Nothing
perhaps would offend Narendra Modi so much as being portrayed as an admirer of
the formidable Indira Gandhi — at least in public. The BJP’s strongman who
thumped his 56-inch chest to be voted India’s prime minister in May 2014 is a
ferocious baiter of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and seldom misses an opportunity
to blame it for the country’s ills. But Indira Gandhi herself has not come much
in the line of Modi’s fire as her daughter-in-law Sonia and grandson Rahul
have.
That might
provide a clue to his closet veneration for the Congress Party’s iconic Iron
Woman and the way he has modelled himself on her, the similarities prompting
one political analyst to describe him as “Mrs G in trousers minus her
cosmopolitanism”. And her political savoir faire and competence, it should be
added.
It’s not
just Modi, however. Former BJP prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is known to
have extolled Indira Gandhi as Durga (Hindu goddess of invincibility) for the
1971 war with Pakistan. Imperious as Indira Gandhi may have been, Modi is
autocratic in the extreme and has reduced the cadre-based BJP to a sycophantic
party that is under his complete domination.
The Modi regime is altering the fundamental nature of
India’s democracy.
When in
recent months, Modi toppled the state governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand
by engineering defections within the ruling Congress legislature it evoked
memories of Indira Gandhi’s penchant for dismissing opposition state
governments. What is lost on Modi — and his party — is that a hoary Congress
practice of the previous century cannot be justified, especially after the
Supreme Court had issued clear guidelines in 1994 that the majority of a
government could be tested only on the floor of the state legislature.
That put
an end to the once-popular political game of playing skittles with elected
state governments, the only exception being an inglorious exercise by Vajpayee
in the late 1990s to overthrow the Bihar government of Rabri Devi. He ended up
with more than egg on his face after the court reinstated her.
Yet, a
brash Modi regime has thought little of brushing aside constitutional propriety
by denying the Uttarakhand government a floor test. Such arbitrary exercise of
power that undermines the federal nature of India’s polity appears to be in the
DNA of the BJP despite its claims to being a party with a higher moral purpose
than the Congress.
The
Uttarakhand High Court which heard a petition against the dismissal of the
Congress government was scathing in its strictures against Delhi and accused it
of “cutting at the roots of democracy”. The court also excoriated the centre
for its tearing hurry to pull down an elected government for no tangible reason.
Similar questions were also asked by the Supreme Court for BJP’s subversion of
democracy in Arunachal Pradesh where it had gone to the extent of declaring an
emergency. So much for the cooperative federalism that Modi had promised when
he took office barely two years ago. Political opportunism has its own logic.
But
dislodging opposition state governments is just one aspect of the illiberal
ways of the BJP governments both at the centre and in states. Parliament itself
has come under attack with the saffron party using its brute majority in the
House of the People or Lok Sabha to quell criticism. It has been run on
practically dictatorial terms over the past two years.
Opposition
criticism that Modi runs the most centralised government in free India’s history
is hard to refute. He has done little to change his style which he had honed in
his three terms as chief minister of Gujarat. It was a state that he ran as his
fiefdom, where his cabinet was marginalised, party MLAs mattered little and the
party was of no account.
Whatever
the criticism in parliament or in the media, it is hardly likely to weigh with
Modi who appears supremely indifferent to the convulsions in Indian society.
The prime minister seldom speaks, not even when the worst of atrocities have
been perpetrated on the minorities and the hugely disadvantaged lower castes.
Nor does he seem particularly concerned about the travails of the economy or
the acute agrarian crisis that has been exacerbated by drought, leading to a
fresh spike in farmer suicides.
All these
are but distractions for Modi who is fixed on his core agenda. He is engaged in
the fundamental transformation of India’s liberal democracy into the imagined
nation of the Hindu supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with whom he
has spent most of his life. Dismissal of opposition state governments is but
one part of the strategy to forever change India’s liberal democracy to one
that the Hindu right wants.
Insidiously,
it cuts at the very idea of what the Indian Republic was meant to be. The ideal
of inclusiveness is being replaced with majoritarian exclusiveness. Nationalism
is defined by callow slogan-shouting while ‘otherness’ is daily emphasised by
attacks on inter-communal marriages, in murders of Muslim cattle traders and in
suppression of dissent. Rationalism and its champions are the prime targets,
the writers eliminated or their works pulped.
Here’s one
example of how far the insanity is being carried. The National Council for
Promotion of Urdu Language has sought a declaration from writers seeking
financial aid from the council that their work was not critical of government
policies. The declaration has to be signed by two witnesses.
New laws
are being enacted by the various BJP governments to extend the control of the government
over universities and autonomous institutions. Prestigious institutions of
higher learning are being packed with RSS ideologues and opportunists lacking
in both academic credentials and any culture of enlightenment. The bureaucracy
has been muzzled in no uncertain terms and officials, like the political
sycophants, are not above declaring that Modi is God’s gift to Indian
democracy.
Ruthlessness
in stifling of political dissent and media freedom has become the hallmark of
both the central and state governments run by the BJP, the most notorious being
the Raman Singh regime in Chhattisgarh which has been in power for over 12
years. Much like Balochistan, Chhattisgarh, which is facing an insurgency by
Maoists, has turned into the deepest black hole of India’s illiberal democracy.
Journalists are hounded, arrested and jailed for reporting on the state.
Lawyers and academics are debarred from working in the state or labelled
anti-national and political activists are routinely targeted. In all cases, the
BJP believes criticism of the state is not permitted in the national interest.
The
founders of the Indian Republic, most of all Nehru, had hoped to and did create
a liberal society despite the deep and unjust divisions in it. Over the years,
much has been done to address the injustices but not with as much success as
one had expected. The BJP under Modi appears determined to undo those hoped for
ideals.
The
writer is a journalist based in New Delhi.
No comments:
Post a Comment