump spearheads the white-supremacist, ultra-nationalist and divisive brand of right-wing politics in America whereas his alter-ego Modi is the lodestar of the rabid ethno-nationalist, communal and deeply polarising Hindutva movement of the Sangh Parivar in India.
Like all weak men who are afraid of the level playing field that is democracy, these guys are authoritarian to the core, prepared to use any means to hold on to power, even if it involves dividing their people. It’s the one arena where they have had unmitigated success.
They have fashioned a new genre of politics that Naomi Klein calls “the fascist clown State” – built on oppression, nepotism, buffoonery and falsehoods.
Hardened right-wing populist leaders, they are both adept at fanning passions along racist, religious and other social fault lines. Trump makes no bones about the way he maligns non-white migrants and Muslims alongside his pandering to white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan, of which his father was a member.
In similar fashion, Modi has successfully nurtured his Sangh brotherhood’s crusade against Muslims and, adopting the “one at a time” principle, is fattening Christians for eventual slaughter, though ‘the slip is showing’ in Manipur.
Going by their track record, both Trump and Modi have affirmed their faith in kleptocratic dictatorship and a mafia State where total loyalty to the king and his interests are all that matter. In their watch, the tax regime and the institutional framework have been mobilised to fill the coffers of family and friends at the cost of impoverishing the common man.
Trump is shamelessly brazen in his nepotism and exclusive allegiance to corporate interests. Among his recent decisions as the next President is the announcement appointing his daughter’s father-in-law – a convicted felon who he pardoned as President in 2020 – as the next US ambassador to France.
Modi has usurped complete control of the purse strings of the Government of India for over a decade to do as he pleases.
The Finance Ministry, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and other government institutions have been pillaging the treasury, writing off thousands of crores in loans owed by friends to public sector banks; gifting airports, ports and what have you to his buddy; investing the public’s money in the dodgy stock market controlled by the oligarchic mafia; using the enormous proceeds from GST(by even extorting from the poor) on expansive projects that are gifted to favoured contractors – Gujarati and global!
Free of a conscience, these two consummate purveyors of falsehoods have even alchemised their monstrous failures, like the Covid response. Trump was personally culpable for a series of missteps including delay in imposing the travel ban, trivialising covid testing and mask wearing, dismissing the virus as a seasonal flu.
He admitted to playing down the virus as he ‘didn’t want people to panic’. They didn’t panic – they died! The US with just 4 per cent of the world’s population accounted for over 20 per cent of deaths during his tenure as President. And he still boasts about being the father of the vaccine and doing a great job in Covid times!
Much more measured in fakery, Modi takes fulsome credit for ‘saving humanity’ by sanctifying the commercial export of vaccines to needy countries. The tragic reality is that his uncaring, self-serving decisions fuelled the spread of the virus. The cruel, sudden lockdown, the holding of the crowd -infested Kumbh Mela and elections in five States resulted in our people dying in hospital corridors and parking lots for want of oxygen, myriads of bodies floating in the Ganga and a death toll of 4.7 million up to the end of 2021.
Yet, even recently, one of his sycophants, Anurag Thakur lauded the country’s exemplary Covid management! The most horrific happening in Independent India has been transfigured into a glorious triumph of the Modi government! Can there be a more appalling travesty than this?
These two ill-educated men seem to have drawn inspiration from Orwell’s dark playbook, 1984: “Those who control the present control the past and those who control the past control the future.”
They are out to reconstruct and cook up history so that the past serves to legitimise their fundamentalist ideology and toxic socio-political agenda.
Trump propounds a perverse view of American history, excoriating academia for focussing on slavery and racism, resulting in “left-wing indoctrination in our schools”. In his first term, he set up a new 1776 Commission “to promote patriotic education”, the obvious intent being to rewrite history to suit the purposes of his ultra-right constituency.
The Commission’s report, replete with historical fiction, was expectedly junked when he lost in 2020, but will now be revived with gusto.
Modi has been much more effective in falsifying history, abetted by his minions in key positions across the educational spectrum. Our history texts are now focussed on denigrating when not erasing our rich Muslim legacy.
Our rewritten history has embraced phantasmagoria: ancient India was familiar with test-tube babies, plastic surgery, the internet and aeroplanes; the legendry Ram Setu was built by Lord Ram and his monkey companions; Maharana Pratap bested Akbar – etc.
Unknowledgeable but full of hubris, Trump and Modi blather straight from the gut, preferring intuition over painstakingly acquired knowledge. As a result, they have, time and again, exposed their idiocy for the world to see.
Who can forget Trump’s claim that injecting bleach could cure one of Covid? Or Modi’s “radar” advice during the Balakot crisis, and his zany gutter-gas prescription for making tea?
There’s something badly wrong with today’s society. Two charlatans are seen as the great hope by large sections of their people. What does one make of the countless millions who, blinded by racism and hate, have wilfully suspended belief and bought into the polarising rhetoric and actions of these two gang lords?
Their feckless devotion can best be explained through a story narrated by a leading psychoanalyst which bears repeating.
A Rabbi in a Polish village had acquired a reputation for being a visionary, but a sceptical journalist decided to check the veracity of the Rabbi’s visionary acumen. Asked to prove what was being claimed by the villagers, the Rabbi climbed to the roof of his house and peering into the distance, proclaimed that a huge fire had broken out in another village 50 miles away.
The journalist hurried to the other village where he found that there was no fire. He returned to the Rabbi’s village and informed the villagers that contrary to what the Rabbi had said, there was no fire in the other village. “So what?” the villagers chorused. “It does not matter if there was a fire or not. Aren’t you impressed by how far the Rabbi can see?”
Mathew John is a former civil servant. The views are personal.