“Loyalty to the country always; loyalty to the government when it deserves it”
– Mark Twain
As I pen this article, India sits at the cusp of history with the results of General Elections 2024 just around the corner. The curtains have fallen on a long-drawn, seven-phase election. Arguably one of the most polarising elections in living memory, marked by vitriol, hate-mongering, appeasement and communal politics of the worst order, the past few months saw political parties drag the discourse down to gutter level. Now as the nation waits on the Election Commission to announce results, one thing is certain – regardless of whoever emerges victorious, some irreversible damage to our fragile democracy and the way we live is inevitable. A veritable universe that hitherto remained outside the influence of politics has been deeply politicised and polarised. A decline in democratic freedoms and the rule of “strongmen” seems here to stay.
I will recount my personal experiences from which the readers may pick what they can relate to. Ten years is not even a blip in the history of a nation. But to my mind, the last ten years represent a deeply polarising decade where almost everyone i know developed political views and turned partisan — something alien prior 2014. A binary of choices emerged, with one side gaining ascendancy– representing loudly much that was considered unconstitutional in the past. Enabled by Big Tech, the deployment and proliferation of ‘IT cells’ spun narratives that have distorted history and truth like never before, mobilising the majority in the name of “awakening”. Religious fundamentalism, far-right majoritarianism, the rise of ‘Hindutva’, selling mythology as science, attacking rationalists and dissenters – all this has been mainstreamed, casting a long shadow on the delicate harmony that exists in a complex country home to one-sixth of humanity. The north-south divide has widened and this disparity is set to exacerbate with Delimitation set to unfold in near future.
To be fair, bias, bigotry, and the “us and them” syndrome were always latent beneath the surface. This is inevitable in a diverse country like India, a melting pot of religions, faiths, beliefs and civilisations. What the regime under Prime Minister Modi has done is leverage the faultlines, prise it out to the surface and platform it, bringing out the worst in us. Parliamentary democracy, collective wisdom and the cabinet model of decision-making has been replaced by a cult of personality centred around Prime Minister Modi and his office, the PMO. All sides of the political spectrum have pulled to the extremes and there is little space left in the centre for nuanced discussion. Tempers flare, abuses are hurled and whataboutery is wielded at the first sign of pushback to the prime minister or his words/actions – unmistakable signs of radicalisation and demagoguery. Balance and trust between communities is damaged almost irreparably. We are closer to blasphemy and lynching in the name of religion today than ever before. An awful lot of healing is required, which I fear may never come if the present trajectory continues.
One of the challenges I have faced in recent times as a public commentator and blogger is the balancing act between passing critique on policies and acts of indiscretion by the government of the day and upholding the apolitical, secular values that I have spent the major part of my lifetime as an Indian armed forces person. Voicing political choices was an unavailable option while in the uniform, neither was anyone interested in such discourse. Deeply insulated inside the confines of a ship, unit or cantonment, there was unending work, plentiful opportunities to bond, beautiful social interactions and an abiding respect for all religions and faiths. Indian Army’s “mandir parade” is a delightful example of this bonhomie and mutual trust that kept the military out of communal politics, at the vanguard of secularism. In my view, 2014 was a turning point where we as a nation took a sharp right turn, descending down the path of majoritarianism and demagoguery.
A phenomenon called Narendra Modi swept the general elections and took oath as the Prime Minister of India a decade ago. His carefully curated public relations campaign captured the imagination of a vast majority of Indians (and diaspora, who are nothing but cheerleaders, with little skin in the game) at a time when social media and digital news platforms were morphing into instruments of propaganda. Prime Minister Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, is on camera in a BBC documentary (now banned in India) saying that what he resented most or could have done differently post the 2002 Gujarat riots (over 1,000 killed, mostly Muslims) was that he did not know how to “handle the media”. In his ascent to the highest office of the land, he has mastered that craft, and how.
Today a legion of acolytes masquerading as journalists and their crafty owners, collectively labeled “Godi” or lapdog media, literally eats out of his hands. The prime minister has not addressed a single press conference or taken impromptu questions in his two terms. And we citizens have normalised this. Save for a handful of small independent media channels that escaped his clutches, major players from the fourth estate have totally and shamelessly capitulated. Accountability from those in power at the centre is an alien concept today. So is asking difficult questions to one who is essentially an elected chief executive of the state. Decadence and PR gimmickry have replaced transparent governance. Unabashed religious signalling by the prime minister to galvanise the Hindu vote bank has made a mockery of his office and set off supremacist fantasies. What’s worse, most of his followers, even the educated ones, justify this in the name of “Hindu awakening”. That less than 17% of the population can pose an existential threat to 83% of the population must strike us as odd, but here we are. Hitler managed to convince Germans that less than 2% of the population (Jews) were a threat to all of Germany. Science offers many more toolkits today.
The discourse from a prime minister perpetually in election mode, with an outsized ego and disdain for all norms of decency has become particularly rancid in the frenetic election campaign of 2024. His provocative speeches and inflammatory rhetoric has set a new low for the highest office of the country. A most astute politician, he speaks with a forked tongue, always making it out to be a battle of narratives started by the opposition. His party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), runs propaganda and misinformation on an industrial scale that has driven millions of frustrated Indians into the arms of WhatsApp University, a convenient watering hole for lies, half-truths and alternative narratives.
Ten years later, marginalisation and “othering” of minorities, especially Muslims, has accentuated to a point that is extremely worrisome. The entire ecosystem feeds on the innate desire of right-wing Hindu nationalists and RSS supporters to show Muslims “their place”. This has unmasked many closet Hindutva supporters, including veterans and government servants sworn to live and die by the Constitution. In this battle of narratives that is dominated by the state, they don’t mind turning a blind eye to hate factories and targeting of minorities so long as their own future and majoritarian agenda is secured. I have never seen such an ugly turn in my entire military service career of 27 years and 10 years since.
But aren’t we forgetting something? In India, we all are minorities or migrants, in a manner indiscernible on the surface. Let me give you my personal example. Like many of my readers, I come from a middle class family. We were essentially migrants; my father came from Kerala to Bombay looking for work in the 1950s, just after an epidemic of hate culminated during World War II. I am a non fish-eating Malayali, a minority in Kerala. My father hails from a minuscule minority community from Kerala called Pisharody – “ambalavasis” or temple residents who strung flower garlands for the resident deity. My faith, beliefs and religion is a fiercely personal matter, which I do not believe in flaunting around with pride as my calling card. I am no stranger to ghettoisation either, having seen how divisive campaigns and regional politics railed against “outsiders” like us when we moved places. Must be some divine force or the power of conscience that a young boy grew up in the suburbs of Mumbai with an egalitarian outlook when there were enough incentives for aligning with the majority to secure own future.
I wish I could look back at my childhood with rose-tinted glasses. There was never enough money to go around. Opportunities were opaque to families like ours without influence or agency. Parties with a divisive agenda threatened to throw us “Madrasis” out of Bombay. There were days my dad sulked through the day as he couldn’t go to work because of lockouts, bandh, or riots. So today when some barely recognisable faction of Hindu-supremacists promise to uphold minority rights, I can’t help but chuckle. Same can be said for the party (Indian National Congress, later Congress (I)) which to many like us was “default-setting” post Independence. The assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her personal bodyguards in 1984 and the anti-Sikh pogrom that followed proved why no political party or its leader should be put on a pedestal. Unmentionable atrocities were perpetrated on one of the most patriotic, peace-loving communities by supporters of a party that today claims to represent the true idea of India. No wonder Modi followers get agitated at the first mention of INC. India is a perpetual tinder box. Eternal vigilance and communal harmony is our only insurance policy.
But the dark chapters were brief, and the highs, however transient, were always incrementally higher than the lows. What helped us cope most was community and a beautiful concept enshrined in the Constitution – fraternity. A few lumpen elements did not make Bombay an unlivable place, just like 1984 did not make Delhi permanently anti-Sikh. The fringe was never mainstream. I remember leaving home in the late 80s at the peak of mafia gang wars that were common in Bombay to join a temple of secularism — the Indian armed forces. When things took an ugly communal turn after the December 1992 Babri Masjid demolition (a blot on our democracy), I was (ironically) safely ensconced in the military. I do not recall a single event with a communal tone in 27 years of uniformed service. This is not to say that everyone was totally apolitical or secular; just that it was considered so improper to give anything a communal spin as to make it almost a taboo.
I am afraid I do not share the same sentiment today. Hate, majoritarianism and discrimination against minorities has been mainstreamed in the last decade like never before. Enabled by Big Tech and political parties that have harnessed the power of information warfare, the “otherization” of minorities has accelerated so much as to make it almost public policy. How long before this cancer spreads to the uniformed forces is anybody’s guess. Maybe we are already there. Retired three and four stars are joining politics and singing paeans to the supreme leader while scholarly veterans continue their sagacious campaign to remain neutral or look the other way. Is being neutral in the face of fascism a harmless choice?
When “completely sane” RPF constable Chetan Singh pumped bullets into his senior, ASI Tika Ram and three Indian citizens identified only by their beards and outfit, he expressed with his gun what closet bigots and right-wing supporters have been spewing through their mouth and pen. As pointed out by journalist and Nobel laureate Maria Ressa, online violence is real life violence. It all starts with hate speech, as we have seen in the case of genocides world over, most recently Rwanda. Yet the dog whistling continues unabated. A century after a disgruntled ex-corporal seized power in Nazi Germany, what have we even learnt?
At the dawn of a new era, India has managed to hold it all together despite many provocations to violence. The credit goes in no small measure to faint voices of sanity, pacifists, liberals, the intelligentsia, comedians and satirists and civil society in general. How wonderful that a country many described as an experiment doomed to fail has not only survived innumerable challenges, but lifted itself to the stature of one of the world’s largest democracies. We have faced wars, terrorism, insurgency, external aggression, famine, drought, communal riots, poverty, and circumspection of the developed world to arrive at the dawn of Amrit Kaal, all in a matter of 75 years. There must be something right our leaders and founding fathers have done to get us here. But nothing can be taken for granted. The path we are on today is confrontational and militates against the spirit of one of the best documents ever written.
We could either place our palm over our chest and proclaim “all is well”. Or we could recognise and acknowledge the clear and present dangers that threaten to rip apart the most diverse, exotic fabric of democracy that is India. Leaning to far-right, far-left, or inching towards a theocratic state is never a good idea for a society like ours. India is an experiment more than a country. Whoever wins, the idea of India should live on and prosper, as a beacon for the world to follow.
This is my solemn call to return to the centre. You may choose your own path. Hope we meet and greet again. Dosti bani rahe.
The author is a full-time aviator and part-time writer.
This article was originally published on the author’s blog Kaypius.
