The season of saam, daam, dand, bhed

IT is the season of saam, daam, dand, bhed, the phrase attributed to Chanakya the master strategist, who in the 3rd century BC is said to have both manoeuvred the removal of the Nanda king and installed Chandragupta Maurya in power — the Maurya dynasty went on to rule for 135 years, its kings swearing by the slogan that translates into “discuss, bribe, punish and discover weakness.”

Credit must be given to AAP leader Manish Sisodia who fished out the phrase earlier in August. Only days before the AAP government in Punjab had withdrawn its own most ambitious policy initiative, the land pooling policy, intended to promote urbanisation in the state. The High Court had rapped the ruling party on the knuckles on the policy. Worse, furious villagers had begun showing black flags to AAP MLAs — a bit like what furious villagers had done to BJP candidates during the Lok Sabha polls last year. A certain nervousness had begun to convulse the party.

That’s when Sisodia spoke to party workers. “2027 Assembly election jeetne ke liye, saam, daam, dand, bhed, sach, jhooth, question, answer, ladai, jhagda jo bhi karna pada karenge. Bolo tayar hain? Josh se bolo!” he said. To win the 2027 election, every ruse will need to be invoked, whether punishment, inducement, truth, lies or fighting.

A frisson ran through the region’s politically hardened landscape. Who had spoken like this before, so openly? The BJP’s Sunil Jakhar complained to the Election Commission about Chanakya’s mantra, but AAP state president Aman Arora countered the jibe. Doesn’t every political party do in private what AAP admits to do in public, Arora asked.

Arora is right. Except for Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, whose politics is usually aimed at the people he most identifies with — the poorest, most backward and deeply underprivileged folk, like the makhaana or foxnut farmers in the Katihar region of Bihar, through which his ‘right to vote’ rally has just passed through — politics both at home and abroad is honing itself these days in the exercise of pure power.

Both Mohan Bhagwat and Donald Trump are cases in point. The RSS leader, who turns 75 next month, in an unusual press conference this Thursday, made several interesting points — the most interesting being that the informal cut-off date in BJP politics, of turning 75 and being shunted off to the old-age home called the ‘Margdarshak Mandal’ — like LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Najma Heptullah were — has been pushed down the line.

This means that both he and PM Narendra Modi are here to stay — Modi, too, will turn 75 in September. The lovely little story about RSS leader Moropant Pingle talking about ‘vanaprastha’ when gifted a shawl on his 75th birthday, must now remain exactly that — a lovely little story for the RSS archives. Saam, daam, dand, bhed.

Mohan Bhagwat knows that no one has done more to expand RSS influence, especially in its 100th year, than Modi. Whether he has had any differences with him over naming a BJP president, pending for over a year, should also be resolved soon — the RSS chief conceded as much — in Modi’s favour.

Donald Trump is hardly any different. From being the PM’s best friend barely five years ago, he and his advisers have taken it upon themselves to attack Modi and India. As the well-regarded former ambassador to France, Jawed Ashraf, has explained in these pages, Trump’s viciousness against India is actually an expression of pure power.

Trump wants the world to be run by the Big Three — the US, China and Russia — and he simply cannot understand how and why a far weaker nation like India is refusing to capitulate. So he’s punishing India which is refusing to fall in line. Saam, daam, dand, bhed.

Certainly, the Trump folks have little understanding of India’s psyche. By blaming the Ukrainian war on Modi (calling it “Modi’s war”), an accusation that is both outrageous and silly, they have succeeded in uniting the country behind Modi, like never before in his 11 years as PM.

For a change, the “foreign hand” theory, favoured by many PMs from Indira Gandhi to Modi, is real — except this one is so ham-handed, it’s embarrassing.

Modi’s refusal to accede to the American demand for credit in brokering the Op Sindoor India-Pakistan ceasefire in May — is what a weaker power does to save face. When you don’t have the weapons to counter the most powerful nation on earth, you simply withdraw. Abstinence, like all Indians know, is your biggest weapon.

Mahatma Gandhi used it against the world’s most powerful nation. Modi is using it against the world’s most formidable power.

That’s why he’s going to the dragon’s lair in Tianjin without a deal in the book. Chinese and Indian troops and their armoured columns continue to stand eyeball-to-eyeball across the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh — but Modi has already won. He has refused to succumb to the American, even as his officials have reached out to their counterparts in Washington DC, politely offering compromise. Modi’s men have also recently met Vladimir Putin, a reassertion of the relationship. There is renewed attention towards a free trade treaty with the European Union. Saam, daam, dand, bhed.

The hard work starts when Modi returns home — how to fix the India-US relationship and how to fix the Sino-Indian relationship. The Americans are so powerful that you cannot antagonise them beyond a point — India knows that. It will take all the ingenuity and flattery that Indians are so adept at, to quieten down mai-baap Donald Trump.

As for Modi’s chief opponent Rahul Gandhi, the BJP will be happy he’s playing a much longer game at reinventing politics — including the dispossessed beneficiaries of makhaana fields. Having lost three general elections and several state elections in a row, Rahul’s litmus test is on the horizon. If the Congress-RJD fails to make the cut in Bihar, unhappy Congressmen will ask, sotto voce, how many elections should a party lose before it wins?

The AAP in Punjab has no such pretensions at noblesse oblige. That is why, in the wake of the withdrawal of the land pooling policy, it is pulling out all the stops to help the flood-affected in the only state they rule. They know the Centre’s missives — weeding out 1.53 crore beneficiaries availing wheat at very low prices and promoting Central schemes like PM Awas Yojana, PM-Kisan and Ayushman Bharat — are ways and means to expand BJP influence in the state. By all accounts, the camps promoting these schemes are doing well.

Saam, daam, dand, bhed. Clearly, Chanakya’s Arthashastra is the order of the day, a must-read that makes Machiavelli look like child’s play.