The Election That Shaped Gujarat & Narendra Modi’s Rise to National Stardom: An Excerpt
- In Dispatch
- 06:48 PM, Feb 27, 2016
- Ramesh Rao
As Indian television channels daily highlight the engineered protests from the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University and the fallout from those protests, and more recently the politically-inspired agitation by the Jat community in Haryana, we bring to you excerpts from a recently published book, “The Election That Shaped Gujarat & Narendra Modi’s Rise to National Stardom”, by Ramesh N. Rao & Vishal Sharma (Mount Meru Publishing, Toronto, Canada), that provides the context for understanding the challenges that democracies like India face. The book is available both in Kindle format and paperback versions from Amazon in India, Europe, and the USA:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat”[1] -- Theodore Roosevelt
Politics is the art of the possible, and surely anyone with a faint heart cannot enter the political kitchen where knives are out, sharpened in back-alleys and corners, and cooks stabbed in the back by plotting, scheming characters who are one day friends and collaborators and sworn enemies the next. In such a context, any story that anyone tells is a selective act of communication. When we say selective, we mean that no particular account of any event, even the narrative of a fairly small event and one narrow in scope, is full or complete. There are always more details, always more interpretations, and always something else that someone else wants to add. We can quote and describe the works of myriad Western philosophers on these matters, or just point to the writing of the Arthashastra[2] by Chanakya (also known popularly as Kautilya), the third century BCE philosopher and adviser to the great king Chandragupta, and his son, Bindusara.
History is contested, and the writing of it is fraught with challenges, and mired in controversy. In the past it was the “winners” who were privileged to tell or pay others to tell stories of their victories. But in a world which witnesses endless battles in one corner or another, and where there are no clear winners and a lot of bruised leaders and followers waiting for their day in the sun, story-telling and history writing have become even more contentious. Those works which win the “authentic”, “scholarly” or “expert” label are products that are not necessarily “true” or “accurate,” but owe their status to how the ingredients are packaged – in the choice of language and the theoretical framework analyzing and showcasing them. While we are chary of summarily dismissing the work of expert historians and investigative reporters, and the analyses of human rights groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), we have reservations in accepting all of their accounts as fair and balanced, for, the “complete truth” in these human matters is hard to find.
In telling the story of the events that forced the elections in Gujarat in 2002, as an aftermath of the massacre of Hindus on the Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002, and recalling the four days of bloody riots that followed, we surely had to be selective. How selective our narrative is and whether it passes the test of “fairness, accuracy, and balance” is not for us to say.
The Godhra train massacre is not the center of our account here nor is it focused on the riots that followed it. Instead, it is the story of the viability and strength of modern nation-states faced with threats from outside and fractures and friction from within, including factions of one’s own party.
It was declared with much fanfare that after the collapse of the Soviet Union history as we knew it would come to an end, and that democratic forms of government would supplant the remaining few authoritarian, feudal and totalitarian governments around the world sooner than expected. India is the world’s largest democracy where faith-inspired terrorism, and neighbors ruled by authoritarians and extremists have seriously impaired the pace of its development. India is a nation with many fault-lines that divide its people: religion, caste, region, language, history, and social and cultural practices. How is it possible to strengthen Indian democracy, and who is going to fight the battle to keep India democratic? Is democracy enough to make a state strong or are there other requirements – for instance, a strong economy, institutions that assure effective law and order, education, alleviation of poverty, equality and justice? The Gujarat elections raised all of these questions, and therefore the retelling of that election story is important to underline its relevance to the sustenance of democracy and the governance of a tumultuous nation in troubled times.
If the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Gujarat chief Narendra Modi had lost the elections, we would have seen a hundred books celebrating the triumph of “secularism” over “communalism”. But the BJP and Narendra Modi won, inviting unsubstantiated demonization and calumny spread around the world by self-proclaimed secularists and progressives indicating how the Gujarat elections were a travesty of the democratic process. Their version of the Gujarat story got much media space, and much academic spotlight. Since they had their say, we, therefore, have to tell the story of the real “winners” and why that win was important in the local context of Gujarat and the global context of democracies threatened by fundamentalist forces.
Our story is not Narendra Modi-centric, though he can be considered the main protagonist in this narrative. In fact, a neologism was coined in India to describe the influence of Modi in the Gujarat elections: it was “Moditva”, or the power and influence of Modi. However, the BJP’s win was not the fallout of any particular political “wave” that marked many Indian elections, nor was it merely due to Modi’s popularity, though that part of the dynamic should not be ignored or minimized.
More important than the personality of Modi, and the relevance and impact of his leadership style, are the concerns about the vulnerabilities of a democratic and open society. In India, anyway, the evaluation of leadership is fairly superficial: the analyses are mostly in terms of caste affiliation, position in the party, money, social clout, previous experience and offices held, and organizational abilities of the party. Or we have the strange and self-deprecating phenomenon of political scientists, journalists, and U.N. officials continuing to produce tomes on Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, regarding them as the architects of modern India. The Nehru cottage industry has become global, and the most dangerous fallout of this “Nehru-mania” is ironically, cult politics, feudalism, authoritarianism, and intolerance of alternative viewpoints.
The political planks of parties are rarely or thoroughly analyzed nor the leadership style and quality adequately understood or described. In a country where a large majority of the population is still illiterate, both politicians and media continue to believe that short and simplistic slogans for eliminating poverty (the famous Indira Gandhi slogan of “garibi hatao” made popular in the 1970s) or for building the Ram temple in Ayodhya can seduce the electorate. If indeed such slogans yield miracles, we don’t know why some politicians using them win, and why others using the same lose. There are no careful rhetorical analyses of speeches Indian politicians deliver, and media commentators do not take the time, for example, to “unpack” carefully as they do in the U.S., the claims and assertions politicians make in their public presentations. In this regard, it is important to understand the popularity of Modi or his influence in terms of his leadership style and his public rhetoric.
The quality and characteristics of Indian leaders have changed over time. From freedom fighters and activists of the independence era to the agitationists of the 1960s and 1970s (student agitationists, Naxalites, language chauvinists, and others), to pretenders winning elections on caste appeal in the 1980s and 1990s we have arrived at a juncture in Indian history where new forms of leadership are emerging. Modi is the harbinger of this trend -- a surprising phenomenon considering that he is not from a powerful caste group; not the scion of any influential or royal family; not the alumnus of any elite schools; not well-connected politically; not owner of a record of winning elections till he became Chief Minister of Gujarat; and not a career politician either, who had run for office till he was actually forced to do so after he was anointed by his party elders to go manage a fast-collapsing state. On the other hand, Modi comes off as a self- made man, belonging to a political group reviled and abused for long (with its own internal wrangling, jockeying for power, and ideological confusion), a man interested in technology, is disciplined and hardworking, and with a clear vision for his country’s future. The Bharatiya Janata Party only faintly embraced the project of integral humanism, propounded by its ideologue, Deendayal Upadhyaya, and which is purportedly the BJP’s “official philosophy”. The middle ground that Upadhyaya sought, between unbridled individualism and stifling socialism, drawing from the fount of Indian traditions and wisdom, integral humanism builds on the idea that the ends of life include kama (desire), artha (wealth), dharma (law and ethics), and moksha (liberation/salvation). Western political philosophies and political planks seem primarily to focus on aspects of production and management of artha and aspects of maintaining law and order. There is very little written about Upadhyaya’s philosophy, and the blame can be assigned both the BJP and its leadership as well as Indian academics who have sold themselves wholesale to the Western and Continental philosophies and political ideologies.
Indian secularists deliberately attribute the outcome of Gujarat elections to the use of the communal (religion) card, whereas Modi attributes it to the surging nationalism that rendered communalism irrelevant. Indian nationalism has many versions – for example Gandhian nationalism, secular nationalism, and Hindu nationalism – but few are those who negotiate the nuances and employ that advantage to appreciate the electoral planks of political parties. How would one interpret the kind of nationalism that, for instance, Muslims and Christians of India support? Are they all secular nationalists? These questions do not trouble the secularists at all because in their anxiety to blame only certain sections of the Hindus for advocating the “wrong” brand of nationalism (“Hindu nationalism”) they exonerate everyone else, even those who are striving to Balkanize India.
The quick urge and simple anxiety to label the BJP as advocates of “Hindu nationalism” (though there are forces within the party who do want that) belies the complex contemporary Indian dynamic that characterizes the BJP’s appeal anchored to a nationalist plank. The appeal to nationalism should be seen in the context of threats from outside forces to wreak havoc on a resurgent and vibrant democracy, and in the context of aspirations of some within the country to divide it on a variety of economic, social, and political fault-lines. Importantly, this new nationalism should be understood as a response to the colonial constructs of India which post-independence, India’s so-called secularists and progressives, ironically, have sought to reify.
This work therefore is placed before the public to draw the attention of both informed and lay readers to the vulnerabilities and strengths of democratic nations in the twenty-first century. The Godhra massacre was orchestrated to bring down not only the Modi government but also to dismember India. The post-Godhra riots tested the strength of the Indian law and order machinery and the compartmentalized relationships, professionalism, and independent procedural systems for resolving disputes. The Gujarat elections repulsed the attempts of forces – both well-meaning and calculating – to undermine Indian democratic traditions and pluralistic identity. Pluralism can survive and thrive only when religious traditions and political ideologies exclusively appropriating claims to God and “equality” are considered the greatest threats to the survival and well-being of people all over the world….
Political scientists and historians argue that democracy has worked or survived only in those nations which were economically developed, which had fashioned a civil society, whose people were ethnically homogeneous, and so on. India, which did not meet any of these requirements at the time of independence, has proven to be a resilient democracy. Pakistan, which was carved out from India, and which therefore had some similarities with India, has mostly been ruled by military dictators, who reduced its democratic institutions to tatters. What ingredients have made India a resilient democracy? Some argue that it is the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and the vision of Jawaharlal Nehru which made India democratic and kept it that way. However, it is not the influence of Gandhi and Nehru alone but also the efforts of great leaders of pre- independence India -- Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajagopalachari, Kripalani, Ambedkar, and a multitude of others. However, leaders alone do not make a nation. It needs some ingredients within the society that keep the people away from pulling down institutions and downsizing leaders. What have kept Indians democratic are not only civil institutions but their religious ethic. Indic traditions have, unlike Semitic traditions, enabled the people to accept and celebrate diversity. So, when we hear the RSS and BJP leaders harp on “Hindtuva” we know that what they are seeking to highlight is the “catholicity” of Hindu peoples, their willingness to embrace and celebrate diversity. Of course, we cannot discount the “hot heads” or the illiberal in the company of the BJP but within every group we find such a mix, and their influence and ambit cannot be discounted.
It is this wider context which it is the aim of this book to discuss to facilitate an understanding of the political and social dynamic of Gujarat and draw lessons in the cause of democracy and good governance. Narendra Modi and the coalition of parties headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party has emerged victorious, and the Indian political scene is beginning to be redrawn and repainted – with many old actors still playing their part in different corners of the country, but an energetic man whose focus is on good governance, seeking justice for all but special treatment to none, shaking up Lutyens’ Delhi.
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