The ruling establishment has a problem. Its stock is falling. There is another problem – wrangling at the top which is becoming visible. The negativity can get even more serious if the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) ideological and political opponents are able to bring greater cohesion and clarity to their stated goal of dethroning the regime in the next parliamentary election – whether held early next year as scheduled, or along with a clutch of key state polls later this year.
The scheduled Mumbai meeting of the INDIA grouping (August 31-September 1) should be a pointer to the quality of expected mutual cooperation among the partners and the trajectory of the practical steps that Modi’s opponents can credibly muster.
The atmospherics are, on the whole, positive though these could have been better. But there is a basic question too: Can all the parties of the conglomerate-in-the-making resist the high-scale coercion the establishment can bring on, and stick it out to the end? Maharashtra affairs are worth watching in this context, but also Delhi and Punjab.
Further, can some regional leaders resist personal ambitions and not fight two battles simultaneously – one to defeat the quasi-dictatorship, and two to promote their personal or party interests? They probably can, though it is best to be doubly sure. But if they fluff this one, they sink together. Swimming separately is out of the question. The regime would ensure that.
Even six months ago, prominent opposition leaders now in the INDIA formation were advancing, in today’s context, the jaded and bizarre formula of striking out on an anti-BJP, anti-Congress path, self-servingly asserting that there was no difference between these parties. Such nonsense had no takers among the people and everyone made fun of the stunt growing out of the south and the east.
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But once INDIA was born in Bengaluru after an immaculate conception in Patna, with the Congress playing a centripetal hand, Prime Minister Narendra Modi began to fulminate, and then wilt. The wilting was on pathetic display in his reply to the no-confidence motion debate in parliament and his ritualistic address from Red Fort on Independence Day
In popular perception, there was now at last the plausibility of resistance. The opposition parties, if they held fast, could challenge a regime that had become openly defiant of public opinion, openly oppressive, unrepentantly given to inflicting violence upon the people, and wantonly suppressing the rights of the poor and the rights of farmers in order to exalt the richest of the rich classes, and to jail those who dissented and protested. In fact, this is the moment when Modi slipped from the pedestal. The parallelogram of forces began to change direction.
That change is still on the path to full realisation and will probably find its crystallised form after INDIA’s Mumbai confabulation. Nevertheless, a few weeks ago the present conjuncture beckoned the rampaging Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to declare in the Lok Sabha during the recent no-confidence motion debate that, exactly like the demon-king Ravana, the prime minister too heeds the advice of just two people – his home minister Amit Shah, and the tycoon Gautam Adani.
In reality, it appears that just one man’s voice counts. The indications are that Adani and Modi are peas in a pod. Reportedly, in Gujarat, the state government has doled out around Rs 4,000 crore to an Adani enterprise without bills being presented. Coincidence?
In this connection, Gujarat Congress president Shaktisinh Gohil has reportedly produced a letter from the Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Ltd to Adani Power, Mundra, in which the state power utility says it made an “excess payment” of Rs 3,900 crore to Adani Power between 2018 and 2023. This begs the question: Is this an example of poor accounting by a government enterprise, or political largesse – in effect, the Modi effect?
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As for Shah, he is doubtless, clever, devious, energetic and a long-time lieutenant of Modi. But in the larger suspiciously turbulent intra-BJP dynamic, the question of where he stands will be asked.Forget the surface play – remember, the BJP-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) are a semi-secret show. There is an illusion and there is a reality.
Gandhi’s pin-pointed speech stands out, nevertheless. No opponent of Modi had before summoned the nerve to compare him with Lord Ram’s arrogant adversary, the evil-doer of Hindu mythology who had dared to abduct Ram’s consort, Sita. Given this, Gandhi at once rose a few inches in public esteem when he voiced the thoughts of countless in the country. The tide was with him as he politically sought to indict the leader of government.
In the process he also cracked a state secret – that the head of government was putty in the hands of the most notable representative of big business who is at the centre of an international controversy over massive financial malpractices, although he denies this. It is becoming self-evident from the overall context that Modi’s big pitch for Hindu voters – building a temple to Sri Ram in Ayodhya – springs less from piety and more from the pursuit of power.
What is noteworthy in the context of current political play is that no one from the treasury benches rose to challenge Rahul Gandhi’s scathing assertions in the Lok Sabha. A late retort came from Union minister Smriti Irani who remained unmoved when a rape video surfaced from Manipur. As Rahul Gandhi was leaving the House, in a revenge attack, she accused him of blowing a flying kiss in the direction of the women on the treasury benches and complained to the Speaker! In effect, Modi was left to fend for himself by his party.
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The prime minister has attacked the INDIA grouping in season and out of season, in Parliament and outside. Distinctly feeling cornered when addressing the nation from the Red Fort on Independence Day, he literally begged the people for “help”, asking them to vote for a single party (rather than an alliance). No other prime minister has used the Red Fort gathering on August 15 as an election rally before, but Modi is not above setting a dubious record.
Before the birth of INDIA, the very notion of an opposition to Modi was reassuringly entertaining at best. With INDIA coming into play, everything began to look probable. The emergence of an opposition-for-itself, in short an opposition for the people in their dire hour, has now developed recognisable contours.
In Gramsci’s famous postulation of “war of position” on the ideological battlefield against the forces of fascism, it can now be posited that the emerging opposition bloc appears to have forged ahead of Modi’s sycophantic bhakt (BJP-RSS supporters) battalions, though the latter are never going to be short on fire power.
In a crunch situation, the government of the bhakts can unleash all kinds of resources, including high-octane propaganda. It can unleash the Election Commission itself by obliging it to resile from its constitutional stance of democratic neutrality.
But for now it is INDIA, especially its Congress component, which is setting the nation’s narratives and agenda. The so-called opinion polls run by television stations and others, and their laughable efforts of daring to tell India about her own political mood many months before an election, may be seen as a massive exercise in deception – a command performance aimed at snatching away the initiative from the national opposition.
In these circumstances, it is doubtful if the government’s efforts to play up a point of national glory, namely the superb success of Chandrayaan-3, or the upcoming G-20 summit in New Delhi, can be notched up in the credit column for the prime minister. People are learning to watch critically. They would instinctively know that what is practically a ban on entering Delhi and on free movement within the national capital for the duration of the summit, is a police tactic to head off any possible protest.
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The present autocracy is a one-trick pony. It can hope to rally its forces only within sections of the majority religious community in hopes of maintaining hegemony on a communal basis, not democratically. This is achieved through the calibrated use of communal violence. We have seen this happen with focused intent since important state polls and the national elections are near.
Alas, this is what India has been reduced to. The technique has been on display for more than three months in Manipur, where violence continues to be produced on the political assembly-line, or the chief minister would have been sent packing long ago. Instead, the man is cosseted by the Centre.
In Nuh, in Haryana, the communal violence, brought on by numerous provocative and violent videos, took a grave turn a few weeks ago when the victims began to be punished, with their homes and businesses bulldozed in wanton fashion. The sorry spectacle ended only when the Punjab and Haryana high court asked if the state government was intent on “ethnic cleansing” of the minority community.
No high court before has raised such a question about a state government. And yet, the Union governmenthas not seen it fit to intervene. In the ordinary course, the chief minister should have been forced out under constitutional provisions crying out to be used. Why such monstrous passivity by the Union, then? When Modi campaigns for “double-engine” governments, then the indictment of the high court in Chandigarh is also that of the regime in New Delhi.
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In UP, recently, instead of being commended for preventing a possible communal attack, a senior police officer was transferred within hours of the brave decision he took. Also in UP, a teacher instructed her Hindu pupils to take turns to slap a seven-year-old Muslim classmate. In Gujarat, a Muslim girl who topped her class was overlooked and the annual trophy handed to the next girl. A Railway Protection Force (RPF) constable went from coach to coach in a moving train, identifying and shooting Muslims dead.
Are these random, discrete, acts? If so, why is there no exemplary punitive action- or is the system itself the perpetrator? Is it all right to land a spaceship on the moon and simultaneously go on a sponsored hunt for members of the religious minority? Does it not seem the case that parts of the country have turned fascist in their political and administrative style, with no questions asked?
Whatever the clever slogans and the propaganda, it is evident that misrule,and its glorification, is woven into the very fabric of a communally-driven regime. This is writ large into the script of a government which, by its very nature, is not going to be even-handed, doesn’t matter what the rule-book says; indeed its aim is to replace the rule book in the fashion of the Nazis, or in emulation of the Zionists.
Such a dispensation, in hopes of not getting burnt, seeks to rely on hate propaganda and communal consolidation in order to come back electorally. The trick has worked for nine years principally because the bulk of the media has capitulated. It has been subverted in more ways than one, and calculatedly fails to show the government the mirror in order to benefit those who seek to lay the path to fascism.
But crushed under financial, emotional, psychological and communal burdens, the people are, at last, catching on. The regime has also grown increasingly aware of the bush fires burning within. That makes it extra jumpy. It has begun to see ghosts everywhere. That is why it is not just the Congress party or the INDIA combine that the ruling dispensation seeks to suppress.
In this context, Nitin Gadkari’s case stands out. The Union minister in charge of building national highways and ports, who has enjoyed a very positive image right through the regime’s nine-year misrule, is being sought to be hounded – exposing internal discords. The leading lights of the regime may perhaps even be viewing him as the locus of a likely internal challenge that may surface and are taking action to pre-empt this.
A former BJP president and party stalwart from Nagpur, where the RSS headquarters is situated, Gadkari was first removed from the ruling party’s parliamentary board, a move that was thought to have emanated at the top. Now, he has been charged with corruption in a recent Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report, which is headed by retired IAS officer, Girish Chandra Murmu – was Modi’s blue-eyed boy in Gujarat who was subsequently brought to New Delhi for high-end jobs. Did Modi fear there might be blood on the carpet if his cabinet colleague was not sought to be side-stabbed?
In a recent interview to a news portal, the disaffected BJP leader and high-profile RSS-backer, Subramanian Swamy, spoke of extensive discontent within the farmer community and the working classes in Modi Raj. Asked to evaluate the rime minister in juxtaposition to senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who has swept through the country frontally challenging Modi, Swamy shot back: “Why are you asking me which of them is more dusht?”. The Hindi/ Sanskrit word dusht translates to wicked or evil.
This dynamite-packed evaluation of the prime minister apart, Swamy has also predicted that the BJP will suffer if it goes to the country under the present leader. His proximity to the RSS is too well known to be questioned. Can Swamy be taken to be expressing his own view in the interview or is he relaying the anxiety felt in the headquarters of Hindutva on account of Modi’s dropping graph?
Anand K. Sahay is a journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi.