Don’t question the son of the ‘Mother of Democracy’!

The Z Factor

“What is the difference between India and China?” I once asked a China scholar at Columbia many years ago.

“Honesty,” he said. “The Chinese are always afraid to say anything bad about their country to a foreigner. The Indians — they will crib about potholed roads, patchy electricity, running sewage and filthy air before they even introduce themselves.”

Americans, he said, love that about Indians because they’re the same way. Nobody complains more about America than the Americans.

“So, why do we do it?” I asked him.

“Because as democracies, we believe that we can fix our problems,” he said. “When you have no confidence of being able to fix your problems, you start avoiding all talk of them.”

Also Read | US should not mistake Modi for India

That was a whole era ago. In more recent times, it’s considered scandalous to complain about India — at home or abroad.

It’s even more scandalous to complain about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Many Indians now equate India’s global reputation with Modi’s global reputation. “You can’t talk about him abroad,” say many a well-intentioned citizen. “It maligns our country.”

Funnily enough, Americans don’t think so. Before Modi landed in Washington this week, Pew Research Center ran a survey asking Americans what they think about India. Over half of them said that they have a favourable opinion of India. 40% said that they hadn’t even heard of Modi. And of those who had heard of Modi, 37% said that they have little or no confidence in his global leadership. Only 21% approved of him.

This shouldn’t surprise anybody. Americans are notorious for loving their country and hating their President, whoever it is (the historically most popular president was, in fact, assassinated) at the moment.

They don’t understand why it should be any other way. In a democracy, Presidents and Prime Ministers are mere individuals who come for a while and then leave. You might hate your boss, but it doesn’t mean that you burn your office down because of him. So, why shouldn’t the same thing apply to the head of your government, whom you do, in fact, choose?

When Modi told Americans, therefore, that India is the “mother of democracy,” they didn’t understand what he meant. Indian democracy no longer makes sense to them. It doesn’t seem to function as it used to, they contended.

When people told them that Modi doesn’t hold press conferences, they were shocked. American diplomats told the Indians that everybody on a state visit to Washington is expected to hold a press conference. Wary of a stalemate, the Indians talked the Americans down to a compromise. Only one question from an American reporter, they agreed.

The Americans expressed gratitude for the settlement. As if to rub it in, they told the Indians that they understood that addressing a press conference is “really a big deal” for the Prime Minister. They were willing to be kind and hold a “limited” press conference. But that turned out to be a terrible idea. Under almost all circumstances, giving the press very little is worse than giving them nothing at all. Few people were thereafter interested in the actual content of the press conference. Instead, almost every report about the event ended up investigating why the press conference was “limited”, why the Indian Prime Minister doesn’t answer questions, and where India stands on global press freedom indices. The questions were quite relentless — except that the Prime Minister won’t answer them.

In the end, it was ironic that the Prime Minister of India was compelled to hold a press conference in America and not in the ‘Mother of Democracy’ itself.