India’s bet on the wrong horse

One of the most controversial Indian politicians of his time, Narendra Modi, has been voted back for the third time as Gujarat’s chief minister. Most of us associate Modi’s name with the violent communal riots of 2002, while his supporters associate his name with ‘Vibrant Gujarat’!

In an article titled, ‘Why Modi appeals to Hindus’ (Rediff News, December 24, 2007), Mr B Raman analyses what the Hindu community sees in him. He asks: “His [Modi’s] simple and austere living…His reputation as an incorruptible politician…His style of development-oriented governance…The fruits of his policy, which Gujarat and its people are already enjoying…His tough stance on terrorism…His lucid-thinking on matters concerning our national security…His defiance in the face of the greatest campaign of demonisation mounted against him…?” And then Mr Raman goes on to give one other factor, which he says is more important than the ones stated above. That one factor is: “…for large sections of the Hindus – young and old, even more among the young than among the old – he gave them a sense of pride in their identity as Hindus. They feel that he removed from their minds long habits of defensiveness as Hindus, carefully nurtured by the self-styled secularists.”

After reading Mr Raman’s article, one is left bewildered about many things. One, how can someone have a “tough stance on terrorism” when he himself was responsible for state-sponsored terrorism? As far as Modi’s “defiance” in the face of a negative media campaign is concerned, it was not defiance, it was sheer obstinacy. And even if we concede that Modi possesses all these ‘qualities’, does that justify voting for someone who was responsible for the mass murder of thousands of Muslims? Are the Hindus so proud of Modi’s ‘qualities’ that they have put aside the secular ethos of the Indian polity and voted back an extremist?

If I was not aware that a lot of Hindus, inside and outside India, condemn what happened in Gujarat back in 2002, I would have gotten a negative impression of the Hindus because of Mr Raman’s article. To any ordinary reader, his article says that ‘all’ the Hindus are proud of Modi; that because of Gujarat’s economic success, Modi has been absolved of his sins and all the Hindus, inside and outside Gujarat, really admire him; and that anyone who denounces Modi or calls him names is just a pseudo-secularist. My question to Mr Raman is: how would killing, rather massacring, thousands of Muslims give the Hindus a sense of pride? If anything, it was something that brought them shame, not pride. It is just like saying that all the Muslims approve of what Osama bin Laden did in 2001 and that al Qaeda’s brand of ‘Islam’ is something to be proud of for all the Muslims, which is rather incorrect. Just like most Muslims condemn what Osama and his ilk did (and are still doing) in Islam’s name, I believe that most of the Hindus would denounce what Modi did in Hindutva’s name. About communalism, Mr Raman writes, “As if to proclaim one’s Hindu identity and to assert one’s rights as Hindus in their own homeland in which they are in a vast majority (80 per cent of the population) is to be communal, is to become an ugly Indian.” Are the 80 percent Hindus so insecure that they have to “assert” their “rights” by slaughtering the 20 percent Muslims? Is that the only way the Hindus can ‘safeguard’ their identity? By killing thousands of innocent people, what kind of ‘rights’ are the Hindus ‘asserting’? Going by Mr Raman’s logic, can then one justify the violence committed by Dawood Ibrahim to avenge the Babri Mosque episode? No. Dawood Ibrahim’s criminal act was not different from what Modi and his Hindutva brigade did. Some Indians at an online forum were of the view that since secular political parties like Congress have adopted ‘minority appeasement’ policies and give in too much to the Muslims to gain their vote-bank, a lot of the Hindus have become frustrated over the years. Granted that in a secular country, there should be no minority appeasement policies such as a reservations system, but that calls for finding a political solution, not a militant one. It is sad to see India, a country whose founders were known for their secular views, go the extremist way. Although it can be argued that Gujarat is just a state that has brought to power extremist Hindu forces, it should serve as a warning. If given time to nurture, extremism, like other vices, spreads its venom everywhere. The Indian electorate must learn from the mistakes of their Pakistani counterparts.

It is rather unfortunate that in India and Pakistan, religious extremism has been allowed to overturn the secular vision of the founding fathers. In Pakistan, the Quaid’s secularism was abandoned at the altar of expedient motives of the ruling elite, comprising the landed aristocracy and of course the military junta hewed to the policy of serving US interests in the country. It is a historical fact that in Pakistan religious fundamentalism was promoted by the US in the 1950s as a foreign policy plank to use it as a bulwark against ‘Godless’ communism – a policy harnessed during the days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. All governments in Pakistan lent covert and overt support to the fundamentalists, for which we paid a rather heavy price and are still reaping the bitter fruits of the original sin.

For the Indians there is still time before things get out of hand. They must get out of the web of self-delusion that they can control their zealots after allowing them to enter the tent. In Pakistan, successive governments accepted religious fanatics as a player in the body politic because of their power to intimidate the streets. President Pervez Musharraf did the same before reaching the conclusion that it could only end up moving Pakistan backwards. It is in the nature of the beast of extremism that it abhors ‘real’ progress. Musharraf had to call back Benazir Bhutto to lend him support of the moderate masses and help him wriggle out of the grip of religious radicals. Benazir Bhutto, to her misfortune, was assassinated by the militants, which sums up the argument that extremists are uncontrollable monsters. If India thinks it can move onto its ‘shining’ or ‘vibrant’ India road on the back of its radicals, it must perish the thought. Pakistan is proof.