Open any newspaper these days and you are bound to see the same story everywhere. In prolix prose that would put a garrulous bunch of Bengalis engaging in adda on College Street to shame, obscure academics and failed graduate students from the United States hold forth on Modi’s failures. Modi is Manmohan 2.0. NDA-2 is UPA-3. The budget was disappointing. Modi has not engaged in reforms. They continue to spread the monolithic idea of Nehruvian India, with its oppressive pluralism and religious freedoms, so beloved of Westernised intellectuals. These quislings fail to see the truly inclusive, encompassing nature of Hindu India, an India where everyone is Hindu and knows their place and where everyone respects the patriarch of home and nation. An India dedicated to simple, patriotic, homegrown values: men tilling the computers and women in the kitchen; an obedient tribe of scribes working for national unity; law and order based on the eternal truth of “jiski lathi uski bhains”.
It annoys me that these academics should be presumptuous enough to do the job of journalists. I don’t parachute into your classes in the US and cut short your lectures on Edward Said with disquisitions on Nirad Chaudhuri, do I? So please don’t rehash your term papers in the pages of our newspapers here. (If you’re from Oxford or Cambridge, preferably Bengali but not Marxist, then no problem.)
The Deepak Chopra Self
It is true that the Modi government’s budget, its stand on Gaza, its policy on the rights of Kashmiri Pandits, and its general timidity may seem to superficially resemble the policies of its predecessor, but naysayers miss the forest for the trees. The beauty of Modi is that he appears to serve everyone’s interests. He supports both Israel and Palestine. He is revolutionary and incremental at the same time. Modi is hawk and he is dove. Some formerly self-hating Anglicised intellectuals with North American pedigrees now find themselves completely enamoured by him, as do real humble Indians living in villages. In his multitudes, Modi embodies the Hindu idea of the multiple, infinite quantum self – the self that has been popularised to great personal profit by the leading physicist, physician and prophet of our times, Deepak Chopra.
This was the reason for the success behind his campaign: Modi’s appeal was truly broad-based. Indian elites seduced by the idea of a strong state saw him as a strongman who would keep unruly Pakistanis outside our borders in check. In the villages of Bihar and UP, they saw him as a strongman who would make sure everyone’s cows grazed on the commons equitably. On Wall Street, Trump and others saw him as a strongman who would be good for business, managing those people inconveniently existing on land ripe for luxury towers and oil refineries.
The two mistakes of my life
By violating expectations, Modi has executed an elegant pivot. In this, he is to be credited for an open-mindedness in following the example of many academics, thinktankers and policymakers. As it became clear that Modi was going to win the elections, many Indian-origin Americans, Indian-origin British, and most of all, Indian-origin Indians smoothly pivoted to supporting him.
Look, no one is perfect and, speaking as a journalist, I do think there are two serious mistakes that Modi has made.
First, he has not appointed me media adviser. No, wait, that’s not right. First, he has not appointed as media advisers those of us journalists who were Hindu nationalists – sorry, committed to Hindu values – way before it was fashionable. Of course, it is possible that he does not have my number and my daily emails to him are going to his spam folder. Here, I must confess that these Johnny-and-Junie-come-lately right-wing journalists really annoy me, shouting their love for Modi on Twitter just when it became trendy to do so. Listen, young chirps, show some respect to your elders. Remember, I was the first journalist in India to critically question the need for secular coexistence, communal amity, and freedom of speech.
Second, Modi’s policy of not taking journalists on Air India One for official trips overseas just does not make sense. I was really hoping to be able to celebrate Pujo in Milton Keynes this year; the chena murki they make there is past compare.
Despite these mistakes, Modi’s personal qualities are to be tremendously admired. He is a go-getter with great can-do spirit unlike the politicians of a jaded, enervated Congress.
So, to my journalist friends on my side of the aisle and the devoted Hindu armies on Twitter and Facebook, I say we need to give Modi about five-six years. In that time, the projects for shuddhi will have succeeded in reconverting all Indian Muslims and Christians to Hinduism, so there will be no basis for anyone to accuse Modi of religious discrimination. Under the able leadership of Baba Ramdev, India’s space programme will have successfully colonised the moon and Mars, and, under the supervision of Amit Shah and the help of Gujarat Police, we can resettle all the pseudosecularists there. All of India, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, will be a modern Hindu technological paradise – a verdant Saffron Valley – brimming with the technological wonders described by Dinanath Batra in his books: ancient airplanes and telephones in the sky, talking birds and giant floating vats of gulab jamuns. Anyone who does not see this coming totally does not understand realpolitik.
We welcome your comments at
letters@scroll.in.
It annoys me that these academics should be presumptuous enough to do the job of journalists. I don’t parachute into your classes in the US and cut short your lectures on Edward Said with disquisitions on Nirad Chaudhuri, do I? So please don’t rehash your term papers in the pages of our newspapers here. (If you’re from Oxford or Cambridge, preferably Bengali but not Marxist, then no problem.)
The Deepak Chopra Self
It is true that the Modi government’s budget, its stand on Gaza, its policy on the rights of Kashmiri Pandits, and its general timidity may seem to superficially resemble the policies of its predecessor, but naysayers miss the forest for the trees. The beauty of Modi is that he appears to serve everyone’s interests. He supports both Israel and Palestine. He is revolutionary and incremental at the same time. Modi is hawk and he is dove. Some formerly self-hating Anglicised intellectuals with North American pedigrees now find themselves completely enamoured by him, as do real humble Indians living in villages. In his multitudes, Modi embodies the Hindu idea of the multiple, infinite quantum self – the self that has been popularised to great personal profit by the leading physicist, physician and prophet of our times, Deepak Chopra.
This was the reason for the success behind his campaign: Modi’s appeal was truly broad-based. Indian elites seduced by the idea of a strong state saw him as a strongman who would keep unruly Pakistanis outside our borders in check. In the villages of Bihar and UP, they saw him as a strongman who would make sure everyone’s cows grazed on the commons equitably. On Wall Street, Trump and others saw him as a strongman who would be good for business, managing those people inconveniently existing on land ripe for luxury towers and oil refineries.
The two mistakes of my life
By violating expectations, Modi has executed an elegant pivot. In this, he is to be credited for an open-mindedness in following the example of many academics, thinktankers and policymakers. As it became clear that Modi was going to win the elections, many Indian-origin Americans, Indian-origin British, and most of all, Indian-origin Indians smoothly pivoted to supporting him.
Look, no one is perfect and, speaking as a journalist, I do think there are two serious mistakes that Modi has made.
First, he has not appointed me media adviser. No, wait, that’s not right. First, he has not appointed as media advisers those of us journalists who were Hindu nationalists – sorry, committed to Hindu values – way before it was fashionable. Of course, it is possible that he does not have my number and my daily emails to him are going to his spam folder. Here, I must confess that these Johnny-and-Junie-come-lately right-wing journalists really annoy me, shouting their love for Modi on Twitter just when it became trendy to do so. Listen, young chirps, show some respect to your elders. Remember, I was the first journalist in India to critically question the need for secular coexistence, communal amity, and freedom of speech.
Second, Modi’s policy of not taking journalists on Air India One for official trips overseas just does not make sense. I was really hoping to be able to celebrate Pujo in Milton Keynes this year; the chena murki they make there is past compare.
Despite these mistakes, Modi’s personal qualities are to be tremendously admired. He is a go-getter with great can-do spirit unlike the politicians of a jaded, enervated Congress.
So, to my journalist friends on my side of the aisle and the devoted Hindu armies on Twitter and Facebook, I say we need to give Modi about five-six years. In that time, the projects for shuddhi will have succeeded in reconverting all Indian Muslims and Christians to Hinduism, so there will be no basis for anyone to accuse Modi of religious discrimination. Under the able leadership of Baba Ramdev, India’s space programme will have successfully colonised the moon and Mars, and, under the supervision of Amit Shah and the help of Gujarat Police, we can resettle all the pseudosecularists there. All of India, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, will be a modern Hindu technological paradise – a verdant Saffron Valley – brimming with the technological wonders described by Dinanath Batra in his books: ancient airplanes and telephones in the sky, talking birds and giant floating vats of gulab jamuns. Anyone who does not see this coming totally does not understand realpolitik.
