While the BJP supporters went into jubilation to celebrate second consecutive electoral victory of their party, the political opponents and observers sounded doom and gloom as soon as the election results of Indian Lok Sabha were announced. “It’s an end of Mahatma Gandhi era in India,” an opponent cried while a political observer claimed that this is a “validation of two nation theory.” The secularists, who always found fault in fundamentalist policies of Pakistan for all kinds of extremism that prevails in the country, had no convincing explanation to offer for an extremist political power that had emerged in India from the womb of secularism. All they can offer was a prediction that this election results are initiation of a disaster that that is going to hit India sooner or later. Historically speaking, it isn’t a unique political scenario that has made its appearance in India. The rise of ultra-right forces is as old an occurrence as is the institution of governance. In the recent past, many countries have already witnessed it and India is just a new addition to it. Instead of loathing and bemoaning about such an outcome of the Indian election, the best way is to look for its causes and point out what options are still there to explore to minimize any negative fall outs that may occur at any time in the future.
India has been through many political turmoils in the past and this time again it is witnessing a major shuffle in its political arena that will have a very lasting imprints on its history. The overwhelming victory of BJP is like a dawn of a new era in the Indian politics irrespective of how good or bad it would be for the people and the country. Coincidentally, the leadership of this new change belongs to the same province of Gujrat that had produced two great leaders in the past: Mahatma Gandhi and Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah whose leadership brought an end to the British rule in India and now the emergence of Narinder Modi has ended Gandhi dynasty (descendants of India’s first prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru that shouldn’t be linked with Mahatma Gandhi) . Apart from all the negativities attached to Narinder Modi, one has to admire the great achievements this poor man of India has made within a short span of time, from being a son of chai wala (tea seller) to the premiership of the world’s largest democracy besides having many other accolades in his favor. Only Abraham Lincoln comes to mind who made similar strides from a very poor family background and became the 16th President of USA in 1861. Coincidentally, his presidentship was also a cause of divide in the US polity as did the premiership of Narinder Modi in India.
India has been through many political turmoils in the past and this time again it is witnessing a major shuffle in its political arena that will have a very lasting imprints on its history. The overwhelming victory of BJP is like a dawn of a new era in the Indian politics irrespective of how good or bad it would be for the people and the country
Another coincidence that needs not to be ignored is that like the other three great leaders, Modi has also emerged at a time when the Indian society is going through a major change in its polity. Abraham Lincoln had emerged when the US society was at a cross road to decide which direction it has to go – slave-owning or free-for-all country. Gandi and Jinah had appeared to lead the society for the freedom of people from the British rule. What new role is Modi going to play in his country?
Narinder Modi is, in fact, an anti-thesis of the three great leaders who played historical roles at their times: Abraham Lincoln fought for the rights of slaves while Gandhi and Jinnah fought for the liberation of Indian people. Modi, on the other hand, is struggling to establish a majoritarian rule in the country that will ultimately deny rights to the minority people and uphold criminality as a justifiable tool to achieve their goal, a glaring example of which is the efforts of some BJP leaders to reincarnate the killer of Gandhi as a national hero.
Why is a society, having been recognized as a secular democracy, now supporting so overwhelming to a leader whose agenda is against the basic tenets of its constitution and democratic principles? There are many explanations on this emerging new trend in the Indian politics but I would confine myself to one statement of Jawed Naqvi, the Dawn correspondent in Delhi, that is quite mind boggling. “It’s difficult to understand the grudge against Indian liberalism, when that is all one has to save and fight for,” he aptly wrote in one of his columns but my question is: “Why should a majority fight for something that doesn’t favor its interest?” The next question that pops up in mind is, “The same majority was there when India was fighting for its freedom and yet it had opted for equality and secularism, why?” I call it liberalism or democracy of elite class of pre-independent India. To make my point clear as to what I mean by the elite’s democracy, I will ask the readers to wait for the next part of this column.
The writer is a Senior Research Fellow, Center for Research and Security Studies