Thanks to Balakrishnan Hariharan for the links.
" India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the occident's success and failure, but still the ancient immemorable Shakti recovering her deepest self, lifting her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma".
- Sri Aurobindo
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Narendra Modi’s India – Will a Million Mutinies stifle a Billion Aspirations?
04 November 2015
Civilization as we once knew it has probably already ended if we were to go by the angst in the Op-Ed Columns and the outrage in the TV Studios.
If you are still in doubt just look at what the New York Times has to say and what The Moody’s had to warn.
It is a different matter that the New York Times Editorial Board is packed with anti-Modi Left-Libs and that so called “Moody’s Report” lapped up unquestioningly by the Indian Media was in reality the personal opinion of a lowly analyst that mysteriously found its way to the headlines.
It is abundantly clear that 18 months on, Delhi’s entrenched Left-leaning establishment and the Nehru-Gandhi family remained unreconciled to the reality of the first BJP Majority Government in India with Narendra Modi as Prime Minister.
Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections the “scorched earth” tactics of the Congress were staple of gossip.
Eighteen months on in November of 2015, “scorched earth” is the new Political Reality for the Narendra Modi led BJP.
The vicious cycle of Social Media and Mainstream Media feeding off each other to raise Minority Anxieties while giving Oxygen to the fringe has now played itself many times over.
If it was media misreporting on Attacks on Churches ahead of the Delhi elections, it is #IntoleranceAnxiety ahead of the Bihar elections.
If it was mostly a media led phenomenon during the Delhi Campaign, this time around we have our own version of non-state actors mounting a million mutinies against a government that is barely 1.5 years old with some of our very own joining in.
So what is Narendra Modi to do in the face of these Million Mutinies?
Before we can begin to answer that question we must recalibrate our perspective.
During his recent visit to the United States, theLA Times carried a curious article titled – “Pope Francis and India’s Narendra Modi had very different visits to America“.
Now why would someone in the United States actually compare Mr. Modi to the Pope and why would such a comparison be of any academic interest?
The thinking behind this comparison becomes apparent as one digs further into the LATimes report.
They each lead a billion people worldwide, and drew crowds, worship and controversy while here.
To put this “each lead a billion people worldwide” into perspective consider this:
The Indian Population in 1964 when the Nehru era came to an end was 487 millionWhen Indira Gandhi’s era came to an end in 1984 the Indian Population was 764 millionBy 1991 when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated the Indian Population hovered around 886 million
Take a moment to let this sink – Narendra Modi is India’s first Prime Minister with a majority in Parliament since we become the world’s first Billion People Democracy.
India’s population crossed the Billion mark only in 2001 while China crossed the Billion mark back in 1980.
Let us once again put this into perspective with this quote from 1967 by then US Secretary of State Rusk in a press conference on the 12th of October:
Within the next decade or two, there will be a billion Chinese on the Mainland, armed with nuclear weapons, with no certainty about what their attitude toward the rest of Asia will be.Now the free nations of Asia will make up at least a billion people.They don’t want China to overrun them on the basis of a doctrine of the world revolution. The militancy of China has isolated China, even within the Communist World, but they have not drawn back from it.
Anxieties over a Billion Chinese was the dominant theme of American Foreign Policy over the next decade with Nixon’s famous visit and subsequent engagement during the Reagan years.
But then China was not a democracy, and the anxiety over a Billion Chinese was largely an anxiety over the Communist regime.
So one may ask where was the anxiety over a Billion Indians with nuclear weapons, after all by 2001 when India had crossed the Billion mark, the Vajpayee government was already through with Pokharan-2?
The answer lies in the democratic instability that has plagued India for more than two decades with a fractured Parliament, unstable coalition governments and weak Prime Minister.
This is the first time the world has had a taste of a Billion Indians led by a Strong Indian Prime Minister at the helm of the world’s largest democracy with a stable majority in Parliament.
Coming back to that LA Times article that betrayed anxiety over Modi’s India of a Billion look at what troubled the author of that report:
The pope hung out with the homeless, abuse victims and prisoners; Modi with Google, Facebook and AppleProtesters dogged Modi on human rights record, while pope fans successfully protested … a tent
When VS Naipaul wrote about a Million Mutinies in India back in 1990 India with little above 800 million people was not yet the Billion People Democracy that it today is.
Here is what Naipaul had to say of the Million Mutinies:
the last 90 years of British rule and the first 40 years of independence“begin increasingly to appear as part of the same historical period–the idea of freedom has gone everywhere in India . . . (but) the liberation of spirit that has come to India could not come as release alone.In India, with its layer below layer of distress and cruelty, it had to come as disturbance. It had to come as rage and revolt.India was now a country of a million little mutinies.”
Interestingly on the eve of Modi’s ascent to the Office of Prime Minister, the author of the book “India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India”, Akash Kapur had this to say of Modi’s India of a Billion:
Revolutions are rarely simple affairs; mutinies, as Naipaul noted, are both emancipatory and oppressive. The question, going forward, is whether India under Modi can find the change — the revolution — it desperately needs, without the upheavals and disruptions that so often follow.
Prescient as these words seem 18 months on it is quite clear that the real intolerance we are witnessing today is of the rise of a Billion People Democracy with a strong Leader at its helm.
The idea of Modi’s India of a Billion has several unsettled from the entrenched elite in Delhi to the power brokers across the globe.
The Million Mutinies against Modi are thus a pre-emptive strike to stifle the rise of a Billion Aspirations in Modi’s India.
Which brings us back to our original question – What is Narendra Modi to do in the face of these Million Mutinies?
Perhaps it is time for him to leverage the strength of those Billion Aspirations to overwhelm and overcome these Million Mutinies for that is what the 2014 Mandate was about.
India’s destiny cannot be allowed to be hijacked by an elite that finds itself cut out and marginalised after decades of patronage by the Nehruvian State.
It is high time the silent Indian Majority speaks up and sends a message to the vocal elite Minority that Modi’s India is moving on, with you or without you and in spite of you.