Will the real Narendra Damodar Modi please stand up? In the onslaught of publicity, projection and promotion, which has continued unabated even after the parliamentary elections, reality remains elusive and myths proliferate. Publicity blurs the profile of fact; projection reinforces mythologies; and, promotion becomes a goal unto itself irrespective of the truth. Many in our nation are confused. Contradictory signals abound. The evidence points in one direction, while the publicity machine tomtoms the opposite. It is time, I think, that the real Narendra Modi should volitionally end this confusion.
Let us list a few areas where confusion is paramount. Mr Modi incessantly speaks of development as his only priority, and his senior party colleagues faithfully parrot out the same formula. But, if this is so, why is our Prime Minister so excessively indulgent to all the loonies in the Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh parivar who are bent on derailing the development project? Consider the facts. During the elections, development was the favourite mantra of Mr Modi. But the priority for the RSS cadres working for him was quite different.
Their single-minded goal was to try and consolidate Hindu votes on the ground by inciting communal hatred. Since their role was so instrumental in ensuring Mr Modi’s victory, surely he could not have been unaware of this.
Mr Modi’s election slogan was “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas”. On Independence Day, from the ramparts of the Red Fort, he proclaimed that there should be a 10-year moratorium on religious acrimony. His MPs and ministers would have also heard this. Then why did he refuse to sack Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, a minister in his government no less, when she outrageously dubbed all those not “Ramzadas” (read BJP supporters) as “Haramzadas”? Why did he choose Yogi Adityanath, known to be communally inflammable, as the mascot of his party for the Uttar Pradesh byelections? Why was he inexplicably silent when an RSS affiliate, the Dharma Jagran Samiti, declared that by 2021 India will be an exclusively Hindu country?
Where was his famously acerbic tongue when the Vishwa Hindu Parishad triumphantly proclaimed that with Mr Modi’s coming, India, after a hiatus of a millennium, has once again reverted to being a Hindu nation? Why was BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj able to get away with one communal provocation after another, and in the end only issued an anodyne notice asking to please provide an explanation? Is Mr Modi the vikas purush, or is he still at heart just the pracharak he was trained to be at the RSS headquarters in Nagpur?
Mr Modi’s publicity machine tells us that he is a forward-looking, progressive leader concerned only about confidently taking India into the future. We are willing to believe this, but then at a certain function in Mumbai he let his carefully cultivated guard down. Instead of paying tribute to the truly remarkable achievements of ancient India in the field of metaphysics, philosophy, aesthetics, astronomy, mathematics, literature, state-craft and art and culture, he devalued them all (and Ganesha) by saying that Ganapati proves the existence of advanced plastic surgery in ancient India, because how else could an elephant’s head have been transplanted on a human body?
And then, he went on unabashed to say that the manner in which Kunti had her children shows us that ancient India had advanced genetics too. There is more. Under his patronage, and that of the RSS, the venerable Indian Science Congress now has historians telling us that ancient India had planes that could make inter-planetary voyages, thereby making India a laughing stock across the world. The nation is confused all over again.
When entering Parliament for the first time after his election victory, Mr Modi flamboyantly prostrated himself before the country’s highest altar of democracy. The cameras flashed, the headlines glowed. Perhaps this exaggerated gesture was meant to make people forget that when he was chief minister he gave pretty much short shrift to the Gujarat Assembly. His record in Parliament is not much better.
In fact, in the Rajya Sabha, where the BJP does not enjoy a majority, his presence is almost negligible. In spite of the combined request of the entire Opposition, he refused to participate and make a reply on a debate on the seriously provocative statements being made by his MPs and ministers. Is he, like Atal Behari Vajpayee, truly a democrat by temperament, or does he only like to project that he is one? The nation would like to know.
There are other contradictions. Mr Modi says he likes to delegate work, but mounting evidence points definitively to the opposite. All power seems to be centralised in the Prime Minister’s Office, and, according to some reports, files are piled up there awaiting the Prime Minister’s disposal since he alone must decide on everything. Even Cabinet ministers cannot appoint their private secretaries without his imperious approval. Mr Modi’s publicity machine says he is a “team person”, but his own ministers testify to the contrary, as do many officers I have spoken to in Gujarat.
In fact, the systematic “elimination” of rivals, potential or actual, in Gujarat, hardly speaks of Mr Modi’s abilities of co-option. Again, Mr Modi makes the fullest use of the media to project his image, but journalists say that he does not welcome an impromptu or unstructured interaction with them, choosing only those platforms where he knows the questions will not be unpredictable.
Mysteries surround the towering, larger-than-life persona of Mr Modi. No one seems to know who the real Mr Modi is. Has the massive and carefully calibrated publicity machine that surrounds him succeeded in projecting a persona entirely different from the real Mr Modi? The evidence certainly is pointing in this direction. A nation must know what its Prime Minister is really like. Sooner or later myth and reality will ultimately part ways, no matter how powerful the image-makers are.
Author-diplomat Pavan K. Varma is a Rajya Sabha member
