India awaits an existential verdict
RESULTS for the Indian elections will be announced today. The needlessly tortuous contest for 543 Lok Sabha seats in extremely punishing weather saw at least a dozen poll officials killed by heatstroke. That the voters still came out should be a testament to their faith in democracy.
The campaign had the prime minister ever more viciously targeting the Muslim community, describing them as infiltrators who posed a demographic threat to 80 per cent of Hindus. His office published spurious data in the middle of the elections to shore up the lie. He accused Muslims of eyeing Hindu women’s mangalsutras, and every Hindu’s jobs and even buffaloes. He described the Congress manifesto as a Muslim League document. And since Muslims were infiltrators in his view and their population would sooner than later reduce Hindus to a minority, as per his claim, a larger and more dire message could be gleaned: that they were a threat that needed to be vacated at once.
The imagery of the accusation seemed lifted from the Nazi toolkit for spawning a racist ideology. Having said his hate-filled piece, Prime Minister Modi swore to his handpicked TV interviewers that he had never targeted Muslims, for if he did, he wouldn’t be worthy of leading the country. Mr Modi’s legendary about-turns and doublespeak are too numerous to list.
He threatened the opposition with dire consequences for criticising his policies, the rawest nerve for him being the persistent charge about his crony capitalist friends, a key opposition theme in the campaign. He didn’t spell out how he would deal with the opposition, but did menacingly gnash his teeth to warn the young opponent in Bihar, the 34-year-old Tejaswi Yadav, that he faces jail after the polls.
Will India find its soul again as was envisaged by the founding fathers?
In the meantime, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s three-week bail period ended on Sunday, and he is back in prison. The chief minister of Jharkhand resigned after being arrested before the polls, and he too is in jail, as are far too many left and liberal intellectuals of India. They are languishing in prison cells across the country with little hope of their so-called terror trials starting anytime soon. Unreported and invisible to the media, the farmers are continuing to sit in protest in Punjab to press for the prime minister’s unfulfilled promises to be met.
Mr Modi donned a range of attires, contrasting with Rahul Gandhi’s plain white shirt. Their competition was amusing. After Rahul jumped into the Arabian Sea from a fishing boat, Mr Modi sat in meditation in a shallow sea — with his eyes closed in silence and his security providing a tube for him to breathe normally — but not without an underwater camera transmitting the event.
Rahul had a wrestling outing with some of the leading wrestlers in the field, and then got his beard trimmed by a street corner barber in Rae Bareli. Mr Modi responded by announcing himself as an avatar of a divine deity, and therefore not to be confused with ordinary human beings.
Having said his bit, he went off to meditate once more, saffron-clad like Swami Vivekananda, to the southern-most tip of India, where the seer had sat in contemplation in 1893. TV paraphernalia was in attendance. Mr Modi has never allowed it to miss his attention-seeking antics in the 10 years he has ruled India as a wilful and whimsical autocrat.
An existential question has been asked about today’s coming verdict: would India find its soul again, as was envisaged by the founding fathers who gave it an enviable constitution, or would it wither into oblivion and be recast into an ideologically driven state inspired by the divisive doctrine of Hindutva?
Everyone agrees that India won’t be the same after June 4. If Prime Minister Narendra Modi gets a thumping majority, as exit polls claim against the more tempered estimates of the opposition, it could very much signal the final assault on Gandhi’s and Nehru’s and, above all, Ambedkar’s idea of India. And the assault would come from a more strident right-wing Hindu nationalist dispensation.
I deliberately mentioned Ambedkar, the Dalit member of the constituent assembly who headed the panel that drafted the constitution, the globally venerated book that is increasingly reviled by Hindutva advocates but which Rahul Gandhi flaunted at every election rally. When Mahatma Gandhi asked Ambedkar to join the temple entry movement to allow Dalits into Hindu temples from where they were banished by the Brahmin priesthood, he flatly turned down the offer. It was for Hindus to decide how they wished to project their truth, Ambedkar said. But he would rather have his Dalit people get education and find good jobs, instead of wasting their energies on temple visits.
The constitution Ambedkar helped frame nudged Indians to seek his scientific spirit. Mr Modi’s methods contravene the enshrined quest by playing on ignorance and superstition of large swathes of the masses that the Congress had failed to address, leave alone weed out, in its decades-long rule.
Rahul was focused on the rights of and justice for the exploited masses, above all women. Let’s focus also on the duties for citizens mandated in the constitution, which Mr Modi mocks.
“It shall be the duty of every citizen to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture.” There’s a particular focus presciently on safeguarding the environment, whereby citizens must “protect and improve the natural environment, including forests, lakes, rivers, wildlife, and to have compassion for creatures”.
But perhaps, dearest to Ambedkar and Nehru was the quest “to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform”. And how Indians under Modi should “promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; [and] renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women”.
India awaits an existential verdict with plenty of hope but with a lurking fear too.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2024