Regarding fascism

The point is not that voters want to compromise with communalism for the sake of growth.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta,  April 11, 2014

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/regarding-fascism/99/

he rise of Narendra Modi has brought the “F” word into promiscuous use. The spectre of fascism is said to be haunting India. It is easy to dismiss this concern over fascism as the hyperbole of a crumbling elite that has often used moral outrage as a substitute for addressing genuine political challenges. It might be tempting to engage in an argument over the historical specificity of fascism. Can the the combination of military power, total mobilisation and eliminationism that marked fascism really be reproduced in India?

 But take the core concern beneath the hyperbole seriously. The communal atmosphere in some parts of the country is fragile. Dozens of riots in UP testify to this. As Suhas Palshikar had argued, the BJP has regionally varied strategies.

In UP, in particular, it involves fishing in troubled communal waters. Whatever Narendra Modi’s intentions or change of heart might be is besides the point. India still has a communal challenge and ultimately the quality of its democracy will be judged by how it deals with it. You don’t have to subscribe to analytically otiose invocations of fascism to wonder what this election means for India’s prospects as a country where no one is targeted for being who they are. All sides speak about minorities, but few speak to them.

Whatever Amit Shah’s organisational genius might be, his track record should make you nervous about the kind of intimidation he could create. If we end up voting for them, the morning after we will need to think of the kinds of structures that can mitigate the damage they might do. BJP supporters, who might bristle at being called fascist, would do well to act reassuringly on these concerns.

The best way to respond to accusations of fascism is not to dismiss them. It is to make them look silly by your own exemplariness.
But those scare-mongering on fascism also need self-reflection. Many of those dropping the “F” word also betray a will to simplification that tells you more about those making the accusations than it does about politics. The Indian Left is incapable of any dialectical thinking; there is not a trace of reflection on the forces that have brought us to this pass. There should be no complacency over the communal question.

But what is it about the structures of our thinking about communalism that 60 years after Independence, we seem to be revisiting the same questions over and over again? Is there some deeper phenomenon that the BJP-Congress system seems two sides of the same coin to so many, even on this issue? The point is not about the political equivalence of two political parties. People will make up their own minds. But is there something about the way we have conceptualised the problem of majority and minority, trapped in compulsory identities, that makes communalism the inevitable result?

Is there something odd when voting for the Samajwadi Party, which has done its damnedest to stoke communal tension under the garb of electoral secularism, is not fascist, by the same standards? And does it serve the purpose of any kind of democratic accountability to let a party like the Congress, which has done its best to corrode every institution that should be the foundation of protecting equal individual rights for all, consistently get a free pass, based on fear?

In short, if you are serious about the communal question, you will have to think of what it is about the larger political culture that we seem to be trapped in the same discourse all over again. The political construction of identities, shared across parties, has been as much the deep substrate from which this poison springs.

We also need some historical perspective. It is hard to imagine that the same set of urban voters who in 2009 were considered the paragons of social democracy by electing the Congress have all suddenly turned fascist. Yes, these voters are anxious, because India’s growth story is faltering.

And this is where we need some dialectical thinking. Hindu nationalism arose in the 1990s against a backdrop of immense national anxiety: an uncertain economic future, various secessionist movements. The imperatives of creating coalitions, the checks and balances of an immensely complicated institutional structure, helped contain its furies, though not perfectly.

Hindu nationalism dissipated somewhat because of the confidence that growth provided. Growth created a new churning and a different national narrative. It created the circumstances where there was a lot more to lose by violence. This did not, tragically, work in every specific case. But the overall effects were to take the edge off investment in destructive identity politics. It mitigated some of the psychological anxieties from which the furies of nationalism had stemmed. It was the self-confidence and hope in the future that made organisations like the RSS so much less attractive.

It was the cunning of history that a BJP government, unintentionally, created the conditions that undermined the anxieties that fuelled Hindu nationalism. The anxieties returned somewhat when India’s confidence faltered.

The critique of fascism is less effective because it is not playing on the right terrain: a growth narrative that can restore India’s confidence. But the point is not that voters want to compromise with communalism for the sake of growth. What many of them sense, more presciently than academics, is that if this growth story continues to falter, we will create the conditions for the kind of reactionary politics that we have not seen.

They don’t find the Congress credible any longer, or the AAP quite ready. They may be misjudging the economic downsides of any non-BJP alternative. But to think that the social democrats of 2009 have now created a fascist surge is besides the point.

The role of incentives can be exaggerated in politics. But the incentive structures for the BJP at this moment are very different. Large-scale communalisation will, in the long run, create the very uncertainties that can damage growth. Violence may pay in specified local contexts, but beyond a point it backfires nationally.

Democracy cannot be the excuse for immobilising questions of individual liberty and security. But invocations of fascism often express a kind of distance from Indian democracy that is also disquieting. We are not on the high tide of fascism. It is more about a complicated country feeling its way through difficult times, fed up with old power structures. The “F” word has become a substitute for real thinking. We will need to think anew about what incentives and pressures will work in our new context. We are on a wing and a prayer. But we need to show more intelligence than screaming the “F” word.

If Modi wins on Sunday

Shekhar Gupta

 Sat Dec 22 2007

http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/if-modi-wins-on-sunday/253013/0

On the eve of the 2002 Gujarat elections, I had stuck my neck out to predict, somewhat audaciously, that if Modi wins, it would alter the character of national politics and that the next general election could be a Sonia versus Modi contest. There were some curious murmurs and questions from the usual suspects of the Congress that Saturday morning. But, surprise of surprises, the only protest came from Pramod Mahajan.

He called early that morning and, for once, was not his usual sugar-coated self. "What's this, boss, what kind of nonsense are you writing?" he said. Why should it have upset Pramod if I was predicting his party's victory in Gujarat? That foxed me at that moment and, in any case, six thirty in the morning is not exactly when I am at my brightest. Pramod apologised for calling early and we agreed to meet for lunch that afternoon.

Frankly, I had banked that lunch away for my memoirs, not so much for what we discussed, but because of some interesting sidelights. Like Mahajan asking a startled steward at the Oberoi's very proper Belvedere for a whole, large onion — "don't peel it," he specified. I thought, for a moment, that Mahajan, always a great showman, wanted to use the onion to make a political point about the BJP. He, instead, plonked it on the table, crushed it under his ample palm and plucked out the flesh for himself and me to munch with our lunch. Even in a seven-star environment, the BJP's most flamboyant star wanted to be his rustic self.

Then he came to the point. "What do you mean by saying Sonia versus Modi in the next general elections? Have we all disappeared? Do we all wear bangles? You think we have spent decades in politics to now hand it all over to somebody who walks in through the backdoor?"

I tell this story because, while the advanced 2004 poll distorted the emerging political scenario then, it is incredible how it is promising to play out exactly the same way now. If Modi wins on Sunday, the stage will be set for an ultimate Modi versus Sonia battle for national power, even if Advani continues to be the BJP's shadow prime minister. Modi will then be the key campaigner, his kind of politics, his style of campaigning, his lexicon of cryptographic saffronism and even his short-sleeved kurtas will then define the BJP campaign in the next general election. In the long run, too, he will emerge as Rahul Gandhi's main challenger. He will unite the parties that need the Muslim votes, thereby strengthening any Congress-led coalition. He will put under great strain the members of any BJP-led coalition, particularly those that still value Muslim votes. Nitish Kumar is a key example. But even his worst critics won't deny that if he wins on Sunday, he will pretty much define the agenda for national politics in the near future.

It is also for this very reason that his re-election will worry many of his party's national leaders exactly the same way his rise had worried Mahajan in 2002. It is not just because he will then make an immediate bid for the national leadership. On the contrary, chances are that he will let Advani be the prime-ministerial candidate for the next round. But his style and persona will cast a larger than life shadow, not just on the BJP, but on the entire universe of saffron politics. Two important factors that have marked the BJP's national politics so far will then change. One is the fact that whatever their commitment to RSS ideology and classical Hindutva, most senior leaders of the BJP have risen from the parliamentary system of the fifties and the sixties. They have, therefore, conducted their politics within the broader parameters of constitutionalism and parliamentary sobriety. Vajpayee has sparred with Nehru, and Advani was on talking terms with Indira Gandhi and Rajiv, even after she jailed him and his entire party leadership during the Emergency. Also, whatever their private views, you have never heard any senior leader say nasty things about Muslims in any public discourse. The second factor to have defined the BJP's politics, so far, is the political leadership's remarkable servility to the kingmaker of Nagpur, the leadership of the RSS. So strong has that hold been that even at the peak of Vajpayee's power most key decisions, even privatisation of PSUs, had to be cleared with Nagpur.

If Modi were to win tomorrow, both will change. He may not call Muslims names in public but he leaves very little to chance. Not for him the "lily-live redness" of the old-fashioned BJP politicians. He will never even nod to a suggestion to reach out to Muslims especially, as he does not believe in "appeasement". He is not shy of using the expression "Aalia, Malia, Kamalia" to refer to goondas on the streets of Gujarat. And when asked if he isn't actually suggesting — in code language — that the bad guys are all Muslim, asks with a straight face: So what would you have said in English, Tom, Dick and Harry... Would that have made the bad guys all Christian?

Modi's rise will completely change the form, style, substance and essence of the BJP's politics. In the nineties with Ayodhya, Advani had given his party a certain direction. Modi's rise will now mean that the use-by date on that politics is over. Most interestingly, he will change the second factor too. He may be an icon of aggressive Hindutva, but Modi has emerged as the first BJP leader ever to defy the moral and political authority of the RSS. He has not deferred to them. He has, in fact, defied them. He has even prevented RSS boys and sympathisers the power of making money on the side, something they consider their right in BJP states. The RSS is now returning the compliment by boycotting his campaign. So if Modi wins, he will also be the first BJP leader ever to win in defiance of, and despite, the RSS.

And if he loses, which, though unlikely, is not an impossibility, it will also have far-reaching consequences, most of all for the BJP, as its old leadership and the RSS — already sharpening their knives — turn on him.

So come Sunday, you will see the rise of a new politics, one way or the other.

PS: I have a sneaking feeling that this time, too, my phone may ring (hopefully, not at 6.30 am) and someone from the BJP will call to say, "What nonsense are you writing?"

National Interest: After May 16

Shekhar Gupta | April 12, 2014

The rise of Modi marks the shifting of the largest tectonic plate. He is the first non-Dynasty leader to acquire this domineering stature, the only non-Brahmin and also the first never to have been in the Congress party

One of the deadliest truisms in our business of reading election trends is, never trust journalists with their predictions. But when all journalists agree on the outcome of an election, take it easy. You know for sure that exactly the opposite will happen.

We would only hope this doesn’t extend to psephologists as well. Because if it did, you might end up looking very stupid by 11 am on May 16. I shall, therefore, be a coward and confine myself to drawing upon the opinion poll data to predict (yes, predict) lasting shifts in Indian politics. So significant, long-lasting and intense that we could describe them as tectonic. We also know tectonic shifts define the movement of seven such plates that constitute the earth. Let us now play political geologists and read the seismic signals.

First, whatever his tally finally, Narenda Modi would have risen as India’s preeminent political personality. This is a first and here is why. Think of any juncture since 1947, and the most powerful political leader was always from the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. I know you are speed-reading the history of 67 years in your minds, and I can  anticipate your doubts. The period from Nehru’s death in May 1964 to Shastri’s in January 1966.

The September 1965 war built Shastri into a genuine national icon. But everybody knew even then who the real star of the Congress was. Indira Gandhi may have been just a junior minister for information and broadcasting, but she was always the heir apparent and Shastri a caretaker. In any case, this “break” was for less than 18 months. Second, Indira’s defeat in 1977 after the Emergency and the rise of the Janata Party.

Yet, who was the most powerful political figure in India then? Jayaprakash Narayan was in rapid decline by then, physically and politically. The rest in the ruling Janata Party were squabbling subedars, not generals.

Indira Gandhi, in comparison, was a political field marshal. The third, and probably more arguable, would be the first half of the Narasimha Rao reign. Even then, as Arjun Singh’s intrigues and later open rebellion showed us, the real power was to return inevitably to Sonia Gandhi.

Rao defied it but paid for this foolhardiness. He was sent to the doghouse to fight his cases alone, and then denied, in death, the elementary dignity of a stop at the AICC headquarters for his funeral van and a cremation spot along the Yamuna in Delhi. You want evidence of how brutally it was done, check out my friend and former colleague Sanjaya Baru’s The Accidental Prime Minister: The making and unmaking of Manmohan Singh (pp 72-73). Atal Bihari Vajpayee ruled for six years, but never owned his party as Sonia did.

THAT is why the rise of Modi marks the shifting of the largest tectonic plate. He is the first non-Dynasty leader to acquire this domineering stature, the only non-Brahmin and also the first never to have been in the Congress party. He could rule India on his own strength and definitely own his party as well. How totally, you can see in how the BJP has thrown out Jaswant Singh and now his son Manvendra. This is not the way the BJP functioned in the past.

Even when Uma Bharti was expelled from the party in December 2005, the top leadership continued to humour her, presuming she would return inevitably, whatever the provocation from her.

In a Walk the Talk interview for NDTV 24×7 at Hoshangabad along the Narmada, she pointed at a bloated animal carcass floating in the water and compared the BJP with it: dead, but floating because of putrefaction. And yet, one of the most brilliant coincidences of my journalistic life once put me in the perfect place, the corridor of Parliament, as Vajpayee caught Umaji walking in from the other direction and asked why she had  stopped visiting his home.

“Kaise aaoongi, Atalji, aapne toh party se nikaal diya,” she said.

“Arre bhai, party karyalaya se nishkasit kiya hai na, ghar se toh nahin, ab aaiye aap,” said the great charmer.

No such things will likely happen now. There may not be a third coming for Jaswant Singh, unless he goes down on his knees in public in return for a distant Raj Bhawan with a well-stocked library. So here is the second coming shift in our politics: the BJP acquiring its own high command. It may actually do some good if it brings discipline in its cabinet (should it come to power) and keeps the grand viziers of Nagpur and the Luddites of Allahabad University at bay. It can also become authoritarian and rob the BJP of its internal democracy. But this, really, is something for the BJP to debate. The era of running internal party battles through leaks versus tweets in the BJP is now over.

The third comes prefixed with an “if”. So if a BJP-led NDA government comes to power this May, it will have a very different kind of cabinet arrangement. Nobody can predict who the key ministers will be as Modi will make his own choices, not distracted by history or hustled by the present. This will be a Modi cabinet. He will look for talent — and loyalty — wherever he finds it.

The concept of hierarchy will be redefined in India’s most enduring gerontocracy. A Modi cabinet will have place neither for Jairam Ramesh’s kind of youthful defiance nor for the Jaipal Reddy/A.K. Antony school of stodgy do-nothingness. If we get a Modi government in May, this will not be a change as uneventful as the ascent of Vajpayee, when there was more continuity than change. Be prepared for a bureaucratic, political and even social and intellectual twister: the lists of invitees to state banquets will change.

The fourth: If Modi’s political style is that of a CEO, he has already succeeded in relaunching his party as the new Congress, only way to the right. It has many more allies, will not only batter the Congress in the entire Hindi heartland (including Bihar) but, also, if opinion polls are generally right, poll more votes than the Congress in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Orissa. That will reduce the Congress party’s national preeminence to Kerala.

WHAT about the remaining three? First of these will be the most dramatic decline of the Congress in our history. A poll of all the major polls places the Congress firmly below its all-time low of 114 in 1999. It cannot find any new partners and some of the old ones may bolt. It is the first time since 1967, for example, that the Congress is fighting without an ally in Tamil Nadu and will score a zero. The party’s situation will be worse than the numbers will indicate.

For the first time, the party will have no non-Dynasty scapegoat.  Of course, if it remains true to its tradition, it will set up another Antony Committee to look into the disaster, as it did in 1996, and once again it could conveniently blame Manmohan Singh. But it won’t wash. By staying out of the campaign — or not protesting that he is kept out — and having been silent for a full five years, the outgoing prime minister has out-Antonied the real Antony. Vajpayee and Advani rebuilt the BJP from two seats in December 1984. Does Rahul Gandhi have it in him? Does the Congress have the ideological cohesion of the BJP? Both will be tested. The BJP stayed out of power for 10 years, but discovered a new leader and a new agenda. The Congress will have serious limitations there.

The sixth shift will also mostly affect the Congress, and it will be ideological. Evidence from across the country suggests that the Aam Aadmi Party is catching the fancy of the Muslims and the urban underclass, including the Dalits. This will devastate the Congress. This is also tectonic because it will reset the ideological divide in Indian politics from old secular versus communal, particularly if Modi can ensure Muslims do not come to harm under his rule, and chances are that he will. He will know that one communal riot under his watch will be one too many, worth too many I-told-you-sos.

If the minimalistic politics of seeking Muslim votes by merely promising them physical survival dies, many of them will flock to Arvind Kejriwal. This will also shake out many of the entrenched secular parties from their bunkers: most importantly, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s SP and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U). Kejriwal may or may not get many seats, but he will sound more convincingly pro-poor, secular and certainly cleaner than the Congress.
He could emerge as the central figure of future anti-BJP secular alliances.

And finally, the seventh. The election of 2014 could mark a terminal decline of the Left Front. The left ideology will survive. But possibly in the AAP. In most states outside of Kerala and West Bengal, the AAP has already taken away old and loyal left voters. By bringing Soni Sori in the election in Chhattisgarh, it has also reached out to the extreme left in our Maoist centre-east. This is the first sign of the current set of Naxalites checking out the political mainstream. Every Indian should welcome it.

It is also an opportunity the Left lost out of sheer laziness and arrogance. In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee has taken over its space by sounding more left than it, by looking like a more reliable protector of the Muslims and, at the same time, decimating the Maoists. Either way, the Left risks being reduced to a TV studio party, particularly as the seats it wins in Kerala will be largely seen as a swan song gift from V. S. Achuthanandan at 90.

Could you have asked for more upheaval from a single general election? Would you call this change anything but tectonic?

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/national-interest-after-may-16/99/