NaMo worship won’t work any better than Modi bashing did
Believe me or not, there exist Indians who do not bear the non-trivial load of one Narendra Modi in the back
of their mind. In the darkly comical existence of (formally) educated Indians
where almost everybody is identifiable by his or her unquestioning devotion to
or pathological hatred of the Gujarat chief minister, it may sound preposterous
but there are Indians, in fact millions of them, who give a damn either way.
In the past few months, as the BJP hems and haws over its choice
of the prime ministerial candidate, I, like many, have been bombarded with
unsolicited group emails, social media missives and online posturing for and
against, mostly for, Modi. The majority of these internet trolls disguised as
patriotic Indians build the cult of NaMo as an apostle of good administration
and reforms. The rest swear that they will keep hurling the charges of
cold-blooded mass murder against him till Judgement Day dawns on secularism.
If you are caught in this abusive crossfire – and you will be at
some point or other if you happen to be a moderate to heavy internet user – you
will have every reason to believe that India’s destiny hinges on whether or not
Modi will become its next Prime Minister. You may or may not feel tempted (read
provoked) to take sides, but you are likely to get overwhelmed by the enormity
of the stakes. But even your hazy mind will register the obvious numerical
supremacy of Modi supporters who are smug about Modi’s inevitable ascent to the
country’s top office.
In the past few weeks, I have faced the question several times.
Given the surprisingly fast and steady decline of meritocracy in the media, it
is no small miracle that many still trust journalists for an actually informed
‘informed opinion’ or a more intuitive insight. I did not want to disappoint
any of those who quizzed me on Modi’s national prospects but my thoughts failed
to impress my inquisitors from both camps.
I recounted the Godhra carnage, the mass killing that followed
in Gujarat and its aftermath. Those turbulent days, I spent long hours in the
newsroom of a newspaper that virtually took it upon itself the task of
delivering justice to Gujarat’s victims. But we were no exception. A very large
section of the media, particularly the English press, minced no words in
accusing Modi of deliberate inaction. Others went to the extent of charging the
chief minister of conspiracy and collusion with the killers.
News channels ran campaigns, both sobering and shrill. Dailies
splashed series after series of exposes and platitudes. The fast-expanding and
already hyperactive worldwide web buzzed with incredulity and anger. The pile
of evidence, backed by numerous blood-curdling eyewitness accounts, was damning
enough to fuel the outrage. The conscientious liberal secular intelligentsia
convinced itself that the good sense of the majority of Hindus in Gujarat would
prevail and Modi would be humiliated in the Assembly polls due in a few months.
Modi retained power with a thumping majority. As investigations continued
into his own involvement and that of his partymen in the organised riots, the
BJP’s performance only improved in the two subsequent polls. The national (and
international) outrage that made many of us believe that the ouster of Modi was
a foregone conclusion did not swing votes in Gujarat. Only the psephologists
were humbled.
I can think of two plausible explanations for this. Could it be
that the outrage was manufactured or, at any rate, insincere? Did Modi-bashers
really believe in what they professed or were they just being politically and
parochially correct? If the answers to these possibilities are in negative, I
have to conclude that the formally educated, English-speaking Indians are
perhaps too self-important to see anything beyond their noses and failed to
read the voters of Gujarat.
To most, justice is too abstract a remedy. Many of those who
suffered irreparable personal losses did not want to risk whatever they were left
with by stirring the political pot without any guarantee of the desired result.
The majority of voters, who did not suffer directly in the riots, were largely
insulated from the so-called national mood for the lack of an English education
and exposure. Expecting them to mete out justice was naively presumptuous. As a
former colleague often reminded me in jest, Gujaratis do not need formal
education to master profit and loss equations.
Whatever be the reasons, Modi-bashing in the formal and social
media failed to defeat Modi in 2002 or after. Just like there have always been
a few Gujaratis in the anti-Modi camp, the Modi-worshippers on the web are also
represented by a number of non-Gujaratis. They are prize spokespersons of the
NaMo fan club and apparently represent Modi’s increasing acceptability at the
national level.
Even if that claim is true, it only proves that the image of an
assertive, no-nonsense leader who apparently delivers good governance has
takers among a certain class of Indians outside Gujarat (and even outside India
which disqualifies them as voters). The deluge of online support for Modi does
not include the majority of Indians who cannot access internet or articulate
themselves suitably in expletive-laden Hinglish chat debates. So the online
smugness and media flutter about the inevitability of Modi the prime minister
is as misplaced as the secular intelligentsia’s presumption that the people’s
court in Gujarat would punish Modi.
But Indian voters are known to surprise pundits. I won’t hazard
a guess who they will catapult to power in the next general elections. Though
it seems unlikely, what if the BJP gets to lead a coalition and Modi indeed
becomes the PM? Frankly, I won’t rejoice or worry. India did not take off with
Sanjay Gandhi. Nor did it succumb to Emergency.