Patna queers the pitch

KC Singh

DIWALI this year for PM Modi and his party is gloomy after their dismal showing in a make-or-break election in Bihar, which is not only the cradle of old empires pre-dating Christianity, but also the font of caste-based political consolidation and a tenth of India’s population. It also provided India Jayprakash Narayan, who challenged the domination of Indian politics by Indira Gandhi, coining the phrase “total revolution”. 

The BJP attempted to underplay electoral defeat, fielding urbane Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, dubbing it mathematical error. While all elections are about the totalling of votes, the real story is why people voted a certain way. Lokniti-CSDS survey indicated that where the BJP went horribly wrong was to treat caste and development as binary divides. Nitish Kumar, seen by people as the harbinger of development, could hardly be targeted by the BJP with promise of more of the same. On failing to do so, even more despicably, the BJP tried to polarise communally. 

The double whammy for Modi is that while Bihar is lost due to, or despite, Amit Shah’s polarising tactics, the PM’s image has dented abroad amongst those who had rested their lingering doubts over his 2002 Godhra riots legacy. A series of actions and statements by his party men, including elected MPs, starting with the lynching of the father of a serving airman over the alleged consumption of beef, accompanied by deafening silence from Modi and followed by the return of national awards by prominent writers and filmmakers raised the alarm abroad. The New York Times headlined “India’s attack on free speech”, underlining the irony that when Pakistan politician Salman Taseer was assassinated, MJ Akbar, now BJP’s face on national television, wrote that had Taseer been an Indian Muslim “he would still have been alive”. Even worse, the paper likened the killing of activists by right-wing groups akin to those of Bangladesh bloggers by supposed ISIS followers. 

As PM Modi sets forth on another almost non-stop foreign jaunt till the winter session of Parliament on November 26, the British weekly The Economist greets him with a piece titled “Intolerable”, subtitling with the warning that manic intolerance of Modi party men “threatens to scupper Narendra Modi’s grand visions”. It concludes solemnly that even worse is “the thought that perhaps he agrees with them”.

Post-Bihar election, The New York Times again warned Modi that “poisoning politics with hatred is bound to squander the country’s economic potential”. An earlier similar warning from Moody’s was dismissed by government as heated imagination of an analyst. The perceptive disconnect between Modi’s domestic politics and his international posturing is not only beginning to be noticed but even chided. 

A well-known observation from the past is when the Indian people get restive over the non-delivery of electoral promises, they resent excessive travel by Indian PMs abroad. While a Modi visit to the G20 or ASEAN summits is perhaps unavoidable, the hoopla over tea with the Queen and the diaspora event is beginning to tire. The Wembley Stadium event organised by the Europe India Forum, on its site, welcomes “the new global visionary” who “forges new paradigms of growth and success for not just Asia, but the rest of the world too”. Britain has the second biggest Indian diaspora, numbering over 1.5 million, with London having about a third of them. This will be the fifth such conclave in the last one year, running from Madison Square Garden in New York to venues in Australia, Canada and California. Law of diminishing returns is kicking in.

The diaspora gatherings raise some uncomfortable questions. One, despite Sikhs being a large proportion of the diaspora in the US and Canada (29.06 per cent in UK), hardly any turbans were visible. Discounting for clean-shaven persons, clearly the gatherings were largely Gujaratis or RSS sympathisers. This polarisation was always the danger in BJP’s outreach, even during Vajpayee government’s era. Secondly, with the Patel rebellion in Gujarat, anti-Akali upsurge in Punjab, where the BJP is an ally, and the Bihar fiasco following horrible attempts at dividing one Indian from another, what really is the relevance of a contrived gathering of offshore Modi fans, mostly citizens of other countries, if it is merely a stage to bandy domestic Indian politics on foreign shores. Singapore has attached conditions to the event thereby ensuring that only Indian passport holders will be organisers.  

Bihar is the second signal by Indian people, after Delhi, of a desire to correct the rightward swing of Indian polity and bring India more towards the centre, where Vajpayee ensured at least one foot of the NDA-1 government remained. Globally, such correction is under way, even in the West. The challenger for the Democratic Party nomination in the US, closest to front-runner Hillary Clinton, is Bernie Sanders — a self-proclaimed socialist who seeks the taming of the billionaires. In the UK, the Labour Party’s leadership has passed into the hands of Jeremy Corbyn, a far-left adherent to old style Labour politics, including demands for re-nationalisation. Development must be inclusive, is the signal that both Delhi and Bihar sent. 

Has this lesson been learnt by Modi, shall be known when he ascends the podium at Wembley. If he desists from expounding his one-sided views on his political opponents, tailors his speech to drawing the energy of the diaspora without rabble-rousing and jingoism and with humility accepts that mistakes made under his watch to upset Indian cohesion by his followers and party men will be rectified and not repeated come next election, then he can begin reconstructing the damage he has done abroad to his image. If he continues like a stuck gramophone record, he will confirm that Modi the Pracharak is here to stay.

The world and India are hoping to hear that Modi has ingested the Bihar message and that he will purge wrongdoers, reshape his council of ministers without outside influence and unplug his ears. The inflexion point for his prime ministership has arrived sooner than normal. The nation, in tennis terms, awaits his response to the blistering forehand from Nitish Kumar & Co. Otherwise, the script will follow the old rhyme:

“Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?

I’ve been to London to visit the Queen...”

 — The writer is a former Secretary, MEA