Unnikrishnan
In the end Modi 2.0 proved more potent than Rahul Gandhi 3.0. In his 2019 victory Modi also deflated a key argument many so-called liberal commentators had raised to take the sheen off his 2014 win — that it was an anti-incumbency wave and discontent against then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that helped Modi win that massive electoral upset.
But the same anti-incumbency should have worked against Modi this time too. Also, to think of it, there was no singular event that could have vaulted his popularity overnight so he could come back with a bigger scorecard than last time. And if you go by what the liberal media and the opposition was saying, everyone whose back was “broken” by the less-than-perfect implementation of the goods and services tax and demonetization was waiting to banish Modi to the Himalayas.
In 2014, the pundits said it was because of the Muslim voters who were unhappy with Singh's governance and widespread corruption that Modi could win across India, and that if he did not keep them in good humor they will send him and the BJP packing. It was an argument based on the calculus of minority vote-bank politics that the Congress had perfected but which Modi had broken up in 2014.
And the same commentators tried hard to show, in the run up to the 2019 race, why the minorities were angry with Modi and how that would spell his doom – using their same dated calculus. The lined up an array of reasons — conveniently ignoring the very valid issue of cattle smuggling in rural India and the logical local punitive actions – and took local events out of context and systematically blew them up to create a national narrative of cow lynchings and attacks on minority. They tried to paint even progressive legislations like the one banning Triple Talaq as cutting into the religious freedom of the minorities. In short, the pundits had crossed the line and were playing politics themselves. It was not done because of ideology, but was driven by the unholy nexus that was forged over decades between India's vote-bank politicians and these pundits.
Still Modi came back. The Muslims should have deserted him but it looks like they did not. A more plausible explanation is such vote-bank politics did not matter when Modi shined a light on some of the basic issues that underpin the existence and growth of a civilization — things like religion, culture, heritage and community. Those were issues the pundits told us did not matter — or mattered only for the minorities. That by virtue of being a majority, the Hindu had become a “terrorist.”
The narrative worked well with the minority vote-bank, and even the majority Hindu voter who — and here is the irony — because of his thousands of years of heritage did not want to be seen as trying to dominate or change another person's faith and belief system. It was the same things that the pundits and the "secular" politicians said that the Hindu should be ashamed of, which actually helped create and maintain minority vote-bank politics.
And it was the space provided by this politics that helped create and shelter extremist elements with ties to international terror organizations. But to deflect attention from that fundamental flaw of minority politics, the terms Hindu terror was coined.
What Modi did was to bring in fresh thinking and demolish the whole underpinning of vote-bank politics, in a way it can never come back again. The majority has sensed its power, and it has also realized why it is important to protect its culture, faith and heritage. Equally, if not more, than the things that the liberal commentators said mattered, like jobs and development.
It is another irony that the pre-Modi governments failed to provide even those vital things. And what Modi did provide, the pundits said he had failed to deliver.
The pundits were still very much behind the curve in 2014 in understanding that the political paradigm they nurtured and protected no longer stood — and they still are! It is a reflection of how even India's so-called election analyst community is still beholden to Nehru-Gandhi family election paradigms and why we need a new breed of analysts like the new breed of politicians at the helm of the BJP.
By the way Modi did go to the Himalayas, but that was before the results, on his own, and he came back to reclaim the throne — against all that the naysayers had forecast would happen. And what a victory it is!
