Putting the ideas of India to test

As India’s leaders bicker in the run-up to one of the country’s most polarising general elections yet, posters of Narendra Modi are multiplying.

Like early spring hailstorms, images of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s leader and controversial candidate for prime minister seem to be everywhere you turn: on Delhi’s street corners, outside Varanasi’s temples, lining the roads of eastern Uttar Pradesh.

 

Modi’s supporters have multiplied the effect by touting Modi T-shirts, Modi masks, Modi bobble-headed dolls.

 

In a departure from traditional electoral practice, few of the BJP’s posters show any of the party’s old guard; there is only Modi, unsmiling and ubiquitous.

His face easily eclipses that of the Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi, as well as the broom that symbolises the populist Aam Aadmi Party, whose energetic supporters have run effective door-to-door campaigns across Delhi and many northern states.

 

On March 23, the BJP stalwart Rajnath Singh tweeted the party slogan, “Ab ki baar BJP sarkar” (“This time is the BJP’s turn”) - and then hastily changed it to “Ab ki baar Modi sarkar” (“This time is Modi’s turn”).

 

The edit caused a small stir.

When Modi’s closest aide, Amit Shah, tried to clarify matters (“There is no confusion - there is no difference between Modi government and BJP government”), he brought back echoes of another Indian leader known for authoritarianism, Indira Gandhi, and the slogan chanted by her sycophants: “India is Indira. Indira is India.”

It was a reminder that this campaign is a crucible in which India’s ideas of itself are being tested.

 

Modi’s strong links

 

The rise of the Indian right wing has accelerated with Modi’s manly-man campaign and its boasts that it takes a leader with a 56-inch chest to bring about change.

 

Some fear that Modi’s strong links with the extreme right-wing Hindutva nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh mean that he’ll give a new life to the divisive dreams of extremists - most worryingly, a hatred of secularism and a drive to recover India’s glorious past.

Concerns that human rights groups and activists will be targeted under a right-wing government are valid, judging by how they’ve been treated in the state of Gujarat, where Modi has been chief minister since 2001.

 

And yet the emergence of an articulate, and rapidly maturing, right wing is not necessarily a bad thing for India.

Many supporters of Modi and the BJP are betting on the party’s ability to deliver on economic policies, like easier land acquisition and various sops to investors.

Even within the party, there are relatively few takers for the idea of India as a religious Hindu republic. And fears of a right-wing takeover of India’s cultural institutions, for example, are exaggerated.

The steady decline in artistic freedoms over the last 20 years is the result of bad laws, the refusal of politicians across all parties - right, left and centre - to take those freedoms seriously and the willingness of art galleries, publishing houses and festivals to compromise on them.

 

It cannot be blamed solely on the rise of the right fringe.

 

The BJP's dominance during this election campaign has had unexpected benefits, including reviving the belief that secularism is a value - even if it’s a value that needs reviving, and redefining.

 

In rambunctious Twitter arguments, “sickular” is often used as a pejorative term, along with “libtard,” a composite for “liberal bastard.”

 

This language, however extreme, is a sign that between the small but noisy groups of Hindu supremacists and the small but equally vociferous groups of committed left-liberals lies a vast middle ground.

 

Politicians from all parties are campaigning largely on the assumption that caste determines political preference.

 

They are not asking whether waves of migration from the countryside to cities and various economic shifts - like the recent boom in less traditional job opportunities in malls or call-centre’s -town India - are reasons to rethink traditional notions of community.

 

In a recent essay, Arundhati Roy asked if Indians could move beyond the limitations of caste, beyond the hierarchies “implanted in everybody’s imagination, including those at the bottom of the hierarchy.”

 

 Like B R Ambedkar, the dalit philosopher and politician, did more than half a century ago, Roy argued that caste must be annihilated if India is to grow. 

 

And the debate her essay provoked soon sheered away from the realities of caste to become a long wrangle over the politics of appropriation.

It was, sadly, typical of India. Although the time for a caste revolution is overdue, talking about banishing caste is still too radical an idea, even for the 2014 election.