BJP will gain even if Modi fails at the hustings

Is India’s growing middle class fascist? Mussolini famously made trains run on time or at least many in Italy believed so. The craven urban voter of India similarly believes the autocratic Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi possesses a magic wand to transform a lumbering and grimy India into a gleaming and super-efficient China; those levitating high speed trains of Shanghai would be India’s only if this bearded, scowling, ascetic ironman of Gujarat became its next prime minister.

Beware, Gujarat and its people are exceptional. Gujaratis have always been special and only the naive can believe that what happens there can be transposed to the rest of India. This is not to take away from Modi’s spectacular successes. The Gujarat model is now a case study for development and governance. Wharton may have snubbed him, but other hallowed schools of learning will in due course invite Modi; in this rush to adulate many forget that this state was well ahead of the game before Modi.

India’s middle class is ideologically blind; the complex reality of the country is not for them. It neither has the time nor the inclination to engage with the nation’s bewildering contradictions. The so-called middle class is in itself a disparate group and like all things Indian lacks homogeneity. However, one thing it has in common is that it is in thrall of wealth; becoming an economic powerhouse with the accompanying entitlements to sit at the high table at any cost is its preoccupation. How can we become a China is its central obsession and in this pursuit if Modi can deliver the goods must we quibble?

The riots of 2002 were regrettable, but we need to move on.

By projecting Modi as India’s next prime minister, his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is catering to precisely this Indian mindset. Fascism sits easily with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — the fountainhead of the BJP. However much some sections of the BJP may deny its fascination for authoritarianism, there has always been a strong streak of a narrowly-defined nationalism embedded in its ideology; a muscular belief in a common national creed to which all Indian citizens must owe allegiance to.

In theory, none would dispute the centrality of this doctrine in nation-building, but it profoundly misreads India’s exceptional circumstances. Homogenisation — that lode star of the RSS and by deduction that of the BJP — is a prescription for disaster. India lives in its diverse parts as much as in its heartland and eminent historian Ramachandra Guha labels it the most unnatural nation in the world; a recklessly ambitious experiment is how he unblinkingly describes India’s attempts to evolve as a democracy. Pouring that snake oil of a one-size fits-all theory into this cauldron is a folly of monumental proportions.

So then is the BJP about to commit electoral suicide? In factoring in what the middle class and the urban voter want, is it blindsided to the other India? It would appear so; not only has the BJP shown a clear preference for Modi as a frontrunner for the top job, but saner voices in the party like Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha have been dropped from its highest policy-making body in the run-up to the 2014 elections. Instead, the party has opted for Modi’s crony Amit Shah, who is out on bail and Varun Gandhi, who is as famous for his surname as for his controversial speech about Muslims.

Advani’s role

Mysteriously, the one man who could drill some sense into these fancy electoral calculations has been put out to pasture. L. K. Advani has been sidelined by the RSS ever since he made that famous speech in Pakistan extolling Jinnah. But the old warhorse still has life in him. Though he may be no Atal Behari Vajpayee, he is still the tallest leader in the BJP.

Advani is canny as ever and not to be trifled with for he is waiting in the wings to play ducks and drakes; he has praised Sushma Swaraj and extolled the virtues of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan. Not surprisingly, he has not ruled himself out of the prime ministerial race in case there is a squabble. His ambition has not been diminished with age and he has made some overtures to — of all people — Mulayam Singh Yadav, the chief of the Samajwadi Party.

For now though Modi seems supremely well-ensconced; the RSS is completely behind him and he is way ahead of the competition. But is that enough for him to get the top job? He is no consensus builder and by temperament cannot brook dissent or opposition. Prime qualities perhaps to run Gujarat, but not India!

Should Modi come a cropper it may yet be the best thing to happen for the BJP and the country. The RSS would have been discredited and the BJP may finally have set itself free.

Ravi Menon is a Dubai-based writer working on a series of essays on India and on a public service initiative called India Talks.