The massive majority to the
BJP in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls in India have indeed ‘Modi fied’
India. If anyone is the winner, it is Narendra Modi, who despite relentless
criticism, personal abuse and intense media scrutiny, entire government and
opposition machinery against him, pariah in many ways, and his own party leaders opposed to him for good reasons, has won a landslide
victory making his party the single largest non-Congress party in the history
of Independent India. He and his party now have a mandate with which they can
make or break India. Having been a persistent user of social media I have
exhausted my analysis of what this will mean for India and the political situation
that has reduced the Congress Party to its worst electoral performance ever. Instead,
I want to reflect on the passions that this verdict has evoked especially in
the social media. It is important because the social media has been a
significant participant in these elections, hardly a non-partisan observer.
These have been the most
polarised elections; families have been torn apart, friendships have suffered
and emotions have run high. People have found themselves caught in the ideology
of ‘us vs. them’. If not with Modi, must be against him and people in general;
if not against Modi, must not be ‘secular’ or ‘progressive’ enough. These have
been the dominant narratives throughout the campaign period. There has been no
graciousness in the aftermath of the results as well. People on all sides are
abusive and angry. The politicians only reflect the ‘aam janta’. Lalu Prasad
even refusing to congratulate the Narendra Modi team and Sonia and Rahul Gandhi
not even addressing the PM elect. The lack of graciousness is not just between
the opposition and government elect but also within the BJP itself. L. K.
Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Murli Manohar Joshi have been sulking at Modi’s
anointment, some of that frustration against Modi justified not only because of their own legitimate personal ambitions. How does one make sense of the unprecedented rise of Narendra Modi who was once chastised by the BJP patriarch, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for not following 'Rajdharma' during the Gujarat riots. There are also unconfirmed reports about the rough edges being
smoothed between the BJP and the RSS, but time will reveal more.
The liberal space is fast
shrinking and tolerance eroded not only because of a resurgent right wing, but
because the left critics (organised and informal) are equally arrogant and unreasonable.
The doomsday predictions all around, the relentless lampooning of people (especially
from the ‘cow belt’) who are supposed to have unleashed this ‘catastrophe’ on
the country is not doing much good in terms of self-reflection. The lack of any
understanding of voter aspirations and any sense of ‘privilege’ people embody
when they make fun of ‘loony right wingers’ who were concerned about nothing
but unadulterated Hindutva, is a matter of concern. It was depressing to watch
an uncritical and unsophisticated Left/UPA/AAP political campaign; their
arrogance allowing them to dictate to the voters who and what they (voters)
should be voting for to save what they themselves haven’t been able to in all
these years: a sacred ‘secularism’ that imagines that the responsibility of
keeping India secular lies only with its ‘minorities’.
I
have engaged in conversations with all sides and have friends in all major political
camps who hero worship their ‘own’ and ridicule the ‘other’. I have never
understood how India’s educated see the Indian elections as two sided where
traditional voters of any one party stick with them. Time and again, voters
have punished those who failed to deliver and the BJP has been rejected several
times. There is also a kind of naivety with which people are expected to be
partisan: ‘with us or against us’. The space to be a liberal, an invested observer
who is able to see the grey areas and is more interested in the complexity of
narratives than a simplistic picture of winners and losers, is hard to find. Love
and hatred for politicians is deeply embedded in the idiom of everyday life.
Amartya Sen believes we are an argumentative lot; we are more the passionate
lot. What we forget in our own passionate existence is that our outbursts can
really silence people instead of opening up spaces for conversation and debate.
Anger is a wonderful emotion especially during times of elections but we are
wasting its potential.
I
have had many conversations with Modi supporters whom I know personally, asking
them to tone down their derogatory, violent and sexist slogans and also with friends on the left who have
been extremely negative and violent with their words. The point is that one doesn’t
really give up and shut down every avenue of engagement. I am aware that people
have ‘unfriended’ each other (albeit only on facebook!) when their political
views have differed. Gone are the days when communists and RSS followers shared cordial relations in social circles and were able to forge friendships beyond their ideological divide. It is easy to convince the like-minded, tough to argue with a detractor and that is where the challenge is.
People
have spoken through the ballot and it is unfortunate if some of us think they
have chosen badly only because they didn’t choose who we may have wanted, but
instead pressed the button on who they thought would meet their aspirations (assuming
that’s what democracy is all about). Several people I know as perfectly secular,
sane, generous and just citizens yearning for a better life have voted for the BJP
this time. Let us stop telling them, they are idiots. When things go awry and time
comes to resist, they won’t be drawing comfort from you or me pontificating ‘I
told you so’. Instead, they will be rethinking strategies of resistance and
developing new vocabularies of struggle on the ground. Not all intellectual
elites (with secure jobs in universities/think tanks/media, invitations to
foreign lands and privileged life styles) have always sided with the ‘people’ whom they seem to be speaking for.
Most
importantly, let us not assign communal, secular categories without giving any
real thought to the complexity of everyday life in India. It isn’t about
Bismillah Khan and A.P.J Abdul Kalam praying to Hindu deities, Mohammad Rafi
crooning Hindu Bhajans with devotion and Pandit Jasraj invoking the meherban Allah that alone makes Indian
secularism thrive. It is the belief among the common people that in recognising
and acknowledging the diversity, one realises one’s true faith. A Muslim friend
once remarked that growing up in a Hindu locality, bowing everytime he crossed
the temple came naturally to him; most importantly he does not feel like the
‘victim’ he is made out to be by his secular saviours.
An elderly family member who has witnessed all
the elections since 1952 (often delighting us with second world war stories
about Japaniya Rachhas [Japanese
demons]!) and is a devout Hindu who reads the Ramcharitmanas everyday had a
remarkably humbling insight. She was no admirer of Modi when we met last, but
her views may have changed now. Upon hearing the Muslim azan (call for prayer) 5 times a day and on loudspeakers, I was
curious what she, a devout Hindu thought of it (expecting perhaps a negative reaction).
She said it was wonderful because the morning call, woke her up for her morning
arti (invocation) and the evening azan reminded her that it was time for her
diya bati (evening lamp lighting) for
her gods. Religion is all about discipline she said, and it didn’t matter
whether one was disciplined through the azan
or the temple bells.
Time
will tell if the public was completely loony but it is important to respect the
verdict in a democratic system where elections were by and large free and fair
and in which many of us participated. When you play by the rules, you don’t
deride the outcome. Let the election results not be a conversation stopper but
an opportunity to engage one another. We all have a stake in a better, just and
equal India. Once we understand the essence of India beyond our ideological prejudices, perhaps
we will be ready for a truly mature democracy where more will be at stake than
a bizarre political secularism that infantilises people instead of empowering
them.
Shiv
Vishwanathan sums it up rather well, “Secularism cannot be empty space. It
has to create a pluralism of encounters and allow for levels of reality and
interpretation.” For now, the best part of being an Indian is that no ‘god’ is
sacrosanct and no ‘devil’ completely damned. Isn’t that what these elections
have been all about?
