When Modi deciphers Gandhi - By FPJ Bureau - The Free Press Journal, Mumbai, India

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Edit    September 27, 2013 12:04:13 AM |

By FPJ Bureau

When Modi deciphers Gandhi

He has used his old trick to introduce a connection between his unabashed personal desire to be the prime minister with a 63-year-old Gandhian goal

 

There are enough indicators in Modi’s track record to assess the ruthless manner with which he deals with his political opponents. Indeed, there is a long list of persons who have suffered thus at his hands in Gujarat. Besides, this approach is completely in sync with the political approach of the Sangh Parivar that has pushed for his propulsion to the national centre-stage

One of the qualities of the Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, that endears him to his loyal fan following is the panache with which he delivers the punchline in his speeches. In his quest for the prime minister’s post, he has discovered that he cannot get this coveted prize unless he finishes the Congress Party. So, he exhorts his followers to create an India that is free of it. For those who are believers in his credo, this is an endearing thought.

In one of his customary oratorical flourishes, he has drawn a link between a concept enunciated by the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi at the time of Independence in 1947 to his current quest for power. Let us refresh our memory about the father of nation’s idea. He had said: ”Though split into two, India having attained political independence through means provided by the Indian National Congress, the Congress ,in its present shape and form, i.e., as a propaganda vehicle and parliamentary machine, has outlived its use. India has still to attain social, moral and economic independence in terms of its seven hundred thousand villages as distinguished from its cities and towns. 

The struggle for the ascendancy of civil over military power is bound to take place in India’s progress towards its democratic goal. It must be kept out of unhealthy competition with political parties and communal bodies. For these and other similar reasons, the A. I. C .C. resolves to disband the existing Congress organization and flower into a Lok Sevak Sangh under the following rules, with power to alter them as occasion may demand.”
 

Now we can be generous and excuse the Gujarat chief minister if he has not gone into the fine print of this statement, and has simply latched on to the idea that the Congress had outlived its use in 1947. Putting two and two together, he has cleverly envisioned that if something was not done in the wake of Independence, then in a spirit of the cliché better late then never, it would be good to achieve the ‘ Gandhian goal to finish the Congress,’ now and by that logic, help him realise his dream of becoming the prime minister. We can see that Modi has used his old trick to introduce this connection between his unabashed personal desire to be the prime minister with a 63-year-old Gandhian goal. This is a well-practised technique. Much in the same way he used to tell his Gujarat audiences in 2002 that if he won, they would celebrate, and if he lost, then Mian Musharraf would be celebrating. This clearly skips the reality. Neither was Musharraf a factor in the Gujarat elections, nor is the late Mahatma Gandhi much of a revered figure for the Sangh Parivar that they should mourn for his unfulfilled dream. After all, this was not the only dream the father of nation had, which has remained unfulfilled.

But this distortion is not the only problem when Modi deciphers Gandhi for us. All of us have lofty, impractical ideas that we keep expressing. The beauty of the Mahatma was that he was a prolific writer and most of his thoughts have survived in the collected works. He used to think aloud, and this idea that the Congress should disband itself and transform into a Lok Sevak Sangh to ensure that ” the struggle for the ascendancy of civil over military power ….India’s progress towards its democratic goal… must be kept out of unhealthy competition with political parties and communal bodies” makes it clear that the nature of the party’s basic commitments was not to change.

But when Modi talks of a Congress free- India, he is clearly rooting for dictatorship. He is trying to sell a dream that should he emerge victorious in the 2014 elections, as his convinced supporters tell us, then there would be no opposition party. He carefully chooses his words, he is making it clear from the roooftops that he wants a Congress free-India. He is not suggesting or asking the people to merely defeat the Congress in the polls, but he is exhorting his supporters to ‘finish the Congress.” He is actually talking of the end of democracy through a ballot, and this is essential fascism.

It would be injurious to our democratic health, if we condone this excess as a mere election rhetoric. There are enough indicators in Modi’s track record to assess the ruthless manner with which he deals with his political opponents. Indeed, there is a long list of persons who have suffered thus at his hands in Gujarat. Besides, this approach is completely in sync with the political approach of the Sangh Parivar that has pushed for his propulsion to the national centrestage. It is not for nothing that the Sangh is described as fascist and fundamentalist.

Interestingly, democratic elections have been held in this country for the last six decades. The Congress has been one of the major parties that has been in the fray right from the first general elections. No one, including some of its fiercest opponents like the socialists Ram Manohar Lohia and George Fernandes have ever used these expressions in their anti-Congress discourse. This is because they were all anti-Congress, but they were all committed to the values of democracy.

The delicacy of the language is the essence of democratic discourse. You have every right to be critical, but then there is no need to be inimical or venomous. The problem when Modi deciphers Gandhi is that the soul of the discourse is not in the decoding process. When Gandhi wanted the Congress to disband, he was setting a higher purpose for it, but when Modi seks the same goal, he is guided by narrow personal goals of political power. Gandhi wanted the Congress to shun power for a higher goal, but with Modi it is quite the opposite. This is something that reminds one about the devil quoting the scripture.