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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: Godhra

Kaun Banega Pradhan Mantri?

21 Fri Dec 2012

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on Kaun Banega Pradhan Mantri?

Tags

BJP, Chief Minister, Congress, Godhra, Gujarat, Hindu-Muslim riots, India, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister

Who Will Become the Prime Minister?

The recently concluded state elections in Gujarat, India, resulted in an unequivocal victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party and its incumbent chief minister, Narendra Modi. Despite the exuberance of his supporters, Modi and his party did not record a rampant victory and actually slid back by two seats compared to their tally of 117 out of 182 five years ago. While the maths of this is fairly inconsequential, anyone who observes Indian politics knows that nothing is inconsequential about Mr. Modi.

The success of the BJP leader in his state has propelled him to the front ranks of contenders for the most powerful job in the country. Yet success breeds many enemies, and Modi has certainly gained a shrill crowd for himself. As the next general elections come around the corner, many have questioned, particularly in the Western press, whether Modi can transform from a regional leader to a national one, or whether he might make a good chief minister but not an effective prime minister. It is certainly a healthy exercise to vet candidates for elected office and no doubt, it is debatable whether there are other candidates more able than Modi to become prime minister, but it is misleading at best to declare that the man from western India is not up to the challenge for the job in New Delhi.

Modi’s detractors have many salvos to fire against him, the first and most serious being his alleged role in the communal riots of 2002. It would be difficult, their argument runs, for the Government of India to be weighed down by suspicions about the role of its prime minister in a campaign of mass murder; India would find it difficult to function in the comity of nations when a dark cloud hangs over its leader. This logic is riddled with flaws – firstly, the judicial process so far does not bear out any grounds for such concern. Following the premeditated massacre of 58 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya (including 25 women and 15 children) by Muslims, Gujarat was engulfed in riots which saw 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus killed. Modi’s detractors hold him responsible for the massacre, not only as the Chief Minister, but as an architect of the murder and mayhem. The details of this tragedy are beyond the scope of this article but suffice it to say that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court of India gave a clean chit to the Gujarat government, stating that they had done everything possible to prevent the riots and exonerated Modi personally of all charges.

Secondly, in the state elections concluded just a few days ago, Modi won eight of the twelve Muslim-dominated constituencies, puncturing the anti-Muslim image of Modi that his opponents had tried to spread. There can be no statute of limitations on mass murder, no matter how forgiving people are. Modi’s success, however, illustrates not only the willingness of Muslims to move on, but also that the chief minister is their choice for the future – not the sort of bet one makes on a threat.

Thirdly, if one is to disqualify Modi for the blood on his hands, the naive must be reminded that there is nary an Indian politician for whom this is not true. India has seen several bloodbaths over its nearly seven decades of independence, and the Gujarat riot is perhaps the most thoroughly prosecuted one, with more arrests and convictions being handed down than most other cases. One might also want to reflect on the as yet classified reports on the Saturn-Devouring-his-Son come to life Emergency of Indira Gandhi. To the outsider, these may seem old stories, but Indians have long memories to go with their even longer history. If one does not like to dwell in the past, might it then be fruitful to wonder about the Congress role in 2002? What a lay observer learns from all this is that while Modi is guilty by association, those same rules do not apply to any other candidate.

Modi is also painted as a Hindu chauvinist. Yet the image of a secular India that has been skillfully projected to the world is bogus – the reality is that the state does indeed interfere (unequally) in religious matters, funding pilgrimages and subsidising clergy. Hindu religious institutions have to contend with Hindu Religious Institutions acts of various states that do not apply to institutions of other faiths. The notorious Shah Bano constitutional amendment needs no mention, and for all the focus on saffronistas, no one has called to account Mulayam Singh Yadav’s scheme for reservations for Muslims and Mayawati’s Dalit promotions plan. In contradistinction, Modi’s rhetoric has repeatedly stressed development over caste and religion.

Moving on to economic objections, the critique of Modi is not to disqualify him as a prime ministerial candidate but to question his much publicised achievements. Leaving the economists to battle out the statistical details, some things are obvious to the layperson: rate of growth is also dependent on the base, and comparing Bihar to Gujarat is nonsensical; Gujarat has earned the confidence of business houses in India as well as internationally; Gujarat is one of the few states in India that has adequate power and is in fact exporting it to its neighbours; infrastructure in the state has improved significantly, and corruption has dropped too. There is still much work to be done, but Modi has brought a vibrancy and optimism to Gujarat that was not seen before. In just ten years, he has cut through the overgrowth of decades of state planning. Such a governance record is an extremely rare commodity among Indian politicians, and even rarer for it to be actually rewarded by the electorate.

Most importantly, Modi’s detractors argue, the prime minister is India’s first representative to the world. A figure whose reputation has been stained by accusations of mass murder can hardly maintain India’s stature in the international community; India will be hard-pressed to defend its secular credentials and have little soft power to speak of. Furthermore, it is not clear how the US visa row might resolve itself. Closer to home, relations with Muslim states stand to suffer as well, they argue.

These objections are laughable – the only people for whom the sun rises and sets with Modi are his supporters and opponents in India. For everyone else, a state’s stature in the world will be governed more by its economy, its military, and the law and order it can maintain than by the image of one man. International relations are based on interests, not false piety, and the US rapprochement with Mao Zedong’s China, its repeated proclamation that Pakistan is its closest non-NATO ally, and its canoodling with several unsavoury dictators over the years should eliminate any doubt as to where the US or most other countries would stand. Finally, the Muslim states bogey: though they will act as all other states – in their national interest – one must ask what the non-recognition of Israel has gained for India all these years…Saudi underwriting of Pakistan’s nuclear programme? What has decades of non-Modi/BJP rule achieved for India from across the border other than terrorism?

Modi may or may not turn out to be a good prime minister eventually, but there is no reason to doubt his credentials so far. If anybody expects him to be a Napoleon, Rockefeller, and Mother Theresa in one, well, let me disappoint you right now. The criteria for prime ministership is simple – the unrelenting pursuit of the national interest. Modi has shown his business acumen, administrative talent, political skill, and personal integrity in Gujarat, and has produced infinitely superior results than any candidate other parties might field. That one does not wish him to become India’s next prime minister does not mean that Modi is unsuitable for the job.

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The Sociological Narendra Modi

12 Thu Apr 2012

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

capuchin monkeys, Godhra, Gulberg Society, India, inequity aversion, MF Hussain, Muslims, Narendra Modi, Salman Rushdie, secularism, Shah Bano, SIT, Taslima Nasrin

On April 10, 2012, the Ahmedabad Metropolitan Court revealed the findings of the report of the Special Investigation Team (SIT), appointed by the Supreme Court of India. The report stated that the SIT had found no evidence to prosecute Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat, for the post-Godhra Gulberg Society massacre in 2002.

Predictably, the announcement has been met by gnashing of teeth and hair pulling, by sighs of relief and celebrations. No doubt, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) political strategists are already busy calculating Modi’s acceptability and chances for success as a potential prime ministerial candidate. Simultaneously, the activists have declared that their fight against the Gujarat CM is not over, and dispersed to strategise on whether to sabotage Modi’s chances at the voting booth or drag him back to a court of law all over. Clearly, this is a very emotive issue for many in India (and their supporters abroad).

For a case in which emotions run so deep and for a person who induces such strong antipathy, what does Modi represent to India? Not the politician, or the man, but the idea…what chord resonates with the idea of Modi? The Chief Minister’s advocates point to a glowing report card in terms of economic development and governance in Gujarat, while his detractors froth at the mouth as they describe the communal violence that rocked Gujarat ten years ago. But both miss the deeper point – the defenders must realise that while Gujarat has done well, other states such as Tamil Nadu, Punjab, and Maharashtra have not lagged too far behind, while those against Modi must concede that the Chief Minister is not, despite the activists lavishing their attention on him, the only or most (allegedly) communal man in India. Ayodhya (1992) comes to mind, as does Bombay (1993). What is key about these incidents is not that they are examples of anti-Muslim violence – there are plenty of examples of anti-Hindu and anti-Christian violence too – but that unlike Nazi Germany’s targetted Endlösung or the Kosovo of Slobodan Milošević, these were instances of unorganised mob violence. Whether the violence arises from organised or unorganised action may seem trivial to ideologues (and is irrelevant to victims). However, if the violence is unorganised in nature, it exposes a critical trend in Indian society – of a seething resentment against leaders making a Potemkin attempt at running the country.

Lost in our own passions and social circles, it may seem to us that everyone must have a position on the issues we care about. Yet most people are more concerned with gathering their daily bread; work, transportation, inflation, providing an education for their children, planning for their retirement, and if finances allow it, rest and recreation, necessarily take precedence over politics, philosophy, and sometimes, even principles. What possibly could be the source of so strong a bitterness, rancour, or acrimony that would make common people abandon their necessary duties for the sort of wanton destruction after Godhra?

Modern crowd psychology has moved past theories of deindividuation put forward by late 19th and early 20th century thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Gustave Le Bon, and the present consensus argues that a crowd itself does not generate violence; rather, it amplifies a latent dissatisfaction among the people. In a 2005 publication, “The Madding Crowd Goes to School,” sociologists David Schweingruber and Ronald Wohlstein countered the seven most prominent myths about crowds. arguing that they are not spontaneous, suggestible, irrational, emotional, destructive, unanimous, or anonymous. In other words, not only is crowd behaviour not irrational but it is the surfacing of widely suppressed feelings. Connecting the dots, it does not take superhuman intelligence to realise that the root of antipathy is a seething yet restrained anti-Muslim sentiment.

Much of the anti-Muslim feelings are due to, as common wisdom has it, the decades-long soft and preferential treatment of the Muslim community. As true heirs to the British policy of ‘divide and rule,’ successive Indian governments have, in an effort to cultivate vote banks, created a monstrous edifice of inequality in law, from quotas, subsidies and other payouts to separate jurisdictions. All this is ostensibly to ameliorate Muslim “backwardness.” But no matter how many inquiry reports (such as the Sachar Committee report) conclude that Muslims are a backward community, even were the veracity of the findings to be conceded, the common man is neither interested nor inclined to pore over academic debates conducted in ivory towers and moved by what he sees on the street. The complaints are many and well known, and the issue is not even about whether they are legitimate or not but the perception of repeated slights against the Hindu majority. This view needed a political outlet, which the non-Right parties were unwilling to espouse. Hence, the aggrieved segment of society veered towards the Right, as is evident from the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its non-political satellites. Labelled as hindutva, the BJP has espoused, at least ideologically, the idea of Hindu rights. To the outsider, it would be puzzling to see a political party campaigning on a platform of rights for the majority!

In the modern era, humans have become very sensitive to inequality. It is easier to take away their money and even their civil rights than their sense of equality. The famous capuchin monkey experiment conducted in 2003 by Franz de Waals and Sarah Brosnan illustrates this point very well. In the experiment, capuchin monkeys were trained to collect pebbles in exchange for cucumbers. Very quickly, an economic system arose – as they became hungry, the monkeys collected pebbles and turned them in in exchange for cucumbers. Some collected more pebbles and were given more cucumbers. Trouble started when some monkeys were given grapes instead of cucumbers for their effort (a previous experiment had shown that grapes were a higher prized commodity among the capuchins). In response, the monkeys rewarded with cucumbers went on strike; some even started throwing their cucumbers at the scientists, and the vast majority refused to collect any more pebbles. The scientists concluded, “People judge fairness based both on the distribution of gains and on the possible alternatives to a given outcome…They respond negatively to previously acceptable rewards if a partner gets a better deal.” Similarly, in a democratic society, people may “hold emotionally charged expectations about reward distribution and social exchange.” As many have noticed, the problem was not unequal pay for unequal work but differentiated rewards for the same work – it was the arbitrariness and injustice that roused the monkeys. The monkeys’ strike and disruption of work is explained by Ernst Fehr and Klaus Schmidt, who argued in their 1999 paper on inequity aversion that the “willingness to sacrifice potential gain to block another individual from receiving a superior reward” is surprisingly strong.

Critics jump to point out that humans are not the same as monkeys, and while this point may be hesitantly surrendered, we should remember that as children, a common complaint to teachers and parents was, “It’s not fair!” A convincing case is yet to be made that the Godhra carnage required more media attention than the anti-Sikh riots or the eviction of Hindus from Kashmir between 1985 and 1995; a genuine argument is still lacking on why the state can seize control of temple earnings but not of mosques or churches; and no answer has been given on why the Rajiv Gandhi government changed the constitution of the land, despite its adverse effects on women’s rights, to influence the verdict in the Shah Bano case. The Indian government’s pusillanimity over the Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin cases was not evident when it came to defending the freedom of expression of MF Hussain, who, by any stretch of imagination, had “hurt the sentiments” of Hindus just as much as the previous two artists had the Muslims. It is such double standards that have served to enhance the resentment against the government and its unwitting Muslim beneficiaries.

So where should the damage control begin? Every community is responsible for its own actions, and it falls to the secular-minded moderates and liberals within the Muslim community to come forward and make their voices heard. Sensible voices should make a sustained and strong argument to the government for better modern educational facilities and opportunities in place of paternalistic government handouts and lip sympathies which have so far only kept the community behind. There is some good news on this front: in the recent Uttar Pradesh state Assembly elections, the Muslim community did not buy the tall promises offered it by some of the contesting parties.

Violence is unfortunate, and must be avoided as much as possible. But when the laws fail to protect, when the system seems to discriminate, people have historically taken to arms. The Modi phenomenon cannot be swept under the carpet as politicians, the media, and the ‘intelligentsia’ have tried. It cannot be pinned onto some imaginary bigotry of the Indian Right or the Indian uneducated, for Buddhists, Jains, Jews, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians have never generated the same anger among Hindus. The Modi case is neither important nor relevant except in the sense that justice must be done; even if Modi is taken to court and convicted, there will be many others waiting to step into the breach as long as Hindus perceive themselves as receiving a step-motherly treatment from the government. If anyone is genuinely interested in tackling communalism in India, perhaps they should stop working themselves into a murderous frenzy at the mention of Modi or the BJP and stop to listen.

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