The resemblances between Narendra Modi and Indira Gandhi, which were outlined years ago by astute observers such as Ram Guha, get stronger with each passing day. The Prime Minister’s hubristic anniversary celebration in Mathura on Monday called to mind, as do all his self-regarding speeches for Indians of a certain vintage, the grim days when Indira was said to be India, and India Indira.
His use of Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor as a proxy in a fight against the Aam Aadmi Party's elected government is reminiscent of Indira Gandhi’s machinations. While the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance regime was hardly activist-friendly, the BJP’s paranoia about organisations like Greenpeace and the Ford Foundation seems a throwback to the 1970s. AAP's Yogendra Yadav invoked Indira Gandhi after he was refused permission to speak at an event in Ahmedabad on Monday. "Just like Indira Gandhi, Modi doesn't seem to realise that clampdown on NGOs will lead to major reactions from the people," Yadav said.
Modi’s approach also echoes attitudes adopted in our time by aggressively nationalistic leaders like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, both of whom might be categorised by the oxymoronic term "authoritarian democrats". Authoritarian democrats become progressively more authoritarian as their popularity wanes, as it tends to do with the passage of time. The case of Indira Gandhi is typical. Elected with a thumping majority in 1971, she was idolised even more following India’s victory over the Pakistani army and the subsequent creation of Bangladesh. Yet, barely three years later, her aura had faded. A civil disobedience movement spread around the country, and she responded to an adverse court verdict by clamping down on fundamental rights. When we observe the fortieth anniversary of the declaration of the Emergency next month, it would be apt to recall it was engendered by an astonishingly rapid fall from almost universal adulation.
Meanwhile, in Bangladesh...
Something similar played out concurrently across the border in the newly created Bangladesh. After the heady days of 1971 and 1972, Bangladesh’s leader Mujibur Rahman was beset by crises. He responded by curtailing the press and opposition parties. His rule and his life were extinguished in a military coup shortly after Indira gave herself emergency powers.
A week is a long time in politics, the cliché goes, and the fall from grace of Indira Gandhi and Sheikh Mujib demonstrates that three years are like an eon. Yet, when Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, he announced immediately that he needed ten years to transform India.
Many commentators took it for granted he would get that decade in power, given the parlous state of the Indian National Congress. Rajdeep Sardesai said, in an interview, “I sense Modi is here to stay for 10 years. Because he has understood what it takes to win elections. But after that the jury is out. I am at the moment only willing to say that he has 10 years to deliver.” Sardesai would have done well to heed Bob Dylan’s words:
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’
The perils of prediction
I for, one, have regularly been surprised by election outcomes in India and elsewhere. I wouldn’t have believed Indira Gandhi would return to power so soon after her humbling loss in 1977; or that Rajiv Gandhi would squander his landslide victory the way he did; or that Narasimha Rao would become Prime Minister. As for the odds of Manmohan Singh leading India for two full terms, the idea was so outlandish before the 2004 election that no pundit or astrologer came close to predicting it. I was shocked by the extent of the Bharatiya Janata Party's sweep of Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll, and gobsmacked when AAP won all but three seats in the Delhi assembly earlier this year. Having been so surprised so often, I cannot pretend to know if or when the Modi tide will ebb. He could lead the BJP to another victory, or suffer a humiliating defeat. To suggest one or the other is pointless, since history has more cunning passages than our minds can map.
The better question, it seems to me, is, “How will Modi react if his star does dim, the way Indira Gandhi’s did, the way Sheikh Mujib’s did, the way Vladimir Putin’s is doing?” I don’t know the answer, but his record so far scares me. To use the terminology of financial markets, every government offers a potential upside, as well as a downside risk. The first year of Modi’s rule suggests the upside for his spell in office is capped at a lower level than many had hoped.
The downside, on the other hand, remains entirely uncertain. One possibility is that he will stifle dissent in the manner of Sheikh Mujib, Indira Gandhi, Erdoğan and Putin. That’s not a happy thought, but I have enough faith in India’s resilient democracy, and in today’s technology, to believe any muzzling will be relatively short and will erode what support he has left. My worse fear is that a significant fall in Modi’s ratings will be matched by increasing belligerence towards India’s minorities and towards Pakistan. It’s an extremely risky road, but one that might come naturally to him.
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His use of Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor as a proxy in a fight against the Aam Aadmi Party's elected government is reminiscent of Indira Gandhi’s machinations. While the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance regime was hardly activist-friendly, the BJP’s paranoia about organisations like Greenpeace and the Ford Foundation seems a throwback to the 1970s. AAP's Yogendra Yadav invoked Indira Gandhi after he was refused permission to speak at an event in Ahmedabad on Monday. "Just like Indira Gandhi, Modi doesn't seem to realise that clampdown on NGOs will lead to major reactions from the people," Yadav said.
Modi’s approach also echoes attitudes adopted in our time by aggressively nationalistic leaders like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, both of whom might be categorised by the oxymoronic term "authoritarian democrats". Authoritarian democrats become progressively more authoritarian as their popularity wanes, as it tends to do with the passage of time. The case of Indira Gandhi is typical. Elected with a thumping majority in 1971, she was idolised even more following India’s victory over the Pakistani army and the subsequent creation of Bangladesh. Yet, barely three years later, her aura had faded. A civil disobedience movement spread around the country, and she responded to an adverse court verdict by clamping down on fundamental rights. When we observe the fortieth anniversary of the declaration of the Emergency next month, it would be apt to recall it was engendered by an astonishingly rapid fall from almost universal adulation.
Meanwhile, in Bangladesh...
Something similar played out concurrently across the border in the newly created Bangladesh. After the heady days of 1971 and 1972, Bangladesh’s leader Mujibur Rahman was beset by crises. He responded by curtailing the press and opposition parties. His rule and his life were extinguished in a military coup shortly after Indira gave herself emergency powers.
A week is a long time in politics, the cliché goes, and the fall from grace of Indira Gandhi and Sheikh Mujib demonstrates that three years are like an eon. Yet, when Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, he announced immediately that he needed ten years to transform India.
Many commentators took it for granted he would get that decade in power, given the parlous state of the Indian National Congress. Rajdeep Sardesai said, in an interview, “I sense Modi is here to stay for 10 years. Because he has understood what it takes to win elections. But after that the jury is out. I am at the moment only willing to say that he has 10 years to deliver.” Sardesai would have done well to heed Bob Dylan’s words:
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’
The perils of prediction
I for, one, have regularly been surprised by election outcomes in India and elsewhere. I wouldn’t have believed Indira Gandhi would return to power so soon after her humbling loss in 1977; or that Rajiv Gandhi would squander his landslide victory the way he did; or that Narasimha Rao would become Prime Minister. As for the odds of Manmohan Singh leading India for two full terms, the idea was so outlandish before the 2004 election that no pundit or astrologer came close to predicting it. I was shocked by the extent of the Bharatiya Janata Party's sweep of Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll, and gobsmacked when AAP won all but three seats in the Delhi assembly earlier this year. Having been so surprised so often, I cannot pretend to know if or when the Modi tide will ebb. He could lead the BJP to another victory, or suffer a humiliating defeat. To suggest one or the other is pointless, since history has more cunning passages than our minds can map.
The better question, it seems to me, is, “How will Modi react if his star does dim, the way Indira Gandhi’s did, the way Sheikh Mujib’s did, the way Vladimir Putin’s is doing?” I don’t know the answer, but his record so far scares me. To use the terminology of financial markets, every government offers a potential upside, as well as a downside risk. The first year of Modi’s rule suggests the upside for his spell in office is capped at a lower level than many had hoped.
The downside, on the other hand, remains entirely uncertain. One possibility is that he will stifle dissent in the manner of Sheikh Mujib, Indira Gandhi, Erdoğan and Putin. That’s not a happy thought, but I have enough faith in India’s resilient democracy, and in today’s technology, to believe any muzzling will be relatively short and will erode what support he has left. My worse fear is that a significant fall in Modi’s ratings will be matched by increasing belligerence towards India’s minorities and towards Pakistan. It’s an extremely risky road, but one that might come naturally to him.
