http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/a-bonfire-of-vanities/125330.html
Being
the very smart man that he is, Narendra Modi will be the first to
recognise — even if he does not acknowledge it publicly — that August
25, 2015, is the day when Gujarat finally started the process of
disowning him. Future historians may even mark August 25 as the date
when it all unravelled and the Modi political meltdown began. An
over-statement? An exaggeration? A wishful fantasy?
Consider this: from March 2002 to August 24, 2015, nobody, and that
means nobody, other than Narendra Modi had been able to collect a crowd
of five lakh people in any part of Gujarat. The last time such a
large-scale mobilisation took place was way back in the mid-1970s,
during the days of the Navnirman Andolan. The August 25 congregation,
right there in the heart of Ahmedabad, took place despite Modi's wishes
and his long-distance monitoring and micro-managing of everything
political that goes on in Gujarat. And, not since 2002, has the Army
been asked to come out in aid of the civil authority. Words in headlines
like ‘curfew’, ‘police firing’, ‘deaths’ belonged to a bygone era, so
we were told. The rockstar who mesmerised the suburban Gujaratis at
Madison Square Garden has been upstaged by an upstart: a hitherto
unknown Hardik Patel, who has the native Patels eating out of his hand.
It is ironic that only ten days ago, on Independence Day, the Prime
Minister was using that grand pulpit at the Red Fort to exhort us to
beware of the danger of ‘casteism’ and communalism. And then, a few days
later, he was in Gaya (Bihar), showering goodies and special packages
on that “bimaru” state, singing songs of his own politics of
development, and preaching against the vendors of caste politics such as
Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav. Now, on his own home turf, the
caste calculations and demands have erupted gloriously.
There is a context to this Patel eruption. And, it is necessary to recall that context.
In 1981, it was the Patels of Khadia in downtown Ahmedabad who raised a
violent voice against a new reservation regime. That agitation was
directed at the newly elected Congress government, headed by Madhavsinh
Solanki. The Congress had stormed back to power, riding on the KHAM
strategy. The KHAM (Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis, and Muslims)
inclusive promise had yielded massive electoral dividends; and,
Gujarat's political landscape was drastically re-arranged. The Patels
were ejected from the commanding heights of Gujarat politics which they
had occupied for many decades. In the 1985 Assembly elections, the
Congress repeated its performance, consolidating its political
dominance. The Patels again soon found an excuse to raise their voice
against ‘reservation’. This resentment among the upper castes,
especially the Patidars, was easily shoehorned into the new Hindutva
project. Over the years, the Hindutva forces patted themselves on the
back as to how they were able to invoke the religious idiom to get the
better of the caste-centric KHAM and its inclusive politics of social
aggregation of the disadvantaged.
Now, the same Patels are demanding reservation. Gujarat is back to the
1981 days. The Patels were/are at the core of the Modi constituency.
They are vocal, aggressive and assertive in their sustained support at
home and in the NRI portals for the post-2002 Modi and his narrative.
Now, in 2015, violence has been reported from the same BJP strongholds.
It is possible to argue that the Patidar eruption suggests that the
objective conditions that propelled the Modi phenomenon in Gujarat
became redundant on May 16, 2014. In pure realpolitik terms, the ‘2002’
business has finally lost its raison d’etre.
Let us decode it in some detail. The post-2002 Modi and the BJP were
able to enlist, enthuse and ensnare the Gujaratis in an epic battle in
defence of Gujarati asmita. The Patidars applauded the new Hindu hriday
samraat, first as he struggled against Vajpayee who chanted the strange
rajdharma mantra. Then they cheered him as he locked horns with a Sonia
Gandhi who levelled the maut ka saudagar charge, and next they sided
with him against the ‘vicious’ UPA that would demand accountability in
fake encounters.
The Long March to Delhi has ended on a triumphant note. Suddenly, the
objective conditions that sustained the Modi phenomenon have melted
away. The Hindu hriday samraat is the lord and master of all he surveys
from Raisina Hill, the pseudo-secularists are licking their wounds, and
even the judiciary seems disinclined to uphold the secular values and
practices. Even anti-Centrism, the main plank of the Modi phenomenon in
Gujarat, got dismantled on May 24, 2014, when the new Prime Minister
took oath in the Rashtrapati Bhavan forecourt. The majority in Gujarat
has nothing to fear. Its 'protector' is the chief magistrate and
sheriff. The intimidated Muslims have already retreated into their
pitiful ghettos.
The all too obvious communal underpinning of the Modi project apart,
this Patidar eruption demands a sobre reassessment of all that we have
been persuaded to believe about the Gujarat model of development.
The thinness of the so-called Gujarat model now stands so
demonstratively exposed. Those who questioned the claims made in its
name were dubbed anti-Gujarat and damned as pseudo-secularists. The pain
of deepening economic inequalities was never allowed to intrude into
the ‘vibrancy’ optics. Rather, those at the receiving end of the harsh
economic realities were palmed off with the Hindutva rhetoric and
practices. Those realities have not vanished.
Nobody, for example, was allowed to ask how many local Gujaratis had
been given jobs in the famed Nano project at Sanand. For that matter, no
one knows the terms of the agreement between the Gujarat government and
the Tatas. All we have been told is how a pro-business, pro-market,
pro-growth, pro-industrialisation Chief Minister had grabbed the
opportunity to entice an entrepreneur, scorned by those backward looking
politicians in West Bengal. That was the defining moment when the
‘vibrancy’ of the Modi model was reaffirmed and consecrated. Soon the
captains of industry were queuing up in Ahmedabad to issue the
certificate of good conduct to the then Chief Minister. The road to
Delhi was mapped out.
Before and after 2014, there was no dearth of cheer-leaders extolling
the Modi phenomenon and its relevance, demanding that it be replicated
throughout the country. The best and the brightest among the pundits
proclaimed that India stood tutored in the new grammar of development,
merit, growth, liberating modernity. An alternative reality emerged on
August 25.
If the Gujarat model of development was so successful, so
transformative, so revolutionary, how could a 22-year-old become the
fulcrum for a caste-centric mobilisation? And why should Bihar buy into
the presumably post-caste ‘development’ rhetoric?
A bonfire of vanities
An alternative truth emerged on August 25
No comments:
Post a Comment