Bend it like Modi

Harish Khare

Before she spoiled her own copybook over the other Modi, Sushma Swaraj had played the spoilsport when she announced that though Prime Minister Narendra Modi would indeed grace the occasion he would not perform at the mega Yoga event on the Rajpath on June 21. This was bit of a dampener, considering the fact that television channels had already whetted our appetite with tantalising file footage of a virile Modi vigorously performing “Bhastrika Pranayam”.  Notwithstanding Ms. Swaraj, we are inundated,  courtesy Doordarshan, with the Prime Minister himself making a sales-pitch for the mass event, replete with his own plea at the United Nations last year for an international yoga day. In these promos he exhorts the citizens to perform yoga with “garv” on that day in each and every corner of the country (desh ke kone kone mein). The Modi sarkar has invested so much energy, prestige and insistence that suddenly “yoga” appears much more than just an exhilarating personal experience. 

This proposed mega celebration of yoga, being organised at the taxpayers’ expense, drips with Hindutva imagery. This has naturally left sections of our vast minorities rather uneasy. After all, this is a regime that proudly wears its RSS connection on both its sleeves. Though a number of assorted mahants and gurus have held out a threat that those refusing to fall in line would have a price to pay, Sushma Swaraj and other ministers have handsomely conceded that if the Muslims and other minorities  do not want to perform yoga on the anointed day, it is their choice — and their loss.  This feigned graciousness is rather meaningless, because the controversy over “Suryanamaskar” and “Om” has already served the primary purpose of reaffirming categories of citizens between “us” and “them.” Anyone who chooses to demur does so at the risk of being demonised as offending the majority’s sentiments. 

More than the minorities smelling a whiff of coercion, it is the corralling of the majority that should be unnerving to every democratic soul. Never before has any government used its official resources and power to organise a collectivist show on such a grand scale. So far, the Republic Day is perhaps the only occasion when the governments ask the uniformed personnel (and a handful of school contingents) to chip in with the celebration. On the Independence Day a dozen-odd schools are invited to provide audience (and applause) for the Prime Minister's speech. That is about it. Now,  officials,  from the Cabinet Secretary down to every district Collector (at least in the BJP-ruled states),  find themselves having to make strenuous attempts to secure and ensure participation of the Armed forces, para-military organisations, schools and universities, and social groups in the June 21 show. No less jarring is that a dubious baba with extensive mercantile and political links is pencilled in to play the drill-sergeant at the Rajpath spectacle. 

Take a deep yogic breath and meditate over this: H.R.Nagendra, the government's point man, has told the RSS mouthpiece, the Organiser, that “about 30 crore people are going to practice Yog at the same time on that day.”  A mind-boggling number that should teach a thing or two to the North Korean dictators who take considerable pride in their coercive capacities to organise a massive display of discipline and compliance.   

Ritualistic gatherings are primarily designed to serve a purpose. Often, the idea is to foster new solidarities and to reaffirm existing affinities or allegiances.  In the ugly 1990s, Mumbai, for example, had experimented with rival “maha” congregations — for aarti and namaz — with unhappy results and lasting divisions. Now, the Indian State's imprimatur is being used to make people line up and enlist for a conformist exercise. 

It ought to be conceded that this regime does know how to conceive, execute and choreograph very, very large gatherings — for effect beyond the immediate arena. The country first got a taste of how sophisticatedly such a skill can be used was when Narendra Modi staged his ‘roadshow’ in Varanasi during the last Lok Sabha poll. On that day our television anchors and intellectuals got totally  seduced by that mesmerising sight of overflowing crowds in that city's narrow lanes. It had made for enrapturing television. For weeks thereafter, the narrative writers simply could not come out of the trance. Now the country is being made to feel the Varanasi touch on a grand scale, with nationwide intentions and implications. 

Expectedly, a narrative has been manufactured around the June 21 extravaganza. The State is quietly but assertively claiming a privilege to intrude into the citizen’s life. This assertion is cloaked in the altruistic argument of the citizen being steered towards a better, superior and nobler lifestyle. At the back of this seemingly innocuous explanation is a prescription for a particular way of life. As the Organiser puts it editorially, the June 21 business would be a celebration of the "healthy and harmonious living propagated by the ancient Indian sages."  The matter will not end with the spectacularly choreographed visual treat on the Rajpath; there is also a clamorous demand that "Yog" be introduced as part of curriculum in schools and universities.

A prescription is invariably followed with a proscription. The new ruling arrangement in New Delhi is already trying to interfere with our private food habits and choices. A larger theme at work can be discerned. There is a pronounced inclination to smuggle in trusted RSS apparatchiks into cultural institutions who, then, can be trusted to ensure that we watch the “right” kind of movies, read the “right” kind of books and learn and teach the “right” kind of history. All this in the name of a newly acquired insistence that the majority's sentiments ought to be respected.

Nothing out of the ordinary.  After all, the Sangh Parivar has always been contemptuous of constitutionally mandated democratic norms, secular practices and egalitarian values.  It has always positioned the (Hindu) majority and its religious preferences as superior to constraints and restraints inherent in our constitutional order. The Modi government's penchant for mass mobilisation of sentiments and sensibilities can only be understood as part of a carefully thought-out redefining of notions of democratic legitimacy. The June 21 collectivist tableau is meant to soften us up for the new narrative. 

Twentieth century European history teaches us enough about authoritarian rulers using grand spectacles of crowd mobilisation to make citizens comfortable with the idea and practices of regimentation. From the days of the Nuremberg rally, so hypnotically captured by Leni Riefenstahl in that iconic documentary, “Triumph of the Will”, authoritarian rulers have found ways of using crowds to induce a willing abdication of the citizen’s right to question the regime and its whims and fancies. 

The nation has already been wooed silently into rejoicing in an authoritarian personality cult around the Prime Minister.  Add to it this new itch to experiment with collectivist projects like the Rajpath spectacle. The deadly mix can easily calcify into something less than a democratic arrangement.