Muslims can derail the Modi juggernaut: By Anoop Sadanandam

(From The Hindu Business Line) Muslims, when insecure, have collectively voted to defeat the BJP. Narendra Modi’s campaign to be the next prime minister of India is formidable. He has clearly energised the base of the Bharatiya Janata Party and indications are he is the most popular politician in the prime ministerial race. His elevation will galvanise the BJP’s core voters, and give the party a sense of change and new direction. It may even win the party new voters. Yet, Modi faces a decisive gatekeeper — the Muslim voters. There is one thing we know about Muslim voters: When they feel insecure, they punish the BJP in the elections. A good instance of this is the 2004 parliamentary election, the first general election after the Gujarat riots that claimed over 1,000 — mainly Muslim — lives. The insecurities were are apparent in three noticeable trends in the 2004 elections. THREE TRENDS First, Muslims overwhelmingly voted against the BJP. This is evident at the voter and the constituencylevels. At the voter-level, the National Election Study (NES) -- that the Centre for the Study of Developing Studies conducted in 420 constituencies -- shows that nine out of 10 Indian Muslims surveyed voted against the BJP in 2004. At the constituency-level, this produced a strong negative relation between the size of the Muslim population and the party’s electoral performance – a 10 per cent rise in Muslim population brought about a 5 per cent drop in the BJP’s vote share. Second, the NES data reveal that the Muslims voted strategically to defeat the BJP. That is, when Muslims voted against the BJP in 2004, they did not vote for a particular party, ideology or alliance. Instead, they voted for the party that was most likely to defeat the BJP in their constituencies. This meant supporting the Congress Party in one constituency and the Communists or a regional party in another. Over 85 per cent of Muslims thus voted strategically and ensured the BJP’s defeat in three out of five constituencies. What these means for Modi’s campaign is that his party, the BJP, will face an uphill battle to win seats in 2014 with Modi as its leader. In over 60 per cent of the Parliamentary constituencies, the victory margins in the last two elections were smaller than the Muslim population in them. If the Muslims vote en bloc to defeat the BJP in next year’s election, the party -- even if it were to emerge as the largest party in the parliament as some polls suggest --- will have to depend more on allies to form the government. What kills that prospect is the third trend in Muslim voting of 2004: Muslims also voted strategically to defeat BJP allies. Every major BJP ally lost seats in Parliament as a result. Muslims then were signalling that they would forsake any party that allied with the BJP. The defeat of Janata Dal-Secular in last month’s Karnataka by-elections (in Mandya and Bangalore Rural Lok Sabha seats), where the party allied with the BJP, confirms the continuation of this trend. Unsurprisingly, the BJP’s Parliamentary coalition, the National Democratic Alliance, is now in ruins. Barring the Shiv Sena and the Akali Dal (parties that do not rely on Muslim votes), the BJP has no major ally. Wary of alienating Muslim voters, potential allies -- such as the Janata Dal (United and Secular), the Telugu Desam Party or the Samajwadi Party -- are unlikely to ally with the BJP before or after the 2014 elections with Modi as the prime ministerial candidate. What is striking about Muslim voting behaviour in 2004 is that Muslims from diverse backgrounds – literate and illiterate, rich and poor, urban and rural – strategically voted to defeat the BJP. However, they voted en bloc against the Hindu nationalist party to a greater extent in states such as Assam, Bihar, Gujarat and Maharashtra where deadly anti-Muslim violence in the recent decades has made them feel insecure. MEMORIES RANKLE As Modi – the leader whom Muslim and human rights groups accuse of having allowed the Gujarat riots – steps up to lead the BJP, insecurity, if not ill-feeling towards the party, can be expected to prevail among the Muslim voters. After all, memories of older anti-Muslim riots such as the 1983 Nellie massacre and the 1989 Bhagalpur violence still seem to make Muslims in Assam and Bihar vote strategically to defeat the Hindu nationalist party. The spin, therefore, that the Muslims have forgotten the Gujarat riots and moved on are unlikely to turn true. (The author is Assistant Professor, Maxwell School of Public Affairs, Syracuse University).

Narendra Modi and why 2002 cannot go away: N. Ram

There is a buzz around Narendra Modi wherever he goes these days. The jauntiness of his stride reflects reality: his campaign to become Prime Minister of India has gained momentum. He has rhetorical skills, although nothing that approaches the heights of political oratory that Atal Bihari Vajpayee could attain at will, with practised effortlessness, over the decades. The Gujarat Chief Minister even has charisma of a kind, which appeals to a sizeable section of India’s urban middle classes and youth. More important, with Mr. Modi’s nomination for the top job in the land, the stock of the Bharatiya Janata Party has strengthened in the political marketplace. It does not require much psephology to see that this significant change in the mood of voters is in inverse proportion to the move towards junk stock status that the Congress has managed to achieve after being at the head of a coalition for nearly a decade. The ruling party has managed this through the bankruptcy of its socio-economic policies and its unmatched levels of corruption. Every public opinion poll that matters puts Mr. Modi and his party in the lead, with some surveys suggesting that the National Democratic Alliance, which at this point has only three constituents — the BJP, the Shiv Sena, and the Shiromani Akali Dal — could win more than 190 of the 272 seats needed to constitute a Lok Sabha majority. No wonder the Congress wants opinion polls proscribed. Aggressive anticipation In States where the BJP has a mass political base, which mostly means Hindi-speaking and western India, the organisational and propaganda machinery of the Sangh Parivar, the Hindu Right, has gone into top gear a full half-year before a general election is due. There is an air of aggressive anticipation and flexing of muscle by the most fanatical organisations, and the extremist elements, of the Parivar. They are the would-be enforcers of the anti-constitutional and un-Indian Hindutva agenda in a country of enormous diversity, which includes the world’s third largest population of Muslims (after Indonesia and Pakistan), estimated to be in the region of 170 million. In States and regions where the BJP has nothing like a mass political base, which means the whole South other than Karnataka and much of eastern India, there is a sense of curiosity about a political figure projected by Hindutva propagandists, with significant backing from corporate India and sections of the urban intelligentsia, as ‘Vikas Purush.’ This ‘Man of Development’ is supposed to have made ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ an irresistible model for future India. Seat predictions There are of course doubts about the Lok Sabha seat predictions, based on no science at all, that the pollsters manage to conjure up from credible survey findings on voting intentions and projected party shares of the popular vote. There must be some angst in the Modi camp about the political implications of one survey projection that in the sixteenth Lok Sabha the BJP and the Congress together would fall short of a simple majority of seats. That suggests the possibility of a combined and relatively stable post-election front of regional parties coming to power, with support from the Left and, quite likely, from the Congress as well. Another question that reportedly worries some BJP strategists is whether the Modi campaign has ‘peaked’ too early in the electoral game. Politically aware Indians know how the Gujarat Chief Minister got to this point. The most important factor behind this heartening awareness is the broad alignment of democratic and secular political opposition to the RSS-shaped policies and persona of Mr. Modi that has formed across the country during the dozen years he has been in office. A massive amount of material, including fresh evidence surfacing in the courts and emerging from the testimony of senior police officers and civil servants, is now available on the horrors of the Gujarat pogrom of February-March 2002: the precise sequence of events; the deliberate instigation of communal violence, reminiscent of the July 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom in Sri Lanka, through allowing the display of the bodies of kar sevaks and their families killed brutally on the Sabarmati Express as it approached Godhra; the fuelling of hate politics and the neutralisation of the police, not by negligence but as a matter of communal statecraft and realpolitik at the highest levels of the State government; and the material assistance and cover provided to the organisers of the pogrom and to the frenzied mobs let loose to murder, rape, torture, loot, pillage, and intimidate so as to ‘teach Muslims a lesson’ and get away with it. Against such a background, news media coverage, springing from a long democratic tradition and rooted in factuality, has acted as a professional antidote to the ‘Vikas Purush’ propaganda. What this news coverage, which is accompanied by some analysis and a generous supply of outspoken comment, has done is constantly to remind hundreds of millions of Indians that Mr. Modi is a highly divisive figure, with a special notoriety rooted in his and his government’s role in 2002. Thanks to the media and the dedicated work of several civil society organisations, neither democratic India nor the world at large is likely to overlook the fact that the deep social wounds inflicted more than a decade ago are still festering. For one thing, there is plenty of evidence of the continuing immiseration and ghettoisation of Gujarat’s Muslims, who constitute a little over nine per cent of the State’s population. The politically aware also know where true accountability for 2002 lies. They know that, in sum, the role played by Chief Minister Modi and his government was to enable the worst communal carnage India has suffered in the past quarter-century, and thereafter to subvert justice in every way conceivable, until the Supreme Court of India intervened in game-changing fashion to uphold the law and the Constitution. They know, further, that ‘Vikas Purush’ has been unrepentant, refusing to apologise for the pogrom, only conceding provocatively, with breath-taking insensitivity combining with a defensiveness in the face of the criminal law in process, that if “someone else is driving a car and we’re sitting behind, even then if a puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful or not? Of course it is.” What is assured is that 2002 as a legal, political, and moral problem will not go away in the conceivable future. The problem could only become more complicated, domestically and internationally, were Mr. Modi to become Prime Minister. It is surely significant that aside from the Congress and the Left, several regional parties, including an important erstwhile BJP ally, the Janata Dal (United) led by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, have come out in spirited opposition against such a prospect. The more astute among these political adversaries have made it clear that their opposition is not so much to an individual as it is to the world-view and set of policies that the individual represents. The broad front of domestic political opposition to Mr. Modi’s policies and persona is bolstered by his unenviable international status: he is not quite persona grata , to put it mildly, in the comity of nations. The U.S. denial in 2005 of a diplomatic visa to the Chief Minister of an investment-friendly Indian State — a considered decision taken under a law that makes a foreign government official who was responsible for, or who “directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom” ineligible for the visa — highlights this aspect of the problem. 1984 & 2002 From time to time, Parivar spokespersons have aired the complaint that ‘double standards’ are adopted by the news media and ‘pseudo-secular’ politicians and intellectuals when it comes to judging 1984, when an estimated 8,000 Sikhs were massacred, and 2002, when the death toll was ‘just over’ a thousand. The comparison, although not the complaint, is valid. The underlying argument, that one monstrous wrong neutralises or cancels out another, is morally repugnant and politically beyond the pale. An interesting question arises at this point: So why has Mr. Modi not apologised for the 2002 pogrom? Why has he not learnt from the precedent set by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who, although he was in no way accountable for the carnage of Sikhs in 1984, had “no hesitation in apologising to the Sikh community… [and] the whole Indian nation because what took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept of nationhood enshrined in our Constitution.” It is true that the Prime Minister’s public apology, which was made in Parliament on August 12, 2005, fell far short of a ‘truth and reconciliation’ exercise. Nevertheless, as a moral and political gesture, it contrasts positively with Chief Minister Modi’s unrepentant and unreconstructed stance. There is a strategic calculation behind the BJP prime ministerial candidate’s position on what happened in 2002. It is that this benighted chapter in contemporary Indian history appeals reflexively — ideologically and emotionally — to the Parivar and feeds naturally into its core communal agenda. By all accounts, after a decade of ideological confusion and political disarray within the Parivar, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has decreed that the BJP’s focus, for mobilisation as well as national governance, must be on core Hindutva. There is no objection of course to bringing in the development theme, the ‘Vikas Purush’ narrative that beguiles corporate India and appeals to cohorts of voters disillusioned with Congress policies. But the focus on core, irreducible Hindutva, with its panoply of disintegrative issues, symbols, and campaigns, including ‘Ram Janmabhoomi’, must not be blurred. It is this unbreakable genetic connection between 2002 and the present that makes it clear that a Modi prime ministership would be disastrous for democratic and secular India — where the Constitution’s most important commandment, that nobody is more or less equal than anyone else, can be honoured in principle as well as in practice. The Gujarat pogrom is the elephant in BJP’s parlour. It is the unbreakable genetic connection between 2002 and the present that makes it clear that a Narendra Modi prime ministership would be disastrous for democratic and secular India.

Hate Games By Asma Anjum

Dark clouds gather Choking smoke fumes We run for cover as they howl He is coming, he is coming. Ears have gone blind and minds are frozen He is the one they say who has played the perfect development orgy [A stripped emperor smiling at his ‘new’ clothes? ] Never mind we have the lowest human development index Carcasses , cadavers, skeletons too, are now vexed [For his fear they don’t tumble out now from the closet! ] He rode here this far Calling us all Miyan Bhai Musharrafs, Auranagzeb ki aulad [ he envies us, he doesn’t have one!] Armed with the panache of a media savoir-faire The synthetic CM simulates the wolf cry All made up, all made up , he is media- manufactured We cry. All made up. Decorated with thousand skulls round his taut neck Like pearls a king flaunts among his subjects But the skulls are breaking fast They will not be dug out from the debris of democracy, [The debris is being flattened by us all!] No luck you say as that crooked King Richard 3rd freshly had? When his skull was ’re’ captured from a car park It was broken into two A sword, I swear, was thrust into his skull [Poetic justice for a loyal brother!] Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown! He killed his nephews but not before kissing them tenderly No kisses and hugs for Miyan bhais ,we know well enough [not even a good bye kiss , you see!] How many more, they ask him 3000 Gujaratis ( ! ) were not enough [four more zeroes and you get teen karod Gujaratis! ] But this time it won’t be a made to order thingy. He grins. Rather I would chalk out a new “G “plan. Listen and quiver, listen and quiver Will be their fate Forever condemned to a sorry state How else, you tell me, to keep ’them’ straight? My media acumen and my media bouncers will tear them to pieces Raj dharm , he winks, I know well. Now I will show them what is Hindu[tva] dharm ka raj The nephews were lucky, they were kissed before death I will make them die [daily] a thousand deaths….. Courtesy: http://kractivist.wordpress.com/

Three Years After Genocide In Gujarat: By Asghar Ali Engineer

It was on 28 February 2002 three years before that genocide of Muslims started in Gujarat a day after train burning incident in Godhra on 27th February 2002, a day earlier. Every sensible person had condemned what happened at Godhra though it was far from clear as to who was responsible for train burning. Now the U.C.Banerjee report indicates that it was accidental fire which started from inside the compartment. However, Narendra Modi, the Gujarat Chief Minister, a hardcore RSS man, asserted that it was done by Muslims to massacre the Ramsevaks and justified the genocide in Gujarat on Newton's law of action-reaction. It is now well known that he had instructed top police officials in a meeting in Gandhinagar on 27th evening not to interfere with what rioters do on the streets next day. Harin Pandya, the assassinated minister of Narendra Modi Cabinet testified this before People's inquiry Commission and also told his father what Narendra Modi had instructed police officers on 27th February. Harin Pandya's father testified before the Nanavati Commission. Thus complicity of the Gujarat Government in supporting the genocide is hardly in doubt. By any account it was the most horrible massacre of innocent citizens belonging to minority community in Gujarat in the post-independence period. The only other parallel is anti-Sikh riots of 1984. The BJP had often boasted that no communal riots take place when it is in power. And Gujarat saw one of the worst genocide of Muslims when it was in power with great majority in the Gujarat Assembly. What was worse that even then Prime Minister Shri. A.B.Vajpayee justified the massacre saying that had Muslims condemned Godhra incident enough, such a massacre in Gujarat would not have taken place. Though Mr. Vajpayee had reminded Modi of his 'Rajdharma' also (though without taking any action against him), he is too well-known for his flip flops. Mr. L.K.Advani, the then Home Minister, even gave clean chit to Narendra Modi that he has 'maintained' law and order in Gujarat effectively after the Godhra incident. Thus if the top functionaries of the Government of India were backing Narendra Modi why should he not have done what he did. So much for BJP's claim of maintaining communal peace when in power. What is worse, the victims of the worst massacre in Gujarat could not hope for any justice. Modi even tried to wind up all relief camps, something which had never happened before. His administration even threatened to cut off water and food grains supply if the relief camps were not wound up. He had no mercy for the victims of brutal violence. And all this in the land of Gandhi who lived and died for peace and communal harmony. All the institutions of the state - legislative, executive, and judiciary have been communalised. Who then could come to the rescue of the poor victims? Both bureaucracy and police were deeply affected (with honourable exceptions). The Amnesty international impartial keepers of the rule of law has also recently compiled the report "India - Justice the Victim - Gujarat State fails to Protect Women from Violence." It has been compiled in 2005 and released just a month ago. Like other reports on Gujarat genocide it makes horrible reading. The genocide in Gujarat was not only failure of law and order. It would be understatement to say so. It was deliberate and planned genocide. The Amnesty Report under the title "Police connivance in the violence" says, However, police not only withheld assistance" and then quotes Concerned Citizen's Tribunal, "Worse still [than the failure to prevent violence] is the evidence of their [the police force's] active connivance and brutality, their indulgence in vulgar and obscene conduct against women and children in full public view. It is as if, instead of impartial keepers of the rule of law, they were part of the Hindutva brigade targeting helpless Muslims." Further the Amnesty report states, "Local inquiry reports list testimonies of police providing diesel from their official vehicles to burn down Muslim homes. Similarly witnesses told the Nanavati-Shah Commission that the Rapid Action Force had supplied petrol from their official vehicles to the mob to set ablaze houses belonging to the minority community. Another witness told the Commission in Ahmedabad that a police inspector encouraged the mob to attack the Muslims in her area. "The inspector directed that petrol be taken from his vehicle and it was used by the mob to set our society on fire.'" *It should be noted that the Rapid Action Force had been specially set up by the Home Ministry at the Centre to control communal violence. It has been set up out of CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) which generally had good reputation in controlling communal violence. And earlier it had established good name in several other riots by handling them efficiently. In Gujarat under the surcharged communal atmosphere even RAF was communalised - a matter of great shame for it. Its fair name was tainted. The police behaviour is not surprising if we keep in mind that many officers of Gujarat police force are reportedly members of Hindu right wing organisations and in their actions may have sought to further the objectives of those organisations rather than impartially carry on their professional duties, remarks Amnesty International report. This by itself is highly objectionable that members of police force be members of such rightwing organisations but in Gujarat such things are not only permissible but even desirable and hence one finds complicity of the police in such flagrant manner. In any other civilised society police officers will be dismissed if they join any such force. Independence of police from all such political outfits is an essential requirement. The other horrifying aspect of the Gujarat carnage was violence against and rape of women. It was as if rape of all human values. Under the title "Violence Against Women" the Amnesty report says that in all violence communal, racist or ethnic violence against women is specific one. The report says, "In one of the earlier incidents of violence in Gujarat or other parts of the country had sexual violence against girls and women, committed in public, been such a key feature." The report says that they (women) became victims of grave abuses because their identities as both women and Muslims intersected. For right wing Hindus attacking the Muslim minority, Muslim women became the hated symbols of the community, which they sought to threaten, humiliate, hurt and destroy. The women, even if not direct victims of assault and rape suffer most emotionally and psychologically, as they have to care and nurture families torn apart by violence and mayhem. In Gujarat, women were subjected to large scale sexual abuse, apart from physical violence. The cases of Kausar Bano and Bilquis Begum are most talked about. Kausar Bano in Naroda Patia locality of Ahmedabad worst affected by communal frenzy, was eight month pregnant. Her abdomen was split open, the foetus extracted and killed. Such brutalities were unheard of in the history of communal violence in India. Bilqis Begum is another case in point from Randhikpur village of Dahod district. She was six months pregnant and gang raped by the VHP hooligans and nine of her relatives were killed before her eyes. She was taken as dead by the mobsters but she fortunately survived to tell her story. The police officers and doctors also became part of this abominable crime. They added and abetted. And these were not isolated cases. According to Amnesty report several hundred Muslim girls and women were reportedly stripped and dragged naked before their own families and thousands of violent Hindu attackers who taunted and insulted them with obscene words and threatened them with rape and murder. They were then raped, often gang- raped, beaten with sticks or trishuls and swords, had breast cut off and wombs slashed open by swords and rods violently pushed into their vaginas before a large number of them were cut into pieces or burned to death. What was worse, due to state complicity in all this, the victims had no way to get justice within the state of Gujarat. The Supreme Court had to intervene and transfer the cases out of the state and these cases are now going on in the state of Maharashtra. More than 3000 cases closed by the state police for 'want of evidence' had to be reopened as per directive of the Supreme Court. The Bilqis Bano case was one of them. The CBI was asked to take over these cases. These helpless victims had otherwise totally despaired. The lower judiciary was totally communalised and higher judiciary in Gujarat is also partly contaminated with communal ideologies. What was more shocking was that the state appointed prosecutors were members of VHP. How on earth could these victims ever get any justice? We must remember all this not for promoting any negative feeling but so that such things are not repeated in future in India. It would keep us reminding that when communal and fascist forces come to power what happens to our country. The fight against communal forces should go on through democratic methods. They must be isolated and weakened. Intolerance and hatred can never be part of democratic culture. Democracy thrives only when culture of peace and tolerance prevails. There is great need in democracy for a vibrant and healthy civil society. Such a society can be born only out of well informed and committed citizens. Courtesy: Counter Currents

A Muslim PM For India?: By DIPANKAR GUPTA

After the victory of Barack Obama, democracy has again raised its head with considerable swagger. It is true that a dream has been realised in America, and for democracy worldwide. Naturally, comparisons abound, and it has set people thinking everywhere if they could do an Obama in their country too. In India the question that comes up is, who can conceivably be our next Obama? Will it be a Muslim? Or will it be a member of the scheduled caste? Of the two, religion is a more difficult hurdle to cross. We might manage a scheduled caste prime minister, but a Muslim? That is another matter. The reason simply is that we easily equate Muslims with Pakistan, and given the recent history of confrontation between the two countries, this reflex thought is not about to vanish in a hurry. For many old-timers, the Partition still remains a painful wound. As BJP politics depends on this as a stable source of symbolic energy, it is constantly revived at critical junctures. One might even say that Partition is the BJP's birthmark. To make matters worse, misplaced secular scholarship has made writings on the Partition a veritable industry. This keeps the old wound open and fresh hurt is constantly rubbed into it. In recent years, thanks to George W. Bush, Islamic anger the world over has re-energised the paranoia among most Hindus in India. I have heard grown people agonise over how global warming would sink Bangladesh and flood our country with all those Muslims. That is the level of fear psychosis among a broad band of Hindus. The blasts in Bangalore, Delhi and Ahmedabad only sharpen their bigotry.

The reason why it is easier to elect a scheduled caste PM is because members of these communities were never seen as outsiders to the Indian nation-state. They suffered a hundred social disabilities, but they were always seen as Indians, often, even Hindus. This is not nearly as true in the way the majority perceives the Muslims in this country. This truth may stick in the throat, but that is the way it is. Politics in India has always paid attention to scheduled castes in terms of their demands for mobility, as well as in terms of their specific concerns regarding justice. Seats are reserved for them and there are specifically designed laws that punish those who commit caste atrocities. These laws are stringent, for the onus of proof lies with the accused. Post-Independent India may not have made stunning advances, but discrimination against scheduled castes has lost much of its sting in our villages. This has not happened because we have become less caste-conscious, a look at the matrimonial columns will prove that, but because caste is no longer the absolute determinant of the rural power hierarchy. As land has been so severely fragmented, most cultivators are too poor to exercise hegemony over anybody. This is why scheduled caste politics has emerged as such a potent force in recent years. With the Muslims, it is different. No matter how many Muslim trophy representatives occupy high office, it is nearly always a matter of patronage. As we have had a Muslim president, several heads of commissions, governors, and so on, it gives the impression that the past and Partition are truly forgotten. Even if we were half-way to that kind of amnesia, Kashmir and international jehad will help stoke those memories in our political lives. If India is to truly take a lead from Obama's phenomenal success, then the test really lies in how we treat our Muslims. A major reason why minorities in the US feel good about their country is because the rule of law applies to all citizens. No matter how prejudiced someone may be at heart, the moment it is expressed, the law steps in. When a Sikh was mistakenly killed after 9/11 in America, the sentence given to the accused was the harshest possible. In India, on the contrary, killers of the post-Godhra carnage are still at large. Given this background, it is difficult for Muslims to have a feel for what it is to be a citizen. A crime against a scheduled caste has a greater chance of being punished than one against Muslims. The National Commission on SCs and STs has noted that there has been a near 50 per cent rise in the number of convictions in cases of caste atrocities between 1991 and 2001. The same cannot be said for attacks on religious minorities. So before we ask, when will we get our Obama, let us apply the laws of the land so that Muslims are treated as full citizens. This will, of course, change the attitudes of many Muslims, but the best part is that it will make Hindus better citizens. Courtesy: Outlook

The man who would rule India: By Ramachandra Guha

Like Indira Gandhi once did, Narendra Modi seeks to make his party,his government, his administration and his country into an extension of his personality. A journalist who recently interviewed Narendra Modi reported their conversation as follows: “Gujarat, he told me, merely has a seafront. It has no raw materials — no iron ore for steel, no coal for power and no diamond mines. Yet it has made huge strides in these fields. Imagine, he added, if we had the natural resources of an Assam, a Jharkhand and a West Bengal: I would have changed the face of India.”(see The Telegraph, January 18, 2013). Tall claims This conversation (and that claim) underlines much of what Narendra Modi has sought to do these past five years — remake himself as a man who gets things done, a man who gets the economy moving. With Mr. Modi in power in New Delhi, says or suggests Mr. Modi, India will be placed smoothly on the 8 per cent to 10 per cent growth trajectory, bureaucrats will clear files overnight, there will be no administrative and political corruption, poverty levels will sink rapidly towards zero and — lest we forget — trains and aeroplanes shall run on time. These claims are taken at face value by his admirers, who include sundry CEOs, owner-capitalists, western ambassadors and —lest we forget — columnists in the pink papers, the white papers, and (above all) cyber-space. Mr. Modi’s detractors — who too are very numerous, and very vocal — seek to puncture these claims in two different ways. The unreconstructed Nehruvians and Congress apologists (not always the same thing) say he will forever be marked by the pogrom against Muslims in 2002, which was enabled and orchestrated by the State government. Even if his personal culpability remains unproven, the fact that as the head of the administration he bears ultimate responsibility for the pogrom, and the further fact that he has shown no remorse whatsoever, marks Mr. Modi out as unfit to lead the country. The secularist case against Mr. Modi always had one flaw — namely, that what happened in Gujarat in 2002 was preceded in all fundamental respects by what happened in Delhi in 1984. Successive Congress governments have done nothing to bring justice to the survivors, while retaining in powerful positions (as Cabinet Ministers even) Congress MPs manifestly involved in those riots. With every passing year, the charge that Mr. Modi is communal has lost some intensity — because with every passing year it is one more year that the Sikhs of Delhi and other North Indian cities have been denied justice. (They have now waited 28 years, the Muslims of Gujarat a mere 11.) More recently, the burden of the criticism against Mr. Modi has shifted — on to his own terrain of economic development. It has been shown that the development model of Gujarat is uneven, with some districts (in the south, especially) doing very well, but the dryer parts of the State (inland Saurashtra for example) languishing. Environmental degradation is rising, and educational standards are falling, with malnutrition among children abnormally high for a State at this level of GDP per capita. As a sociologist who treats the aggregate data of economists with scepticism, I myself do not believe that Gujarat is the best developed State in the country. Shortly after Mr. Modi was sworn in for his third full term, I travelled through Saurashtra, whose polluted and arid lands spoke of a hard grind for survival. In the towns, water, sewage, road and transport facilities were in a pathetic state; in the countryside, the scarcity of natural resources was apparent, as pastoralists walked miles and miles in search of stubble for their goats. Both hard numbers and on-the-ground soundings suggest that in terms of social and economic development, Gujarat is better than average, but not among the best. In a lifetime of travel through the States of the Union, my sense is that Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and (despite the corruption) Tamil Nadu are the three States which provide a dignified living to a decent percentage of their population. To be sure, Mr. Modi is not solely responsible for the unbalanced development. Previous Chief Ministers did not do enough to nurture good schools and hospitals, or enough to prevent the Patels of southern Gujarat from monopolising public resources. Besides, Mr. Modi does have some clear, identifiable achievements — among them a largely corruption-free government, an active search for new investment into Gujarat, some impressive infrastructural projects, and a brave attempt to do away with power subsidies for rich farmers. Both the secularist case and the welfarist case against Mr. Modi have some merit — as well as some drawbacks. In my view, the real reason that Narendra Modi is unfit to be Prime Minister of India is that he is instinctively and aggressively authoritarian. Consider that line quoted in my first paragraph: “I would have changed the face of India.” Not ‘we,’ but ‘I’. In Mr. Modi’s Gujarat, there are no collaborators, no co-workers. He has a chappan inch chaati — a 56-inch chest — as he loudly boasts, and therefore all other men (if not women) in Gujarat must bow down to his power and his authority. Mr. Modi’s desire to dominate is manifest in his manner of speaking. Social scientists don’t tend to analyse auditory affect, but you have only to listen to the Gujarat Chief Minister for 15 minutes to know that this is a man who will push aside anyone who comes in his way. The intent of his voice is to force his audience into following him on account of fearing him. The proclamation of his physical masculinity is not the sole example of Mr. Modi’s authoritarianism. Like all political bullies he despises free speech and artistic creativity — thus he has banned books and films he thinks Gujaratis should not read or watch (characteristically, without reading or viewing these books and films himself). He has harassed independent-minded writers, intellectuals and artists (leading to the veritable destruction of India’s greatest school of art, in Vadodara). His refusal to the spontaneous offer of a skull cap during his so-called ‘Sadbhavana Yatra,’ while read as an example of his congenital communalism, could also be seen as illustrating his congenital arrogance. The most revealing public display of Mr. Modi’s character, however, may have been a yoga camp he once held for the IAS officers of his State. They all lined up in front of him — DMs, DCs, Secretaries, Under-Secretaries, of various sizes, shapes, ages, and genders — and followed the exercise routine he had laid down for them. Utthak-baithak, utthak-baithak, 10 or perhaps 20 times, before a diverting Surya Namaskar was thrown in by the Master. I do not know whether that yoga camp was held again (it was supposed to be an annual show), and do not know either how Mr. Modi appears to these IAS officers when they confront him one-on-one. But that the event was held, and that the Chief Minister’s office sought proudly to broadcast it to the world, tells us rather more than we would rather wish to know about this man who wishes to rule India. To be sure, Mr. Modi is not the only authoritarian around in Indian politics. Mamata Banerjee, J. Jayalalithaa, and Mayawati (when she is Chief Minister) also run their States in a somewhat overbearing manner. Naveen Patnaik and Nitish Kumar are intolerant of criticism too. However, the authoritarianism of these other State leaders is erratic and capricious, not focused or dogmatic. This, and the further fact that Mr. Modi has made his national ambitions far more explicit, makes them lesser devils when it comes to the future of our country. Resemblance to Indira Gandhi Neither Mr. Modi’s admirers nor his critics may like this, but the truth is that of all Indian politicians past and present, the person Gujarat Chief Minister most resembles is Indira Gandhi of the period 1971-77. Like Mrs. Gandhi once did, Mr. Modi seeks to make his party, his government, his administration and his country an extension of his personality. The political practice of both demonstrates the psychological truth that inside every political authoritarian lies a desperately paranoid human being. Mr. Modi talks, in a frenetic and fearful way, of ‘Rome Raj’ and ‘Mian Musharraf’ (lately modified to ‘Mian Ahmed Patel’); Mrs Gandhi spoke in likewise shrill tones of the ‘foreign hand’ and of ‘my enemies.’ There is something of Indira Gandhi in Narendra Modi, and perhaps just a touch of Sanjay Gandhi too — as in the brash, bullying, hyper-masculine style, the suspicion (and occasional targeting) of Muslims. Either way, Mr. Modi is conspicuously unfitted to be the reconciling, accommodating, plural, democratic Prime Minister that India needs and deserves. He loves power far too much. On the other hand, his presumed rival, Rahul Gandhi, shirks responsibility entirely (as in his reluctance, even now, to assume a ministerial position). Indian democracy must, and shall in time, see off both. (The writer is a historian. Email: ramachandraguha@yahoo.in) Keywords: Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi, Prime Ministerial candidate, Indian democracy, Indira Gandhi, Gujarat government, Lok Sabha 2014, Lok Sabha elections, growth trajectory Courtesy: The Hindu

What if Modi becomes the next Prime Minister of India?: By Aslam Abdullah

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has ruled over India in the past, and the hell did not break loose. Why would it be different if Narendra Modi becomes the next prime minister of India with his party having a majority in parliament? Times are different. The BJP of today is ideologically and administratively controlled by the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS). During the previous BJP government at the national level and at present through its strong presence in several states, the RSS has systematically acquired position of influence in the army, judiciary, academia and administration at various levels. The RSS has also created a myriad of organizations around its ideology at different levels. The organizations within the Sangh family include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Vanbandhu Parishad, Rashtriya Sevika Samiti, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, Vidya Bharati, Seva Bharati and many others spread in all parts of society. Numerous other Hindu organizations take inspiration from the RSS's philosophy. It is, therefore, not unsound to assume that the rise of Modi as the next prime minister of India might lead to a sea of change in India’s identity as a democratic and secular country. The RSS is an organization run by secret cells with a mass following committed to the sanctity of mother India. This para-military organization is no different than what any national army is expected to do. But the army defends the nation as a whole. The RSS is committed to an India that is controlled, dominated and run exclusively by Hindus belonging to a caste hierarchy deemed pure by the standards of Manu Samirti (codes of manu). In its philosophy, organization and strategy, the RSS is not different than that of Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini’s National Fascist Party or that of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party. One of the starlwarts of the RSS, M.S. Golwalkar, laid out the foundational principles of his organization when he wrote the following: “To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races—the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by. “The non-Hindu people of Hindustan must either adopt Hindu culture and languages, must learn and respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but of those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture... in a word they must cease to be foreigners; Or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment— not even citizens' rights.” The secret cells of RSS have the expertise of many former army, police, intelligence and administrative officials who had and still have access to national resources to gather information on anyone. These cells carefully lay plans to help the organization inch towards its goal of total domination of the country. The Gujarat massacres that took place in 2002 provide a glimpse of the tactics used by RSS to serve its interests. The massacres were originally planned to purge the state of Muslims and other minorities. In Modi, the RSS has found a man who can follow its dictates fully and execute the plan perfectly. With every new day, India is learning the ways Modi manipulated the state resources to fulfill the RSS objectives in Gujarat without being caught by the law. Everyone in Gujarat knows that Modi carried out the RSS plans without leaving any legal trace. The secrecy of RSS makes it one of the most dangerous organizations in the world. It has its own intelligence, hit squads and international PR groups. Through temples and social service organizations in India and abroad it collects funds that support millions of its workers and their projects. RSS views Muslims and Christians as the two influential groups that pose threats to India’s integrity and security. Christians are considered dangerous because of their ties with international Christian organizations in different parts of the world and Muslims because of their faith that give priority to one God over everything else. In the view of RSS, Muslims and Christians cannot be loyal to India, a land specified by Gods for Hindus alone. Of course, there exist a vast majority of Hindus that do not subscribe to the ideology of RSS. But the RSS is a very well organized group that exists at every level and has the capacity to mobilize millions any time. It has a dedicated cadre that can carry out its plan without hesitation anywhere and it has a network of secret cells that plans events and has prepared a blue print for the future of a Hindu India. RSS plan was to showcase an Indian state run by the BJP as a model of prosperity and development to the world to prepare the ground for its national government. While, simultaneously, it had also envisaged a state free from all minorities. The 2002 massacre of Gujarat were planned to drive minorities out of the state to turn it into purely Hindu state. But the plan did not work as perceived. The response of non-BJP Hindus shocked the RSS leadership. The way India’s federal government responded also surprised many. The RSS had expected the Indian government to ignore the massacres the way it had done so at the time of the demolition of the Babari masjid. But under the intensive persuasive power of India’s non-BJP Hindu intellectuals, the central government took a strong stand and challenged the Modi government. Had the central government kept quiet, RSS could have repeated the plans elsewhere. RSS has the manpower and capacity to install Modi as the next prime minister of India. However, the only way RSS march can be checked is when the vast majority of India’s non-BJP Hindus come out on election day to cast their votes in favor of non-RSS candidates. India’s religious minorities will not support RSS with the exception of a few individuals and groups who value their personal interests more than the national interests. But rural India can be persuaded on religious issues. The RSS is fully aware of these realities; hence it will try to make religion a dominant factor in the forthcoming elections. It should not surprise anyone if they hear news about increased so called terrorist activities and attacks on temples and other sacred places before elections. It should not surprise anyone if the country experience a new wave of Hindu-Muslim riots and the world should not be shocked, if the plan to rebuild the Ram Temple at the site of the demolished Babari Masjid is unveiled. The BJP under the influence of RSS has already appointed Amit Shah, a man accused of masterminding the 2002 Gujarat massacres as the election strategist for Uttra Pradesh, a state that a must for any aspirant for any prime ministerial candidate. In the glare of economic development, the world’s investors are ignoring the harsh ground realities in India and some of them under the influence and intense lobbying of pro-RSS groups in Europe and North America are trying to project Modi as a genuine progressive leader without realizing that the hands behind Modi are stained with blood including that of Mahatama Gandhi. The group that can engineer the murder of an emissary of peace, a Hindu from the state of Modi, would have no hesitation to cause genocides against even those Hindus who it thinks detrimental to its interests. It is this danger that India is heading to and it is this danger that India must be saved from. [Aslam Abdullah, a naturalized US citizen, is originally from India. He is Editor of the Muslim Observer, published from Detroit, as well as director of the Islamic Society of Nevada. His works can be seen on his blog aslamabdullah.blogspot.ca]