How the RSS bogey boomeranged
At first glance the 2014 election verdict confirms all the reports of a “Modi wave” that had been coming in over the past few months. There is no ambiguity in the mandate. For the first time, a nonCongress Party has acquired a majority on its own. It is, therefore, easy to read the verdict as a manifestation of a groundswell in favour of Narendra Modi, whom some have chosen to describe in this euphoric moment as a “phenomenon without precedent”.
While the centrality of Mr Modi is not in doubt, such a description is highly exaggerated and overlooks the ways in which the Modi- figure was manufactured over the past four years by a whole range of forces. Mr Modi was produced as a nononsense figure who could provide strong leadership and posited in opposition to a UPA government that the corporate world increasingly began to see as afflicted with indecision and some sort of “policy paralysis”. Clearly, this “policy paralysis” did not refer, to matters like legislations on food security or pensions for unorganised workers. No, policy paralysis referred to delays with regard to some very specific things like abolition of subsidies, land acquisition and waiving of environmental clearances for corporate projects.
Mr Modi’s megalomania may have come in useful in the manufacture of the Modi myth but let there be no mistake, “Modi” was produced by a constellation of corporate forces that saw him as someone who would be decisive in a particular way. As actor Paresh Rawal, a Modi follower himself, put it, the country needs a “benevolent dictator” like Mr Modi. Or, as an intellectual acolyte put it after the results came out, this is the time for “audacity”, not “consensus building”. The suggestion here, as amongst a whole range of Modi supporters, is that democratic procedures are an unnecessary drag, hence the need for a powerful and decisive figure who can set such procedures aside.
However, this by itself would not have been enough to ensure the kind of victory that Mr Modi has achieved. For that to be possible, it was necessary for the myth to take hold of the popular imagination, which it now appears it successfully did. This would certainly not have been possible had the Congress/ UPA government not made Mr Modi look like a knight in shining armour by its sheer disregard for popular opinion.
At one level, the most striking aspect of the verdict is the virtual decimation of the Congress, now reduced to a mere 44 seats and an all- time low vote share of 19.3 per cent. The anger that has been building up against the Congress and the UPA was so strong that it has completely eclipsed some of the more significant achievements of the regime. The UPA government that had earned a huge amount of goodwill, thanks to some of the social democratic welfare measures it had initiated over its two terms in office, was suddenly at the receiving end of popular anger.
The change was rapid. For a party that had won 206 seats and 28.6 per cent vote share in 2009, the rapidity with which its mass support dissipated over the next few years is simply breathtaking. As instance after instance of the corruption of the UPA government came to light, people started coming out against it in protests. The government responded with sheer arrogance, dubbing all opposition to it as an “RSS conspiracy”. The more they did this, the more they made the RSS look attractive to the large sections of apolitical youth who were joining the protests.
Aided by a whole line- up of Left- wing intellectuals, the Congress had reduced secularism to a farce. It was a term that was invoked only when the Congress was faced with a political challenge. Others in the now- defunct “third front”, like Mulayam Singh Yadav, also became mascots of this farcical secularism. While Mr Yadav’s Samajwadi Party government’s role in the Muzaffarnagar riots is well known, he has more recently distinguished himself by publicly defending rape and rapists. But for the secular- left intellectual all this is to be passed over in silence — for the sake of “secularism”. For them, it was always only a choice between the Congress or this discredited “third front”. These were the only options people were allowed to entertain. Muslims, in particular, were supposed to place themselves at the mercy of these two combinations, in the name of opposing Mr Modi and the RSS.
For the Muslim youth, this situation is perceived as being suffocating and the need to break out of the deadlock imposed by this kind of politics has been pressing over time. They have issues other than simply preventing the BJP from coming to power. Congress- style secularism only thinks of Muslims during elections as their guaranteed votebanks but does nothing where matters of more substantial interest of the community are concerned. As the Sachar Committee report had shown, the general state of the Muslims in terms of education and professional opportunities and representation in government employment is far from desirable. The younger generation of Muslims are, therefore, no longer prepared to be pawns in the hands of Congress- style phoney secularism.
This time round the emergence of the Aam Aadmi Party helped in posing issues in ways that sidestepped the usual secular- communal binary and made it possible for a large number of Muslim youth as well to make common cause with other sections of the population. In places where this option was available therefore, Muslims deserted the Congress en masse, much to the consternation of the left- secular intelligentsia.
The fact that Mr Modi has received this massive mandate should, however, not be seen as anything more than a temporary response to a situation where huge churning is already underway and many of the cherished assumptions of old- style politics are already being questioned. Mr Modi promised to be different and people seem to have believed him. If he fails to live up to his promise, his new supporters could desert him as well. The writer is professor, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi